“Ship means something you want to see happen.” Bitch, no it don’t. This weird-ass modern culture of lobbying show-runners to make your ship canon didn’t emerge until the advent of social media. (And recent social media like twitter, not shit-you-forgot-existed like MySpace.) Shipping and fandom in general have been around much longer, so you can stop acting like “this is the way it has always been uwu” right the fuck now.

Until relatively recently, most fans I’ve known have been perfectly okay with their ships never being canon. I, personally, would be actively offended if certain ships of mine became canon. That is not why I ship them. What I want from canon and what I want from fandom are often entirely different things that only intersect on the margins.That is why fanworks are called “transformative” ffs.