Tag Archives: Poorly Explained Things

A Very Bad Introduction to Shipping Culture on Tumblr

(Update, 16 Oct. 2018: Literally the week after I wrote this, Symbrock (Venom) flew in and directly dethroned Klance from the #1 spot on the Fandometrics Top 20 Ships list for the week ending on the 15th of October. Needless to say this has completely destroyed the theories I formulated below. I am in shock, to be honest, but here is my original analysis nevertheless; I just needed to share the fact that this development hit me like a freight train and I have not recovered.)

(Disclaimer: I am not a shipper. I am viewing this as an outsider, which will skew my perspective. Nevertheless, I tried to take advantage of this and have an objective stance on each discussed fandom/ship. A.K.A., I share my observations and try to avoid making commentary on it. Apologies if I fail. Also, I am using Terms That Will Be Capitalized That Are Not Actually Used In The Language Of Fandom; this is mostly for my benefit.)

Shipping is a huge part of fandom culture. In regards to a fandom’s popularity in relation to their ships, the most popular fandoms on Tumblr often fit relatively into three categories:

    1. Fandoms driven into popularity by a singular ship
    2. Fandoms driven into popularity by multiple ships
    3. Fandoms whose ships are driven by their popularity

Most commonly, there is one “primary ship” that encompasses a large portion of a fandom, followed by a “secondary ship”, although nearly all fandoms can fit into this dynamic if we really wanted.

We’re not gonna really do that though. Let’s instead look at individual fandoms, starting with fandoms at their peak during the early 2010’s gay shipping craze. The fandoms of Merlin, Shadowhunters, and Teen Wolf, from what I’ve seen, consist nearly entirely of Merthur, Malec, and Sterek, and these Singular Power Ships are what drive the fandoms to the top. (Hannibal, actually, can also be worth mentioning seeing how much the Hannigram ship has helped the fandom move forward, but Hannibal is a much broader fandom in terms of content and is a small enough fandom that I would not consider Hannigram a prominent enough ship to be considered a Singular Power Ship.)

In later years, Bellarke, from The 100, is another example of a ship gaining the power of a Singular Power Ship, but this is mainly because the show killed off Clarke’s lesbian lover, because, Bury Your Gays, so of course the Clexa ship had to sink, leaving Bellarke to rise to the top. Victuuri, from Yuri on Ice, was also widely discussed, especially after the ship was explicitly shown to be canon on the show.

All these shows had secondary ships, but there was generally a single ship that most of the fandom talked about.

Of course, the Three Fandom Princes of Tumblr would have to be brought up at this point as well: Supernatural, with the Singular Power Ship of Destiel (helped perhaps by secondary ships such as Sabriel, which I believe to have replaced Wincest over the years for hopefully obvious reasons); Sherlock, with the Singular Power Ship of Johnlock; and Dr. Who, which is simply a powerful fandom on its own without a distinguished ship to associate with the fandom.

Dr. Who, however, is an exception in being a popular fandom without a powerful ship. Harry Potter and Star Wars are also examples of the exception. (Reylo can count as a Singular Power Ship, but this relationship does not drive the fandom, although it helps a lot.)

Usually, when a fandom rises to a place on Fandometric’s Top 20 lists, this will also push the ships within the fandom to the top. BTS, for example, is one of Tumblr’s most powerful fandoms, yet does not have a particular Singular Power Ship. The ships are powerful for sure, but this appears to mainly be due to the sheer size of the BTS fandom. There are no ships that make up more than 40% of the fandom’s content, not even a Common Arrangement of multiple ships. (Common Shipping Arrangements can take form as something as large as EXO’s six most popular pairings, or as simple as shipping Voltron’s Klance along with Adashi because they complement each other, as opposed to Klance and Sheith, which is bound to clash.)

This is interesting given Tumblr’s history with bandom shipping, particularly with the Three Bandom Princes of Tumblr (MCR, Panic! at the Disco, and Fall Out Boy – all of which I’m pretty sure are still going strong despite the gradual overtaking by The Kpop Community).

BTS falls in contrast to Voltron: Legendary Defender, whose popularity is in large part due to their ships instead of vice versa. Of course, with their wide array of characters, they have quite their share of well-liked secondary ships, be it Shallura, Plance, Heith, Lotura, or honestly literally any pairing of characters ever except Klance and Sheith, which are the primary ships. Both Klance and Sheith have the prominence of Singular Power Ships; in fact, they are two of the top pairings on Tumblr, which may be in part due to the in-fandom fighting between the ships: the more fans argue about the two ships, the more discussed they are, the more they climb up Fandometric’s Top 20 list.

Fighting between ships is normal, but is extremely widespread in the Voltron community due to the nature of the Sheith ship. Shiro is a grown man, in contrast to Keith who is 18, and the two have known each other since Keith was a very young teen. This dynamic is interpreted as inappropriate by many fans, but Sheith shippers believe that since Shiro and Keith are both technically adults, there should be no problem. Thus, many Klance shippers disapprove of Sheith shippers for supporting what they view as a relationship that is pedophilic in nature, and Sheith shippers believe no one should hate on anyone for shipping who they want to ship. Further driving this discourse is the fact that the showrunners have implicated intent to include LGBTQ+ representation in the show, causing fans to relentlessly dig through seasons in an attempt to dig up any evidence they can suggesting that their ship will become canon. Needless to say, it is no surprise the shipping among the Voltron fandom is such a widely discussed topic.

The Marvel fandom is quite similar to that of Voltron, except with more emphasis on individual actors and familial head canons between characters. Marvel and Voltron are both worlds with a large number of (mainly male) characters, allowing lots of shipping and attracting many fans. Stucky and Stony are ships comparable to Klance and Sheith; although, in the case of Marvel, the brotherly dynamic (Stucky) overpowers the rivalry dynamic (Stony), while in the Voltron fandom, Klance is more popular than Sheith.

Another difference is that Marvel fans are generally aware of the impossibility of their ship becoming canon, and, as a live-action franchise, much of the Marvel fandom on Tumblr does center around the actors. There is also a lot more discussion of the familial relationships between the characters with the father-son dynamic between Tony Stark and Peter Parker, sibling relationships between T’challa and Shuri as well as Thor and Loki, and the general family-like relationship between the Avengers and Fury.

The wlw shipping community is significantly smaller and less dramatic but still quite loud concerning canon lesbian couples. Steven Universe (Pearlrose), Adventure Time (Bubbline), Supergirl (Sanvers), Wynonna Earp (Wayhaught), and Avatar: the Last Airbender (Korrasami) are all shows with canon wlw couples that everyone likes, although strangely, the most popular ship from Supergirl is not Sanvers, but rather Supercorp. There isn’t much to say about wlw shipping because it’s generally very non-problematic. The negativity in the wlw community is generally not pointed toward each other, but rather the showrunners/cast for their mistakes (Supergirl @Comic Con 2017 anyone?). As mentioned previously, Clexa was another wlw ship that is no longer running, and the show creators were highly criticized for what they chose to do with the relationship. For most of these fandoms, the popularity is driven by the ships.

Other popular fandoms:

  • Boku no Hero Academia: BNHA is a strong both as a fandom and in shipping, but I’m not familiar enough with this show to make a comment on it; however, my observations suggest the behavior of this fandom is most similar to Marvel and maybe Voltron.
  • Phandom: I’m pretty sure the Phandom is basically entirely Phan content whether the shipping is platonic or not because the dynamic between Dan and Phil is basically the reason for most of their fans.
  • Overwatch: I don’t know what goes on in this fandom except for copious amounts of love for the diversity of this game, but I have seen shipping among the playable characters, though not anything particularly noteworthy.
  • The Royal Animation Children: The Royal Animation Sisters – Adventure Time, Steven Universe, Avatar – now have three younger siblings: Voltron, The Dragon Prince, and Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir. I have already discussed Voltron in great detail; The Dragon Prince doesn’t provide much to discuss, as it hasn’t given much material to work with. Miraculous Ladybug has a pretty basic shipping base considering everyone ships the same thing with a couple side ships; however, the relationship between the two main characters is so nuanced because of the multiple identities that this potentially powerful primary ship has never gotten very far ahead.
  • The Good Place: This jumped on the Top 20 list very high very fast, and I have no idea what the shipping culture is. But from what I’ve seen, people just generally ship anything and it basically works, and from the seasons I’ve watched that checks out so basically I’m pretty sure this is one of those free-for-all shipping fandoms.

In general, it appears that shipping is most powerful with canon wlw couples and with franchises with large, heavily male-dominated casts. For ultimate power, promise LGBTQ+ content and deliver as little as possible. For non-platonic shipping, large casts with family dynamics is where it succeeds. Most of this is quite intuitive.

All that being said, I should probably emphasize that I have a limited experience in terms of fandom, so I have probably excluded many fandoms, including Andi Mack, the Land of Youtubers, and whatever miscellaneous stuff I overlooked. Also, I DO have an opinion about a lot of these, but like I said, I am trying to be neutral. Also, I am very likely misinformed about many of these fandoms. But, from the perspective of the person who wrote this, this analysis is as accurate as can be.

Fandom: In Defense of the Winter Soldier

Hi everyone I just want to share an outline of my very academic essay intended to defend one of my favorite MCU characters

Claim: This entire post is just about how Bucky shouldn’t be held responsible for the actions he carried out as the Winter Soldier because he was LITERALLY BEING MIND CONTROLLED!!! HE HAD NO CHOICE IN THE MATTER!!! HE HAD NO CONTROL OVER HIS ACTIONS!!!

Evidence: He was just a TOOL to carry out the intentions of the people pulling his strings!!!

Commentary: Do you blame the gun for someone getting shot, or do you blame the person who PULLED THE TRIGGER??? Do you blame the knife for someone getting stabbed, or the PERSON WHO JAMMED IT INTO SOMEONE’S STOMACH???

Connection to thesis: Do you, then, blame a brainwashed soldiers for assassinating someone, or the EVIL BEINGS who FORCED them to DO IT?!!!!

Conclusion: Protect guns and knives and brainwashed soldiers and other weapons 2k18 they’ve done nothing wrong it’s how people use them!!!

Irrelevant connection to auxiliary source: It’s like in Black Mirror in which we learn there’s nothing wrong with technology it’s all about how people use it!!! In this essay I will-

(Disclaimer: I got into Marvel because I saw Sebastian Stan as the Winter Soldier in Civil War clips and all that and thought the Winter Soldier was super cool, and also watched the Captain America movies in reverse order so I’m extremely biased towards this character. However I stand by my words and also he looked really badass doing that motorcycle thing so we should automatically forgive him. Thanks for listening)

Etiquette and Appearance

There are some things that different people will have extremely skewed opinions of, and yet both sides can be easily understood with some thought. One of these things is etiquette and appearance (this is technically two things, but they go hand-in-hand).

For some people, appearance is everything. It is a reflection of yourself, and the most important thing is to dress appropriately. The way you carry yourself tells others a lot about you; your self-confidence, how well you take care of yourself, how much you value your interaction with the person in front of you, etc.

But for lots of others, appearance means nothing. Not only are some people unable to afford nice clothes and such, but all-in-all, the way you look outwardly does not affect your inner self in the slightest. For these people, appearance and attire are superficial and irrelevant, and is a poor depiction of the kind of person you truly are.

Many people are extreme in one of these beliefs, and either way you think about it, they both make a lot of sense. Yet, these ideas are in complete opposition.

In a similar vein of thought, politeness is the key to social interaction. Politeness is how you demonstrate consideration and respect. No matter how opposed you are to others, you must be cordial to everyone. It’s impartial and respectful, and keeps emotions out of the equation. Rudeness, for them, is despicable; it’s dismissing the existence and feelings of others, and downright unprofessional and disrespectful.

For others, however, politeness is disingenuous and unnecessary. It may be snobbish, false intrigue, and superficial. Some people prefer to be straightforward and blunt. Some are aloof with everyone save for those close to them. Some don’t understand the unspoken rules of proper etiquette. And sometimes, we are absent-minded, in a hurry, or in a bad mood, and we either forget to be polite or don’t have the energy to do so. In sum, strictly social scripts are insufficient in running society, and politeness is not a good indicator of the kind of person you really are.

So we have two completely opposing sides here: the first is that good appearances and good manners reflect good attitude. It indicates that the person values their interaction with the person in front of them, and that effort has been put into this interaction. The second is that appearances and etiquette cannot possibly reflect a person’s inner self, and that they are not something we should focus on too much.

Of course most people align somewhere in the middle grounds in regards to how much they value politeness and appearance. But much of society, especially those of higher social class, will lean towards intense contempt for those who have the audacity not to make an effort in their appearance and manners or conversation. And honestly, it really isn’t something they can be blamed for.

At the end, the best mindset to take is a nice route down the middle. In professional environments, try your best to respect your colleagues, and pay a little more attention to your clothes and diction. Outside the job, still try to speak nicely to others. Don’t stress too much about how you look or act, but make sure everyone receives the respect they deserve.

Anselm’s Ontological Argument for the Existence of God

So recently (as in a couple of hours before I wrote this in a fever) I started taking online introduction to philosophy courses and they brought up a particular argument supporting the existence of God: Anselm’s Ontological Argument. This post is basically gonna be me copying exactly what the online courses teaches and then explaining what I think about it. Bear in mind I literally just learned this stuff and also I have the memory of a goldfish with anterograde amnesia so I could be very wrong, this is just my understanding and again I just use this blog to just rant about stuff so don’t take me seriously I’m just trying to share some Cool Ideas I came across. Anyway, get ready for a quick, dubiously accurate lesson in basic philosophy, everyone.

Basically, Anselm separates things into things that exist in the understanding (things we are able to conceive) and things that exist in reality.

Anselm's Venn Diagram

Here are some personalized examples:

Personal Anselm Venn Diagram

I spent like two hours on this graphic, one to try and remember how R Studio works and another to give up and actually make this in Google Drawings, so please appreciate it

So, for example, while we have an understanding of both Ryan Reynolds and Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds exists in reality as well while Deadpool does not. Things that exist in reality but not in existence is difficult to comprehend because naming things that exist will make you think about it, and they would exist in understanding. The course I was using suggested stars that are never seen and most fish in the ocean as an example, as while we know there are lots of stars and fish out there, we won’t think about most particular stars/fish, and they will go through their life cycle completely without our awareness. Personally, it is easier to comprehend by the example of undiscovered species – we know there are many animal and plant species out there that haven’t been discovered so while we know they exist, we still don’t have a concept of them in our heads and are unable to conceive their existence.

The problem comes in the placement of God. Anselm defines God as “something that than which no greater can be thought”.

Anselm's Venn Diagram_ God

Anselm claims that if God existed in both understanding and reality, He would be greater than if He existed only in understanding but not in reality:

Anselm's Venn Diagram_ God's Greatness

To understand this argument, let’s use an adjective other than “great”: scary. Let’s take a look at the Dementor. Dementors are pretty scary (if you don’t think Dementors are scary you either don’t know what they are our have never experienced happiness in your life in the first place, but no matter what we’ll assume they are scary for the sake of argument). However, imagine them existing in real life.

Anselm's Venn Diagram_ Dementor

That’s even scarier; while we used to be comforted in the idea that they’re just a myth, we are now confronted with their reality; we could actually be affected by Dementors now because it is a thing that exists in reality – they could absolutely suck out our happiness, hope, and soul in real life now.

So applying the same logic to God, that must mean He is even greater if He exists in reality:

Anselm's Venn Diagram_ God's Greatness

However, that means He can’t exist in the understanding but not in reality, because that would mean something can be conceived that is GREATER than God, and that something is God existing in reality. This is a problem because God is defined as something that than which no greater can be thought, and if existing in reality makes us think of him as even greater, then He cannot exist only in understanding and not in reality; therefore, God MUST exist in reality.

Anselm's Venn Diagram_ God Conclusion

However, the online course I was taking did point out that when you break Anselm’s argument into the premises and conclusion necessary for an argument, you will find that while his argument is VALID, it is not necessarily SOUND.

I won’t go into detail about his premises and conclusion, but just know that validity means it’s impossible for all the premises to be true but the conclusion false, and soundness means that the argument is valid and that all the premises are true. Basically, Anselm uses premises that are not necessarily true no matter how you interpret them.

Here are my personal thoughts: personally, the premise that God exists in our understanding is already not necessarily true for me. This is entirely my own interpretation, but this following commentary is going to be based on it, so just hold on.

In my opinion, the greatness of God is too much to conceive and truly understand, which means God cannot exist in understanding in the first place. Frankly, I view it as plain hubris to assume humans could possibly conceive how great God truly is (or any higher being, for that matter). If He did exist in both understanding and reality, we still wouldn’t be able to comprehend the true extent of his greatness. Reworded, existing in reality won’t change his greatness by a meaningful amount because his greatness exceeds human comprehension.

Now dropping this interpretation, I still find more issues with this logic. Namely, it is entirely based on perception. God existing in reality won’t make His greatness greater – only BELIEVING He exists in reality will make people perceive Him as greater than just existing in understanding, and give people the ability to conceive the greatness of God. However, that does not prove His existence, it only shows that people who genuinely believe God exists in reality will truly perceive Him as “something that than which no greater could be thought”.

Those who do not believe He exists in reality are not perceiving maximum potential greatness and thus God cannot exist in understanding and not in reality; this makes sense. However, all that this implies is that they do not understand the true greatness of God. For them, the greatest thing that can be thought is not God at all. The greatest thing they can conceive IS the concept of a God nonexistent in reality (a paradox explored more in the following paragraph) or something entirely different. Those who do not believe He exists in reality do not have him in understanding in the first place, since for them, the greatest conceivable thing is not God in the first place.

Anselm’s entire reasoning is based on the assumption that God IS the greatest thing in the world, which is a problem if He doesn’t truly exist in reality. What his reasoning tells us, however, is that for something to be conceived as the superlative embodiment of some adjective (scariest, funniest, etc.), the particular person must believe that the thing exists in reality. What I am proposing now is the concept that the THOUGHTS exist in reality and can be the greatest conceivable thing. Basically, I would like to suggest that the IDEA of the greatest conceivable thing BE the greatest conceivable thing to someone.

The idea behind this is that thoughts by themselves are perfectly capable of inflicting emotion. So while, perhaps, something that exists in reality may be the scariest physical thing to someone, but the thought of something that does NOT exist in reality may scare them more. So while they may not believe something exists in reality, the THOUGHT of it does exist in reality.

Consider that to someone the scariest thing known to exist in reality is a snake, but they don’t scare them that much because not many things scare them in real life. However, IMAGINARY things are REALLY scary; perhaps the THOUGHT of Bigfoot really scares them. In this case, neither snakes nor Bigfoot are the conceivably scariest thing because snakes aren’t that scary and Bigfoot doesn’t exist. However, the THOUGHT of Bigfoot is something that exists in reality, and is the scariest thing for that person.

Obviously this doesn’t make much sense; again, if you can THINK of something scary, obviously it’d be scarier if it happened in real life. So we still can’t determine what the “thing that than which no scarier can be thought” is or if it exists, we do know that thoughts of something imaginary CAN be scarier than the scariest real thing, so the scariest thing does not have to be real, although if the thing that was THOUGHT of as the scariest thing but only existed in understanding became real, it WOULD exceed the scariness of the THOUGHT of the scariest thing to become the ACTUAL scariest thing. Basically, it would take the real existence of “something that than which no scarier can be thought” to prove the real existence of “something that than which no scarier can be thought”, and the non-existence of “something that than which no scarier can be thought” to prove the non-existence of “something that than which no scarier can be thought”.

Similarly, the greatest thing existent in reality does not have to be greater than the thought of something great, as the human imagination can exceed reality at times. If the thing that was THOUGHT of as the greatest thing not necessarily existing in reality (God) became real, it would exceed the greatness of the THOUGHT of the greatest thing to become the ACTUAL greatest thing. It would take the real existence of “something that than which no greater can be thought” to prove the real existence of “something that than which no greater can be thought”, and the non-existence of “something that than which no greater can be thought” to prove the non-existence of “something that than which no greater can be thought”.

Of course, this is very unhelpful because it’s basically saying that the existence of God proves the existence of God and the non-existence of God proves the non-existence of God, but such is life. Isn’t philosophy fascinating?!