I’m pissed because we did not spend decades upon decades before the term proship was even a thing building fandom up into what it is today just for a bunch of entitled, snot nosed little shits to come around and say the space belongs to them now and we’re no longer welcome.
“Proshippers” created fandom years before “proship” and “antiship” were even concepts. Antis don’t get to come in and change the narrative now that fandom is “mainstream”. This is where the weirdos (affectionate) gather and it’s always been that way.
I miss the simple days when, for the most part, people just minded their own damn business. I miss when the worst thing someone could say to me over shipping royed or something was “they’re not even gay, you freak!”, instead of immediately accusing me of literal pedophilia over a cartoon. I miss when fandom was chill and not a morality crusade.
I miss when people could tell the difference between a series of lines on a screen and a real person.
Regardless of how I feel about any of the subject matter people talk about or write about or draw about, it’s no mistake that a lot of self proclaimed “antis” have infiltrated fandom spaces that have a shitton of LGBT people and, for lack of better term, neurodiverse people, as well as people who might be in abusive situations in general looking for an escape – only to find themselves at the mercy of these crusaders.
This was never their space to come into and they did, uninvited. I certainly don’t want them in my community. We play games here – and not the kind that involve skewed statistics by goobers who don’t know shit.
I don’t like gatekeeping. I don’t condone it in most cases. But there is definitely an argument to be made about gatekeeping being a good thing when doxxing, harassment, death threats, suicide baiting… over fucking cartoons is considered the moral high ground for these people.
Signed, a game dev who had to deal with this shit off and on the past decade, nearly ruining friendships due to moral crusades under the guise of “helping” people.
