honestly the whole pro vs anti ship discourse never made sense to me. Especially because I fall somewhere in the middle and don’t really identify with either label.My only real boundaries for stuff that I enjoy shipping/seeing be shipped are pedophilia and incest. That’s it. I don’t give a fuck about age gaps or power imbalances or if it’s ‘abusive’ in canon. And I don’t go out of my way to harass people who do ship things that cross those boundaries, I just block and move on because while I respect their right to ship what they want, I also don’t really feel comfortable interacting with people who explicitly ship incest and/or underage.And I understand that fiction can and does affect reality sometimes (like propaganda, for example) but most of the time people are smart enough to draw their own conclusions. I don’t like the fact that people go out of their way to write underage fic, sure, but do I harass people who write it and think it should be scrubbed? Fuck no. Write what you want. I guess I just don’t like how black and white the conflict has gotten. And I especially don’t like falling in between pro shipper and anti shipper. Because when I interact with one, I feel like I’m lying to them no matter which it is, and I’m not here to violate peoples DNIs. I’m not ‘pro’ enough to be a pro shipper and I’m not ‘anti’ enough to be an anti shipper.It makes me feel weird and kinda gross sometimes because I hate conflict. Am I in the wrong here? Any advice?
Technically TECHNICALLY speaking, your attitude counts as “proship”– which means “other people can write what they want and I’ll avoid what I don’t like.”
It’s people who identify as antis who use the term “proship” to mean “revels in the filthiest ideas possible and thinks all darkfic is amazing.”
If you don’t want to actively censor fanfic, and you don’t harass other creators **technically** you count as “proship.”
But here is the thing, both terms are flat unecessary.
The term “antiship” came first, and was self-applied by people who were against certain things in fandom shipping. Then the term “proship” started to be used for people to express that they weren’t antis and didn’t harass people.
But no one needs either term.
I refuse to use either term any more.
Instead of “antis” I say “the fandom pro-censorship crowd” which much more clearly conveys what I mean.
“Doesn’t harass other people over ships they don’t like” doesn’t need a term like “proship” because it’s the default.
Not harassing other people over fanfiction, blocking and avoiding fanfiction you don’t want to see– that’s “"proship”“– but that’s just the default.
"proship” means, (for lack of a better term) “normal” fans who do what they like and block shit they don’t like.
And again, both terms are unnecessary, and I refuse to use them.
Discussion ¬