Stalled reading plus shipping and do we know what that is?

People seem to be in a reading rut right now (I cite Meg's post "Reading Rut, I am in you"), and I am the biggest no-exception. I've started a truly extraordinary number of books and finished none. And then I had that whole watch-too-many-episodes-of-that-unnamed-show thing. 

SO. Just to explain why this hasn't been too updatey. But I'm sure you all have just been in a veritable WHIRLWIND of holiday activity, and are barely even reading blogs, so I could really post or not post whatever and it would all just zoom down into the blogging void. I don't need to explain what the blogging void is, because this is already in it and NO CAN READ THINGS THERE.

...my tumblr's been like this lately as well.

here're some puppies

If I can go in a fiction-related but not necessarily solely book-related direction, do we all know what shipping is?

When I use this


do you all think I'm talking about an actual boat? Hopefully not. Okay, so "shipping" is short for "relationshipping" which means you want certain people to end up together in a romantic way. The term was originally used for Mulder and Scully; people who wanted them to end up together were called Relationshippers (as opposed to the No-Romos).
Do you feel like it's ok to ship non-canon things? Our generally liberal societal feeling makes me think the kneejerk response for a non-guilty conscience would be "Sure, people can do whatever they want," but shipping non-canon couples can make people VERY VERY ANGRY. Like "There is no EVIDENCE; why would you DO that." I'm going to assume most of the people feeling this way are 12, because that's what I did when I was 12.
But you've got authorial intent, right? The author puts two people together. Like Ron and Hermione in Harry Potter. But then you've got all these Harry/Hermione shippers who are like "I don't know what book YOU'RE reading, but H/Hr forever, yo." And J.K's like "That's...kind of delusional." And then the internet EXPLODES.
I should note that JKR specifically avoided saying they were delusional, because she didn't want the internet to explode, but it did anyway, because she shot H/Hr down. So. I guess we're looking at shipping rights. 1) Can you ship non-canon? (pretty much definitely yes) 2) Are you allowed to badger the author for validation? Well. That seems odd since it's not canon, i.e. not what the author chose to do, but I've done exactly that with Once Upon a Time and Swan Queen, the Emma Swan/Evil Queen pairing. 

oh sure, I'M the crazy one

I don't know. I guess people should suck it up if it's a book and it's done and the author obviously put people with someone other than you wanted, but since I've been a part of the shipping world for 14 years, I've kind of got a huge amount of sympathy with people and their ships. And if you can get an author to say "Well, it didn't end up that way, but sure, there was that potential," then that is awesome. 

If a work of fiction is 'out there' can people do what they want with it/interpret it how they want? Can you tell an author "I'm sorry, but the way you've written it clearly indicates these two characters love each other," and have validation for that EVEN if the author says "OMG NO STOP IT"?

I'm particularly interested in this BECAUSE of Swan Queen. There are basically a hundred good arguments for it, but the likelihood of it actually happening is close to zero (which is crazy-stupid, btw). People have pretty much said "I know what I've seen and I refuse to put Emma with whichever Guy of the Week She Has No Chemistry With that you try to force in." Sigh. Oh, fiction.