It’s a gay human right to be able to absorb any piece of media and come away with the conclusion that the two worst characters from that property should be dating. We’ve created entire schools of thought, works of art, and social media platforms (Tumblr) to justify our thirst for shipping.
That said, we can all agree that some ships were certainly not made in heaven. Even if we love the toxic energy certain fictional couples give off, there’s a reason why they broke up or never dated in the original story, and that reason is probably a damn good one. But us gays, we never learn. We keep right on shipping.
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“Some of the projects are big, some of the projects are small, but they’re all queer and trans.”
Which is why there’s no shortage of Tumblr art and AO3 fanfic dedicated to some of the most cursed pairings in media history. There’s so much of it around that when a poster asks “what’s the worst ship in history,” we have no shortage of examples.
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Let’s start with the obvious: Binnie and Della on Eastenders.
Some relationships that were meant to be portrayed as passionate and fiery back in the day seem just straight-up toxic to a modern audience, and this is one of them.
Other ships seem to exist to erase any suggestion of queerness from certain characters…
Some are just pathetic…why are we pretending that Cousin Richie is at all good enough/stable enough for Sydney!
And other ships end up trapping characters with their abusers all in the name of romance…
This trope needs to die a certain death…
A big no thank you to this Buffy pairing!
Some ships just don’t make sense…
And some make too much sense, in the worst way…
Others are so bad they’re good, famously so. In a Reddit thread from last year, users responded to the same call for a toxic ship with wild abandon.
“Hannigram (Hannibal and Will Graham),” one user wrote. “They have amazing chemistry. Hannibal’s charisma is terrifying, considering what a dangerous and amoral person he is, and Will Graham’s uniquely specific deductive reasoning and empathy for him as well. Also, they’re both gorgeous.”
Another poster said their favorite was Batman and Joker, a hero and villain forever locked in an epic battle for Gotham’s soul…with kissing?
“They are fighting a deeply personal, deeply ideological war,” one poster wrote. “They each represent what the other one hates the most, and they each depend on the other to stay alive until the other bends to his will. The last each one of them wants is to kill the other. It is poetic.”
Whatever your favorite toxic ship is, never doubt its power. These aren’t real people and thankfully we don’t have to deal with the problematics of undead spirits, serial killers, and vampires getting together IRL…yet. But gay fandoms are a wonderful thing, toxic or not. After all, let’s not forget that a Sherlock/Watson ship gave us bisexual lighting. And I think we can all agree the world is better for it!
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