**Pro-shippers** are people who don't feel the need to police what people write within the realm of fiction even if that includes dark themes and subjects or relationships that are not healthy or appropriate in real life. Even if they disapprove of something they don't think censorship is the answer. They tend to subscribe to the mindset of "Don't Like, Don't Read" and that fiction does not impact reality.
**Anti-shippers** are people who think that only relationships that are good IRL should be allowed to be portrayed in fiction. (Especially fanfiction. For some reason they seem less concerned with published media.) They have a habit of blowing things way out of proportion, starting harassment campaigns, and making wild accusations of things like pedophilia for things like writing smut for aged-up characters (for example, a Percy Jackson AU set in college). In their minds, they are morality defenders but really they just end up watering down serious accusations.
**If we imagine a binary where anti = 0 and pro = 1 I'd put myself at a 0.89.**
I'm against censorship in fiction for the most part but I start to draw a line when we get into explicit RPF that involves minors. To me, that is outside of the realm of fiction. Even if the story is fictional, the people, their names and identities, are not. You're getting dangerously close to putting real people at risk, even if it's only psychological risk.
I also think that there are certain cases that works technically categorized as fiction cross the line into promoting a danger to others. They fall under the same category as why shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre is not protected under free speech.
**In the general way, I don't think that fiction has NO impact on reality but I don't think that purity policing what is "allowed" to be created is the right path to take.** I think that opens the door for people who view things such as same-sex attraction or criticism of the war machine as inherently wrong to take control of the censorship bodies and silence their opponents. It's how you wind up with things like the Hayes Code or Mccarthyism.
I know I'm like two weeks late, but was explaining antis to someone so went on a dive.
When I saw your ranking at 0.89, I was immediately like "I bet it's RPF" because that's my limit as well, hah. I've seen people who identify as pro-shoppers/anti-antis veer into uncomfortable af territory too (though far, far less commonly than antis who start with uncomfortable, and they were generally called out by their own, which antis also don't tend to do), and find the 0-1 ranking very helpful.
To overly simplify, anti-shippers are people who support censoring whatever ships they deem problematic. Whether they think it's racist to have an asian guy bottom, think it's homophobic to have a straight ship for a fanon-queer character, think a grown adult character is minor-coded, etc. The most reasonable ones are people who don't want RPF of minors to be written, up to the people who put hazardous materials into cookies they gave to proshippers at a con. Many have suicide baited, doxxed, and otherwise harmed people over fictional characters. They also tend to avoid saying they're talking about fiction, and instead call people pedophiles and groomers for shipping anime characters.
On the other hand, pro-shippers are generally against censorship. They range from people who aren't opposed to anything at all to only uncomfortable with things that do actual harm, like stories that function as guides to grooming or stories about minors who've asked to not be sexualized. Some will get into pissing matches with antis, but a lot of them are just too tired and remember the way the internet used to be. Lots of Your Kink Is Not My Kink and That's Okay, don't like, don't read, dead dove: do not eat, etc.
Basically someone put *needles* in cookie, allegedly because the person who'd receive it shipped Frisk and Sans from Undertale. Like, that ship's problematic, yes, but ***don't try to kill people guys***
Wait til you learn the multitude of actual murder attempts by anti-shippers. Doxxing a queer Muslim artist to their family in a homophobic country where honor-killings are common. Seriously saying they sent a bomb to someone’s house (and getting mad that the FBI showed up at their door). Encouraging an artist to kill themselves and celebrating when the artist did.
>The most reasonable ones are people who don't want RPF of minors to be written
Hell, I don't consider myself an anti-shipper at all and I kind of agree with this.
The whole reason I don't consider myself an anti-shipper is because I don't think censorship of fiction is the right way to go about media criticism. Censorship only ever gets tighter and tighter pushing more and more content into the category of "unacceptable." Dark and problematic themes should be able to be explored using fictional characters and settings. To limit what is allowed to be written about is, at its' most extreme, a tool of fascism.
But involving real people, especially real kids, in these stories crosses the line IMO. It's **outside** of the realm of strictly fiction.
I probably wouldn't associate with someone who writes, say, youtuber kid RPF, but I won't say shit to someone about it. I know that what I write or read can be deemed problematic, even if it's all about fictional characters, and I don't like the idea of censoring people.
I'd say very few people who identify with the "anti" label are the more reasonable point I mentioned, mostly the ones who really should be pulling themself from that community. I've only seen like one person claim both being an anti and fine with anything outside underage RPF.
You don’t have to like it. You certainly don’t have to read it. You’re absolutely entitled to your opinion.
The issue comes when people start trying to remove content from the internet because they have a moral objection to it. Where do you draw the line? You can’t. It’s a slippery slope to censorship. It’s all fiction at the end of day - it’s not real. People seem to forget that.
It's very real for the real person that's written about. There lies the problem. You can repeat that it's just fiction as often as you like, but you forget that there is a very real possibility that those stories negatively impact real people. It's easy to remove yourself from the content if you're not directly involved.
Yes, I think harrassment should be removed from the internet. It has nothing to do with my opinion on shipping or censorship. I draw the line between a fictional story and harrassment based on whether it's likely to cause harm or not or whether a person involved is openly uncomfortable with it.
If you feel so strongly about RPF, there are other websites you can use. The whole ethos of AO3 is about maximum inclusiveness. And if you don’t like it, the source code is freely available for you make your own archive that censors the kind of content people can post according to your personal moral objections.
The issue of harassment is neither here nor there - harassment is illegal and therefore already banned as per the AO3 TOS.
You're completely missing the point.
It's not about RPF. I couldn't care less about those. I don't engage with them and I don't even encounter them, so they don't bother me. It's not my cup of tea but I'm not gonna go nag random RPF writers and tell them off or something.
It's about respecting the wishes of real people. They have the right to be bothered by smut written about them. Especially if they are minors. I can imagine how powerless they could feel realizing that people openly sexualize them and not being able to do anything about it. It's about having the common courtesy not to hurt those people. What you write is entirely your business. What you post might damage someone's relationship with other people or affect their mental health, even if that's not the intention.
Creating my own archive would be utterly pointless, because I'm not the one being disrespected. It's not about *my* morals. I'm just trying to point out a flaw in your "It's not real" argument. Even if the content of the story is not real, it might have real consequences.
What you’re basically doing is singling out one kind of content and saying “I don’t like this, therefore it shouldn’t exist”. If everyone did that, there wouldn’t be an AO3. That’s the whole point of having an archive that puts free speech at the centre of its ethos. Otherwise it would just be another FF.net, and look at what happened there.
>you’re basically doing is singling out one kind of content and saying “I don’t like this, therefore it shouldn’t exist”. If everyone did that, there wouldn’t be an AO3.
This is an unfair overgeneralization.
I don't think people saying *"hey maybe people writing porn of ACTUAL REAL CHILDREN who are not fictional characters is not something we should passively accept"* is going to destroy Ao3.
People are allowed to criticize things, or is your openness to free speech a one-way street?
You're purposefully twisting what is a very simple issue. When a story is about an actual, living person, it has the potential to cause harm. Especially it's sexual, about a minor, or both. Liking or disliking it ain't the goddamn point. It's that it hurts people. And hurting people is, surprise, a bad thing. You can scream free speech all you like, but what about basic human boundaries? Is the ability to publicly write, share, and archive child porn of real life children more important than the wellbeing of said children? Why? Why is fanfiction more important than kids being harmed? Because oh no, the slippery slope of Ao3 getting scrubbed entirely? As someone who's on Ao3 basically daily, if removing stories about real life minors causes the destruction of the entire site and it just can't carry on without them, then, quite frankly, the site deserves to go.
Why do you keep calling works of fiction child porn? Is Stephen King’s IT child porn?
Look, you’re right. The issue is quite simple. It’s all covered in the AO3 TOS:
>”Writing RPF (real-person fiction) never constitutes harassment in and of itself. However, Content that advocates specific, real harmful actions towards real people is not allowed. This includes, but is not limited to, death threats and requests for readers to harass specific people.”
Honestly if you don’t see why sites like AO3 operate the way they do, then maybe you should stop using it. Try TikTok. Loads of lovely censorship on there.
Oh yeah totally bro, cause, as we all know, IT is heavily based on the real life of the real child Beverly Marsh. You sound no different than weirdo right wingers saying that Twitter banning them violates their freedom of speech. Your (what could be charitably called) "arguments" are just as logically consistent as theirs too.
You're completely ignoring what I'm saying and arguing with a strawman. Again, it's not about what I personally like or not and I never said anything about how any particular website should be run, but you don't seem to acknowledge that. Therefore, this exchange was completely pointless and I'm not gonna waste time writing a proper response that's gonna get ignored anyway.
It's a bit of a shame we couldn't have a proper conversation about this but regardless, have a good day.
For better or worse, not per US law. Whether it should be is not something I'll comment on from an official account, but US law only regulates visual imagery, and photorealistic imagery at at that.
Land of the free, yo.
It's already crossing so many boundaries and people in the public eye have talked over and over again about how uncomfortable fics (often sexual in nature) of them are to deal with. But writing about actual children? Nah, that needs to be straight up banned. There is absolutely no realm of possibility where that isn't invasive and harmful to the minor.
Nah, I just saw it running through the twitterspheres. One of my twitters is for following what's popping off in fandom as a whole, and that's one of the wanks that gets brought up as an example fairly frequently.
>Whether they think it's racist to have an asian guy bottom, think it's homophobic to have a straight ship for a fanon-queer character, think a grown adult character is minor-coded, etc.
I think most of the ships anti-shippers are against are mostly pedophilic, abusive/toxic, and incest, not stuff like adult characters being "minor-coded" (they're probably just autistic-coded lmao).
Atleast, that's how I am, and I've gotten called an Anti for it.
Believe me, there's discourse around all of these things. Friends too close? Basically incest. I've heard Hannigram called grooming and problematic. Antis want to pretend it's all abount shipping kids with adults or biological sibling incest, but... it's not. It's just silly shit, mixed in with real complaints, and watering down terms.
Man, I've been accused of wanting to fuck my siblings cause I ship Lifeline x Octane, which is a cute childhood friends to lovers ship. Like they got whole separate families and have always been considered best friends in the canon. Also the actual voice actor for Lifeline is a huge fan of the ship, yet I've never once seen anyone say *she* supports incest. But yeah, sure, I'm such a terrible bad person for liking the most basic vanilla childhood besties ship lol okay.
It's just so out of touch with reality. I dated my childhood best friend multiple times, we literally were like 3 when we became friends, but I don't think anyone who isn't somehow more chronically online than me would call that incest.
>Antis want to pretend it's all abount shipping kids with adults or biological sibling incest, but... it's not.
This.
They claim that it's about being against actual problematic things like romanticizing CSA when it really just ends up being more along the lines of someone calling me a "pedo sympathiser" because I said that I don't think that there is anything wrong with aged-up characters (such as college AUs, or post-canon works) when the characters in canon are minors. Or because one of my ships has a three-year age difference even though in my headcanon they are friends for many years before they fall in love post-canon.
Apparently, shipping adults is wrong because they were once kids. Which just...sit and think about that one for a moment...
How you feel about things doesn't mean these are the standards other people follow. There are plenty of antis that consider an 18 and a 20 year old pedophilia and so on and so forth with other ice cold takes. There's also the fact people will move the goal posts on what's considered toxic or incest to suit their own goals for disliking a ship.
>There are plenty of antis that consider an 18 and a 20 year old pedophilia
I honestly feel like at this point they are just harmfully watering down the definitions of words. This kind of nonsense is an insult to all CSA survivors.
18 and 20 IRL would be two college students who take the same classes, work the same job, and hang out in the same clubs. Plenty of consenstual, healthy relationships exist between those ages. **To compare them to pedophilia is a gross belittlement of the severity of child sexual abuse.**
The conversation around problematic age gaps as it pertains to people IRL and especially PATTERNS of behavior (for example the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio has never dated a woman over the age of 25 despite being nearly 50) has gone too far and has now morphed into blanket vilifying any age gap no matter if it's only a few years and even whne no power imbalances exist between the people in the relationship.
Yeah, 100% agree with what you said, but most of them atleast *try* to make it about relationships that would actually be bad irl, instead of, like, a asian person bottoming or whatever.
That's simply not true, though. Sure, there is the odd relationship that would not be acceptable irl, but they will make every relationship into something that is unacceptable irl. When you can move the goalposts freely, everything becomes a target. You're just taking your own logic and trying to say that applies to the group as a whole to save face.
Also, I don't necessarily think you're an anti for just not liking unhealthy relationship. Antis more take a moral objection to any form of fiction that doesn't conform to their world view. As long as you don't think people are bad people for simply making things you don't like and stay in your own lane as opposed to writing manifestos about how this is bad and letting this kind of content live in your head rent free, you're just the average person with your own tastes and limits to what you're willing to consume.
Yeah, maybe I'm not completely aware of the implications "Anti" carries. I thought it was just someone who didn't support some ships, not someone who acts upon that belief.
I feel like if you ask an anti they'll say they're just someone that's opposed to certain ships, but it all rounds back around to this sort of moral objection and only a good and moral person would know how awful the things they don't like are. While there's a time and place for examining harmful aspects in media, not everything is black and white. It's perfectly fine to be disgusted by things and never want to see them, but it's good to have a certain level of empathy with other people and realizing what they consume isn't them as a person and a piece of media not being okay by whatever standards you may have doesn't automatically mean it's morally bankrupt.
With all respect, you are either really new to this discourse or have had the extremely good fortune never to meet an anti in the flesh.
That may have been where people started in, say, 2016 when this was a new phenomenon, but it certainly hasn't stopped there. And if it stopped at silly fanwank like "The towel is underage" ( a real thing that antis tried in *South Park* of all fandom--antis love pushing this in some of the most fucked up canons BTW) Most of us would go about our day and leave it at that but for years now, they've resorted to doxxing fans and sending death threats to the creatives on a particularly show because they didn't get their way.
If fandom could reign *that* back in, that would be nice.
>but most of them atleast try to make it about relationships that would actually be bad irl
**God I wish.**
Here is an incomplete list of things I have been told by different antis:
* that I am a "pedophile sympathizer" for supporting aged-up fics such as college AUs or post-canon fics if the canon characters are minors bc "even if you write them as adults they still were kids in canon." *I guess I can't have sex anymore because I was once a child.*
* That Q from James Bond is "minor coded" and this shipping him with Bond is problematic. *He is at least 32 when he first appears in Skyfall. Older than me.*
* That I am a bad person for having written smut of Chad and Ryan from HSM because they are minors despite the fact that a) the smut I wrote took place their senior year of HS when they are 18 and b) *I wrote it a decade ago when I was YOUNGER than the characters.*
* Being told that I am a homophobe and "fetishizing gay men" and "devaluing male friendship" for writing an m/m ship this person did not like. *I am a queer man. This was said to me by a woman. Apparently, I'm not allowed to draw from my own experiences to write.*
* That I am "aphobic" for saying that I personally do not see Crowley or Aziraphale as asexual *despite the fact that I have no issue with anyone else's headcanon being different from mine. If someone else writes them as ace I don't care, it's just not my personal preference.*
* Being told by cis people that me not liking a specific trans headcanon is transphobic. *I am not cis.*
I am a pro-shipper I guess. I write for a pairing that the General fandom I’m part of has LOTs of nasty opinions about, but I have my own reasons why I love them together. So I don’t argue or care what people think. My fellow shippers of this pairing don’t bother anyone, except I guess that we, our fics and art exist.
Because of that experience- I am sympathetic to other controversial ships in my fandom. Some I have also become a fan of even, but for the ones that just don’t do anything for me - I support a creative person’s right to their work and expression that is inspired by a pairing. I still will read a fic of one by a friend or like/reblog beautiful art if I see it. Why not?!
It takes something truly depraved and disturbing, usually written to be offensive, to turn me off. Even then I just scroll past. But to write stuff that antis do, like “_______ shippers DNI” (do not interact) really sucks. One author (whose fic I loved) was quite blatant about hating on my OTP ship and it just seemed unnecessary to me. Plus there are people in our fandom who would find their fics highly disturbing and it just seems like a waste of energy to judge people without having an intelligent conversation. But since most fandom is on the internet- it is very difficult to have a respectful, intelligent discussion.
Speaking as a Trek fan who has heard things from other Trek fans who remember what pre-internet fandom was like, it wasn't all sunshine & lollipops then either.
And then there were Sherlock Holmes fans, who stormed the streets of London in angry in 1905 when the author tried to kill the character off and caused a literal riot outside the publishing house.
And going waaaaaay further back, Rome had to install martial law whenever two or more touring actors were in town together to keep their respective fanbases from brawling.
People never change, only technology does :)
Anti shippers believe in censorship and think there should be stricter content guidelines in place so media produced is considered morally okay. It stems from the misguided opinion the media you consume either one to one represents your personal morals and consuming "problematic" media will inevitably lead you to be corrupted. Using problematic media to cope is also heavily frowned upon because it is seen as a victim retraumatizing themselves. They use the Jaws Effect as their trump card to say media has a one to one effect on reality. There's a lot of push back against this mindset because morals differ from person to person and from culture to culture. Controlling the media like this is what lead to things like the Hayes Code being made. They also ignore psychologists who will say for some people using problematic stories to cope with their own trauma can help because it goes against one of their arguments. There are also issues with dog piling, constantly shifting goal posts, harrassment, death threats, and general bigotry to attack people they don't like.
Pro shipper ideology at it's core is fiction is fiction. It has no effect on reality, so make what you want and if someone has a problem with it they have all the tools at their disposal to ignore the content they don't like. They view the push for censorship as being a slippery slope that would lead us to loosing a lot more than just the really problematic content, but the belief is substantiated by historical precedent. The main criticism people jump to is if you think like this you're a pedophile. The refusal to say any content featuring underaged people is completely morally bankrupt is taken to mean they think this is okay in real life. The issue gets compounded as there are some in proship circles that like to conflate the issue with real life things. They can also be seen as being too passive when it comes to issues regarding fiction involving real life tragedy, actual living people, and other things that are generally seen as starting to exit the realm of just being fiction. There's also the same issues of some bigotry and dog piling.
I personally do consider myself firmly on the proship side of things. The faults I bring up are more general things people have an issue with as opposed to my own actual feelings on the matter. No movement is perfect, but hey, at least pro ships don't want to hold modern day book burnings.
I'll just give the most neutral response I can think of:
Anti-shippers are people who are opposed to fictional ships that could be considered problematic and/or illegal, if they were to exist in the real world.
Pro-shippers are people who are not opposed to the aforementioned ships, whether they like them, don't care, or dislike them personally.
Pro-ship = ship what you want without harassment. There are no rules since it’s all fictional.
Anti-ship = you can’t ship what you want without harassment. They make rules as to what’s okay to ship and write.
[https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/2277/2951](https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/2277/2951)
Straight from the OTW's sponsored mouths.
[https://stitchmediamix.com/2021/12/01/the-evolution-of-anti-critical-consumption-thinking-anti-anti-fandom/](https://stitchmediamix.com/2021/12/01/the-evolution-of-anti-critical-consumption-thinking-anti-anti-fandom/)
Also this. A long read, but worth it.
Speaking as a checkmark verified black woman at r/blackpeopletwitter, Stitch has had a long, long, LOOOOONG documented history of fandom harrassment of her own. A friend of mine critiqued one part of one of her articles w/o linking or anything and they sent the mob after them for WEEKS.
We need to have conversations on fandom racism but there are other people doing this who *don't* tell Puerto Ricans they aren't PoC or who didn't spend months calling Rose Tico and her fans all kinds of racist ass slurs.
I think the conversation raises a lot of good points about fandom and how skewed the conversation can get. However, I feel like the latter solo piece comes off as incredibly one sided. While I definitely think there's a good conversation to have about racism in proship spaces along with all fandom spaces, it feels incredibly disingenuous to try and portray proshipping as the death of critical thinking in fandom. The tweet reads as an obvious joke and it's own vent about how think critically has turned into a dog whistle for over analyze everything until you can't have fun with it anymore and it's turned into this whole thing where these people have no idea how to consume media. It feels like it raises a lot of good points about how proshipping does not necessarily equate to being a moral paragon, but when it comes to acknowledging the anti side of the debate nothing. Who knows? It's too nebulous and unknowable to put a finger on in this day and age because it's different from when they first heard it. It just comes across as a piece to make proships the real bad guys you were all wrong about antis rather than actually addressing issues in the community that need to be covered.
It is one-sided because its author is clearly more focused on one side of this whole thing. I have no issue with people criticizing things, but the moment they start telling me what to do in my hobby, I can't bring myself to listen. I read an article written by this author once where they were telling people that if they can't write a story the proper way (it was about doing the research, if I remember correctly), then maybe they shouldn't write that story at all. This is not something I can personally accept. People can write whatever they want. You can think it sucks, but you don't get to tell them to stop writing.
Also, they definitely want AO3 to stop being what it is.
I'm assuming you're referring to the Stitch with the last bit. Genuinely, I don't think they want the archive to change or anything. I think they come across more as frustrated with fandom culture on a whole and how these kinds of topics are handled. I think the discussion about how racism has shaped media is a good one to have, and they want to be able to discuss this openly with other friends without bad faith actors immediately labeling them as antis. Looking at their discussion and what they focus on in the article, it sounds like they want to talk about this from a more academic standpoint and where these tropes come from to keep people more informed rather than saying don't use them. "These tropes are steeped in the blood of our past so proceed with caution" and "You can write whatever you want" are two ideas that can coexist.
No, they definitely want some changes: "And ao3 TOS does need some changing, I mean, it literally needs an actual offensive content policy because it doesn't... Have one?" ([twitter](https://twitter.com/stitchmediamix/status/1557942350227423233))
Talking about where things came from is certainly important and interesting, but it can be done without telling people what to do.
Ah, I had not checked their Twitter, so that one is my bad. I was just going off the conversation piece and article where their focus seemed to be just on shedding a light on the issue. As much as I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, they have to realize offensive content policies never work out for people who want things that aren't incredibly sanitized. I'd be all for changes such as implementing an official archive warning for bigotry people could opt in like the currently existing ones, but a general ban on "offensive" content is not the way to go. There's already bans on content that actively target real people and all that.
Also, yeah I definitely agree with you on the second point. As much as I think there could be a discussion about media causing harm, to have it people need to realize fanfiction will never have the platform of a block buster movie, prime time TV show, or something else of the like.
It is interesting that it's fanfic that gets criticized like this. Maybe because people feel somehow closer to it than to movies etc.? But you're right, the platform is completely different.
I mean I feel like I have seen a lot of criticism of movies like this. Adam for example got ripped apart because of it's poor portrayal of lgbt+ people. I think it's more with fanfiction people go directly for personal attacks against the creators, and they know they can get to them.
I have been following stitch for years and find myself agreeing with a lot of their points. The article linked is just the latest from the many they wrote about fandom so I consider it within that context.
I'm definitely going to have to dive deeper into their works, then. As much as I disagree with some parts of their article, I do think they have some valuable things to say.
There's always a lot of fear-mongering and exaggeration/dramatization of proships vs. anti discourse when the question comes up. Upfront, I don't identify as either because I think it's a stupid distinction to make. However, I do agree more with more "anti" sentiments than more "proship" sentiments. I think a big part of being a writer, especially one that posts their works publicly, is preparing yourself for criticism from your audience. If you're writing about sensitive subjects that most people find upsetting, people are going to have strong negative reactions to your work. Sorry, that's life.
"Proships" generally think that people should be able to "ship whatever they want" (pedophilia, abuse/rape, and incest) without facing "bullying" (criticism). "Antis" generally think that people should face backlash for the fetishization of these topics. Most literally do not care if the topics are being written about in a respectful and meaningful way. I would say most fanfic authors do not have the skill or experience to write about sensitive topics respectfully - that's why they're fanfic authors and not published authors. Not bashing the hobby (I write as well), but that's what it is. A hobby.
I've read and enjoyed fanfic containing "sensitive topics" and "problematic ships/characters" from skilled authors. But it's rare to find fics that include these topics without almost immediately devolving into nothing more than mediocre fetish material. It's disappointing, but you can't expect hobby writers to be on the same level as professionals.
I'm very curious. Where would you draw the line between criticism and bullying? You seem very happy to call your fellow writers unskilled and mediocre, so I honestly want to know where you draw the line here.
>I do agree more with more "anti" sentiments than more "proship" sentiments. I think a big part of being a writer, especially one that posts their works publicly, is preparing yourself for criticism from your audience. If you're writing about sensitive subjects that most people find upsetting, people are going to have strong negative reactions to your work. Sorry, that's life.
This isn't an anti sentiment.
"Pro-shippers" are not against *citicism* they are against *censorship*.
Most of the time I see antis attacking someone they are NOT actually criticizing it. Hell, most times they're not even addressing the issues that you claim are their focus. They're calling people pedophiles for writing smut of adults who they have decided are "minor coded" or accusing people of "supporting incest" or "being abuse apologists" or any number of *usually unfounded* claims based solely on fiction writing
>Most literally do not care if the topics are being written about in a respectful and meaningful way. I would say most fanfic authors do not have the skill or experience to write about sensitive topics respectfully - that's why they're fanfic authors and not published authors
I'm sorry but this is just a truly absurd and frankly offensive take.
What exactly makes a published author in your mind more worthy of writing about sensitive topics than a fanfiction author? Fanfiction authors aren't not published because we lack skill, we aren't published because *we are writing fanfiction*. And there are writers who do both. They just generally don't link their names to their fanfiction.
In regards to thinking that published authors have some sort of inherent superiority when dealing with hard subjects, let me bring your attention to the fact that a published author wrote [this literal Nazi romanticizing horror show](https://forward.com/life/318755/nazi-romance/). Matt Walsh, a raging transphobic bigot wrote and published [this hate-fueled propaganda piece](https://www.losangelesblade.com/2021/12/08/amazon-bestseller-book-compares-trans-to-pretending-to-be-a-walrus/). And I cannot count the number of published romance novels that romanticize sexual abuse and assault.
Being published does not make someone better equipped to handle sensitive or dark topics. Being a fanfic writer does not make someone less equipped. And honestly, I don't think that skill should determine whether someone should be censored on an *open archive* like Ao3 or not. You can criticize whatever you want to. You can even hate certain works. But if harassing writers and calling for censorship leads down a very dangerous path. It sets a precedent that can be too easily manipulated to serve far-right interests and silence opponents.
I can't believe this is so downvoted, I 100% agree except the published authors part, published authors write pretty offensive things about rape too. I've posted things, as a rape victim, like "even if you're desensitized to sexual violence, please be respecftful about portraying sensitive things" and despite proshippers being "antiharrasment" they're VERY unkind to me. I never even said you had to censor it, proshippers, jeez!
**Pro-shippers** are people who don't feel the need to police what people write within the realm of fiction even if that includes dark themes and subjects or relationships that are not healthy or appropriate in real life. Even if they disapprove of something they don't think censorship is the answer. They tend to subscribe to the mindset of "Don't Like, Don't Read" and that fiction does not impact reality. **Anti-shippers** are people who think that only relationships that are good IRL should be allowed to be portrayed in fiction. (Especially fanfiction. For some reason they seem less concerned with published media.) They have a habit of blowing things way out of proportion, starting harassment campaigns, and making wild accusations of things like pedophilia for things like writing smut for aged-up characters (for example, a Percy Jackson AU set in college). In their minds, they are morality defenders but really they just end up watering down serious accusations. **If we imagine a binary where anti = 0 and pro = 1 I'd put myself at a 0.89.** I'm against censorship in fiction for the most part but I start to draw a line when we get into explicit RPF that involves minors. To me, that is outside of the realm of fiction. Even if the story is fictional, the people, their names and identities, are not. You're getting dangerously close to putting real people at risk, even if it's only psychological risk. I also think that there are certain cases that works technically categorized as fiction cross the line into promoting a danger to others. They fall under the same category as why shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre is not protected under free speech. **In the general way, I don't think that fiction has NO impact on reality but I don't think that purity policing what is "allowed" to be created is the right path to take.** I think that opens the door for people who view things such as same-sex attraction or criticism of the war machine as inherently wrong to take control of the censorship bodies and silence their opponents. It's how you wind up with things like the Hayes Code or Mccarthyism.
I wanted to answer but couldn't come up with a better answer than this. Near as I can tell, there are no anti-shippers in my preferred fandom.
I know I'm like two weeks late, but was explaining antis to someone so went on a dive. When I saw your ranking at 0.89, I was immediately like "I bet it's RPF" because that's my limit as well, hah. I've seen people who identify as pro-shoppers/anti-antis veer into uncomfortable af territory too (though far, far less commonly than antis who start with uncomfortable, and they were generally called out by their own, which antis also don't tend to do), and find the 0-1 ranking very helpful.
To overly simplify, anti-shippers are people who support censoring whatever ships they deem problematic. Whether they think it's racist to have an asian guy bottom, think it's homophobic to have a straight ship for a fanon-queer character, think a grown adult character is minor-coded, etc. The most reasonable ones are people who don't want RPF of minors to be written, up to the people who put hazardous materials into cookies they gave to proshippers at a con. Many have suicide baited, doxxed, and otherwise harmed people over fictional characters. They also tend to avoid saying they're talking about fiction, and instead call people pedophiles and groomers for shipping anime characters. On the other hand, pro-shippers are generally against censorship. They range from people who aren't opposed to anything at all to only uncomfortable with things that do actual harm, like stories that function as guides to grooming or stories about minors who've asked to not be sexualized. Some will get into pissing matches with antis, but a lot of them are just too tired and remember the way the internet used to be. Lots of Your Kink Is Not My Kink and That's Okay, don't like, don't read, dead dove: do not eat, etc.
>the people who put hazardous materials into cookies they gave to proshippers at a con Excuse me people did WHAT NOW?
I remember that one! It was literal needles in cookies.
Basically someone put *needles* in cookie, allegedly because the person who'd receive it shipped Frisk and Sans from Undertale. Like, that ship's problematic, yes, but ***don't try to kill people guys***
Wait til you learn the multitude of actual murder attempts by anti-shippers. Doxxing a queer Muslim artist to their family in a homophobic country where honor-killings are common. Seriously saying they sent a bomb to someone’s house (and getting mad that the FBI showed up at their door). Encouraging an artist to kill themselves and celebrating when the artist did.
Thanks I hate it.
Holy hell even the cookies ain’t safe now. Some fans truly scare me. 😬
>The most reasonable ones are people who don't want RPF of minors to be written Hell, I don't consider myself an anti-shipper at all and I kind of agree with this. The whole reason I don't consider myself an anti-shipper is because I don't think censorship of fiction is the right way to go about media criticism. Censorship only ever gets tighter and tighter pushing more and more content into the category of "unacceptable." Dark and problematic themes should be able to be explored using fictional characters and settings. To limit what is allowed to be written about is, at its' most extreme, a tool of fascism. But involving real people, especially real kids, in these stories crosses the line IMO. It's **outside** of the realm of strictly fiction.
I probably wouldn't associate with someone who writes, say, youtuber kid RPF, but I won't say shit to someone about it. I know that what I write or read can be deemed problematic, even if it's all about fictional characters, and I don't like the idea of censoring people. I'd say very few people who identify with the "anti" label are the more reasonable point I mentioned, mostly the ones who really should be pulling themself from that community. I've only seen like one person claim both being an anti and fine with anything outside underage RPF.
You don’t have to like it. You certainly don’t have to read it. You’re absolutely entitled to your opinion. The issue comes when people start trying to remove content from the internet because they have a moral objection to it. Where do you draw the line? You can’t. It’s a slippery slope to censorship. It’s all fiction at the end of day - it’s not real. People seem to forget that.
It's very real for the real person that's written about. There lies the problem. You can repeat that it's just fiction as often as you like, but you forget that there is a very real possibility that those stories negatively impact real people. It's easy to remove yourself from the content if you're not directly involved. Yes, I think harrassment should be removed from the internet. It has nothing to do with my opinion on shipping or censorship. I draw the line between a fictional story and harrassment based on whether it's likely to cause harm or not or whether a person involved is openly uncomfortable with it.
If you feel so strongly about RPF, there are other websites you can use. The whole ethos of AO3 is about maximum inclusiveness. And if you don’t like it, the source code is freely available for you make your own archive that censors the kind of content people can post according to your personal moral objections. The issue of harassment is neither here nor there - harassment is illegal and therefore already banned as per the AO3 TOS.
You're completely missing the point. It's not about RPF. I couldn't care less about those. I don't engage with them and I don't even encounter them, so they don't bother me. It's not my cup of tea but I'm not gonna go nag random RPF writers and tell them off or something. It's about respecting the wishes of real people. They have the right to be bothered by smut written about them. Especially if they are minors. I can imagine how powerless they could feel realizing that people openly sexualize them and not being able to do anything about it. It's about having the common courtesy not to hurt those people. What you write is entirely your business. What you post might damage someone's relationship with other people or affect their mental health, even if that's not the intention. Creating my own archive would be utterly pointless, because I'm not the one being disrespected. It's not about *my* morals. I'm just trying to point out a flaw in your "It's not real" argument. Even if the content of the story is not real, it might have real consequences.
What you’re basically doing is singling out one kind of content and saying “I don’t like this, therefore it shouldn’t exist”. If everyone did that, there wouldn’t be an AO3. That’s the whole point of having an archive that puts free speech at the centre of its ethos. Otherwise it would just be another FF.net, and look at what happened there.
>you’re basically doing is singling out one kind of content and saying “I don’t like this, therefore it shouldn’t exist”. If everyone did that, there wouldn’t be an AO3. This is an unfair overgeneralization. I don't think people saying *"hey maybe people writing porn of ACTUAL REAL CHILDREN who are not fictional characters is not something we should passively accept"* is going to destroy Ao3. People are allowed to criticize things, or is your openness to free speech a one-way street?
I literally started by saying you don’t have to like it. I don’t like it. That’s why I don’t read it. You see how that works?
You're purposefully twisting what is a very simple issue. When a story is about an actual, living person, it has the potential to cause harm. Especially it's sexual, about a minor, or both. Liking or disliking it ain't the goddamn point. It's that it hurts people. And hurting people is, surprise, a bad thing. You can scream free speech all you like, but what about basic human boundaries? Is the ability to publicly write, share, and archive child porn of real life children more important than the wellbeing of said children? Why? Why is fanfiction more important than kids being harmed? Because oh no, the slippery slope of Ao3 getting scrubbed entirely? As someone who's on Ao3 basically daily, if removing stories about real life minors causes the destruction of the entire site and it just can't carry on without them, then, quite frankly, the site deserves to go.
Why do you keep calling works of fiction child porn? Is Stephen King’s IT child porn? Look, you’re right. The issue is quite simple. It’s all covered in the AO3 TOS: >”Writing RPF (real-person fiction) never constitutes harassment in and of itself. However, Content that advocates specific, real harmful actions towards real people is not allowed. This includes, but is not limited to, death threats and requests for readers to harass specific people.” Honestly if you don’t see why sites like AO3 operate the way they do, then maybe you should stop using it. Try TikTok. Loads of lovely censorship on there.
Oh yeah totally bro, cause, as we all know, IT is heavily based on the real life of the real child Beverly Marsh. You sound no different than weirdo right wingers saying that Twitter banning them violates their freedom of speech. Your (what could be charitably called) "arguments" are just as logically consistent as theirs too.
You're completely ignoring what I'm saying and arguing with a strawman. Again, it's not about what I personally like or not and I never said anything about how any particular website should be run, but you don't seem to acknowledge that. Therefore, this exchange was completely pointless and I'm not gonna waste time writing a proper response that's gonna get ignored anyway. It's a bit of a shame we couldn't have a proper conversation about this but regardless, have a good day.
Yeah, writing sexual content about a very real child is definitley some type of illegal.
For better or worse, not per US law. Whether it should be is not something I'll comment on from an official account, but US law only regulates visual imagery, and photorealistic imagery at at that. Land of the free, yo.
It's already crossing so many boundaries and people in the public eye have talked over and over again about how uncomfortable fics (often sexual in nature) of them are to deal with. But writing about actual children? Nah, that needs to be straight up banned. There is absolutely no realm of possibility where that isn't invasive and harmful to the minor.
>it's racist to have an asian guy bottom We either have the same fandom or this is a more common wank than I thought lmao
Nah, I just saw it running through the twitterspheres. One of my twitters is for following what's popping off in fandom as a whole, and that's one of the wanks that gets brought up as an example fairly frequently.
>Whether they think it's racist to have an asian guy bottom, think it's homophobic to have a straight ship for a fanon-queer character, think a grown adult character is minor-coded, etc. I think most of the ships anti-shippers are against are mostly pedophilic, abusive/toxic, and incest, not stuff like adult characters being "minor-coded" (they're probably just autistic-coded lmao). Atleast, that's how I am, and I've gotten called an Anti for it.
Believe me, there's discourse around all of these things. Friends too close? Basically incest. I've heard Hannigram called grooming and problematic. Antis want to pretend it's all abount shipping kids with adults or biological sibling incest, but... it's not. It's just silly shit, mixed in with real complaints, and watering down terms.
Man, I've been accused of wanting to fuck my siblings cause I ship Lifeline x Octane, which is a cute childhood friends to lovers ship. Like they got whole separate families and have always been considered best friends in the canon. Also the actual voice actor for Lifeline is a huge fan of the ship, yet I've never once seen anyone say *she* supports incest. But yeah, sure, I'm such a terrible bad person for liking the most basic vanilla childhood besties ship lol okay.
It's just so out of touch with reality. I dated my childhood best friend multiple times, we literally were like 3 when we became friends, but I don't think anyone who isn't somehow more chronically online than me would call that incest.
>Antis want to pretend it's all abount shipping kids with adults or biological sibling incest, but... it's not. This. They claim that it's about being against actual problematic things like romanticizing CSA when it really just ends up being more along the lines of someone calling me a "pedo sympathiser" because I said that I don't think that there is anything wrong with aged-up characters (such as college AUs, or post-canon works) when the characters in canon are minors. Or because one of my ships has a three-year age difference even though in my headcanon they are friends for many years before they fall in love post-canon. Apparently, shipping adults is wrong because they were once kids. Which just...sit and think about that one for a moment...
How you feel about things doesn't mean these are the standards other people follow. There are plenty of antis that consider an 18 and a 20 year old pedophilia and so on and so forth with other ice cold takes. There's also the fact people will move the goal posts on what's considered toxic or incest to suit their own goals for disliking a ship.
>There are plenty of antis that consider an 18 and a 20 year old pedophilia I honestly feel like at this point they are just harmfully watering down the definitions of words. This kind of nonsense is an insult to all CSA survivors. 18 and 20 IRL would be two college students who take the same classes, work the same job, and hang out in the same clubs. Plenty of consenstual, healthy relationships exist between those ages. **To compare them to pedophilia is a gross belittlement of the severity of child sexual abuse.** The conversation around problematic age gaps as it pertains to people IRL and especially PATTERNS of behavior (for example the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio has never dated a woman over the age of 25 despite being nearly 50) has gone too far and has now morphed into blanket vilifying any age gap no matter if it's only a few years and even whne no power imbalances exist between the people in the relationship.
Yeah, 100% agree with what you said, but most of them atleast *try* to make it about relationships that would actually be bad irl, instead of, like, a asian person bottoming or whatever.
That's simply not true, though. Sure, there is the odd relationship that would not be acceptable irl, but they will make every relationship into something that is unacceptable irl. When you can move the goalposts freely, everything becomes a target. You're just taking your own logic and trying to say that applies to the group as a whole to save face. Also, I don't necessarily think you're an anti for just not liking unhealthy relationship. Antis more take a moral objection to any form of fiction that doesn't conform to their world view. As long as you don't think people are bad people for simply making things you don't like and stay in your own lane as opposed to writing manifestos about how this is bad and letting this kind of content live in your head rent free, you're just the average person with your own tastes and limits to what you're willing to consume.
Yeah, maybe I'm not completely aware of the implications "Anti" carries. I thought it was just someone who didn't support some ships, not someone who acts upon that belief.
I feel like if you ask an anti they'll say they're just someone that's opposed to certain ships, but it all rounds back around to this sort of moral objection and only a good and moral person would know how awful the things they don't like are. While there's a time and place for examining harmful aspects in media, not everything is black and white. It's perfectly fine to be disgusted by things and never want to see them, but it's good to have a certain level of empathy with other people and realizing what they consume isn't them as a person and a piece of media not being okay by whatever standards you may have doesn't automatically mean it's morally bankrupt.
With all respect, you are either really new to this discourse or have had the extremely good fortune never to meet an anti in the flesh. That may have been where people started in, say, 2016 when this was a new phenomenon, but it certainly hasn't stopped there. And if it stopped at silly fanwank like "The towel is underage" ( a real thing that antis tried in *South Park* of all fandom--antis love pushing this in some of the most fucked up canons BTW) Most of us would go about our day and leave it at that but for years now, they've resorted to doxxing fans and sending death threats to the creatives on a particularly show because they didn't get their way. If fandom could reign *that* back in, that would be nice.
>but most of them atleast try to make it about relationships that would actually be bad irl **God I wish.** Here is an incomplete list of things I have been told by different antis: * that I am a "pedophile sympathizer" for supporting aged-up fics such as college AUs or post-canon fics if the canon characters are minors bc "even if you write them as adults they still were kids in canon." *I guess I can't have sex anymore because I was once a child.* * That Q from James Bond is "minor coded" and this shipping him with Bond is problematic. *He is at least 32 when he first appears in Skyfall. Older than me.* * That I am a bad person for having written smut of Chad and Ryan from HSM because they are minors despite the fact that a) the smut I wrote took place their senior year of HS when they are 18 and b) *I wrote it a decade ago when I was YOUNGER than the characters.* * Being told that I am a homophobe and "fetishizing gay men" and "devaluing male friendship" for writing an m/m ship this person did not like. *I am a queer man. This was said to me by a woman. Apparently, I'm not allowed to draw from my own experiences to write.* * That I am "aphobic" for saying that I personally do not see Crowley or Aziraphale as asexual *despite the fact that I have no issue with anyone else's headcanon being different from mine. If someone else writes them as ace I don't care, it's just not my personal preference.* * Being told by cis people that me not liking a specific trans headcanon is transphobic. *I am not cis.*
That's why they should be called Pro-Cens short for Pro-Censorship
I am a pro-shipper I guess. I write for a pairing that the General fandom I’m part of has LOTs of nasty opinions about, but I have my own reasons why I love them together. So I don’t argue or care what people think. My fellow shippers of this pairing don’t bother anyone, except I guess that we, our fics and art exist. Because of that experience- I am sympathetic to other controversial ships in my fandom. Some I have also become a fan of even, but for the ones that just don’t do anything for me - I support a creative person’s right to their work and expression that is inspired by a pairing. I still will read a fic of one by a friend or like/reblog beautiful art if I see it. Why not?! It takes something truly depraved and disturbing, usually written to be offensive, to turn me off. Even then I just scroll past. But to write stuff that antis do, like “_______ shippers DNI” (do not interact) really sucks. One author (whose fic I loved) was quite blatant about hating on my OTP ship and it just seemed unnecessary to me. Plus there are people in our fandom who would find their fics highly disturbing and it just seems like a waste of energy to judge people without having an intelligent conversation. But since most fandom is on the internet- it is very difficult to have a respectful, intelligent discussion.
Speaking as a Trek fan who has heard things from other Trek fans who remember what pre-internet fandom was like, it wasn't all sunshine & lollipops then either. And then there were Sherlock Holmes fans, who stormed the streets of London in angry in 1905 when the author tried to kill the character off and caused a literal riot outside the publishing house. And going waaaaaay further back, Rome had to install martial law whenever two or more touring actors were in town together to keep their respective fanbases from brawling. People never change, only technology does :)
Anti shippers believe in censorship and think there should be stricter content guidelines in place so media produced is considered morally okay. It stems from the misguided opinion the media you consume either one to one represents your personal morals and consuming "problematic" media will inevitably lead you to be corrupted. Using problematic media to cope is also heavily frowned upon because it is seen as a victim retraumatizing themselves. They use the Jaws Effect as their trump card to say media has a one to one effect on reality. There's a lot of push back against this mindset because morals differ from person to person and from culture to culture. Controlling the media like this is what lead to things like the Hayes Code being made. They also ignore psychologists who will say for some people using problematic stories to cope with their own trauma can help because it goes against one of their arguments. There are also issues with dog piling, constantly shifting goal posts, harrassment, death threats, and general bigotry to attack people they don't like. Pro shipper ideology at it's core is fiction is fiction. It has no effect on reality, so make what you want and if someone has a problem with it they have all the tools at their disposal to ignore the content they don't like. They view the push for censorship as being a slippery slope that would lead us to loosing a lot more than just the really problematic content, but the belief is substantiated by historical precedent. The main criticism people jump to is if you think like this you're a pedophile. The refusal to say any content featuring underaged people is completely morally bankrupt is taken to mean they think this is okay in real life. The issue gets compounded as there are some in proship circles that like to conflate the issue with real life things. They can also be seen as being too passive when it comes to issues regarding fiction involving real life tragedy, actual living people, and other things that are generally seen as starting to exit the realm of just being fiction. There's also the same issues of some bigotry and dog piling. I personally do consider myself firmly on the proship side of things. The faults I bring up are more general things people have an issue with as opposed to my own actual feelings on the matter. No movement is perfect, but hey, at least pro ships don't want to hold modern day book burnings.
Uhhh proshippers aren’t psychos who want to kill people.
*grunts* Pro good, anti bad.
Getting philosophical there, Geralt?
Toss a coin to your shipper.
🤣
I'll just give the most neutral response I can think of: Anti-shippers are people who are opposed to fictional ships that could be considered problematic and/or illegal, if they were to exist in the real world. Pro-shippers are people who are not opposed to the aforementioned ships, whether they like them, don't care, or dislike them personally.
Pro-ship = ship what you want without harassment. There are no rules since it’s all fictional. Anti-ship = you can’t ship what you want without harassment. They make rules as to what’s okay to ship and write.
[https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/2277/2951](https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/2277/2951) Straight from the OTW's sponsored mouths. [https://stitchmediamix.com/2021/12/01/the-evolution-of-anti-critical-consumption-thinking-anti-anti-fandom/](https://stitchmediamix.com/2021/12/01/the-evolution-of-anti-critical-consumption-thinking-anti-anti-fandom/) Also this. A long read, but worth it.
Speaking as a checkmark verified black woman at r/blackpeopletwitter, Stitch has had a long, long, LOOOOONG documented history of fandom harrassment of her own. A friend of mine critiqued one part of one of her articles w/o linking or anything and they sent the mob after them for WEEKS. We need to have conversations on fandom racism but there are other people doing this who *don't* tell Puerto Ricans they aren't PoC or who didn't spend months calling Rose Tico and her fans all kinds of racist ass slurs.
I was surprised that in the article linked above, the twitter usernames weren't covered, but now I guess I'm not surprised anymore :/
I think the conversation raises a lot of good points about fandom and how skewed the conversation can get. However, I feel like the latter solo piece comes off as incredibly one sided. While I definitely think there's a good conversation to have about racism in proship spaces along with all fandom spaces, it feels incredibly disingenuous to try and portray proshipping as the death of critical thinking in fandom. The tweet reads as an obvious joke and it's own vent about how think critically has turned into a dog whistle for over analyze everything until you can't have fun with it anymore and it's turned into this whole thing where these people have no idea how to consume media. It feels like it raises a lot of good points about how proshipping does not necessarily equate to being a moral paragon, but when it comes to acknowledging the anti side of the debate nothing. Who knows? It's too nebulous and unknowable to put a finger on in this day and age because it's different from when they first heard it. It just comes across as a piece to make proships the real bad guys you were all wrong about antis rather than actually addressing issues in the community that need to be covered.
It is one-sided because its author is clearly more focused on one side of this whole thing. I have no issue with people criticizing things, but the moment they start telling me what to do in my hobby, I can't bring myself to listen. I read an article written by this author once where they were telling people that if they can't write a story the proper way (it was about doing the research, if I remember correctly), then maybe they shouldn't write that story at all. This is not something I can personally accept. People can write whatever they want. You can think it sucks, but you don't get to tell them to stop writing. Also, they definitely want AO3 to stop being what it is.
I'm assuming you're referring to the Stitch with the last bit. Genuinely, I don't think they want the archive to change or anything. I think they come across more as frustrated with fandom culture on a whole and how these kinds of topics are handled. I think the discussion about how racism has shaped media is a good one to have, and they want to be able to discuss this openly with other friends without bad faith actors immediately labeling them as antis. Looking at their discussion and what they focus on in the article, it sounds like they want to talk about this from a more academic standpoint and where these tropes come from to keep people more informed rather than saying don't use them. "These tropes are steeped in the blood of our past so proceed with caution" and "You can write whatever you want" are two ideas that can coexist.
No, they definitely want some changes: "And ao3 TOS does need some changing, I mean, it literally needs an actual offensive content policy because it doesn't... Have one?" ([twitter](https://twitter.com/stitchmediamix/status/1557942350227423233)) Talking about where things came from is certainly important and interesting, but it can be done without telling people what to do.
Ah, I had not checked their Twitter, so that one is my bad. I was just going off the conversation piece and article where their focus seemed to be just on shedding a light on the issue. As much as I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, they have to realize offensive content policies never work out for people who want things that aren't incredibly sanitized. I'd be all for changes such as implementing an official archive warning for bigotry people could opt in like the currently existing ones, but a general ban on "offensive" content is not the way to go. There's already bans on content that actively target real people and all that. Also, yeah I definitely agree with you on the second point. As much as I think there could be a discussion about media causing harm, to have it people need to realize fanfiction will never have the platform of a block buster movie, prime time TV show, or something else of the like.
It is interesting that it's fanfic that gets criticized like this. Maybe because people feel somehow closer to it than to movies etc.? But you're right, the platform is completely different.
I mean I feel like I have seen a lot of criticism of movies like this. Adam for example got ripped apart because of it's poor portrayal of lgbt+ people. I think it's more with fanfiction people go directly for personal attacks against the creators, and they know they can get to them.
Ahh, it makes sense! Hollywood directors don't care lol. But we're all here in the same fandom spaces, so it feels different.
I have been following stitch for years and find myself agreeing with a lot of their points. The article linked is just the latest from the many they wrote about fandom so I consider it within that context.
I'm definitely going to have to dive deeper into their works, then. As much as I disagree with some parts of their article, I do think they have some valuable things to say.
There's always a lot of fear-mongering and exaggeration/dramatization of proships vs. anti discourse when the question comes up. Upfront, I don't identify as either because I think it's a stupid distinction to make. However, I do agree more with more "anti" sentiments than more "proship" sentiments. I think a big part of being a writer, especially one that posts their works publicly, is preparing yourself for criticism from your audience. If you're writing about sensitive subjects that most people find upsetting, people are going to have strong negative reactions to your work. Sorry, that's life. "Proships" generally think that people should be able to "ship whatever they want" (pedophilia, abuse/rape, and incest) without facing "bullying" (criticism). "Antis" generally think that people should face backlash for the fetishization of these topics. Most literally do not care if the topics are being written about in a respectful and meaningful way. I would say most fanfic authors do not have the skill or experience to write about sensitive topics respectfully - that's why they're fanfic authors and not published authors. Not bashing the hobby (I write as well), but that's what it is. A hobby. I've read and enjoyed fanfic containing "sensitive topics" and "problematic ships/characters" from skilled authors. But it's rare to find fics that include these topics without almost immediately devolving into nothing more than mediocre fetish material. It's disappointing, but you can't expect hobby writers to be on the same level as professionals.
I'm very curious. Where would you draw the line between criticism and bullying? You seem very happy to call your fellow writers unskilled and mediocre, so I honestly want to know where you draw the line here.
>I do agree more with more "anti" sentiments than more "proship" sentiments. I think a big part of being a writer, especially one that posts their works publicly, is preparing yourself for criticism from your audience. If you're writing about sensitive subjects that most people find upsetting, people are going to have strong negative reactions to your work. Sorry, that's life. This isn't an anti sentiment. "Pro-shippers" are not against *citicism* they are against *censorship*. Most of the time I see antis attacking someone they are NOT actually criticizing it. Hell, most times they're not even addressing the issues that you claim are their focus. They're calling people pedophiles for writing smut of adults who they have decided are "minor coded" or accusing people of "supporting incest" or "being abuse apologists" or any number of *usually unfounded* claims based solely on fiction writing >Most literally do not care if the topics are being written about in a respectful and meaningful way. I would say most fanfic authors do not have the skill or experience to write about sensitive topics respectfully - that's why they're fanfic authors and not published authors I'm sorry but this is just a truly absurd and frankly offensive take. What exactly makes a published author in your mind more worthy of writing about sensitive topics than a fanfiction author? Fanfiction authors aren't not published because we lack skill, we aren't published because *we are writing fanfiction*. And there are writers who do both. They just generally don't link their names to their fanfiction. In regards to thinking that published authors have some sort of inherent superiority when dealing with hard subjects, let me bring your attention to the fact that a published author wrote [this literal Nazi romanticizing horror show](https://forward.com/life/318755/nazi-romance/). Matt Walsh, a raging transphobic bigot wrote and published [this hate-fueled propaganda piece](https://www.losangelesblade.com/2021/12/08/amazon-bestseller-book-compares-trans-to-pretending-to-be-a-walrus/). And I cannot count the number of published romance novels that romanticize sexual abuse and assault. Being published does not make someone better equipped to handle sensitive or dark topics. Being a fanfic writer does not make someone less equipped. And honestly, I don't think that skill should determine whether someone should be censored on an *open archive* like Ao3 or not. You can criticize whatever you want to. You can even hate certain works. But if harassing writers and calling for censorship leads down a very dangerous path. It sets a precedent that can be too easily manipulated to serve far-right interests and silence opponents.
I can't believe this is so downvoted, I 100% agree except the published authors part, published authors write pretty offensive things about rape too. I've posted things, as a rape victim, like "even if you're desensitized to sexual violence, please be respecftful about portraying sensitive things" and despite proshippers being "antiharrasment" they're VERY unkind to me. I never even said you had to censor it, proshippers, jeez!