general techniques to avoid gross shipping of your characters

andrewhussiespisskink:

• recognize that your idea of what is and is not “gross” is entirely subjective and based on your own personal moral stance. come to terms with the fact that even things you consider to be basic human morality–even things you think should be universal–are not and cannot ever be accepted universally. 
• avoid putting so much of your own personal investment in the characters you share in a mass media context. audiences will always interpret your work differently than you originally intended. death of the author is status quo. you cannot be emotionally invested in audiences’ interpretations of your characters, relationships, and themes, to the point that a conflicting interpretation will utterly wreck your ability to produce content or send you into witch hunts after your audience members.
• write diverse casts of characters with interesting dynamics regardless of whether or not those dynamics are unhealthy and your audience will interpret them howsoever your audience pleases. make the ships you like canon, or don’t. whatever your story calls for. the audience won’t care either way, and will probably purposefully ignore all canon ships. see bullet point #2.
• recognize audiences’ need for catharsis, for exploring fucked-up concepts, and for purposefully engaging in “gross” media in order to explore the darkest parts of one’s subconscious. recognize that even in children’s media, people need to explore fucked-up concepts. even children themselves play-act ordering around slaves, kidnapping love interests, murdering people, marrying family members, all kinds of dark shit.
• realize that, given all of this, there’s really no such thing as “gross shipping” in an objective sense.
• be entirely free from this concept and this discourse.