what ships are considered proship?
When Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was asked to describe his test for obscenity in 1964, he responded: “I know it when I see it.”
Types of ships that pro-censorship fans have attempted to label as objectionable “proships”:
- characters who are more than 2 years apart in age (power imbalance)
- boss x employee (power imbalance)
- unrelated characters who have referred to one another as siblings (incest)
- characters who have known one another since they were children (incest)
- enemies to lovers (abusive)
- characters who are playfully mean to one another (abusive)
- characters they personally feel have a “sibling” dynamic (incest)
- characters they personally feel have a “parent/child” dynamic (incest)
- ships where one character is autistic or disabled (pedophilia)
- ships where one character has a playful attitude (pedophilia)
- ships where one character is short and the other is tall (pedophilia)
- ships where one character is an 18-25 year old adult (pedophilia)
followers, please feel free to add to this list!
don’t forget how many antis really hate ships where you ship a canon character with an au versoin of themselves. (incest.)
they tend to apply similar to a character dating their own clone
Things I’ve been called a gross proshipper for writing:
- Interracial relationship (power imbalance – a non-white can never be equal to a white, ever)
- Characters were in the same foster home for six months as children (siblings, thus incest, despite the 17 and half years of their lives they weren’t aware of one another existing)
- Interfaith relationship (problematic/someone is unequal I guess)
- Characters who were once children but are now adults (pedophilia, you’re thinking about them fucking even if they never have sex in the fic) (by this metric your parents are pedophilia as a ship btw)
- Disabled character x disabled character (double pedophilia)
- Interracial relationship with no white characters (fetishization)
- Mentally ill character x non mentally ill character (fetishization and pedophilia because mental illness = child)
- Mentally ill character x mentally ill character (double pedophilia)
- Character with no canon age x anyone (pedophilia, because the person making the accusation assumes they’re a kid and they’re going to fuck and they’re totally normal, I’m the one in the wrong here)
- Monsterfucking because all monsters are bestiality-coded or, depending on the anti, black people coded
- Two fantasy characters of different races (bestiality or interracial or power imbalance, take your pick)
- A 56 year old man and a 50 year old man (pedophilia even though they’re both middle aged adult men, somehow)
- Anyone having a crush on anyone older than them, even if they never say a word and nothing comes of it and it’s a total non-ship in the story (crushes are pedophilia)
- Any neurodivergent character with anyone (ND = child = pedophilia)
- Mixed race characters shipped with anyone = bad (fetishization)
- Two religiously devout characters shipped together (fetishization)
- A religious and non-religious character in a relationship (power imbalance, fetishization)
- High school sweethearts getting married and having kids (pedophilia, as they were once minors)
- Characters met once as kids (pedophilia)
- One character had an abusive home growing up (power imbalance, he is now weaker than others and broken)
- One character is a robot (pedophilia)
- One character has more education than another (power imbalance)
- Species difference leads to longer lifespan for one character (power imbalance, pedophilia, abuse)
I’m sure I’m missing some but if you want to avoid shipping “proships”, just avoid all of the above! It’s very easy and leaves you with tons of options. /s
Shaking with curiousity at the 2 interracial and one mixed race pairings listed, what would it take to know what fandom and characters these are from I’m dying to know??
I’ve gotten the objection to interracial pairings in multiple fandoms but it’s most prevalent currently in the Spider-verse fandom, where all interracial ships are bad. Gwen/Miles is stereotypical and you hate black women. Margo/Miles is bad because Miles is mixed so you’re fetishizing him. Pavitr/Hobie and Pavitr/Miles are bad because fetishization. Hobie/Noir, my favorite obscure pairing (they’re both 19 according to the director and they like to punch Nazis, what more do you need?) is bad because Hobie isn’t “equal” to Noir. Both of them are dirt poor anti-fascist fighters but in the name of being progressive, we’ve gotta call the black man lesser, I guess. Hobie/Miles/Gwen is bad because fetishization.
The Disney fandom, which I unfortunately was a part of as a teen, is also rife with this. I lost a friendship over the panic that someone had when I said I shipped Elisa Maza from Disney’s Gargoyles (who is black with Navajo heritage and a smidge of Mexican on her father’s side) with her canonical love interest. The interest isn’t human, but since a lot of these people insist monster characters = black, it still falls into several categories of problematic for them, because it’s fetishizing black men to ship them with anyone who’s not a black woman, and fetishizing mixed women to ship them with anyone.
Magical girl fandoms have an exhausting amount of this but in particular Star Twinkle Pretty Cure’s fandom gets angry at you for shipping Elena Amamiya with anyone. She’s Mexican/Japanese and shipping her with Japanese people = problematic, power imbalance, she’s unequal, also you’re fetishizing her. Shipping her with Mexican OCs = fetishization, you’re creeping on her, you’re being gross, etc.
I guess Elena and Elisa are just supposed to not date anyone. And Miles isn’t, either. Otherwise it’s “problematic”.
As a biracial person this drives me nuts. It feels like these people are constantly implying it’s gross or wrong to date outside your race and thus my parents are doing something “wrong” somehow and I’m doing something “wrong” by dating literally anyone.
I wish they’d just flat-out admit they’re pro-segregation and be done with it instead of pretending to be progressive. They’re not fooling anyone.
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