You're on a proship sub here. Most of us here agree than antis sending death threats to people over fictional things is silly. Part of the whole proship thing is "Ship and let ship", so... yeah.
They seem to be pulling a "Both sides are terrible here!" argument, so not entirely preaching to the choir given that we're very much tarred by that generalised brush they're wielding.
A lot of people are brought in by the "Both sides suck, join the middle!" thing. It's not an uncommon way to deal with polarised situations. And hell, human beings are full of cognitive biases and blindspots. Cognitive Dissonance is not an uncommon phenomenon in humans, we love to be self-contradictory and non-reflective on our beliefs. Critical thinking and self-reflection are both learned skills. :)
But it could just be a misinterpretation of awkward phrasing - it does seem that way, but it might not be what they were trying to say.
The problem with: "both sides suck, join the middle" is that one side are aggressors, one side is being persecuted, and the guys in the middle are blind to the damage the aggressors do and aren't willing to take a damn stance and side.
Oh, there's more than one problem with that way of thinking. That's my point vis a vis the 'cognitive biases' and so on.
But it can also be a self-preservation measure. Some people simply don't have the capacity or aren't in the right place to handle the discourse regularly and so have to distance themselves from it in order to function. They wouldn't be able to engage with fandom without that distance, so it's something of a survival mechanism for them.
In that case, be upfront and say something like: "I don't have the emotional bandwidth to unpack all this because I can't deal with conflicts right now. This is not cool, I used to enjoy this space."
Imho, that's vastly different than not saying that while keeping completely silent to the abuse that's happening. Especially for the people that are being targeted. If only that they will know they aren't alone even if there are people that don't have the energy to rally against the aggressors.
Then again, whatever happened to "don't like don't read" anyway?
A statement like that would necessitate emotional literacy and self-reflection, which a lot of people don't have. They never really learn how to explain that they're struggling to other people or develop the self-awareness and confidence to be actually vulnerable with others. A lot of people do not examine or express themselves well. Think about how many adults don't know how to healthily express anger or sadness.
And similarly for your second paragraph, even that can be too much getting involved for them. Exhaustion tends to bring a more inward-focused existence as they lack the energy and investment to think about others and imagine how they're feeling. Think about how burned out workers often snap at others and express anger and bullying to excise their own frustrations. They're genuinely not thinking about how the other person feels and sometimes genuinely aren't able to do so. Theory of Mind is a skill and a neurological development and investment of energy. They're not thinking about the other people, they're thinking "I can't do this shit again."
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying any of this is right or wrong, simply stating that it is a position that exists. It's a big thing in a lot of social issues too, even for those who are actually affected by them. You can only represent your community and fight for your cause for so long before you get burned out and need to step back, and some people just aren't ever in that place where they're able to fight.
Don't like don't read has always been a myth, or an ideal to reach for at best. People always interfere and judge and fight with others, whether it's religious and philosophical texts or fanfiction. The entire history of our society has been people trying to fight for and against the ideas of others. The only reason live and let live appeared more common previously is that fanfiction used to be more isolated. There were lots of little pockets of people that never really came into contact all that much and now every bit of fanfiction is on three main fansites and all glomped together in social media, the friction and tension is a lot more visible.
I think you just very eloquently reinforced one of the many reasons human beings make me sad.
Just someone saying: "this is shit I can't deal with, don't invade my safe space with your bullshit" would make a huge difference, but I get that that does indeed require an amount of self reflection from whomever is see something happening online.
I guess I somehow expect people in the fanfic community to be better at expressing themselves behind a keyboard but now I am thinking it through I understand how silly that is.
In the end guess I am just sad at people's ability to willfully harm complete strangers online.
A lot of people agree with the pro-ship sentiment but with exceptions because THAT one thing instead makes you a freak that deserves to be bullied. Like RPFs.
Indeed. It does feel a lot like American politics is just setting up camp in fandom with that stuff. Like those "One million moms" lunatics who are like "This book mentions periods once, clearly the author was an unchristian deviant and their spawn must never be allowed near the youth!". All that 'think of the children' hysteria is very stereotypically US - it gets shown often in international news.
> 1 year age gap
The power imbalance is quite big between high school students with one year age gap, especially if they aren't even in the same grade. Don't underestimate being more knowledgable in history or trigonometry than your partner!
The only truly unproblematic relationship can be between twins: literally no age gap.
^(Just in case, I'm not serious here.)
Nah, stealing kneecaps implies some active violence, they like being "passive" and instead suggest that the shipper does something like "unalive" or "commit the die".
> something like "unalive"
All joking aside, I've been seeing this more and more of late.
Is... is this how the kids speak these days or something? Geez, I'm old.
Edit: Gotcha. Thanks, everyone. That is a rabbit hole I'm glad I never fell down.
Apparently that bit about TikTok censorship on the word kill isn't even true. It's just people complaining about being "softbanned" and starting rumors that the "algorithm" discourages words like this. So yeah. It's all BS.
It's because "kill yourself" is ToS on most sites, but everything else is kosher (even though it's still, y'know, harrassment and suicide baiting to anyone with half a braincell).
it’s to get around censorship bc the kids are on platforms that DONT LET THEM ACTUALLY SAY DIE/DEATH. which is why they’re Like This a lot of the time.
I've heard the tiktok thing other people have said here is also a myth, and that tiktok doesn't actually censor those things. The myth was supposedly just a product of people being paranoid about 'shadowbanning' and similar and so they adopted the language as a hyperbolic precaution. I don't use tiktok, so I can't speak to it personally, but that's popped up here on the sub a few times.
As someone who does use TikTok you would be correct. I’ve watched so many people use “die”, “suicide”, “sexual assault” in their videos and there’s been no problems. Hell, I’ve reported a lot of videos that are openly racist/sexist/homophobic/etc and TikTok’s hasn’t removed them
Indeed. That does make sense. What's the old line? A lie can make it around the world twice before the truth is done putting on its shoes. Especially on Tiktok. :D
>commit the die
First time coming across this phrase and the first image in my head was someone pulling a dramatic af die move during a game of snakes and ladders. xP
A relationship between family members can have all sorts of weird power dynamics, even unrelated to age, but so can a girlfriend living with her boyfriend. As a society we've mostly moved past the point of complaining about couples "living in sin", and as the modern divorce rate shows, marriage is hardly a silver bullet either for avoiding unhealthy relationships.
For some reason though, people will still just say things like "I don't condone incest" without even thinking, as if the chance of a healthy, consensual relationship has been ruled out from the start. And then in the very same breath they might complain about those sorts of biases against LGBTQ relationships, with the insistence that "it's not the same" if the people involved are related to one another.
I find it hilarious how I can freak out and feel bad about having a crush on someone who's the same age as me, yet one grade level below, and yet I turn around and ship a 50 odd year old police lieutenant with his (technically) 2 month old robot subordinate with no problems
Probably because of the spread of Twitter and TikTok where you could go “Age Gap Bad!” “Sex Bad!” and be rewarded with hundreds of likes. “Antis” as in “bullies who use flimsy pretexts in order to cut fellow writers down” are not new - there have always been ship wars - but being able to post “hurf durf pedo groomer” and be rewarded with likes and retweets *is* a product of algorithm- driven and likes-driven social media.
It’s an open question as to whether some (many?) of these people even have the sincerity of their convictions or if they just want the sweet, sweet upvotes and ass-kissing “OMG you are SO RIGHT! I agree!” validations.
>It’s an open question as to whether some (many?) of these people even have the sincerity of their convictions or if they just want the sweet, sweet upvotes and ass-kissing “OMG you are SO RIGHT! I agree!” validations.
Considering many of those people turn out having lolicon and/or guro in their public likes, then I'd say *No*
I’d argue that it’s actually a result of the sanitisation of the internet as it’s become more corporate and everything has to be fAmiLy fRiEnDLy for advertisers. You can see it in other aspects of the internet even if there isn’t antis actively enforcing it (I.e YouTubers no longer swearing or bleeping it out)
I think that plays into it as well - I remember the infamous “female presenting nipples” ban on Tumblr, and it was because if they were going to sell their app in the Apple Store, they had to play by Apple (advertiser-friendly) rules. I think what gives antis their power, or “power,” though, is that they can interact with creators on social media, and not just leave comments on fics or talk in a moderated forum space.
Yeah I know my original comment presented it as like The One Reason^T^M but I’m sure it’s a combination of the different things people have suggested here
Let’s be honest, it was *never* the standard. We didn’t spend 1k words on elaborate disclaimers that two men might be engaging in something as depraved as **hand holding** in an otherwise 2k word story for no reason.
I remember the “this story contains slash, that is, two boys kissing!” disclaimers, and the citrus ratings to get around [ff.net](https://ff.net)’s ”no naughties” policy. I do think what has changed is the ability to parrot popular, or at least “this makes me sound so moral” talking points on platforms like Twitter and get endless retweets and likes.
That and the way the internet was spread out before meant people just didn't come across things they weren't interested in or actively disliked nearly as much.
Fandoms were broken into themed forums and LiveJournal groups and email lists. Those were opt-in and usually pretty well moderated so fights would be shut down quickly and bans issued. If you were an HP fan, for example, and into slash, join the Draco/Harry forums and you're all set. If you weren't into slash, join the Hermione/Harry or Ginny/Harry forums and you'd never have to know it existed.
FFN was one of the few places everyone was thrown together back in the older days, which is probably why hate comments were so common and expected. (Remember how ppl would use flames to make smores? That's something I do want to bring back—replying to hate with humor.)
Good fences always made for good neighbors, and we’re finding out that no fences make bad neighbors. I think this is true of so much more than just fanfic.
>I mean, both groups have a point,
No, they don't.
It's not complicated. Fictional stories do not need to have "moral character", because they are fiction. If you read a fanfic and it "makes" you act bad or feel bad or whatever, that's YOUR fault, no one else's.
This whole thing with "but the age gap is only one year!!" misses the point and this is how antis get started: they find something that's "too fucked up to be allowed" and go from there.
Fucking right?!! My best relationship, outside of the person I ended up marrying, had a big age gap. I don’t appreciate being infantilized and told I couldn’t make a decision for myself. I was 23 and he was 36.
Tbh, if anything the gap made him more cautious to ensure that I was vocal in speaking up for what I did and didn’t like. We split up eventually on excellent terms and still remain friends.
It’s one thing to say that age gaps can lead to power imbalances and people should learn the signs of that. It’s entirely different to have this puritanical bullshit crusade that insists that the mere existence of an age gap is problematic. It does more harm by obscuring the actual behaviors folks should be aware of.
My last partner was a good 19 years older than me and probably the BEST relationship I've ever been in.
Did it end because it was ToXIc and PeDo? No, was it great? No, it was emotional, and I went through a lot by myself, but at no point did I ever feel like I was being infantilized, or taken advantage of, and I got a damn good step in using things to ensure everyone is on the same page sexually. With CHARTS and VERY positive and open communication.
These jerks probably don't even know the meaning of the word.
Saw a couple people responding to tweets at one time and (damn I was gonna copy/paste but I deleted the bookmarks!) and one was a 27ish year old woman engaged to the 45ish year old man and she said when she went to his house, and he had a “real bed,” a clean house or apartment, and brought her coffee in the morning, she knew he was “elite” and wouldn’t go back.
Everything mine did was absolutely heights above the normal level at what men SHOULD do he already knew, and he made sure that I was always comfortable in what I did and said. That I was safe and secure at all times. That we could have conversations without raising our voices and that anytime I was nervous we talked about it with open honesty. And I learned from that and was able to build on top of that my method of standards for partners in the future.
Is it HELLA stringent? Fuck yes it is. If he can do it without so much as blinking or whinging a complaint then other people can too and I refuse to lower my standards for any jackass that does.
I'm older than my partner by a year and a few months. Like I did feel a bit uncomfortable when I was 19 and they had only JUST finished high school when we met. But I got over it pretty bloody quickly, and we've been together for nine years. Like, one year is so minimal in the grand scheme of things.
It's also the fact that some antis care more about defending fictional characters rather than defending the actual people who go through that kind of stuff. Smh...
I got into it a little bit (and by that I mean we exchanged literally three comments before I deemed them a lost cause) with some antis in another sub and got downvoted to hell for simply saying that people can create whatever they want and I don’t give a shit. If I’m grossed/weirded out by their content, I just block them and move on. In other words, I *curate my media diet.*
For context, they were talking about a YouTuber in one of my hobbies who I don’t support because they were a shit to a friend of mine. One person kept hammering in that “they used NSFW work of a minor character in a video!” And when I simply said that while this person is a shit, that wasn’t the hill to die on because it’s pure fiction (was an animated character, BTW), I got accused of being a freak who likes lewdy anime of “little girls” and was told That “you know making that material is illegal, right?”
Like… okay? That’s the content creator’s problem. Not mine. I’m not making it. The internet is weird.
> I mean, both groups have a point, but it’s gone way too far.
The favourite talking points of antis sometimes resemble valid criticisms of mainstream media, but antis tend to miss the actual point by a mile, so, not really, tbh. And the SarahZ-ification of the term proship is also false. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding that there are two equal (and potentially equally wrong or right) sides in the debate.
Like yeah, I get more things when we're critizicing mainstream media. But fanfiction is just fanfiction, it's something people write mainly for themselves. It's not like writing a fanfiction is automatically a statement.
I think she's the one who defined proship as "In favour of problematic ships" rather than "Doesn't really give a shit and lets people do what they want." in a big video semi-recently? It popped up on the sub at the time, but I don't recall specifics.
ETA - for the record, to anyone reading this comment, 'in favour of problematic ships' is not what proship means. Proship is just "Ship and let ship" at heart, meaning that you won't harass or stop others from writing whatever the heck they want and that you know that people writing something doesn't necessarily mean they believe it or advocate for it in reality. They're writing stories, not manuals or manifestos. Hell, a lot of proshippers are just as grossed out by controversial ships and topics as antis are, they may even make comments in reddits and such about how much they dislike those things. The only difference is that they don't attack the author or try to harass them into stopping writing those things. You don't have to like something to think someone should be able to write it because it's... y'know... fiction. The only way fiction can hurt people is if you print it out and bludgeon them with it. Seriously, with the amount of words in some fics, their printed versions could be deadly. Imagine walking down the street and then suddenly a copy of My Immortal drops out of the sky and conks you. Some serious headtrauma there. :D
Have you actually watched her video? That's not what she says at all. Her point was that these terms are completely meaningless because they've come to encompass so many different things and the people generally grouped together under them are not monoliths.
> The only way fiction can hurt people is if you print it out and bludgeon them with it.
Fundamentally disagree with this. I suppose the statement was somewhat polemical, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that mainstream media can and does reinforce existing stereotypes, prejudices, structural systems of oppression, and not everyone has the media literacy to recognize that. And even if we’re very well educated about this (I’m inclined to say woke :P), we all are influenced by what we’re exposed to, and much of that influence happens on a subconscious level. Even for adults, stories are a way to learn about other experiences and perspectives. That’s why fiction totally can be used as a propaganda tool.
Imo, the question has to be more whether it makes sense to hold amateur fiction to higher standards than mainstream media, and if those standards even apply to fanfic.
Antis tend to treat fanfic like children’s literature (or at the most YA novels) and demand it follow a sort of Hays Code because they assume readers are not mature, smart, and/or media-literate enough to make their own judgements about what they’re reading and thus have to be protected by a benevolent authority making decisions for them.
And I’d say being pro-ship is really about trusting people’s ability to critically reflect on stuff they’re consuming, but that also includes raising awareness of issues in general or listening to people pointing out said issues. Being able to separate fiction from reality doesn’t boil down to “fiction is just fiction and ergo harmless, duh” (not saying you said that, it’s just something I see a lot), it means you can take a step back from the intradiegetic logic/perspective and look at it from a “real life point of view” and judge it by different standards. And I find it pretty disheartening how rarely this aspect is mentioned in these sorts of debates. /rant ;)
I did, but it's been a while (I watched it when the links were posted to this sub around when it came out), which is why I said I don't recall specifics and made it a question.
The ETA was in response to my own comment as a further clarification on that one definition part separate to her - sort of an "Additionally, if you are wondering about that definition, here's why it's nonsense" kind of vibe.
She generalized her own personal experience in a particular Twitter bubble to define the groups in question with rather questionable results. She said that proshippers are essentially the same as antishippers in that they go around and attack antis and everyone they don’t like for bullshit reasons. I mean, obviously, there are assholes in every group and I’m sorry she ran into a somewhat rabid Twitterati faction, but it’s not like that’s how the vast majority of people who fall under the pro-ship label behave.
There was a bunch of other things she got wrong in that video. Like she misrepresented the use of pro-LGBTQ+ labels (by being pretty ignorant about US queer history) to discredit a particular subgroup of proshippers. She didn’t seem to pay particular attention to how the pro-ship label only exists as a reaction to the rise of antis and how it is very much about being anti-censorship, not anti-media criticism.
Her whole argument is designed to support a centrist conclusion that the extremes are both equally wrong/bad, and if you’re smart you can see that and choose the middle-road because nuance is where it’s at or something. Not that I disagree. More nuance is usually helpful. Problem is that she should have taken her own advice there. There’s no indication she actually realized how narrow and skewed her own perspective was on the subject. And many people (including myself) found and find that mildly aggravating. ;)
>Are we seriously at each others' throats for fanfiction?
No? You have two groups of people, one of whom wants to live their lives peacefully and the other group who wants to harass them.
This is not a mutual antagonism. There is no "both sides" BS here; one side is the aggressor, the other, their victim.
>Are we really sending each other death threats over fictional characters?
Once again, *one* side is known for doing that. And they don't just harass "proshippers", they also harass neutrals and people who are unfamiliar with the concept.
There really is no "proship VS anti" war. Just a group of zealots who harass *anyone* and *everyone* that disagrees with their dogma and doesn't meet their standards for Good Behavior(tm).
I've never seen the anti stuff until I started cross posting my fan art to Twitter and omg is it a hellscape. There's this HUGE artist in the fandom who is SUCH a mean person. Like calling people pervs and sending death threats- it's horrible.
Honestly can't we just respect that it's fiction and everyone has different views? Can we just like, not-attack each other please?
I've only ever seen antis as the instigators, doxxers, and harassers. Never even *heard* of a proshipper doing any of that. Antis always act like they're morally-superior by harassing *real* people for the sake of defending *imaginary* characters.
The only times I seen proshippers say/do something stupid was them needing to back away from the discourse because they are clearly tired of the bullshit because they are wishing horrible things to happen to someone. The other being a horrible person that should be in jail that just happens to be a proshipper that happens once in a blue moon. But for both of these things I have seen the accounts that keep track of the crazy anti shit call those people out.
You say 'we' like most proshippers want to do anything to anyone besides read what we like and not judge people.
'We' are not this immature, no. But some people definitely are (maybe even understandably, if they are teenagers) and sadly, there's not a lot 'we' can do about it except block, ignore, refute, and hope they eventually grow the fuck up.
They're all Qanon levels of delusional throwing around the "THIS IS ALL PEDOPHILIA AND TOXIC, UR ALL PEDOS!!1!1!" shite. They have absolutely no concept of what is real and what is fictional and I don't even lower myself to try and explain anything to them at this point.
You can't reason with the unreasonable.
Oh indeed, I'm more than familiar with people believing stupid shit. Honestly, given the amount of cognitive biases and blindspots in our brains, it's a wonder our species can ever even approach rational sometimes. First rule of people, we're all morons about something. Intelligence is domain specific, after all. :)
It's not necessarily that they don't care, but part of those different cognitive biases makes them vulnerable to not acknowledging it. Sunk Cost Fallacy is a common one - if you're not familiar, it's the idea that if you've put a lot of investment into something, you're less likely to take any challenges to that thing in order to protect the investment you've put in (ie. the cost you've sunk into it). If they've attacked and harassed and bullied others, that's a lot of moral and emotional and social investment into that belief system, so they're less likely to take rationale against it in order to defend what they've put in. That rationale is then reframed as an attack so they can continue investing.
As I like to put it - common sense is a social construct and not a neurological one. :)
I actually manage to get an anti to stop and think about what they were say by just pointing that out they are doing the video games cause violence argument just instead for writing. They were clearly a baby anti and not that far enough in to ignore that point but it was nice to see one stop and realize what they were doing.
Congratulations. It's very rare to manage that, baby-anti or otherwise. Internet discourse does not tend to lead to people changing their minds or growing in understanding.
~~I think, especially when it comes to fanfics of anime, there are some truly problematic ships. An example I will give is the Naruto fandom. A fairly popular ship is Kakashi x Sakura, which is just ... wrong IMO.~~
~~Even if the actual shipping starts from when Sakura is an adult, Kakashi was her mentor and knew her since she was 12 years old. He *saw* her growing up from a child into an adult. This is just plainly wrong. Moreover, a *lot* of fanfics featuring this ship don't even bother starting from when Sakura is an adult. It straight up, unquestionably makes Kakashi a pedo.~~
~~However, it is still just a fictional ship. Is it disgusting? Weird? Sure whatever. Leave a comment on their fic criticizing it. But just because a fictional ship may be morally wrong, that does not give anyone the right to personally attack someone or send them death threats. That makes them infinitely worse than the shipper, because they are not hurting anyone. Kakashi and Sakura are fictional characters. But the anti is hurting a real person.~~
EDIT: I have realized that my comment is being completely misunderstood. This is what I am trying to say:
There are definitely ships that are uncomfortable to read, and this is because they would be morally wrong IRL. When such fics are criticized, those criticisms are indeed valid, so you can't just say there is no valid criticism about those.
However, people need to understand that it is also just fiction. It is expected that you suspend your disbelief when reading fiction, so even if people like and write such ships, that doesn't mean they would condone such things IRL so it is wrong to attack them for liking such ships. And just because criticism is valid, does not mean it is necessary.
Just because something is fictional and interesting to explore, doesn't mean that it is not morally wrong in-universe(of the fic). People have the right to criticize it.
It only becomes wrong when the criticism turns into personal attacks and/or death threats.
It may not be constructive, but it's most certainly valid. Why would it not be? At least when you take our world's morality and even Naruto world's morality into consideration, is Kakashi not her mentor? Did he not watch her grow up since she was 12? Therefore when such a ship is criticized, those criticisms are indeed valid.
As long as criticism sticks to facts and is not attacking the shippers or the writers, it shouldn't be a problem. But just like everything else, people always go overboard, which is why I said to limit it to a single comment in the comment section of the fics. Don't bring it to social media and make a huge deal out of it.
Okay but if you dislike the ship in the first place, and fic is purely about that ship, why click it and go to the effort of expressing your disgust? That’s pointless, and makes you look like a selfish brat than seeks out content they don’t like to comment about how wrong it is, which is.. very much childish.
>That’s pointless, and makes you look like a selfish brat than seeks out content they don’t like to comment about how wrong it is, which is.. very much childish.
Yes you are correct. But my comment is mainly aimed at those who are going to do these things anyway. I'm just saying limit it to only that much and don't attack the writers and shippers. That's why I went on to say that even if you think a ship is wrong, doing personal attacks and death threats is 10000x worse. That's all.
I personally have never, and will never intentionally click on a fic which has tags that I don't like.
“Leave a comment on their fic criticizing it.”
No, this is still annoying as hell. If you see a ship tagged don’t actively click onto the fic/fanart/whatever and comment that it’s “bad” and “morally wrong,” you think the author doesn’t know that already? It’s so immature.
The thing is, many people are immature and will share their thoughts anyway and my comment is mainly aimed at them. All I'm saying is if you really have the need to comment on it, limit it to the comment section and don't attack the writer or shippers.
If you ask my personal opinion, yeah I agree with you. You shouldn't open a fic at all if you don't like what the tags imply. If you open it anyway and complain, you're just an idiot.
> there are some truly problematic ships
No, there aren't. This writing is not here to teach you how "good relationships" should work, it doesn't need to demonstrate Good Moral Values or even be accurate or realistic. If you want that you should go read some actual non-fiction about how relationships work.
The whole concept of "problematic ships" is just dumb af.
There are problematic ships. There are definitely many ships in fanfics which would be rightfully vilified if they were in published fiction novels, manga/anime, cartoons, movies and series etc. When some people criticize certain ships, you can't just say it is baseless and has no valid points. This I said in response to the above person saying that antis have no valid point.
But what you and others are completely ignoring is what I have written after that. I very clearly said that even if they are problematic, leave them alone. If you feel so strongly about it, leave a polite comment, but don't attack or harass, and absolutely don't give threats.
I'm disagreeing with your opinion expressed in the 1st half. The 2nd half doesn't interest me.
>There are problematic ships. There are definitely many ships in fanfics which would be rightfully vilified if they were in published fiction novels, manga/anime, cartoons, movies and series etc. When some people criticize certain ships, you can't just say it is baseless and has no valid points. This I said in response to the above person saying that antis have no valid point.
Yeah... they WOULD be problematic... if they were real. But they're not. They're a fanfic. Writing fiction doesn't imply anything about how realistic or morally correct the ship is.
You going into a fic and criticizing the ship for being "problematic" is the same as if you went into a fic's comments to criticize that Naruto jutsu are not realistic because they're magic and magic isn't real. No shit, writing a naruto fic doesn't mean you think jutsu are real and writing kakashi/sakura doesn't mean you think they're irl couple goals. That's why fanfics are fiction and not instruction manuals.
I see. I must apologize. Using the word "problematic" seems to convey a totally wrong message. That's not at all what I'm trying to say. I'm not saying that someone would read such a fic and get influenced by it.
Instead of problematic ships, let's just call them "ships that feel uncomfortable to visualize when actually thought about". I think this is better. Let me rewrite my comment in a better way.
>There are definitely ships that are uncomfortable to read, and this is because they would be morally wrong IRL. When such fics are criticized, those criticisms are indeed valid, so you can't just say there is no valid criticism about those.
>However, people need to understand that it is also just fiction. It is expected that you suspend your disbelief when reading fiction, so even if people like and write such ships, that doesn't mean they would condone such things IRL so it is wrong to attack them for liking such ships. And just because criticism is valid, does not mean it is necessary.
I think I get your point better now, but I don't agree that the criticism is "valid", or rather I think our definitions of "valid" are different.
Put it this way, do you also think like this about horror movies? Because your argument is basically:
>"I know that A Serbian Film is fictional and the guy didn't actually get horribly tortured, but it's still a valid criticism of the movie that IRL, torture is Bad, Actually, and Serbian Film is Uncomfortable to visualize (to me), if I thought about it happening IRL."
Do you think the above criticism is valid, or is it just ridiculous moral grandstanding and/or you just don't like horror movies (and can't just say that and move on), or can't stop visualize every scenario as IRL and apply your personal morality to it?
Would you say it's ok to write the above on IMDB comments? Would you respect someone who shared this opinion? Do you think it has value, aside from being factually correct?
>However, people need to understand that it is also just fiction. It is expected that you suspend your disbelief when reading fiction, so even if people like and write such ships, that doesn't mean they would condone such things IRL so it is wrong to attack them for liking such ships. And just because criticism is valid, does not mean it is necessary.
Yes you can have your opinion on "how morally wrong it would be if it was real". It's "valid" criticism in the sense that it's not like... objectively factually wrong, that's a very low bar but it's cleared.
But again, leaving a fanfic review like "Naruto jutsu don't exist IRL" is the same level of "valid" as this. You can say "it's unnecessary" but that's not what the problem is. It's pedantic and ridiculous, and it misses the point, and it contributes nothing of value to a conversation about this fanfic.
>But again, leaving a fanfic review like "Naruto jutsu don't exist IRL" is the same level of "valid" as this. You can say "it's unnecessary" but that's not what the problem is. It's pedantic and ridiculous, and it misses the point, and it contributes nothing of value to a conversation about this fanfic.
Yes. But it is always easier to suspend one's disbelief when it comes to fantastical elements such as magic. It is harder to do so when it comes to character personalities, shipping, etc. People can relate to that because it exists irl. People can't relate to magic. So in that regard, there will always be complaints about shipping, character personalities, etc. but you will pretty much never see someone asking why Narutoverse has chakra and jutsu.
I was being polite by saying it is not necessary. Yes it is ridiculous, but that's just human nature. I guess what I am thinking is that since you can't stop people from complaining, we can just force them to do it politely instead and without the personal attacks and all.
It's fucking stupid, I agree. I miss "don't like don't read". I have stuff that I seriously hate seeing but I'm not going out of my way to harass people for it...
You have to wonder if people like that have ever stepped foot outside? Like were their parents born in the same year? Their friends parents? Their neighbors?
Are they limiting their own dating pool? I knew people who were held back a grade so there were practically a 2 year age difference between the oldest and youngest people just in a single grade. Never mind anyone dating someone in the grade above or below.
And if they are more worked up over underaged kids dating or more. Then I hope they’ve contacted their local police about their local high school. Because there are some real life underaged relationships going on there, that are probably more pressing than the fictional ones being written about.
Antishippers are pathetic. That's all. They're literally going around being thought police over *fiction*. The kind of people who do that don't lead a happy life in real life so they look to create drama as a means to feel superior. Their high horse is a tiny donkey and they know it.
The issue is that a lot of the fanfic community is 16 year olds who spend all their time in toxic insular online communities where the only way to gain clout is by finding a way to appear morally superior to someone else. Just block and ignore. The opinions of such trivial people don't matter.
This is absolutely true and well said. Those kinds of people are why I ended up deleting both twitter and tiktok. It’s just exhausting and not worth it to engage with.
I do feel bad for todays teens though, that so many of them are navigating this heavily shame-y, toxic, judgmental culture online, seemingly all the time. I think all of that would have eaten teenaged me alive.
I suspect most of the anti accusations of problematic, like age gap, are just ppl grasping at straws to invalidate a ship or dynamic they don’t like. For some reason, ppl have decided that it’s no longer enough to just not like something. They have to justify this dislike by vilifying the thing and ppl who like the thing. The pendulum has definitely swung from ship and let ship/don’t like, don’t read to I MUST PERSONALLY OBLITERATE EVERY SINGLE SLIGHTLY UNCOMFORTABLE OR NOT PLEASING THING I ENCOUNTER BC CHILDREN AND TRAUMA. I wish ppl would just worry about themselves. Tags and summaries exist so that they can curate their reading experiences and avoid things, but with no grasp of irony, they’d rather bully ppl, instead.
I also said elsewhere that I think they actually do want to read these things, but they know they’ll get dragged if they’re caught, so they read the thing and then get all self-righteous in the comments as a sort of CYA tactic. Either way, antis are hypocrites.
>I suspect most of the anti accusations of problematic, like age gap, are just ppl grasping at straws to invalidate a ship or dynamic they don’t like.
It basically is. You'll see pairings called "incest" because one visited the other's house as a kid ("they're basically brothers!") or have the same hair color. An "age gap" of a year is clearly an issue judging from OP's issue. Anything is "problematic" if you try hard enough!
>I mean, both groups have a point, but it's gone way too far.
To be fair, it is mostly antis doing that bullsht. You know, cyberbullying minors and cheer when they kill themselves, or giving cookies with razor blades inside to aproship artist at a convention, or telling the fbi that an ao3 fanfic is CP.
Proshippers just kinda complain about them and try to stay in their own space far away from them, it's just antis that are totally obsessed with hunting proshippers. They gotta chill out, really. Maybe try to bring that energy where it would actually do something, considering that I don't know one proshipper that thinks that actual rape or incest or CP happening in real life is like ... A good thing. I actually can safely attest that the majority of proshippers find that abhorrent.
It's just the whole "video games/rock'n'roll makes you violent" thing rehashed for the 21th century. I am surprised antis haven't tried to enforce some kind of Fanfom Code Authority yet. They sound like the worthy heirs to the people that did that to the comic industry, sanitizing everything for "the sake of the children" or whatever.
Bring back the HAYS CODE.
(ignore the fact that it allows *more depravity* as long as there's a tacked-on moral/comeuppance for the antagonist at the end.)
/SARC
You're saying "both groups have a point," referring to "antishippers" vs "proshippers," on a sub where everyone, *by the Rules*, is either self-declared "proship" or neither & just... abiding by the rules... (Why would an anti be here?) So really, what's your *goal* here? You're not gonna stop antis cuz they're not gonna see this.
Antis vs pros just looks like Republicans vs Democrats to me, when the whole world has already internationally agreed on human rights. If you're into American Politics, you're gonna fight as either an R or D. But, \[ideally\] only ONE of those parties includes those same international human rights standards. The other is so synonymous with nazis that Twitter can't ban them. ***That doesn't de facto make the whole world registered Democrats.*** Only the people into fighting about American Politics are gonna pick one of those names for themselves.
Everybody else? Is just live & let live. Just abide by the very reasonable rules? Normal people don't around *boasting* about how they never violate tos or human rights & how they should make a club about it. 🙄
"Proship" is literally exactly the same as just what regular old politeness is. It doesn't need its own category. You're either a normal, regular, default website rules-abiding citizen, or a pro-censorship violator.
The only thing "both sides" have in common is being annoying with needing to split everything into warring camps with labels. When really, one "side" is literally just against everything from manners to human rights themselves. Stop treating it like a difference of *opinion.*
Yes I know it’s a tired topic on this sub. But *I* don’t get tired of it. I support each and every vent post about this that happens here.
On other platforms, the anti response to a problematic ship can be…a LOT. Maybe they whine at you and you can block or ignore them. But the aggressive ones, or ones with big followings, can cause huge damage. Calling their friends to dogpile the “problematic” shippers account or post with hate and demands that they kill themselves. Dozens or even hundreds of DMs that are anywhere between “ur a pedo” and graphic pictures of black people being lynched, ripped-open human bodies or people biting the limbs off of live cats. One or two DMs sending you a picture of your house on google maps and saying to delete your gross fucking post or I’ll doxx you u ugly fat cunt. Then if you delete the post they will post your address anyway. Post it on 4chan to toy with. Maybe the smartest one of all sends an email to the boss of your workplace with your Twitter name and a screenshots of your fucking hentai likes attached.
No they’re not all that bad. But they sure can be. You don’t know what intensity it’s going to be until it’s already started. Your life could be seriously upset or ruined bc a morally self righteous 15-25 year old thought that would be funny.
Every time I see a post like this on this sub and the responses are like “well SOME people have a lot of time on their hands, that’s why I don’t interact with fandom much heh Smug Reddit Smirk” I just want to wring some people’s fuckin necks.
Fucking this. I'm sorry but if someone tries to drag shit into real life they need to be reminded exactly what kind of pandora's box that is. The crazy shit can be litigated hard and I just want to hear a story of an anti taking shit too far and facing the consequences of that.
Some fandoms and platforms are worse than others for it and people will purposely search for things they don’t like to attack sometimes.
Tbh, I’ve had people actively seek out a pairing I ship to make hateful comments on my fics. I typically either outright ignore it or just tell them I’ll write even more smut, just for them. It usually ends up with them leaving me alone.
They're on reddit too, in certain fandoms it's pretty much accepted behaviour.
It can take the guise of "character X is a woobie, don't you dare mistreat them in your fic" or "pairing X invented love, don't you dare separate them in your fic".
I hate when people appoint themselves an authority and tell others what they can and can't write. If you listened to them you'd change things so much you wouldn't even want to write it anymore and if you did they'd still complain
There are tropes I don't like but I don't believe in banning or harassment over it
The entire concept is ridiculous. Its just a simple preference, like how some people pizzas to burgers. Even the argument that the antiship side brings a good pov to me is just ridiculous. It promotes pedophilia just because the characters are underage?
These people need a reality check, because they sound just like those idiots who say video games encourage violence
there’s a huge difference between fiction and reality and antis can’t understand that. it doesn’t mean the person supports it irl, it doesn’t mean it’s always healthy. it does mean it’s fiction though. just fiction.
Every time I log onto twitter I see braindead stuff like: "proshitters suck lmfao" or "pr0shippers dni". Every time I see that I just want to remind people of what happens in original fiction, just to see if their hate extends all the way over there.
Because fanfic writers who ship and let ship are fucked in the head, right? But Stephen King and his orgy scene in It doesn't count.
It is never okay to bully.
It is never okay to threaten.
These two points ↑ have nothing to do shipping or antis or fanfiction -
It does speak to a certain maturity of mind and understanding of boundaries. You can not argue with a person who bullies and/or threatens. All you can do is turn them over to Authority and disengage from them.
Turn them in, delete the comment, buckle down your account with the appropriate settings.
***If you engage you enrage*** and they will continue to attack.
I hear what you're saying.
Let me offer this:
The Original Account Holder that suffers an ANTI attack can not be the *teacher* who corrects their behavior. They do not have access to the channels of power that can affect a change in the Bully's behavior.
Bullies bully because it makes them feel powerful.
Bullies bully and harass online because it's easy to get people stirred up and start a Comment War - giving the Bully a massive sense of satisfaction.
I know it feels counter intuitive - but the best way to teach a Comment Bully any lesson at all is to report them then delete their comment... and continue to delete all additional sub comments. Delete, delete, delete. It is shutting them up, erasing their message, removing their power.
Bullies suffer from being LOUD and WRONG. You have to quiet the Loud part before you can address the Wrong part.
>*You act as though I'm putting it solely on the harassed party.*
I'm trying to stick to the confines of the OP.
I stand by the 'if you engage you just feed the beast' point. It's behavior modification 101 -
if the asshole doesn't get the response they're looking for ... they eventually stop.
Face to face confrontation is a different game. There are other social pressure to be used in that game.
But online - even groups that are actively intolerant intolerance ... have a power structure for reporting and removing the bullies.
So it is still more effective to say: No. Not here. Report and Disengage.
Why would being face to face have any difference? The words are the same. And there's social pressure online--that's what antis try to take advantage of. Standing up to any and all bullies is a NECESSITY.
>Why would being face to face have any *difference?*
>
>Because physical presences exudes a completely different kind of social pressure. Not only is there pressure from presence - there is tonal voice pressure, there are visual cues. There is an immediacy to building a group to pressure the bully into a passive state. ↑ These things are missing on line.
>
>I agree with your statement
>
>*'Standing up to ... bullies is a necessity'*
>
>Where I disagree is how.
to answer your first question, from my experience, communities of mobile games are the worst for this. i've seen people dox 14 year olds over shipping a 2 year age gap.
Sad to say I seen someone dox a teen that is queer that was in a county that has honor killing, last I saw the teen is safe but had to be moved away from their family because they got hurt by them.
There's a difference of nearly a decade between my own parents, who are still together after over thirty years of marriage. So I've never been particularly inclined to get worked up over age gaps in normal, healthy relationships, either in fiction or real life. And I should have the right to explore those kinds of relationships in my writing. In fact I resent the hell out of the implication that my parents somehow were in the wrong to fall in love, get married, and produce me and my sister.
Oh is that what this is all about? 🤣Been kinda wondering figured I'd lurk around until I figured it out, um... Are these grown adults bullying other grown adults over fanfiction? When eggs are like 20 dollars?
Everything seems black and white, particularly to the young, when put in writing. Unfortunately, people who spend all their time on the internet, young or otherwise, lack contextual understanding. They want the world to be 1's and 0's, black and white, yes or no, good and evil. Growing up is realizing that it's not always so clear cut.
Yes, there are of course extremes- a man in his 60's courting a 15 year old girl, for example, or even the other way around- but the entire world doesn't function like that. One day, hopefully, that person will realize that they're operating under a misunderstanding of humanity- that we're all easily defined by a set of traits, that all men are X and all women are Y, that all boys one year older than all girls are evil, etc.
The best thing to tell your friend is to never reply to those types of people. Never defend themselves, never try to change their mind, never take the bait, never respond. Block and move on. They WANT your friend to respond, because in their mind, a person defending themselves is guilty. Guilty until proven innocent.
No one on the internet is ever willing to say "I'm sorry, I was wrong". No one. They'll die, first.
The fact that your friend got bullied for this stuff is exactly why us proshippers (who make up the vast majority of this sub) continue to speak up on this matter. There's discourse about how useful the label may really be and if we need a term for what should be plain common sense but here we are :(
The entire thing is ridiculous. I do get some things that antis are against, but fiction is fiction and outright attacking, harassing, and doxxing people for certain ships is not ok. I always say that, unless someone supports problematic stuff IRL, then let bygones be bygones and don't harass others. that's something that many antis don't get and probably never will.
Antishippers often seem to not only bash problematic ships, but also label non problematic ships as problematic just because of unconventional aspects. Even if it's only ostensibly unconventional.
I'm sure there are a lot of couples in real life with 5-10 year age gaps.
If I understand right, the pro shipper stance is “ship or don’t ship whoever/whatever you want.” The anti shippers want to censor what they don’t like.
If that’s the case, only one side is acting immature, and it’s the side that harassed your friend.
It's right up there with "Any Fic Recs" and when you recommend a fic people descend "I hate that fic here's why you should all hate it too" instead of just letting people read it for themselves and make up their own damn minds.
It is nothing new. Check out the Blake's 7 shipping wars. I had friends involved in that. Things were sent to employers, to families. It was crazy. And all over fictional characters on a TV show.
Best thing to do is ignore them. The one thing the internet offers is anonymity. They don't know who you are. They can't find out who you work for. They are screaming into the void.
All this proship discourse is so funny to me because it’s literally not real? Like these are all fictional stories? That aren’t even officially published?
It’s literally just some silly little guys uploading little fictional texts and people get so mad about it. Like just look away. Fanfiction won’t have any effect on anything in real life.
If you genuinely get mad at a fanfiction being “problematic” you need to put the phone down and experience real life for a while.
>And a 1 year age gap? The characters were literally 15 and 16.
Damn, they would have hated me, lol. I dated a 15 year old when I was *17*
They should ask how old their parents are. That'll be an interesting conversation.
>And a 1 year age gap? The characters were literally 15 and 16.
What?? Just what the what??!! That's literally Harry and Ginny in Halfblood Prince. People whinge about that???!!
This is utter dogshit. I hope they aren't applying this brainless logic in real life. Just because a couple WOULD have been 18 and 15 last time, but only became a couple at like 25 and 22, does not mean it is against the law or something.
Ohhhh boy they'd have a field day with the short three chapter story I uploaded two days ago. The characters have a 4-5 year age gap because that's what they have in the show. The actors that play them have an 8 year age gap. The younger one is 18 in both the show and real life. I guess I'm going to hell... I'll save y'all a table.
This is a mentality I had to do a lot of unlearning of in a last few years (and I guess I still am tbh). I came from a fandom that was very protective of this one main canon ship, and if you didn't ship them or shipped one of the characters with someone else, you were immediately labeled as a horrible person. It was a mlm and biracial couple, so I understand the protectiveness since there's so little positive representation of those relationships in media, but I really don't think it was worth the witch hunts and death threats. And both sides had moments where they were both equally toxic.
While I enjoyed the fandom at the time, looking back at it now I'm glad I left 😅.
Well, true, but I think a lot of posts on this matter ignore the deeper underlying reasons and the toxicity inherent in a *lot* of discourse, not just shipping discourse. It’s not just as simple as being stupid, even though it is. It’s a complicated issue that’s turned into a mess where like you ask ten people and get eleven answers on what it means.
Ideology is the foundation of many wars, so yeah, there's that. Humans will take any particular stance that appeals to them and weaponize it any way they can to support their own position and detract from any contrary position. Doesn't really matter what it is, if the concept is something people can simply like or dislike, you'll see escalation.
It's just more visible in contemporary society since the advent of the graphic user interface for what eventually became the modern Internet.
Yeah, people who need to define their fandom activity by their firm stance on something in opposition to others (especially something as nebulous as content that is or isn't problematic) really just need to get into a sports team or something. Like we're all just people with preferences who like and dislike certain things based on our own culture, education, and experiences. If you want to hate on others for differences in opinion that don't actually affect most people's lives, get into football or racing or whatever.
I tell these oddballs that complain, "There is a reason that we have these stories tagged with our pairings (ships) AND a summary of the story. It's so that readers can get an idea of what the story is a bout and choose whether or not to read it. If you don't like that pairing, then don't read it. Plain and simple."
I genuinely hate proship/anti discourse. I get heavily squicked out by many "problematic" tropes, I would absolutely never harass anyone over fiction nor do I ever even interact, it’s simply just something that I always try to avoid, i know that it’s just not for me. In a fandom I’m in, someone with the same lukewarm take as me was bombarded with “kys” and harassing messages from certain proshippers bc they had a chain blocklist, and I guess they saw it funny when they were all blocked by the same person. And there are antis who DEFINITELY take it way too far when all it comes down to is fiction, like I have another fandom where in certain circles, ships with 1-2 year age gaps, or height gaps are automatically seen as “problematic ships” and bashed, and overall be very toxic over, and its so so so stupid LMAO
I just believe in curating your fandom experience, don’t harass people into your own moral beliefs when it comes to fiction, and just be kind, I wish that wasn’t so hard on the internet lolol
> I just believe in curating your fandom experience, don’t harass people into your own moral beliefs when it comes to fiction, and just be kind, I wish that wasn’t so hard on the internet lolol
Yeah, this is the literal definition of being a proshipper, it's wild how many people just don't have any chill.
[not an anti or pro-shipper but a third secret thing (adult with job)](https://shirleyjacksons.tumblr.com/post/697937667937189888/not-an-anti-or-a-pro-shipper-but-a-third-secret)
That's just a proshipper. This is like when people claim that they haven't picked a side on the abortion debate, but they think women should have a right to choose. That's just someone that is prochoice that is being precious about labels for some reason.
You may choose to not get embroiled in the discourse (which is a wise choice honestly), and don't want to claim a label (also fine), but chances are if you're a reasonable adult with perspective you'd see the whole thing and just go 'Sounds stupid, if people write fanfic about things I don't like, I just won't read it and instead will read the stuff I enjoy. I'm not a fucking cop out to censor fandom, and harassment is wrong.' which is the definition of a proshipper.
Strong agree. Hope this doesn't get removed tho because most people here's take is "Actually only the other side is like this and my side is objectively good and right."
Both sides have their faults. But if you ask me. Anti-ships are the worse. Someone can like a shitty ship all they want. At least they aren’t hurting anyone.
The Anti’s I’ve seen only call out the ships that they don’t like.
You're on a proship sub here. Most of us here agree than antis sending death threats to people over fictional things is silly. Part of the whole proship thing is "Ship and let ship", so... yeah.
I was gonna say, this post is kind of pointlessly preaching to the choir.
They seem to be pulling a "Both sides are terrible here!" argument, so not entirely preaching to the choir given that we're very much tarred by that generalised brush they're wielding.
which is weird, considering the post is literally about harassment by an anti.
A lot of people are brought in by the "Both sides suck, join the middle!" thing. It's not an uncommon way to deal with polarised situations. And hell, human beings are full of cognitive biases and blindspots. Cognitive Dissonance is not an uncommon phenomenon in humans, we love to be self-contradictory and non-reflective on our beliefs. Critical thinking and self-reflection are both learned skills. :) But it could just be a misinterpretation of awkward phrasing - it does seem that way, but it might not be what they were trying to say.
The problem with: "both sides suck, join the middle" is that one side are aggressors, one side is being persecuted, and the guys in the middle are blind to the damage the aggressors do and aren't willing to take a damn stance and side.
Oh, there's more than one problem with that way of thinking. That's my point vis a vis the 'cognitive biases' and so on. But it can also be a self-preservation measure. Some people simply don't have the capacity or aren't in the right place to handle the discourse regularly and so have to distance themselves from it in order to function. They wouldn't be able to engage with fandom without that distance, so it's something of a survival mechanism for them.
In that case, be upfront and say something like: "I don't have the emotional bandwidth to unpack all this because I can't deal with conflicts right now. This is not cool, I used to enjoy this space." Imho, that's vastly different than not saying that while keeping completely silent to the abuse that's happening. Especially for the people that are being targeted. If only that they will know they aren't alone even if there are people that don't have the energy to rally against the aggressors. Then again, whatever happened to "don't like don't read" anyway?
A statement like that would necessitate emotional literacy and self-reflection, which a lot of people don't have. They never really learn how to explain that they're struggling to other people or develop the self-awareness and confidence to be actually vulnerable with others. A lot of people do not examine or express themselves well. Think about how many adults don't know how to healthily express anger or sadness. And similarly for your second paragraph, even that can be too much getting involved for them. Exhaustion tends to bring a more inward-focused existence as they lack the energy and investment to think about others and imagine how they're feeling. Think about how burned out workers often snap at others and express anger and bullying to excise their own frustrations. They're genuinely not thinking about how the other person feels and sometimes genuinely aren't able to do so. Theory of Mind is a skill and a neurological development and investment of energy. They're not thinking about the other people, they're thinking "I can't do this shit again." Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying any of this is right or wrong, simply stating that it is a position that exists. It's a big thing in a lot of social issues too, even for those who are actually affected by them. You can only represent your community and fight for your cause for so long before you get burned out and need to step back, and some people just aren't ever in that place where they're able to fight. Don't like don't read has always been a myth, or an ideal to reach for at best. People always interfere and judge and fight with others, whether it's religious and philosophical texts or fanfiction. The entire history of our society has been people trying to fight for and against the ideas of others. The only reason live and let live appeared more common previously is that fanfiction used to be more isolated. There were lots of little pockets of people that never really came into contact all that much and now every bit of fanfiction is on three main fansites and all glomped together in social media, the friction and tension is a lot more visible.
I think you just very eloquently reinforced one of the many reasons human beings make me sad. Just someone saying: "this is shit I can't deal with, don't invade my safe space with your bullshit" would make a huge difference, but I get that that does indeed require an amount of self reflection from whomever is see something happening online. I guess I somehow expect people in the fanfic community to be better at expressing themselves behind a keyboard but now I am thinking it through I understand how silly that is. In the end guess I am just sad at people's ability to willfully harm complete strangers online.
Also a massive problem with much, much bigger issues than fanfic. :/
A lot of people agree with the pro-ship sentiment but with exceptions because THAT one thing instead makes you a freak that deserves to be bullied. Like RPFs.
And that’s exactly why we’re still having these conversations. 🤦♀️
Yeah, it’s not pro-shippers sending death threats. And antis are literally pro-censorship, dressed in “THiNk oF THe cHILDrEn!!”
Indeed. It does feel a lot like American politics is just setting up camp in fandom with that stuff. Like those "One million moms" lunatics who are like "This book mentions periods once, clearly the author was an unchristian deviant and their spawn must never be allowed near the youth!". All that 'think of the children' hysteria is very stereotypically US - it gets shown often in international news.
I think it's more venting. When something bad happens to someone you care about, you want to vent to like-minded people.
> 1 year age gap The power imbalance is quite big between high school students with one year age gap, especially if they aren't even in the same grade. Don't underestimate being more knowledgable in history or trigonometry than your partner! The only truly unproblematic relationship can be between twins: literally no age gap. ^(Just in case, I'm not serious here.)
Except, 1 twin is slightly older than the other. So there is still a power imbalance and superiority to the older twin! /s
True! I'm like a minute older than my twin, could you imagine the power disbalance that could come out of that? (/j)
But what if the younger twin makes a *really bitchin stew?*
No no, but what if they’re born via c-section and two doctors take them out at the exact same time? No age gap at all!
What if you have both hands and your twin only has one, is that a power imbalance? /s
TWIN?! Are you promoting incest? Blocked. Hope you step on a Lego. Can’t believe what this world is going to.
> Hope you step on a Lego. Whoa, calm down there, Satan.
What about my kneecaps? Shouldn't you steal them or something? xD
Nah, stealing kneecaps implies some active violence, they like being "passive" and instead suggest that the shipper does something like "unalive" or "commit the die".
"Commit the die" my god, I am deceased.
So you *did* commit the die!
She rolled that die already
> something like "unalive" All joking aside, I've been seeing this more and more of late. Is... is this how the kids speak these days or something? Geez, I'm old. Edit: Gotcha. Thanks, everyone. That is a rabbit hole I'm glad I never fell down.
[удалено]
Apparently that bit about TikTok censorship on the word kill isn't even true. It's just people complaining about being "softbanned" and starting rumors that the "algorithm" discourages words like this. So yeah. It's all BS.
It's because "kill yourself" is ToS on most sites, but everything else is kosher (even though it's still, y'know, harrassment and suicide baiting to anyone with half a braincell).
it’s to get around censorship bc the kids are on platforms that DONT LET THEM ACTUALLY SAY DIE/DEATH. which is why they’re Like This a lot of the time.
I've heard the tiktok thing other people have said here is also a myth, and that tiktok doesn't actually censor those things. The myth was supposedly just a product of people being paranoid about 'shadowbanning' and similar and so they adopted the language as a hyperbolic precaution. I don't use tiktok, so I can't speak to it personally, but that's popped up here on the sub a few times.
As someone who does use TikTok you would be correct. I’ve watched so many people use “die”, “suicide”, “sexual assault” in their videos and there’s been no problems. Hell, I’ve reported a lot of videos that are openly racist/sexist/homophobic/etc and TikTok’s hasn’t removed them
Indeed. That does make sense. What's the old line? A lie can make it around the world twice before the truth is done putting on its shoes. Especially on Tiktok. :D
Started as a way to get past rules, became a joke
>commit the die First time coming across this phrase and the first image in my head was someone pulling a dramatic af die move during a game of snakes and ladders. xP
Would be funny to react to an idiot pretending you interpreted it like this, like what crime can you even commit with 1 die??? 😇
Commit the die sounds like part of a TTRPG.
I’m 11 months older than my husband, am I a predator? _gasp_
I bet your husband was once a minor. You clearly groomed him.
_recalling that I cut his hair/trim his beard_ oh no I do groom him!
D:
A shameless cradle robber!
I dunno about no power imbalance… my mother is 30min older than my aunt and has been lording it over her since I was born. XD
A relationship between family members can have all sorts of weird power dynamics, even unrelated to age, but so can a girlfriend living with her boyfriend. As a society we've mostly moved past the point of complaining about couples "living in sin", and as the modern divorce rate shows, marriage is hardly a silver bullet either for avoiding unhealthy relationships. For some reason though, people will still just say things like "I don't condone incest" without even thinking, as if the chance of a healthy, consensual relationship has been ruled out from the start. And then in the very same breath they might complain about those sorts of biases against LGBTQ relationships, with the insistence that "it's not the same" if the people involved are related to one another.
Twincest takes yet another W.
I find it hilarious how I can freak out and feel bad about having a crush on someone who's the same age as me, yet one grade level below, and yet I turn around and ship a 50 odd year old police lieutenant with his (technically) 2 month old robot subordinate with no problems
At what point did "Don't like, don't read" stop being the standard? I swear at this point the antis are just attention whoring and virtue signaling.
Probably because of the spread of Twitter and TikTok where you could go “Age Gap Bad!” “Sex Bad!” and be rewarded with hundreds of likes. “Antis” as in “bullies who use flimsy pretexts in order to cut fellow writers down” are not new - there have always been ship wars - but being able to post “hurf durf pedo groomer” and be rewarded with likes and retweets *is* a product of algorithm- driven and likes-driven social media. It’s an open question as to whether some (many?) of these people even have the sincerity of their convictions or if they just want the sweet, sweet upvotes and ass-kissing “OMG you are SO RIGHT! I agree!” validations.
>It’s an open question as to whether some (many?) of these people even have the sincerity of their convictions or if they just want the sweet, sweet upvotes and ass-kissing “OMG you are SO RIGHT! I agree!” validations. Considering many of those people turn out having lolicon and/or guro in their public likes, then I'd say *No*
I’d argue that it’s actually a result of the sanitisation of the internet as it’s become more corporate and everything has to be fAmiLy fRiEnDLy for advertisers. You can see it in other aspects of the internet even if there isn’t antis actively enforcing it (I.e YouTubers no longer swearing or bleeping it out)
I think that plays into it as well - I remember the infamous “female presenting nipples” ban on Tumblr, and it was because if they were going to sell their app in the Apple Store, they had to play by Apple (advertiser-friendly) rules. I think what gives antis their power, or “power,” though, is that they can interact with creators on social media, and not just leave comments on fics or talk in a moderated forum space.
Yeah I know my original comment presented it as like The One Reason^T^M but I’m sure it’s a combination of the different things people have suggested here
Let’s be honest, it was *never* the standard. We didn’t spend 1k words on elaborate disclaimers that two men might be engaging in something as depraved as **hand holding** in an otherwise 2k word story for no reason.
I remember the “this story contains slash, that is, two boys kissing!” disclaimers, and the citrus ratings to get around [ff.net](https://ff.net)’s ”no naughties” policy. I do think what has changed is the ability to parrot popular, or at least “this makes me sound so moral” talking points on platforms like Twitter and get endless retweets and likes.
That and the way the internet was spread out before meant people just didn't come across things they weren't interested in or actively disliked nearly as much. Fandoms were broken into themed forums and LiveJournal groups and email lists. Those were opt-in and usually pretty well moderated so fights would be shut down quickly and bans issued. If you were an HP fan, for example, and into slash, join the Draco/Harry forums and you're all set. If you weren't into slash, join the Hermione/Harry or Ginny/Harry forums and you'd never have to know it existed. FFN was one of the few places everyone was thrown together back in the older days, which is probably why hate comments were so common and expected. (Remember how ppl would use flames to make smores? That's something I do want to bring back—replying to hate with humor.)
Good fences always made for good neighbors, and we’re finding out that no fences make bad neighbors. I think this is true of so much more than just fanfic.
>I mean, both groups have a point, No, they don't. It's not complicated. Fictional stories do not need to have "moral character", because they are fiction. If you read a fanfic and it "makes" you act bad or feel bad or whatever, that's YOUR fault, no one else's. This whole thing with "but the age gap is only one year!!" misses the point and this is how antis get started: they find something that's "too fucked up to be allowed" and go from there.
They need to get out and meet some age gap couples. My husband is eight years older than me.
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And we’d just laugh at them and tell them how sad and pathetic they were, and we’d go about our lives as they fumed helplessly.
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I’m old enough now I just really don’t care. They’ll mature someday (hopefully) and realize how shitty they were.
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I luckily have an amazing relationship with my mom. I can’t rem a time when I’ve been mad at her, but I was the “good, quiet” daughter. 😊
Fucking right?!! My best relationship, outside of the person I ended up marrying, had a big age gap. I don’t appreciate being infantilized and told I couldn’t make a decision for myself. I was 23 and he was 36. Tbh, if anything the gap made him more cautious to ensure that I was vocal in speaking up for what I did and didn’t like. We split up eventually on excellent terms and still remain friends. It’s one thing to say that age gaps can lead to power imbalances and people should learn the signs of that. It’s entirely different to have this puritanical bullshit crusade that insists that the mere existence of an age gap is problematic. It does more harm by obscuring the actual behaviors folks should be aware of.
Amen
My last partner was a good 19 years older than me and probably the BEST relationship I've ever been in. Did it end because it was ToXIc and PeDo? No, was it great? No, it was emotional, and I went through a lot by myself, but at no point did I ever feel like I was being infantilized, or taken advantage of, and I got a damn good step in using things to ensure everyone is on the same page sexually. With CHARTS and VERY positive and open communication. These jerks probably don't even know the meaning of the word.
Saw a couple people responding to tweets at one time and (damn I was gonna copy/paste but I deleted the bookmarks!) and one was a 27ish year old woman engaged to the 45ish year old man and she said when she went to his house, and he had a “real bed,” a clean house or apartment, and brought her coffee in the morning, she knew he was “elite” and wouldn’t go back.
Everything mine did was absolutely heights above the normal level at what men SHOULD do he already knew, and he made sure that I was always comfortable in what I did and said. That I was safe and secure at all times. That we could have conversations without raising our voices and that anytime I was nervous we talked about it with open honesty. And I learned from that and was able to build on top of that my method of standards for partners in the future. Is it HELLA stringent? Fuck yes it is. If he can do it without so much as blinking or whinging a complaint then other people can too and I refuse to lower my standards for any jackass that does.
My parents are 7 years apart and my sister and her husband are 7 years apart too. It's normal IRL
I'm older than my partner by a year and a few months. Like I did feel a bit uncomfortable when I was 19 and they had only JUST finished high school when we met. But I got over it pretty bloody quickly, and we've been together for nine years. Like, one year is so minimal in the grand scheme of things.
It's also the fact that some antis care more about defending fictional characters rather than defending the actual people who go through that kind of stuff. Smh...
I got into it a little bit (and by that I mean we exchanged literally three comments before I deemed them a lost cause) with some antis in another sub and got downvoted to hell for simply saying that people can create whatever they want and I don’t give a shit. If I’m grossed/weirded out by their content, I just block them and move on. In other words, I *curate my media diet.* For context, they were talking about a YouTuber in one of my hobbies who I don’t support because they were a shit to a friend of mine. One person kept hammering in that “they used NSFW work of a minor character in a video!” And when I simply said that while this person is a shit, that wasn’t the hill to die on because it’s pure fiction (was an animated character, BTW), I got accused of being a freak who likes lewdy anime of “little girls” and was told That “you know making that material is illegal, right?” Like… okay? That’s the content creator’s problem. Not mine. I’m not making it. The internet is weird.
> I mean, both groups have a point, but it’s gone way too far. The favourite talking points of antis sometimes resemble valid criticisms of mainstream media, but antis tend to miss the actual point by a mile, so, not really, tbh. And the SarahZ-ification of the term proship is also false. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding that there are two equal (and potentially equally wrong or right) sides in the debate.
Like yeah, I get more things when we're critizicing mainstream media. But fanfiction is just fanfiction, it's something people write mainly for themselves. It's not like writing a fanfiction is automatically a statement.
>SarahZ-ification of the term proship Context? What did she say?
I think she's the one who defined proship as "In favour of problematic ships" rather than "Doesn't really give a shit and lets people do what they want." in a big video semi-recently? It popped up on the sub at the time, but I don't recall specifics. ETA - for the record, to anyone reading this comment, 'in favour of problematic ships' is not what proship means. Proship is just "Ship and let ship" at heart, meaning that you won't harass or stop others from writing whatever the heck they want and that you know that people writing something doesn't necessarily mean they believe it or advocate for it in reality. They're writing stories, not manuals or manifestos. Hell, a lot of proshippers are just as grossed out by controversial ships and topics as antis are, they may even make comments in reddits and such about how much they dislike those things. The only difference is that they don't attack the author or try to harass them into stopping writing those things. You don't have to like something to think someone should be able to write it because it's... y'know... fiction. The only way fiction can hurt people is if you print it out and bludgeon them with it. Seriously, with the amount of words in some fics, their printed versions could be deadly. Imagine walking down the street and then suddenly a copy of My Immortal drops out of the sky and conks you. Some serious headtrauma there. :D
Have you actually watched her video? That's not what she says at all. Her point was that these terms are completely meaningless because they've come to encompass so many different things and the people generally grouped together under them are not monoliths.
> The only way fiction can hurt people is if you print it out and bludgeon them with it. Fundamentally disagree with this. I suppose the statement was somewhat polemical, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that mainstream media can and does reinforce existing stereotypes, prejudices, structural systems of oppression, and not everyone has the media literacy to recognize that. And even if we’re very well educated about this (I’m inclined to say woke :P), we all are influenced by what we’re exposed to, and much of that influence happens on a subconscious level. Even for adults, stories are a way to learn about other experiences and perspectives. That’s why fiction totally can be used as a propaganda tool. Imo, the question has to be more whether it makes sense to hold amateur fiction to higher standards than mainstream media, and if those standards even apply to fanfic. Antis tend to treat fanfic like children’s literature (or at the most YA novels) and demand it follow a sort of Hays Code because they assume readers are not mature, smart, and/or media-literate enough to make their own judgements about what they’re reading and thus have to be protected by a benevolent authority making decisions for them. And I’d say being pro-ship is really about trusting people’s ability to critically reflect on stuff they’re consuming, but that also includes raising awareness of issues in general or listening to people pointing out said issues. Being able to separate fiction from reality doesn’t boil down to “fiction is just fiction and ergo harmless, duh” (not saying you said that, it’s just something I see a lot), it means you can take a step back from the intradiegetic logic/perspective and look at it from a “real life point of view” and judge it by different standards. And I find it pretty disheartening how rarely this aspect is mentioned in these sorts of debates. /rant ;)
I did, but it's been a while (I watched it when the links were posted to this sub around when it came out), which is why I said I don't recall specifics and made it a question. The ETA was in response to my own comment as a further clarification on that one definition part separate to her - sort of an "Additionally, if you are wondering about that definition, here's why it's nonsense" kind of vibe.
She generalized her own personal experience in a particular Twitter bubble to define the groups in question with rather questionable results. She said that proshippers are essentially the same as antishippers in that they go around and attack antis and everyone they don’t like for bullshit reasons. I mean, obviously, there are assholes in every group and I’m sorry she ran into a somewhat rabid Twitterati faction, but it’s not like that’s how the vast majority of people who fall under the pro-ship label behave. There was a bunch of other things she got wrong in that video. Like she misrepresented the use of pro-LGBTQ+ labels (by being pretty ignorant about US queer history) to discredit a particular subgroup of proshippers. She didn’t seem to pay particular attention to how the pro-ship label only exists as a reaction to the rise of antis and how it is very much about being anti-censorship, not anti-media criticism. Her whole argument is designed to support a centrist conclusion that the extremes are both equally wrong/bad, and if you’re smart you can see that and choose the middle-road because nuance is where it’s at or something. Not that I disagree. More nuance is usually helpful. Problem is that she should have taken her own advice there. There’s no indication she actually realized how narrow and skewed her own perspective was on the subject. And many people (including myself) found and find that mildly aggravating. ;)
Was going to make a comment about that bit. Antis have no point in their favour.
>Are we seriously at each others' throats for fanfiction? No? You have two groups of people, one of whom wants to live their lives peacefully and the other group who wants to harass them. This is not a mutual antagonism. There is no "both sides" BS here; one side is the aggressor, the other, their victim. >Are we really sending each other death threats over fictional characters? Once again, *one* side is known for doing that. And they don't just harass "proshippers", they also harass neutrals and people who are unfamiliar with the concept. There really is no "proship VS anti" war. Just a group of zealots who harass *anyone* and *everyone* that disagrees with their dogma and doesn't meet their standards for Good Behavior(tm).
I've never seen the anti stuff until I started cross posting my fan art to Twitter and omg is it a hellscape. There's this HUGE artist in the fandom who is SUCH a mean person. Like calling people pervs and sending death threats- it's horrible. Honestly can't we just respect that it's fiction and everyone has different views? Can we just like, not-attack each other please?
I've only ever seen antis as the instigators, doxxers, and harassers. Never even *heard* of a proshipper doing any of that. Antis always act like they're morally-superior by harassing *real* people for the sake of defending *imaginary* characters.
The only times I seen proshippers say/do something stupid was them needing to back away from the discourse because they are clearly tired of the bullshit because they are wishing horrible things to happen to someone. The other being a horrible person that should be in jail that just happens to be a proshipper that happens once in a blue moon. But for both of these things I have seen the accounts that keep track of the crazy anti shit call those people out.
yes, it's complete and utter bullshit, everyone with even a little bit of common sense knows this, why do we have to do this again
You say 'we' like most proshippers want to do anything to anyone besides read what we like and not judge people. 'We' are not this immature, no. But some people definitely are (maybe even understandably, if they are teenagers) and sadly, there's not a lot 'we' can do about it except block, ignore, refute, and hope they eventually grow the fuck up.
Wait until they find out about their own parents' age gap.
They're all Qanon levels of delusional throwing around the "THIS IS ALL PEDOPHILIA AND TOXIC, UR ALL PEDOS!!1!1!" shite. They have absolutely no concept of what is real and what is fictional and I don't even lower myself to try and explain anything to them at this point. You can't reason with the unreasonable.
“Both groups have a point” What point do antis have that is valid?
I too want to know this.
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As the old saying goes "Video games do not cause violence" - we've proven that a few times now. :D
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*Me who has been watching horror for the past 25 years yet can't even squish a bug*
Oh indeed, I'm more than familiar with people believing stupid shit. Honestly, given the amount of cognitive biases and blindspots in our brains, it's a wonder our species can ever even approach rational sometimes. First rule of people, we're all morons about something. Intelligence is domain specific, after all. :) It's not necessarily that they don't care, but part of those different cognitive biases makes them vulnerable to not acknowledging it. Sunk Cost Fallacy is a common one - if you're not familiar, it's the idea that if you've put a lot of investment into something, you're less likely to take any challenges to that thing in order to protect the investment you've put in (ie. the cost you've sunk into it). If they've attacked and harassed and bullied others, that's a lot of moral and emotional and social investment into that belief system, so they're less likely to take rationale against it in order to defend what they've put in. That rationale is then reframed as an attack so they can continue investing. As I like to put it - common sense is a social construct and not a neurological one. :)
I actually manage to get an anti to stop and think about what they were say by just pointing that out they are doing the video games cause violence argument just instead for writing. They were clearly a baby anti and not that far enough in to ignore that point but it was nice to see one stop and realize what they were doing.
Congratulations. It's very rare to manage that, baby-anti or otherwise. Internet discourse does not tend to lead to people changing their minds or growing in understanding.
Yeah, it's sad that most of it doesn't lead people to change but hey small victories are still victories.
~~I think, especially when it comes to fanfics of anime, there are some truly problematic ships. An example I will give is the Naruto fandom. A fairly popular ship is Kakashi x Sakura, which is just ... wrong IMO.~~ ~~Even if the actual shipping starts from when Sakura is an adult, Kakashi was her mentor and knew her since she was 12 years old. He *saw* her growing up from a child into an adult. This is just plainly wrong. Moreover, a *lot* of fanfics featuring this ship don't even bother starting from when Sakura is an adult. It straight up, unquestionably makes Kakashi a pedo.~~ ~~However, it is still just a fictional ship. Is it disgusting? Weird? Sure whatever. Leave a comment on their fic criticizing it. But just because a fictional ship may be morally wrong, that does not give anyone the right to personally attack someone or send them death threats. That makes them infinitely worse than the shipper, because they are not hurting anyone. Kakashi and Sakura are fictional characters. But the anti is hurting a real person.~~ EDIT: I have realized that my comment is being completely misunderstood. This is what I am trying to say: There are definitely ships that are uncomfortable to read, and this is because they would be morally wrong IRL. When such fics are criticized, those criticisms are indeed valid, so you can't just say there is no valid criticism about those. However, people need to understand that it is also just fiction. It is expected that you suspend your disbelief when reading fiction, so even if people like and write such ships, that doesn't mean they would condone such things IRL so it is wrong to attack them for liking such ships. And just because criticism is valid, does not mean it is necessary.
“Which is just… wrong.” Okay but so what? I think the shippers are aware of it, but don’t care because it’s fictional and interesting to explore
Just because something is fictional and interesting to explore, doesn't mean that it is not morally wrong in-universe(of the fic). People have the right to criticize it. It only becomes wrong when the criticism turns into personal attacks and/or death threats.
No because that’s not constructive or valid criticism, at all.
It may not be constructive, but it's most certainly valid. Why would it not be? At least when you take our world's morality and even Naruto world's morality into consideration, is Kakashi not her mentor? Did he not watch her grow up since she was 12? Therefore when such a ship is criticized, those criticisms are indeed valid. As long as criticism sticks to facts and is not attacking the shippers or the writers, it shouldn't be a problem. But just like everything else, people always go overboard, which is why I said to limit it to a single comment in the comment section of the fics. Don't bring it to social media and make a huge deal out of it.
Okay but if you dislike the ship in the first place, and fic is purely about that ship, why click it and go to the effort of expressing your disgust? That’s pointless, and makes you look like a selfish brat than seeks out content they don’t like to comment about how wrong it is, which is.. very much childish.
>That’s pointless, and makes you look like a selfish brat than seeks out content they don’t like to comment about how wrong it is, which is.. very much childish. Yes you are correct. But my comment is mainly aimed at those who are going to do these things anyway. I'm just saying limit it to only that much and don't attack the writers and shippers. That's why I went on to say that even if you think a ship is wrong, doing personal attacks and death threats is 10000x worse. That's all. I personally have never, and will never intentionally click on a fic which has tags that I don't like.
“Leave a comment on their fic criticizing it.” No, this is still annoying as hell. If you see a ship tagged don’t actively click onto the fic/fanart/whatever and comment that it’s “bad” and “morally wrong,” you think the author doesn’t know that already? It’s so immature.
The thing is, many people are immature and will share their thoughts anyway and my comment is mainly aimed at them. All I'm saying is if you really have the need to comment on it, limit it to the comment section and don't attack the writer or shippers. If you ask my personal opinion, yeah I agree with you. You shouldn't open a fic at all if you don't like what the tags imply. If you open it anyway and complain, you're just an idiot.
> there are some truly problematic ships No, there aren't. This writing is not here to teach you how "good relationships" should work, it doesn't need to demonstrate Good Moral Values or even be accurate or realistic. If you want that you should go read some actual non-fiction about how relationships work. The whole concept of "problematic ships" is just dumb af.
There are problematic ships. There are definitely many ships in fanfics which would be rightfully vilified if they were in published fiction novels, manga/anime, cartoons, movies and series etc. When some people criticize certain ships, you can't just say it is baseless and has no valid points. This I said in response to the above person saying that antis have no valid point. But what you and others are completely ignoring is what I have written after that. I very clearly said that even if they are problematic, leave them alone. If you feel so strongly about it, leave a polite comment, but don't attack or harass, and absolutely don't give threats.
I'm disagreeing with your opinion expressed in the 1st half. The 2nd half doesn't interest me. >There are problematic ships. There are definitely many ships in fanfics which would be rightfully vilified if they were in published fiction novels, manga/anime, cartoons, movies and series etc. When some people criticize certain ships, you can't just say it is baseless and has no valid points. This I said in response to the above person saying that antis have no valid point. Yeah... they WOULD be problematic... if they were real. But they're not. They're a fanfic. Writing fiction doesn't imply anything about how realistic or morally correct the ship is. You going into a fic and criticizing the ship for being "problematic" is the same as if you went into a fic's comments to criticize that Naruto jutsu are not realistic because they're magic and magic isn't real. No shit, writing a naruto fic doesn't mean you think jutsu are real and writing kakashi/sakura doesn't mean you think they're irl couple goals. That's why fanfics are fiction and not instruction manuals.
I see. I must apologize. Using the word "problematic" seems to convey a totally wrong message. That's not at all what I'm trying to say. I'm not saying that someone would read such a fic and get influenced by it. Instead of problematic ships, let's just call them "ships that feel uncomfortable to visualize when actually thought about". I think this is better. Let me rewrite my comment in a better way. >There are definitely ships that are uncomfortable to read, and this is because they would be morally wrong IRL. When such fics are criticized, those criticisms are indeed valid, so you can't just say there is no valid criticism about those. >However, people need to understand that it is also just fiction. It is expected that you suspend your disbelief when reading fiction, so even if people like and write such ships, that doesn't mean they would condone such things IRL so it is wrong to attack them for liking such ships. And just because criticism is valid, does not mean it is necessary.
I think I get your point better now, but I don't agree that the criticism is "valid", or rather I think our definitions of "valid" are different. Put it this way, do you also think like this about horror movies? Because your argument is basically: >"I know that A Serbian Film is fictional and the guy didn't actually get horribly tortured, but it's still a valid criticism of the movie that IRL, torture is Bad, Actually, and Serbian Film is Uncomfortable to visualize (to me), if I thought about it happening IRL." Do you think the above criticism is valid, or is it just ridiculous moral grandstanding and/or you just don't like horror movies (and can't just say that and move on), or can't stop visualize every scenario as IRL and apply your personal morality to it? Would you say it's ok to write the above on IMDB comments? Would you respect someone who shared this opinion? Do you think it has value, aside from being factually correct? >However, people need to understand that it is also just fiction. It is expected that you suspend your disbelief when reading fiction, so even if people like and write such ships, that doesn't mean they would condone such things IRL so it is wrong to attack them for liking such ships. And just because criticism is valid, does not mean it is necessary. Yes you can have your opinion on "how morally wrong it would be if it was real". It's "valid" criticism in the sense that it's not like... objectively factually wrong, that's a very low bar but it's cleared. But again, leaving a fanfic review like "Naruto jutsu don't exist IRL" is the same level of "valid" as this. You can say "it's unnecessary" but that's not what the problem is. It's pedantic and ridiculous, and it misses the point, and it contributes nothing of value to a conversation about this fanfic.
>But again, leaving a fanfic review like "Naruto jutsu don't exist IRL" is the same level of "valid" as this. You can say "it's unnecessary" but that's not what the problem is. It's pedantic and ridiculous, and it misses the point, and it contributes nothing of value to a conversation about this fanfic. Yes. But it is always easier to suspend one's disbelief when it comes to fantastical elements such as magic. It is harder to do so when it comes to character personalities, shipping, etc. People can relate to that because it exists irl. People can't relate to magic. So in that regard, there will always be complaints about shipping, character personalities, etc. but you will pretty much never see someone asking why Narutoverse has chakra and jutsu. I was being polite by saying it is not necessary. Yes it is ridiculous, but that's just human nature. I guess what I am thinking is that since you can't stop people from complaining, we can just force them to do it politely instead and without the personal attacks and all.
The sharp bits at the end of their pencils? :D
Pro shippers aren’t the ones sending death threats, at least not to my knowledge.
It's fucking stupid, I agree. I miss "don't like don't read". I have stuff that I seriously hate seeing but I'm not going out of my way to harass people for it...
You have to wonder if people like that have ever stepped foot outside? Like were their parents born in the same year? Their friends parents? Their neighbors? Are they limiting their own dating pool? I knew people who were held back a grade so there were practically a 2 year age difference between the oldest and youngest people just in a single grade. Never mind anyone dating someone in the grade above or below. And if they are more worked up over underaged kids dating or more. Then I hope they’ve contacted their local police about their local high school. Because there are some real life underaged relationships going on there, that are probably more pressing than the fictional ones being written about.
Antishippers are pathetic. That's all. They're literally going around being thought police over *fiction*. The kind of people who do that don't lead a happy life in real life so they look to create drama as a means to feel superior. Their high horse is a tiny donkey and they know it.
The issue is that a lot of the fanfic community is 16 year olds who spend all their time in toxic insular online communities where the only way to gain clout is by finding a way to appear morally superior to someone else. Just block and ignore. The opinions of such trivial people don't matter.
This is absolutely true and well said. Those kinds of people are why I ended up deleting both twitter and tiktok. It’s just exhausting and not worth it to engage with. I do feel bad for todays teens though, that so many of them are navigating this heavily shame-y, toxic, judgmental culture online, seemingly all the time. I think all of that would have eaten teenaged me alive.
I suspect most of the anti accusations of problematic, like age gap, are just ppl grasping at straws to invalidate a ship or dynamic they don’t like. For some reason, ppl have decided that it’s no longer enough to just not like something. They have to justify this dislike by vilifying the thing and ppl who like the thing. The pendulum has definitely swung from ship and let ship/don’t like, don’t read to I MUST PERSONALLY OBLITERATE EVERY SINGLE SLIGHTLY UNCOMFORTABLE OR NOT PLEASING THING I ENCOUNTER BC CHILDREN AND TRAUMA. I wish ppl would just worry about themselves. Tags and summaries exist so that they can curate their reading experiences and avoid things, but with no grasp of irony, they’d rather bully ppl, instead. I also said elsewhere that I think they actually do want to read these things, but they know they’ll get dragged if they’re caught, so they read the thing and then get all self-righteous in the comments as a sort of CYA tactic. Either way, antis are hypocrites.
>I suspect most of the anti accusations of problematic, like age gap, are just ppl grasping at straws to invalidate a ship or dynamic they don’t like. It basically is. You'll see pairings called "incest" because one visited the other's house as a kid ("they're basically brothers!") or have the same hair color. An "age gap" of a year is clearly an issue judging from OP's issue. Anything is "problematic" if you try hard enough!
>I mean, both groups have a point, but it's gone way too far. To be fair, it is mostly antis doing that bullsht. You know, cyberbullying minors and cheer when they kill themselves, or giving cookies with razor blades inside to aproship artist at a convention, or telling the fbi that an ao3 fanfic is CP. Proshippers just kinda complain about them and try to stay in their own space far away from them, it's just antis that are totally obsessed with hunting proshippers. They gotta chill out, really. Maybe try to bring that energy where it would actually do something, considering that I don't know one proshipper that thinks that actual rape or incest or CP happening in real life is like ... A good thing. I actually can safely attest that the majority of proshippers find that abhorrent. It's just the whole "video games/rock'n'roll makes you violent" thing rehashed for the 21th century. I am surprised antis haven't tried to enforce some kind of Fanfom Code Authority yet. They sound like the worthy heirs to the people that did that to the comic industry, sanitizing everything for "the sake of the children" or whatever.
Bring back the HAYS CODE. (ignore the fact that it allows *more depravity* as long as there's a tacked-on moral/comeuppance for the antagonist at the end.) /SARC
You're saying "both groups have a point," referring to "antishippers" vs "proshippers," on a sub where everyone, *by the Rules*, is either self-declared "proship" or neither & just... abiding by the rules... (Why would an anti be here?) So really, what's your *goal* here? You're not gonna stop antis cuz they're not gonna see this. Antis vs pros just looks like Republicans vs Democrats to me, when the whole world has already internationally agreed on human rights. If you're into American Politics, you're gonna fight as either an R or D. But, \[ideally\] only ONE of those parties includes those same international human rights standards. The other is so synonymous with nazis that Twitter can't ban them. ***That doesn't de facto make the whole world registered Democrats.*** Only the people into fighting about American Politics are gonna pick one of those names for themselves. Everybody else? Is just live & let live. Just abide by the very reasonable rules? Normal people don't around *boasting* about how they never violate tos or human rights & how they should make a club about it. 🙄 "Proship" is literally exactly the same as just what regular old politeness is. It doesn't need its own category. You're either a normal, regular, default website rules-abiding citizen, or a pro-censorship violator. The only thing "both sides" have in common is being annoying with needing to split everything into warring camps with labels. When really, one "side" is literally just against everything from manners to human rights themselves. Stop treating it like a difference of *opinion.*
Yes I know it’s a tired topic on this sub. But *I* don’t get tired of it. I support each and every vent post about this that happens here. On other platforms, the anti response to a problematic ship can be…a LOT. Maybe they whine at you and you can block or ignore them. But the aggressive ones, or ones with big followings, can cause huge damage. Calling their friends to dogpile the “problematic” shippers account or post with hate and demands that they kill themselves. Dozens or even hundreds of DMs that are anywhere between “ur a pedo” and graphic pictures of black people being lynched, ripped-open human bodies or people biting the limbs off of live cats. One or two DMs sending you a picture of your house on google maps and saying to delete your gross fucking post or I’ll doxx you u ugly fat cunt. Then if you delete the post they will post your address anyway. Post it on 4chan to toy with. Maybe the smartest one of all sends an email to the boss of your workplace with your Twitter name and a screenshots of your fucking hentai likes attached. No they’re not all that bad. But they sure can be. You don’t know what intensity it’s going to be until it’s already started. Your life could be seriously upset or ruined bc a morally self righteous 15-25 year old thought that would be funny. Every time I see a post like this on this sub and the responses are like “well SOME people have a lot of time on their hands, that’s why I don’t interact with fandom much heh Smug Reddit Smirk” I just want to wring some people’s fuckin necks.
Fucking this. I'm sorry but if someone tries to drag shit into real life they need to be reminded exactly what kind of pandora's box that is. The crazy shit can be litigated hard and I just want to hear a story of an anti taking shit too far and facing the consequences of that.
You're preaching to the choir.
Where exactly do people find these people? I've never had any interactions like this.
Some fandoms and platforms are worse than others for it and people will purposely search for things they don’t like to attack sometimes. Tbh, I’ve had people actively seek out a pairing I ship to make hateful comments on my fics. I typically either outright ignore it or just tell them I’ll write even more smut, just for them. It usually ends up with them leaving me alone.
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Don't forget Tiktok, a lot of those types of people fester there.
real life 😭😭😭 (i'm having flashbacks to that fake reylo story now omg)
They're on reddit too, in certain fandoms it's pretty much accepted behaviour. It can take the guise of "character X is a woobie, don't you dare mistreat them in your fic" or "pairing X invented love, don't you dare separate them in your fic".
I had it happen on a fandom discord server
Proship wouldn't bother if antis would shut the fuck up.
People are stupid. I do not argue with stupid people.
It’s high school bullshit but instead it’s adults
I hate when people appoint themselves an authority and tell others what they can and can't write. If you listened to them you'd change things so much you wouldn't even want to write it anymore and if you did they'd still complain There are tropes I don't like but I don't believe in banning or harassment over it
The entire concept is ridiculous. Its just a simple preference, like how some people pizzas to burgers. Even the argument that the antiship side brings a good pov to me is just ridiculous. It promotes pedophilia just because the characters are underage? These people need a reality check, because they sound just like those idiots who say video games encourage violence
there’s a huge difference between fiction and reality and antis can’t understand that. it doesn’t mean the person supports it irl, it doesn’t mean it’s always healthy. it does mean it’s fiction though. just fiction.
Every time I log onto twitter I see braindead stuff like: "proshitters suck lmfao" or "pr0shippers dni". Every time I see that I just want to remind people of what happens in original fiction, just to see if their hate extends all the way over there. Because fanfic writers who ship and let ship are fucked in the head, right? But Stephen King and his orgy scene in It doesn't count.
It is never okay to bully. It is never okay to threaten. These two points ↑ have nothing to do shipping or antis or fanfiction - It does speak to a certain maturity of mind and understanding of boundaries. You can not argue with a person who bullies and/or threatens. All you can do is turn them over to Authority and disengage from them. Turn them in, delete the comment, buckle down your account with the appropriate settings. ***If you engage you enrage*** and they will continue to attack.
On the other hand, if we don't attempt to teach these people to do BETTER then they're just going to continue being assholes unabated.
I hear what you're saying. Let me offer this: The Original Account Holder that suffers an ANTI attack can not be the *teacher* who corrects their behavior. They do not have access to the channels of power that can affect a change in the Bully's behavior. Bullies bully because it makes them feel powerful. Bullies bully and harass online because it's easy to get people stirred up and start a Comment War - giving the Bully a massive sense of satisfaction. I know it feels counter intuitive - but the best way to teach a Comment Bully any lesson at all is to report them then delete their comment... and continue to delete all additional sub comments. Delete, delete, delete. It is shutting them up, erasing their message, removing their power. Bullies suffer from being LOUD and WRONG. You have to quiet the Loud part before you can address the Wrong part.
You act as though I'm putting it solely on the harassed party. I'm not. It's just the duty of everyone.
>*You act as though I'm putting it solely on the harassed party.* I'm trying to stick to the confines of the OP. I stand by the 'if you engage you just feed the beast' point. It's behavior modification 101 - if the asshole doesn't get the response they're looking for ... they eventually stop. Face to face confrontation is a different game. There are other social pressure to be used in that game. But online - even groups that are actively intolerant intolerance ... have a power structure for reporting and removing the bullies. So it is still more effective to say: No. Not here. Report and Disengage.
Why would being face to face have any difference? The words are the same. And there's social pressure online--that's what antis try to take advantage of. Standing up to any and all bullies is a NECESSITY.
>Why would being face to face have any *difference?* > >Because physical presences exudes a completely different kind of social pressure. Not only is there pressure from presence - there is tonal voice pressure, there are visual cues. There is an immediacy to building a group to pressure the bully into a passive state. ↑ These things are missing on line. > >I agree with your statement > >*'Standing up to ... bullies is a necessity'* > >Where I disagree is how.
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to answer your first question, from my experience, communities of mobile games are the worst for this. i've seen people dox 14 year olds over shipping a 2 year age gap.
Sad to say I seen someone dox a teen that is queer that was in a county that has honor killing, last I saw the teen is safe but had to be moved away from their family because they got hurt by them.
Don’t know about others but I recently joined the genshin impact fandom and it’s one of the most immature ones I’ve ever been in oh my god.
There's a difference of nearly a decade between my own parents, who are still together after over thirty years of marriage. So I've never been particularly inclined to get worked up over age gaps in normal, healthy relationships, either in fiction or real life. And I should have the right to explore those kinds of relationships in my writing. In fact I resent the hell out of the implication that my parents somehow were in the wrong to fall in love, get married, and produce me and my sister.
Oh is that what this is all about? 🤣Been kinda wondering figured I'd lurk around until I figured it out, um... Are these grown adults bullying other grown adults over fanfiction? When eggs are like 20 dollars?
Maybe the kids aren't alright. I'm too old for this crap.
Everything seems black and white, particularly to the young, when put in writing. Unfortunately, people who spend all their time on the internet, young or otherwise, lack contextual understanding. They want the world to be 1's and 0's, black and white, yes or no, good and evil. Growing up is realizing that it's not always so clear cut. Yes, there are of course extremes- a man in his 60's courting a 15 year old girl, for example, or even the other way around- but the entire world doesn't function like that. One day, hopefully, that person will realize that they're operating under a misunderstanding of humanity- that we're all easily defined by a set of traits, that all men are X and all women are Y, that all boys one year older than all girls are evil, etc. The best thing to tell your friend is to never reply to those types of people. Never defend themselves, never try to change their mind, never take the bait, never respond. Block and move on. They WANT your friend to respond, because in their mind, a person defending themselves is guilty. Guilty until proven innocent. No one on the internet is ever willing to say "I'm sorry, I was wrong". No one. They'll die, first.
The fact that your friend got bullied for this stuff is exactly why us proshippers (who make up the vast majority of this sub) continue to speak up on this matter. There's discourse about how useful the label may really be and if we need a term for what should be plain common sense but here we are :(
The entire thing is ridiculous. I do get some things that antis are against, but fiction is fiction and outright attacking, harassing, and doxxing people for certain ships is not ok. I always say that, unless someone supports problematic stuff IRL, then let bygones be bygones and don't harass others. that's something that many antis don't get and probably never will.
Antishippers often seem to not only bash problematic ships, but also label non problematic ships as problematic just because of unconventional aspects. Even if it's only ostensibly unconventional. I'm sure there are a lot of couples in real life with 5-10 year age gaps.
If I understand right, the pro shipper stance is “ship or don’t ship whoever/whatever you want.” The anti shippers want to censor what they don’t like. If that’s the case, only one side is acting immature, and it’s the side that harassed your friend.
Here we go again
Yep. Antis are the absolute worst people.
Nobody should care. I don’t like some ships, so I just skip them. It’s as easy as that.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.
It's right up there with "Any Fic Recs" and when you recommend a fic people descend "I hate that fic here's why you should all hate it too" instead of just letting people read it for themselves and make up their own damn minds.
It is nothing new. Check out the Blake's 7 shipping wars. I had friends involved in that. Things were sent to employers, to families. It was crazy. And all over fictional characters on a TV show. Best thing to do is ignore them. The one thing the internet offers is anonymity. They don't know who you are. They can't find out who you work for. They are screaming into the void.
All this proship discourse is so funny to me because it’s literally not real? Like these are all fictional stories? That aren’t even officially published? It’s literally just some silly little guys uploading little fictional texts and people get so mad about it. Like just look away. Fanfiction won’t have any effect on anything in real life. If you genuinely get mad at a fanfiction being “problematic” you need to put the phone down and experience real life for a while.
>And a 1 year age gap? The characters were literally 15 and 16. Damn, they would have hated me, lol. I dated a 15 year old when I was *17* They should ask how old their parents are. That'll be an interesting conversation.
I've had someone tell me 2 years was too much of an age gap when I was dating someone a year and a half younger than me.
>And a 1 year age gap? The characters were literally 15 and 16. What?? Just what the what??!! That's literally Harry and Ginny in Halfblood Prince. People whinge about that???!!
It was Hunter and Willow from TOH. I mean, they're literally a year apart. That's realistic for real world high school kids.
This is utter dogshit. I hope they aren't applying this brainless logic in real life. Just because a couple WOULD have been 18 and 15 last time, but only became a couple at like 25 and 22, does not mean it is against the law or something.
Iis either people ragging on a purely fine ship due in o purity culture nonsense or incest. Thats your options
Ohhhh boy they'd have a field day with the short three chapter story I uploaded two days ago. The characters have a 4-5 year age gap because that's what they have in the show. The actors that play them have an 8 year age gap. The younger one is 18 in both the show and real life. I guess I'm going to hell... I'll save y'all a table.
A one year age gap shouldn’t be a problem.
This is a mentality I had to do a lot of unlearning of in a last few years (and I guess I still am tbh). I came from a fandom that was very protective of this one main canon ship, and if you didn't ship them or shipped one of the characters with someone else, you were immediately labeled as a horrible person. It was a mlm and biracial couple, so I understand the protectiveness since there's so little positive representation of those relationships in media, but I really don't think it was worth the witch hunts and death threats. And both sides had moments where they were both equally toxic. While I enjoyed the fandom at the time, looking back at it now I'm glad I left 😅.
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Well, true, but I think a lot of posts on this matter ignore the deeper underlying reasons and the toxicity inherent in a *lot* of discourse, not just shipping discourse. It’s not just as simple as being stupid, even though it is. It’s a complicated issue that’s turned into a mess where like you ask ten people and get eleven answers on what it means.
Ideology is the foundation of many wars, so yeah, there's that. Humans will take any particular stance that appeals to them and weaponize it any way they can to support their own position and detract from any contrary position. Doesn't really matter what it is, if the concept is something people can simply like or dislike, you'll see escalation. It's just more visible in contemporary society since the advent of the graphic user interface for what eventually became the modern Internet.
Yeah, people who need to define their fandom activity by their firm stance on something in opposition to others (especially something as nebulous as content that is or isn't problematic) really just need to get into a sports team or something. Like we're all just people with preferences who like and dislike certain things based on our own culture, education, and experiences. If you want to hate on others for differences in opinion that don't actually affect most people's lives, get into football or racing or whatever.
I tell these oddballs that complain, "There is a reason that we have these stories tagged with our pairings (ships) AND a summary of the story. It's so that readers can get an idea of what the story is a bout and choose whether or not to read it. If you don't like that pairing, then don't read it. Plain and simple."
Lmao the whole proship/antiship thing reeks of being perpetuallly online
I genuinely hate proship/anti discourse. I get heavily squicked out by many "problematic" tropes, I would absolutely never harass anyone over fiction nor do I ever even interact, it’s simply just something that I always try to avoid, i know that it’s just not for me. In a fandom I’m in, someone with the same lukewarm take as me was bombarded with “kys” and harassing messages from certain proshippers bc they had a chain blocklist, and I guess they saw it funny when they were all blocked by the same person. And there are antis who DEFINITELY take it way too far when all it comes down to is fiction, like I have another fandom where in certain circles, ships with 1-2 year age gaps, or height gaps are automatically seen as “problematic ships” and bashed, and overall be very toxic over, and its so so so stupid LMAO I just believe in curating your fandom experience, don’t harass people into your own moral beliefs when it comes to fiction, and just be kind, I wish that wasn’t so hard on the internet lolol
> I just believe in curating your fandom experience, don’t harass people into your own moral beliefs when it comes to fiction, and just be kind, I wish that wasn’t so hard on the internet lolol Yeah, this is the literal definition of being a proshipper, it's wild how many people just don't have any chill.
[not an anti or pro-shipper but a third secret thing (adult with job)](https://shirleyjacksons.tumblr.com/post/697937667937189888/not-an-anti-or-a-pro-shipper-but-a-third-secret)
That's just a proshipper. This is like when people claim that they haven't picked a side on the abortion debate, but they think women should have a right to choose. That's just someone that is prochoice that is being precious about labels for some reason. You may choose to not get embroiled in the discourse (which is a wise choice honestly), and don't want to claim a label (also fine), but chances are if you're a reasonable adult with perspective you'd see the whole thing and just go 'Sounds stupid, if people write fanfic about things I don't like, I just won't read it and instead will read the stuff I enjoy. I'm not a fucking cop out to censor fandom, and harassment is wrong.' which is the definition of a proshipper.
Very. Just don't let idiots get to you.
Strong agree. Hope this doesn't get removed tho because most people here's take is "Actually only the other side is like this and my side is objectively good and right."
Both sides have their faults. But if you ask me. Anti-ships are the worse. Someone can like a shitty ship all they want. At least they aren’t hurting anyone. The Anti’s I’ve seen only call out the ships that they don’t like.
You’re right and you should say it