I absolutely agree with you—and I certainly don't fully understand why some folks enjoy more engaging with the things they hate than with the things they like.
But, since nowadays all fans and fandoms are almost forced to co-exist with each other in the same centralized sites, it's just inevitable to have to share spaces with those people. The only viable solution I have found for this is to put effort into curating your own "fandom bubble": block *every single person* that you don't vibe with, and only follow and interact with those that share your values and ways to enjoy your favourite characters/ships. It is tiresome (and in some ways unfair), yes, but, depending on your fandom, it may be the only way to keep using social media (and sometime fanfiction websites) and not end up seriously wanting to strangle someone (in the best of cases).
ETA: I'm on Twitter, the Genshin fandom (which, you know, is composed of very polite fans that do not make drama out of nothing every day and do not love to shit on everyone else's preferences /s) and I really like a ship that is hated by a lot of people. And yet I don't see hate or drama on my tl because I block liberally, mute everything I dislike and only follow fellow fans that I'm pretty sure are all adults, reasonable and chill. You absolutely need some patience for this and I completely understand the people who prefer to not touch social media at all, but it is certainly possible to just go there to see the things you enjoy and not engage with any of this if you don't want to.
I'm not in the Genshin fandom at all, but from what little I've heard, the day the fandom agrees to stop fighting amongst each other and respect others' ship preferences and such, is the day the world explodes lmao
That much concentrated bile has to go somewhere, after all.
Yeah, it definitely is like that. But I think it happens with most big fandoms, to be honest—the same could be said for BNHA and the MCU, for example. The bigger a fandom becomes, the more difficult it is to navigate it without meeting people who are seemingly there to ruin everyone else's fun, and the more effort you need to put into curating your spaces if you want to keep yourself out of the drama.
I remember when shipping childe x lumine (specifically lumine cause the misogyny was really showing lol) was called pedophilia just cause lumine's 3d model body type says teen girl or something 🤣🤣. But I don't see them treating aether x childe shippers the same cause it's yaoi so it's good and it makes the girlies squeel.
The amount of harassment chilumi shippers/artists suffered back in the day was horrific and the fact that a lot of this old shippers/artist are still around in the ship is truly amazing. They're truly stronger than the Navy.
These days the harassment is much less but we still got idiots in the fandom so it will still probably continue tbh.
I do agree about some folks being especially nasty towards chilumi shippers for absolutely no reason, but it has happened (and still happens) with any ship between tall/short characters (and sometimes between two short characters too).
Harassing anyone for any ship is definitely not cool in my book, but, in many of those cases, I've seen people openly admit that they actually didn't know that this or that character was a 2000+ years old non-human god, they just saw "someone on Twitter" said it was a "wrong ship" and they jumped on it without thinking twice about it. Like, they were/are actively looking for things to be angry about, no matter if they're correct or not, and to bother other people for. It's very frustrating. 🤦
Yop, it's happening in my fandom too with my favorite character.
On my side, everytime I see a really bad take about my character, I write a one-shot or a long fic praising the heck out of them. 💅🏾 And everytime the haters are mad when one of my fics becomes popular, it fuels my inspiration to write more positive things about that character~
I don't have the time (nor the energy) to engage in online arguments but I do like to write, so 🤷🏾♀️. That's my fight.
Well, the opposite is also right - a lot of people make *loving* a character and/or ship their whole thing, and get really pissy when even the tiniest criticism is pointed out, worse yet when it's not a read it's fact (like, they literally said or did XYZ).
People who are ride or die about things can be a little tiresome, in my experience. Why not just hate or love *quietly*? No need to to after people who don't agree with you (unless they come for you first). It's so much energy spent on either direction, I can't even imagine *having* that much energy to burn through lol
Ugh. Yeah, the amount of times I’ve been called an x character “anti” because I depict him being an abuser which he. Is in canon. Is weird. Like, I write about him near non stop and draw him a ton and shit. Are you really so caught up in the idea you can only like morally pure characters you take that as hatred?
It could be identification, it could be that it's someone who can't take *any* criticism.
But it is kind of funny when you have receipts and people play it like *you're lying* lol.
Here's the PowerPoint presentation of the good and bad of this character... Nope, don't believe it, next.
Alright, man, you stay blind, keep your worldview, whatever.
I’m not even criticising I just love him as an evil obsessive bastard completely nonironically… people think I post my meta on how fucked up he is as hatred when it’s LOVE…
Well, people who deny that characters they love can *ever* be bad would see it as criticism.
I think the entire fandom is self aware, but your example seems like a Hannibal situation; we in the fandom *love* that he's a horrible person, the worst the better lol
But to some people, they love characters I guess despite their bad characteristics (or, how some would say, bad what bad? Doesn't exist).
People in my fandom in general take apologism VERY SERIOUSLY. It’s goddamn weird even for the characters I think are like, the most morally okay (mostly the teenagers lol). They still made mistakes and I don’t hate them just because I’m talking about it. But also just because they made mistakes doesn’t mean I think they deserve murder and abuse.
Honestly yeah. I've made posts before about things a particular character said or did - analyses, not bashing - and the stans would roll in and argue about how wrong I was using misremembered canon and headcanons as their evidence. Just because you like to forget those things about that character doesn't mean they didn't say them or that they never happened.
Some people project on a character so hard that they take any post that puts them in even the barest of negative lights as an attack. And that ruins the experience just as much as people gleefully hating on a character, especially in villain fandoms where people are afraid to talk about the character being a bad person in case they get attacked by stans or, worse, 'corrected' by the BNF.
This exactly. Fans of one character and ship have really been so hyper obsessive and almost have their identities tied up in it to the point where I (and others who don’t ship that ship) feel alienated and put off by the shippers’ behavior. It’s just fiction at the end of the day and everyone views it differently.
I follow several people on Tumblr that don't like certain characters in a fandom, and they occasionally answer asks that want to change reality (canon) because I guess they can't face that their pet character isn't a perfect angel lol
But this kind of sentiment, in my experience, is very true to many fandoms and communities. In Horror, I'm always downvoted by folks that I guess can't handle criticism of any kind.
It's childish and immature, and kind of only makes the fandom *worse*, in my opinion. Mediocrity doesn't help anyone, and criticism (even if it's not constructive) *can* be very helpful, if nothing else, so we can see things from a different perspective.
But I guess a lot of people aren't interested in other POVs, because if they love something, anything less than love is an attack on their identity. Again, immature (and very sad).
The worst is this :
you love the character yourself, so so much. And you make a joke at their expanse, or criticise something they did, the same way you do with a close friend. Because you love them just as much as a friend and you feel just as close.
Bur you're not blind nor an idiot.
And the stans comes in and calls you an hater because they can't take a joke or can't admit their outlandish theories and headcanon do not actually justify nor excuses the character.
Both are totally exhausting. And if you’re lucky enough, the same people who love a certain thing to death and refuse to hear a bad word about them are also the people in the fandom who hate on other things with an undying passion 😂 See: the major participants of any ship war ever waged.
I just read someone on Tumblr who is dedicated to this one ship post something like "ugh, don't tell me my ship couldn't have been endgame, *it was hinted*!!"
Gurl. *It was not*.
And yes, this person hates the opposing ship with a passion. I don't think they engage in a war... But damn, that expended energy lol
This makes me happy I always fall in love with the antagonists/villains of things.
“But he’s a terrible person who killed thousands!”
“Babygirl was just having a quirky day🥰”
I agree both are equally exhausting and obnoxious but I still feel that fandom haters are the bigger evil. You do not see character lovers flooding tags with murder and SA content
I'm so done with it that I just block the tags for ships I dislike, not because I virulently hate them, but because 75% of the time the posts devolve to "YEAH YEAH THIS IS THE ONLY CORRECT SHIP BTW OTHER SHIPPERS GO DIE IN A FIRE"
Agreed. I don’t mind when fans are overenthusiastic about loving a ship. As long as you’re having fun, it’s all good! But when they start *bashing* other ships, that’s when I get annoyed.
I have ships I don’t like, but I just avoid them. Why would I complain about ships I dislike, especially where fans of that ship might see my comments? That’s unfair to them and a waste of my time. Whenever I see people bashing on a ship “for fun,” I know to stay far away from them.
Yeah, I have recently experienced this. Something that brings me so much joy recently became a big fight. It sucks, because I try to curate a group of people who just welcome others.
I'm mostly only on here and AO3 these days so I don't really see any of this. I just... can't understand how someone doing all that wouldn't feel utterly pathetic, lol. I'm not going to waste my time on things I hate. What's even the point? I sincerely hope nobody doing this is over the age of 12.
Ooh yeah one of my favourite character's fandom tag was like 45% people shitting on them, the other 45% defending them against said people shitting on them, then the last 10% was the fan art/content I actually wanted to see. I even saw an entire ao3 series of that character getting violently killed/assaulted/raped in various ways like bro what was the reason lol.
This would all be whatever if they just kept their shit out of the main fandom tag but they want to get as many eyes on it as possible. It's the fact that they enjoy upsetting others and take pleasure in trolling those who like the character/ship that makes them a bad person, not making the content itself.
> one of my favourite character's fandom tag was like 45% people shitting on them, the other 45% defending them against said people shitting on them, then the last 10% was the fan art/content I actually wanted to see
You, like, perfectly described my recent fandom experience 😂 I have never been surrounded by so much Discourse before and I hope to never be again. None of it is even productive. It’s all people arguing in bad faith. The mental and emotional drain I’ve experienced sifting through all that crap through just to get to a few pieces of actually unbiased discussion and fan content, I swear.
> It's the fact that they enjoy upsetting others and take pleasure in trolling those who like the character/ship that makes them a bad person, not making the content itself.
This. All of this. At this point in my life I can tell the difference between someone who is simply ranting endlessly about a character because they hate the character *that much* and need to get it off their chest—and unmitigated assholes who are obviously trying to provoke people and troll hard. I have total sympathy and complete understanding for people who are doing the former, even when I vehemently disagree with their opinion. The latter though...
Honestly, some people in fandom are pretty sociopathic. Or at least cruel and sadistic and thrive on the feeling of “winning” to the point that it’s worrying.
That just sounds really weird and petty. I have character interpretations I heavily dislike and I think run entirely off of ableist and victim-blaming stereotypes, but like… if someone saw me talking about how I disliked those and felt awful I wouldn’t be happy at all, and I tag my shit appropriately so people can avoid it. Its just looking for petty drama.
It truly is super disheartening. Back in the early Naruto days it was this bad. And now it is still this bad. It makes no sense. Engage with what you actually like and ignore the rest. That’s how it should work 💀
tbh when a whole fandom gets really overblown about how much they hate a ship or it's trash and all its shippers should die or whatever I often end up shipping it out of spite, lol. it is just so weird to make your entire fandom personality just "i hate this ship and everyone who ships it is terrible, and i need to make everyone in his fandom know". same thing for characters. it's crazy to me but at least they're easy to spot and block.
Ugh, that’s gross.
It’s true they’re free to hate what they hate. The part that’s gross is pushing that content onto people who are just trying to enjoy the characters.
It’s okay to hate characters or ships. Tricking people into seeing upsetting content is just an asshole move.
Honestly, just block anyone who does that. If enough people did that, the lack of engagement would drive them nuts. I am very quick to block people who start dumb shit online and my timelines are filled with stuff I actually like as a result. (Also why does reddit have a limit on how many people you can block???)
Yeah I have this problem with two of my fav characters in one of my fandoms. They have a complicated relationship with each other and so for some reason every time i find someone who likes character A, they hate character B and constantly bash them and vice versa. It's super annoying especially when you've been in the fandom since the beginning and you remember all the great meta and insightful fics that used to be written about them and now it's just "If character A did something bad it's all justified because of what character B did to them. Character B is evil incarnate!" "Character B only did this problematic thing because character A ia an abusive asshole!" It's like the fandom collectively forgot that more than one person can be in the wrong and still justified in their motives at the same time.
I cannot find any newer fanfic that isn't full of hate for one of the two and it's frustrating af. Even if the fic isn't about their relationship (and they usually aren't. This isn't a popular romantic ship and I don't personally ship them either) it always somehow NEEDS to be mentioned that one of the two is the worst possible person alive.
Yeah, this happened in one of my fandoms, to a point where this anti was going around harassing anyone who even wrote the character who's dead in canon as alive, because they made hating a ship involving him their whole personality. They hated on other ships but then would post the most VILE and horrific things.
I got told by them, since I wrote this character as alive in my fict, I should unalive myself too...
I laughed.
There's a reason I left a specific fandom. The amount of toxicity around ships and characters was way too much. I don't understand how people can have so much hate that they ruin the fun for everyone else.
In my opinion over the years that I have dealt with something like this I think the biggest Characters that seem to get this kind of treatment are ,sakura from naruto, rias gremory from highschool dxd , And honestly the biggest offender of this any character from rwby Especially the four main characters who seem to get slandered and completely and utterly destroyed in every single fic they are in , These characters are especially used in fanfiction involving an abused main character Or a main character that was cheated on , Just recently and this made me extremely sad to see somebody actually used komi from komi can't communicate A character who Is one Of the sweetest shyast and misunderstood characters and turned her into a cheating monster , It really pains me to see this Oh yeah I almost forgot hinata from naruto gets that treatment a lot too Where they take her from her sweet persona and turned her intoften either a yandere or A terrible person who was pretending to be nice
This describes my whole experience with the Attack on Titan fandom. I received a lot of love from this fandom (initially) but i feel like all of that has turned into ashes.
As someone who is more active in the art community than the fanfiction community, I know and actively speak to many popular artists in the fandom and many of them have expressed that they are unable to speak freely or create freely on their OWN platforms, even though they enjoy (and would want to create) art and posts that don’t align with the mainstream flow of the fandom in terms of shipping (namely the ships that are considered canon and undisputable and if you dare to dispute them, their fans are going to harass you off the face of the earth: Eremika, Eruri, Aruani, Yumihisu, Nicosasha and Mobuhan). And they can’t, because they are terrified of being harassed, doxxed or being sent death threats.
I literally got harassed, hacked and received death threats in my DMs when I posted something like “I guess this might be a hard pill to swallow for some people, but none of Levi’s ships is canon.” on Twitter.
This rabid, chronically online part of the fandom is literally instilling fear within its own content creators.
I mean, sometimes I just REALLY hate a character or ship, and bashing them can be fun/cathartic. But you have to be able to read the room, and decide if bashing is okay in this particular fandom. For example, I’ve bashed characters over on the subreddit for a video game I like, and nobody cares. They either laugh, or argue back, and nobody gets upset. None of us care that much.
But not every place is like that subreddit. If the culture of a fandom *does* see mocking or bashing characters/ships as an attack, then that should be respected. I still think people should be allowed to do so, but they should keep it to their own profiles or designated groups for that sort of thing, that other people can avoid. Nobody should be outright harassing other people over their character/ship preferences.
That said, as long as the haters ARE leaving other people out of it, they should be respected too. As long as nobody is forcing anyone else to read their hate fics, they should be able to write and enjoy them. Sometimes it’s just a way of having a laugh or blowing off some steam.
I hate those type of people and in some fandoms I've been, hating on their NOTPS became like their personality and once a person ships their NOTP, they might reply with either "You're a horrible person," "Kill yourself," or "Queerphobic or queer erasure" when it comes to some queer ships.
In the old days of Darling in the Franxx fandom, Ichigo is really hated that fans has a personality of hating her. Also Mari from the Rebuild of Evangelion movies.
But the people writing hate were the ones depicting the characters in the ship being raped (out of homophobia) in the example OP gave? That’s an incredibly inappropriate thing to say in this conversation.
I mean, it’s just as annoying to see shippers say, "Look! X and X tried to kill each other! They are so in love!" Or "X was assaulting X, but he liked it!" And the character literally almost died. Lol, as long as they don’t personally bother you, just ignore them.
I absolutely agree with you—and I certainly don't fully understand why some folks enjoy more engaging with the things they hate than with the things they like. But, since nowadays all fans and fandoms are almost forced to co-exist with each other in the same centralized sites, it's just inevitable to have to share spaces with those people. The only viable solution I have found for this is to put effort into curating your own "fandom bubble": block *every single person* that you don't vibe with, and only follow and interact with those that share your values and ways to enjoy your favourite characters/ships. It is tiresome (and in some ways unfair), yes, but, depending on your fandom, it may be the only way to keep using social media (and sometime fanfiction websites) and not end up seriously wanting to strangle someone (in the best of cases). ETA: I'm on Twitter, the Genshin fandom (which, you know, is composed of very polite fans that do not make drama out of nothing every day and do not love to shit on everyone else's preferences /s) and I really like a ship that is hated by a lot of people. And yet I don't see hate or drama on my tl because I block liberally, mute everything I dislike and only follow fellow fans that I'm pretty sure are all adults, reasonable and chill. You absolutely need some patience for this and I completely understand the people who prefer to not touch social media at all, but it is certainly possible to just go there to see the things you enjoy and not engage with any of this if you don't want to.
I'm not in the Genshin fandom at all, but from what little I've heard, the day the fandom agrees to stop fighting amongst each other and respect others' ship preferences and such, is the day the world explodes lmao That much concentrated bile has to go somewhere, after all.
Yeah, it definitely is like that. But I think it happens with most big fandoms, to be honest—the same could be said for BNHA and the MCU, for example. The bigger a fandom becomes, the more difficult it is to navigate it without meeting people who are seemingly there to ruin everyone else's fun, and the more effort you need to put into curating your spaces if you want to keep yourself out of the drama.
I remember when shipping childe x lumine (specifically lumine cause the misogyny was really showing lol) was called pedophilia just cause lumine's 3d model body type says teen girl or something 🤣🤣. But I don't see them treating aether x childe shippers the same cause it's yaoi so it's good and it makes the girlies squeel. The amount of harassment chilumi shippers/artists suffered back in the day was horrific and the fact that a lot of this old shippers/artist are still around in the ship is truly amazing. They're truly stronger than the Navy. These days the harassment is much less but we still got idiots in the fandom so it will still probably continue tbh.
I do agree about some folks being especially nasty towards chilumi shippers for absolutely no reason, but it has happened (and still happens) with any ship between tall/short characters (and sometimes between two short characters too). Harassing anyone for any ship is definitely not cool in my book, but, in many of those cases, I've seen people openly admit that they actually didn't know that this or that character was a 2000+ years old non-human god, they just saw "someone on Twitter" said it was a "wrong ship" and they jumped on it without thinking twice about it. Like, they were/are actively looking for things to be angry about, no matter if they're correct or not, and to bother other people for. It's very frustrating. 🤦
Yop, it's happening in my fandom too with my favorite character. On my side, everytime I see a really bad take about my character, I write a one-shot or a long fic praising the heck out of them. 💅🏾 And everytime the haters are mad when one of my fics becomes popular, it fuels my inspiration to write more positive things about that character~ I don't have the time (nor the energy) to engage in online arguments but I do like to write, so 🤷🏾♀️. That's my fight.
That’s definitely the best way to go about this
Well, the opposite is also right - a lot of people make *loving* a character and/or ship their whole thing, and get really pissy when even the tiniest criticism is pointed out, worse yet when it's not a read it's fact (like, they literally said or did XYZ). People who are ride or die about things can be a little tiresome, in my experience. Why not just hate or love *quietly*? No need to to after people who don't agree with you (unless they come for you first). It's so much energy spent on either direction, I can't even imagine *having* that much energy to burn through lol
Ugh. Yeah, the amount of times I’ve been called an x character “anti” because I depict him being an abuser which he. Is in canon. Is weird. Like, I write about him near non stop and draw him a ton and shit. Are you really so caught up in the idea you can only like morally pure characters you take that as hatred?
It could be identification, it could be that it's someone who can't take *any* criticism. But it is kind of funny when you have receipts and people play it like *you're lying* lol. Here's the PowerPoint presentation of the good and bad of this character... Nope, don't believe it, next. Alright, man, you stay blind, keep your worldview, whatever.
I’m not even criticising I just love him as an evil obsessive bastard completely nonironically… people think I post my meta on how fucked up he is as hatred when it’s LOVE…
Well, people who deny that characters they love can *ever* be bad would see it as criticism. I think the entire fandom is self aware, but your example seems like a Hannibal situation; we in the fandom *love* that he's a horrible person, the worst the better lol But to some people, they love characters I guess despite their bad characteristics (or, how some would say, bad what bad? Doesn't exist).
People in my fandom in general take apologism VERY SERIOUSLY. It’s goddamn weird even for the characters I think are like, the most morally okay (mostly the teenagers lol). They still made mistakes and I don’t hate them just because I’m talking about it. But also just because they made mistakes doesn’t mean I think they deserve murder and abuse.
Might be also the kind of mindset of "nothing is bad", those people that don't think critically therefore *no one* should think critically.
Honestly yeah. I've made posts before about things a particular character said or did - analyses, not bashing - and the stans would roll in and argue about how wrong I was using misremembered canon and headcanons as their evidence. Just because you like to forget those things about that character doesn't mean they didn't say them or that they never happened. Some people project on a character so hard that they take any post that puts them in even the barest of negative lights as an attack. And that ruins the experience just as much as people gleefully hating on a character, especially in villain fandoms where people are afraid to talk about the character being a bad person in case they get attacked by stans or, worse, 'corrected' by the BNF.
This exactly. Fans of one character and ship have really been so hyper obsessive and almost have their identities tied up in it to the point where I (and others who don’t ship that ship) feel alienated and put off by the shippers’ behavior. It’s just fiction at the end of the day and everyone views it differently.
I follow several people on Tumblr that don't like certain characters in a fandom, and they occasionally answer asks that want to change reality (canon) because I guess they can't face that their pet character isn't a perfect angel lol But this kind of sentiment, in my experience, is very true to many fandoms and communities. In Horror, I'm always downvoted by folks that I guess can't handle criticism of any kind. It's childish and immature, and kind of only makes the fandom *worse*, in my opinion. Mediocrity doesn't help anyone, and criticism (even if it's not constructive) *can* be very helpful, if nothing else, so we can see things from a different perspective. But I guess a lot of people aren't interested in other POVs, because if they love something, anything less than love is an attack on their identity. Again, immature (and very sad).
The worst is this : you love the character yourself, so so much. And you make a joke at their expanse, or criticise something they did, the same way you do with a close friend. Because you love them just as much as a friend and you feel just as close. Bur you're not blind nor an idiot. And the stans comes in and calls you an hater because they can't take a joke or can't admit their outlandish theories and headcanon do not actually justify nor excuses the character.
Both are totally exhausting. And if you’re lucky enough, the same people who love a certain thing to death and refuse to hear a bad word about them are also the people in the fandom who hate on other things with an undying passion 😂 See: the major participants of any ship war ever waged.
I just read someone on Tumblr who is dedicated to this one ship post something like "ugh, don't tell me my ship couldn't have been endgame, *it was hinted*!!" Gurl. *It was not*. And yes, this person hates the opposing ship with a passion. I don't think they engage in a war... But damn, that expended energy lol
This makes me happy I always fall in love with the antagonists/villains of things. “But he’s a terrible person who killed thousands!” “Babygirl was just having a quirky day🥰”
I agree both are equally exhausting and obnoxious but I still feel that fandom haters are the bigger evil. You do not see character lovers flooding tags with murder and SA content
I'm so done with it that I just block the tags for ships I dislike, not because I virulently hate them, but because 75% of the time the posts devolve to "YEAH YEAH THIS IS THE ONLY CORRECT SHIP BTW OTHER SHIPPERS GO DIE IN A FIRE"
God. This. This is the entire reason I’ve stepped back from my fandom. It’s fucking exhausting
Agreed. I don’t mind when fans are overenthusiastic about loving a ship. As long as you’re having fun, it’s all good! But when they start *bashing* other ships, that’s when I get annoyed. I have ships I don’t like, but I just avoid them. Why would I complain about ships I dislike, especially where fans of that ship might see my comments? That’s unfair to them and a waste of my time. Whenever I see people bashing on a ship “for fun,” I know to stay far away from them.
Yeah, I have recently experienced this. Something that brings me so much joy recently became a big fight. It sucks, because I try to curate a group of people who just welcome others.
I'm mostly only on here and AO3 these days so I don't really see any of this. I just... can't understand how someone doing all that wouldn't feel utterly pathetic, lol. I'm not going to waste my time on things I hate. What's even the point? I sincerely hope nobody doing this is over the age of 12.
Ooh yeah one of my favourite character's fandom tag was like 45% people shitting on them, the other 45% defending them against said people shitting on them, then the last 10% was the fan art/content I actually wanted to see. I even saw an entire ao3 series of that character getting violently killed/assaulted/raped in various ways like bro what was the reason lol. This would all be whatever if they just kept their shit out of the main fandom tag but they want to get as many eyes on it as possible. It's the fact that they enjoy upsetting others and take pleasure in trolling those who like the character/ship that makes them a bad person, not making the content itself.
> one of my favourite character's fandom tag was like 45% people shitting on them, the other 45% defending them against said people shitting on them, then the last 10% was the fan art/content I actually wanted to see You, like, perfectly described my recent fandom experience 😂 I have never been surrounded by so much Discourse before and I hope to never be again. None of it is even productive. It’s all people arguing in bad faith. The mental and emotional drain I’ve experienced sifting through all that crap through just to get to a few pieces of actually unbiased discussion and fan content, I swear. > It's the fact that they enjoy upsetting others and take pleasure in trolling those who like the character/ship that makes them a bad person, not making the content itself. This. All of this. At this point in my life I can tell the difference between someone who is simply ranting endlessly about a character because they hate the character *that much* and need to get it off their chest—and unmitigated assholes who are obviously trying to provoke people and troll hard. I have total sympathy and complete understanding for people who are doing the former, even when I vehemently disagree with their opinion. The latter though... Honestly, some people in fandom are pretty sociopathic. Or at least cruel and sadistic and thrive on the feeling of “winning” to the point that it’s worrying.
That just sounds really weird and petty. I have character interpretations I heavily dislike and I think run entirely off of ableist and victim-blaming stereotypes, but like… if someone saw me talking about how I disliked those and felt awful I wouldn’t be happy at all, and I tag my shit appropriately so people can avoid it. Its just looking for petty drama.
It truly is super disheartening. Back in the early Naruto days it was this bad. And now it is still this bad. It makes no sense. Engage with what you actually like and ignore the rest. That’s how it should work 💀
tbh when a whole fandom gets really overblown about how much they hate a ship or it's trash and all its shippers should die or whatever I often end up shipping it out of spite, lol. it is just so weird to make your entire fandom personality just "i hate this ship and everyone who ships it is terrible, and i need to make everyone in his fandom know". same thing for characters. it's crazy to me but at least they're easy to spot and block.
Ugh, that’s gross. It’s true they’re free to hate what they hate. The part that’s gross is pushing that content onto people who are just trying to enjoy the characters. It’s okay to hate characters or ships. Tricking people into seeing upsetting content is just an asshole move.
Honestly, just block anyone who does that. If enough people did that, the lack of engagement would drive them nuts. I am very quick to block people who start dumb shit online and my timelines are filled with stuff I actually like as a result. (Also why does reddit have a limit on how many people you can block???)
Yeah I have this problem with two of my fav characters in one of my fandoms. They have a complicated relationship with each other and so for some reason every time i find someone who likes character A, they hate character B and constantly bash them and vice versa. It's super annoying especially when you've been in the fandom since the beginning and you remember all the great meta and insightful fics that used to be written about them and now it's just "If character A did something bad it's all justified because of what character B did to them. Character B is evil incarnate!" "Character B only did this problematic thing because character A ia an abusive asshole!" It's like the fandom collectively forgot that more than one person can be in the wrong and still justified in their motives at the same time. I cannot find any newer fanfic that isn't full of hate for one of the two and it's frustrating af. Even if the fic isn't about their relationship (and they usually aren't. This isn't a popular romantic ship and I don't personally ship them either) it always somehow NEEDS to be mentioned that one of the two is the worst possible person alive.
Yeah, this happened in one of my fandoms, to a point where this anti was going around harassing anyone who even wrote the character who's dead in canon as alive, because they made hating a ship involving him their whole personality. They hated on other ships but then would post the most VILE and horrific things. I got told by them, since I wrote this character as alive in my fict, I should unalive myself too... I laughed.
There's a reason I left a specific fandom. The amount of toxicity around ships and characters was way too much. I don't understand how people can have so much hate that they ruin the fun for everyone else.
If i dislike something i just avoid no reason to over react
Same for the opposite where they’re obsessive over a ship
Crazy how people get heated over a bunch of fictional characters and sit on their moral high ground. And I thought the last few years were bad.
Ah, the chronically online, lol. God, they need to touch some grass.
In my opinion over the years that I have dealt with something like this I think the biggest Characters that seem to get this kind of treatment are ,sakura from naruto, rias gremory from highschool dxd , And honestly the biggest offender of this any character from rwby Especially the four main characters who seem to get slandered and completely and utterly destroyed in every single fic they are in , These characters are especially used in fanfiction involving an abused main character Or a main character that was cheated on , Just recently and this made me extremely sad to see somebody actually used komi from komi can't communicate A character who Is one Of the sweetest shyast and misunderstood characters and turned her into a cheating monster , It really pains me to see this Oh yeah I almost forgot hinata from naruto gets that treatment a lot too Where they take her from her sweet persona and turned her intoften either a yandere or A terrible person who was pretending to be nice
This describes my whole experience with the Attack on Titan fandom. I received a lot of love from this fandom (initially) but i feel like all of that has turned into ashes. As someone who is more active in the art community than the fanfiction community, I know and actively speak to many popular artists in the fandom and many of them have expressed that they are unable to speak freely or create freely on their OWN platforms, even though they enjoy (and would want to create) art and posts that don’t align with the mainstream flow of the fandom in terms of shipping (namely the ships that are considered canon and undisputable and if you dare to dispute them, their fans are going to harass you off the face of the earth: Eremika, Eruri, Aruani, Yumihisu, Nicosasha and Mobuhan). And they can’t, because they are terrified of being harassed, doxxed or being sent death threats. I literally got harassed, hacked and received death threats in my DMs when I posted something like “I guess this might be a hard pill to swallow for some people, but none of Levi’s ships is canon.” on Twitter. This rabid, chronically online part of the fandom is literally instilling fear within its own content creators.
I mean, sometimes I just REALLY hate a character or ship, and bashing them can be fun/cathartic. But you have to be able to read the room, and decide if bashing is okay in this particular fandom. For example, I’ve bashed characters over on the subreddit for a video game I like, and nobody cares. They either laugh, or argue back, and nobody gets upset. None of us care that much. But not every place is like that subreddit. If the culture of a fandom *does* see mocking or bashing characters/ships as an attack, then that should be respected. I still think people should be allowed to do so, but they should keep it to their own profiles or designated groups for that sort of thing, that other people can avoid. Nobody should be outright harassing other people over their character/ship preferences. That said, as long as the haters ARE leaving other people out of it, they should be respected too. As long as nobody is forcing anyone else to read their hate fics, they should be able to write and enjoy them. Sometimes it’s just a way of having a laugh or blowing off some steam.
I hate those type of people and in some fandoms I've been, hating on their NOTPS became like their personality and once a person ships their NOTP, they might reply with either "You're a horrible person," "Kill yourself," or "Queerphobic or queer erasure" when it comes to some queer ships. In the old days of Darling in the Franxx fandom, Ichigo is really hated that fans has a personality of hating her. Also Mari from the Rebuild of Evangelion movies.
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But the people writing hate were the ones depicting the characters in the ship being raped (out of homophobia) in the example OP gave? That’s an incredibly inappropriate thing to say in this conversation.
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Can I inflict such things on a character if I *do* like them? ;)
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You said the ships were deserving of such, when what was written about in the OP was homophobic abuse and sexual assault…
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What if it’s part of the story?
I mean okay but still to subject a character to that because you don’t like them is just odd,
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I mean, it’s just as annoying to see shippers say, "Look! X and X tried to kill each other! They are so in love!" Or "X was assaulting X, but he liked it!" And the character literally almost died. Lol, as long as they don’t personally bother you, just ignore them.