cashew | Don't you hate it when the dumber ship name becomes popular?

Ok, I've bitched about this before with the Starbuck vs Starbucks ship name whilst in my Steve/Bucky phase (I prefer Starbuck BTW, because Moby Dick reference FTW; fuck your chainstore coffee shop), but ship name annoyance has come up again in my current fandom.

Long story short, I am shipping 王砚×兰珏 a lot. To the point I'm re-reading fic and bookmarking MVs and pushing through the 王砚 side story by the original author despite finding the plot immensely dumb, just so I can get my fix.

The most popular ship name is 兰砚知己. Allow me to explain why I find this ship name dumb:

This is a play on the phrase 蓝颜知己, which is itself a play on the much older phrase 红颜知己. First, you must understand that 知己 is a platonic soul mate. The phrase 红颜 (red cheeks) refers to sexual/romantic partner. So 红颜知己 is a romantic soul mate. Then 90s feminists decided they wanted a phrase for a platonic soul mate, so they changed the color red to blue, resulting in 蓝颜知己. Even though 知己 is already platonic. The phrase 蓝颜知己 is immensely stupid on a literary level because not only does it stem from a misunderstanding of what "red" is referring to in 红颜 (not the woman's make up, it's referring to flush from sexual arousal), it also assigns color association to gender (blue=man, red=woman; real progressive there🙄/s). And on top of all that, it turns the BL ship into a platonic friendship! Are we trying to porn these two characters or not?!

Meanwhile, the alternative ship name (that for some reason never got popular) is 惊才珏砚. This is a play on 惊才绝艳. The phrase 惊才绝艳 (first used in 清·王晫《今世说·企羡》) is a combination of 惊才 (shocking talent) and 绝艳 (brilliant colors), meaning that the quality is outstanding. Simultaneously, 珏砚 is a homophone of 绝艳, while also being a combination of the two characters' given names. So the implication of this ship name implies a shockingly talented duo, which is quite appropriate since the two characters are high ranking officials at a relatively young age.

So of course the more literary ship name doesn't become popular. This is immensely frustrating to me on so many levels.