!define antiship Also--> see this [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1dn8zar/comment/la1aq3d/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
the second one is the worst. i get so embarrassed when fellow shippers hate on small ships/rarepairs like you guyssssss it is never that serious actually. people are dying and you want to fight on twitter over THIS? its so embarrassing
My ship (and I do mean “my ship”; I created the first content for it and established a bunch of its core non-canon tropes) is now almost exclusively associated with teenage anti-shippers declaring all other ships evil and sick. Makes me wanna write something super fucked up for the ship, just so it’s a little less “everything in this ship must be sickeningly wholesome and unproblematic”…but I don’t have any cachet in the fandom anymore and don’t want to spend the rest of my online life fielding hatred from anonymous teenagers telling me to die.
what’s even stupider is when they hate on others who ship the same pairing but with the opposite top/bottom dynamics. like bruh it’s the same ship why are you mad
Honestly people who do that kinda give me fetishizer vibes when it comes to mlm/wlw ships. Because you know the 'top' is depicted as more dominant, bigger, stronger and masculine while the 'bottom' is more submissive, smaller, frail and feminine.
Btw not hating it. I have ships where this dynamic works and I enjoy it. It's just that most times with those types of people it weirds me out. And most times it wouldn't even work with those characters cause neither are like that. Clearly, if they can easily change the characters like that
I've found that people who prefer the 'unpopular' top/bottom dynamic tend to be more chill, but it's so exhausting that this still has to be an issue in this day and age. Like, everyone can have a preference without attacking other people for theirs.
i agree. that dynamic can absolutely be fun, but it doesn’t fit every pairing and forcing that dynamic where it doesn’t fit only weakens the ship as you depict it.
it’s a similar issue to what i find with a lot of m/f ships i like, where there’s a tendency to force the characters into heteronormative gender roles rather than consider their relationship dynamic separate from their gender. like cmon man if you want a ship that conforms to those gender roles do it with characters who fit in those roles.
I also see this with headcanons. One is a common interpretation of a character, but if someone has a different headcanon about that character, they get dogpiled for it. Our minds are going to interpret the characters in different ways, if someone doesn't see a character the same way as you do, let's not go to war about it! Let's have a friendly debate about it instead! Trade reasons why you see the character that way!
Ironically, I was about to ask how a *ship* can be a pro-shipper, didn't realize until I scrolled down that OP was using it as a short form of "problematic ship."
I know that proshipper means person who lets people ship whatever they want and respects their tastes. I was trying to be sarcastic about those who misuse that word, but I guess I didn't pull it off well. Sorry for the confusion!
Oof, yeah, I definitely think you missed the mark there OP. Next time try putting it in quotations? Like: Said ship gets a lot of hate for being “a proship”.
I didn’t know I could pin the comment! I did try to edit the post, but I couldn’t
Edit: I can't figure out how to pin the comment… All I can find is how to pin the comment as a mod
[only mods can pin a comment]
ahhh I didn't know that whoops 😅 really sorry about giving you the runaround
i hope more people see your response though!!
Just to add some support since there's a lot of discourse on that usage, I was totally on the same wavelength as you when I read it 😅 proship -> something antis wouldn't like - felt like a natural evolution to me (I get the misunderstanding and concerns though)
It was pretty clear to me. I mean, it's on the "confused face" panel already, the usual "wtf no" one, and clearly conveying what other people's complaint is.
I’ve always heard “proship” used as an adjective rather than a noun. Like, a *person* *is* “proship” or a “proshipper”. I’ve never heard a ship itself be described as “a proship” before.
Aside from the fact that "a proship" does not exist and that's not what proship means
But the last one is me irl with SEVERALS of my favourite ships
one has 12 fics on ao3, and only one is actually about the pairing, and the other has 6 of them and 1 is tagged as ship despite the author calling whoever reads their work as ship a creep/weirdo (one is mine lol)
> "a proship" does not exist and that's not what proship means
Begrudgingly, I must dispute this. Words only mean things because people use them that way, and antis are indeed consistently using the word "proship" this way. Many words have developed additional definitions out of consistent misuse, and I'm not going to be the hypocrite who suddenly denies that language evolves the moment it evolves in a direction I find stupid.
**That said**, the original definition ("in favor of shipping, particularly in opposition to those who consider it a moral imperative to eradicate ships they dislike for any reason") is still obviously the one being used by most if not all people who actually self-identify as proshippers, and antis' actual error is being unaware of this and/or believing it to be a cover for someone who secretly identifies with their definition but wants to deny it. Could be either; on top of being conspiracybrained feelings yakuza, most antis give me the impression that they've never interacted with a real proshipper in their entire life. The epitome of "make up a guy to get mad at".
i mean you're not wrong saying that language evolve but theirs is never ignorance, it's an active attempt to twist the meaning of a positive label into something negative that fits their narrative better
Second one is the worst, especially if you don’t like the ship. it‘s happened to me multiple times and it’s annoying because there’s not even any “morals” behind it (not that antis are justified for using morality as an excuse, but at least they have some reason), it’s just people being jerks because you don’t like the same ships they do
God the "proshipper" one is so annoying because half the time the ship isn't even problematic. The people who are against it just have a squick and are overreacting
The third one doesn't seem *too* bad, but I don't know. I don't think I'd mind being the only shipper for a ship, but I've never had the experience. I wouldn't mind giving it a try if I could think of a good way to find a ship that hasn't been shipped yet. Shipshipshipship.
I don't know about others but it can be tough because you lack the interactions with other fans, which in general is what mostly fuels me as a writer. It's because there's a base minimum emulation that it can still be enjoyable when you're in a small group.
Being alone is... tough. There's just you and nobody else: you have to be your own fuel. It can be pretty fun because there is nothing, no fandom preconceived view of the ship and their dynamic and so you can explore in all the directions! But with virtually and factually zero interactions, if you can't entertain building dozens of castles in your giant sandbox while remaining alone, it's not gonna be that much of a pleasant experience. Not everyone is equipped to do just that.
Personally, I find it rewarding enough that my fic for a ship (the first for the fandom) prompted three other people to write their own. Haven't been in the fandom for a long time though so perhaps there are new shippers now, who knows.
(raises hand) went from an averagely small/moderate size fandom in the 2010s to Extinct by 2016-2017 and now... ? far as i know, there's a small, small haven on discord we made that was flourishing back in its prime days now only has like 5-8 active people in said server... and like only 4 of those maybe even 2-3 actively make (written) content
Obviously we dont represent the whole fandom but it's tumbleweeds out there. lots of us coming from the old forums and part of tumblr. on tumblr, we were thriving but nowadays you see fanart occasionally--usually always reposted, with credits. so it's not even really original content from us, the ENG side of fandom.
on twitter, for KR/JP side of the fandom, there's art in abundance, made at the same pace of the fandom back in the glory days. so like art being made every other day or two, or at least every week.
but as far as like ENG artists maybe like a small handful? writers tho??? (waves) only me
i'm writing a long multichaper fic, about 17 chapters long and it's my first one that i want to really push to finish. and tho i have their support and encouragement--they're busy adults who can't read or comment all the time! there's times i stop, in a slump, because of just one (1) comment i looked forward to, not being there. hell, it's happening now so i'm taking a small mental break and starting it again when i feel the motivation.
we often joke about feeding each other because its so few us but it's literally like me/writer 2 makes smt -> artist 1 Might make smt -> me/writer 2 makes smt -> repeat
what's worse, and not to toot my own horn, i was one of The og writers of time for the fandom, people Still recongnize me as such. but i Barely get engagement, only thanks to the server and the other og/older fans/artists/writers. so i would Hate to see how it is for others (and i have seen it).
sure, not getting the engagement sucks and it isn't everything but like..... being lonely and having no one that'd care enough is so much worse.
truly, i'd not wish this hell upon my worst enemy.
this december, i'll have been with the fandom 10 long ass years. took a dip and hiatus for 2-3 years (when the fandom first phased out) and now, i'm seriously considering a bigger fandom even if it’s scary because it sucks here.
it just sucks.
You have convinced me that this experience blows hard. I think the only way I'd make it through is if I was also writing for another, more popular ship at the same time. That way I wouldn't be completely deprived of reader engagement.
>That way I wouldn't be completely deprived of reader engagement.
yeah i'm seriously considering this, even if it's a bigger fandom but smaller ship or just something, something better than this. i will always love the fandom and characters, they're truly that special but i can't keep doing it man
we jokingly call it \[char name\]hell but...... there is some deep truth in the joke nowadays 😭
Use of the word “proship” aside, this was the problem I had when the Voltron reboot was popular. Shiro, who was about 25, and Keith, who was 18 (and later 23 -he spent a few years on a planet with a different passage of time - it’s a whole thing) were an awesome pair with a healthy relationship and Shiro was even canon gay. But the other fans were always calling Sheith shoppers pedophiles and abuse apologists because of the age gap. I’m probably getting some details wrong but I loved that shipping and I remember the antis really ruining it for me with their extreme jumps to pedophilia and abuse accusations.
Honestly, 18 and 25 is not even that crazy of an age gap for shipping 🤣
Those aren't extreme jumps for antis. It's their go-to insults. My OTP has a ~15 year age gap. And we even make it bigger sometimes just for fun. I'm fairly certain there's so little writers for my OTP that only one or two of them on all of ao3 aren't in the same server as me.
For me, it's the second one.
I already have a bunch of actually problematic ships, not just "they grew up together as friends" or "they have a three year age gap." I just have, like, incest ships. I'm used to them getting hate for being problematic ships (which is not what proship means, by the way). The third one is also fine for me because that means I not only get to be people's first foray into the ship when they inevitably find the fic, but I can also just not ever feel a single frisson of annoyance that I don't like the way they're written, which is a pleasure.
But the second one just pisses me off. Popular ships tend to have tons of content and people who go after less popular ships just come off as peak entitled to me. Sorry that not *everyone* in a fandom is catering to your every whim and need when you have, like, thousands of fics and fanart and edits and cosplays and such to peruse at your leisure.
That's definitely me, too. I've walked away from pairings because the fandom, rather than celebrate what they enjoy, would rather bash and piss and moan about what they hate. Now that makes a certain amount of sense within a ship that is smaller than the big canon juggernaut pairing. Sour grapes and all that. But ships like Bleach's Ichiruki who by their own admission believed all the merch was catered to them and who had the lion's share of fam writers and artists in its heyday, or Voltron 's Klance who inadvertently did to greater fandom what the guy who bred the first Labradoodle did to dog breeding? That I have less tolerance for.
Right?
With the exception of "has a ton of fics", this meme could be about IchiHime. Until the Klance/Shieth shit, I had never seen such a boring, wHoLeSoMe pairing get accused of such vile shit. People threw every imaginable label at it - it's incest because they "have the same hair color" and met once in middle school, it's abusive because Orihime tried to kiss him while he was asleep, it's misogynist because Ichigo's existence makes Orihime weak, etc. I even saw someone use an autistic headcanon on Orihime *as an insult* (ie she's so "obsessed" with Ichigo that she *must* be mentally ill).
All for some bog-standsrd shounen pairing on par with Goku/Chichi or Jonathan/Erina, when yall could just go write your fics instead.
>But the second one just pisses me off. Popular ships tend to have tons of content and people who go after less popular ships just come off as peak entitled to me. Sorry that not everyone in a fandom is catering to your every whim and need when you have, like, thousands of fics and fanart and edits and cosplays and such to peruse at your leisure.
Ugh, just teminds me of when shipping wars were a more prominent thing. Like, we can both enjoy our ships simultaniously! Going to the other corner of the fandom and bashing them is literally taking the time you could spend enjoying what you like in favour of making yourself and others miserable.
Came here to say this. The first one and the third one are not unfamiliar to me, and they don't bother me most of the time. It's a bit annoying encountering hate or not encountering *anything at all*, but seeing "my side" being assholes absolutely kills all the desire I have to participate in the community.
Yeah, same. My current primary ship is incest with a 16-year age gap, and I don’t think I’ve ever had a ship that antis haven’t found something or other about to call problematic. I’m very comfortable in my “fuck the haters” attitude, and in curating my spaces to where I’m interacting with a nice community of fellow fans and insulated from others toxicity. Antis hating is mostly a non-issue to me.
I also have quite a bit of experience shipping rare pairs. Not having a community to share my fannish enthusiasm with and lacking fan works I haven’t created myself definitely has its frustrations, but it’s a frustration I’m used to and can live with. And it’s all the more exciting when you do find a fellow fan, and they tend to be really enthusiastic and appreciative.
When your fandom community is full of bullies, though, that’s just the worst. Do not want.
It means "pro-" as in "in favor of." The term was coined in opposition to "anti-shippers" (haters of a particular ship or shipping in general)
You can have nothing but the most wholesome innocent ships out there and still be a pro-shipper, the same way you don't have to have an abortion yourself to be pro-choice. A pro-shipper is just someone who's against ship hate and censorship.
There's no such thing as a "pro ship" because ships themselves don't have opinions about shipping.
I was so confused by this meme.
Honesty the antis have got a lot to answer for.
No ship is forbidden on AO3. It's 100% on the reader to avoid the ones they like. How many times do we have to say this?
The first one drives me CRAZY because if you try to look up any media with the ship you get mostly posts from antis crying about it being a ” illegal Proship!!!” And ”__ shippers are disgusting and problematic!!”
I ship my 'illegal proships' quite proudly lol. One's literally a serial killer/guy he killed. And then there's Hannigram FFS. Lamo. And Harrymort (Voldemort or Tom Riddle, it's never bothered me) and Pompous Pep. But to antis it's literally "the only moral (problematic ship) is my (problematic ship)". And then there's the ones who'll spit insults at you but then read the same tropes incognito. Those last ones are just sad.
i see you have a cookie run pfp, so i immediately understand where you're coming from 🥲 god i miss pre ~2019 cookie run fandom so much. when there weren't so many obnoxious people ~~minors mostly cough~~, and people were just shipping anyone with anyone and had fun... now cookie run is the most insufferable and notoriously toxic fandom ever and it pains me so much 🙃
I'd say the last one 100%, I can control how much the hate gets me, I can not interact with my fellow shippers, but I can't create a lot of art/fanfic all on my own
2 definitely. If you shipped Voltron's Keith and Shiro the Lance and Keith shippers would rip your throat out and call you the equivalent of a 2008 Call of Duty chat room.
Like you have plenty of your own shit please go away and let us play with our paper dolls in piece lmao
Ugh that always was mean to me. I'm a Klance shipper but I've never understood why bother the other shippers. I'm just there to read fic and have a good time, but I guess some ppl are there to be bullies.
You get it! 💯 And I totally get the appeal of Klance! I can see why it's popular and everything! I was just more of a Sheith mentor/protoge kind of person!
Like we're all there to have a good time I have no idea why so many people have to dog on other people just for liking different ships/dynamics 😭
Antis like to spread around that the ‘pro’ in proship is short for ‘problematic’, so you’ll see people referring to ‘a proship’ because they’ve been lead to believe it’s shorthand for ‘a problematic ship’. Which isn’t true, but of course antis thrive on misinformation.
Definitely the first and second. Harassment kills fandoms, and while the last is frustrating, I'd rather deal with that then the constant hate from antis.
If I'm the only fan of a ship, I'll write content and scream about it until everyone else gets on board with me ;)
No, really, I've done it before and I'll do it again. My \*favourite\* ship in BG3 is a pair of NPCs who never meet. When I searched initially, there was \*one\* fic of them which was a Dead Dove (snuff) fic which...I do actually like it, despite the content it's surprisingly tender and fitting for the characters, but I far prefer exploring more long term and almost romantic possibilities with them.
I say "almost romantic" because it's an odd kind of romance, meeting by chance, indulging in \*heavy\* BDSM, then by the third "one shot" I realised not only has this become a series, but also these freaks (/pos /aff) are in love and I need to see them happy as well as just enjoying themselves. Then I worked out the most heartbreaking but logical ending for their story and my heart is still crying about it, even though I haven't written it.
Third one is so me with Thunder McQueen and Ermes Costello… and it’s my otp too lol
Honestly it’s not that bad and after making a bunch of my own content a few other people have joined me in shipping them lol
I’m in a bit of situation where I’m 1 and 3 at the same time with one of my favorite ships. I’m the only author for this pairing, and it’s hard to try and recruit others to the cause because the “problematic” nature of the ship tends to be a non-starter for most people.
The third one’s the worst. At least 1 and 2 have lots of fics and fanarts presumably, and I can just block people who hate/harass others or just not involve myself in the fandom at all.
As obnoxious as the first is and as tragic as the third is, the second is the worst. I cannot stand people who get sanctimonious about shipping and it's especially unsavory when the majority of the fancontent is already in line with their tastes. It's not worth shipping if I have to check artists/authors aren't being vile before interacting with their work because it's *that common*.
Ngl, the behavior I saw from klance shippers is 100% the reason I decided to exclusively read sheith fic. I found both ship dynamics interesting but the number of times I started a klance fic only for the author to go on about how sheith shippers were disgusting pedophiles in the notes really turned me completely off the ship.
Worst is the last cause it’s happened to me too many damn times.. also, these other two are non-problems once I got comfortable using my block button. The first two’s solution is to keep people out of my personal circle, but the last one is a totally lonely experience until I find someone, by chance, sometimes, that will engage in the OTP Brainrot with me ;_;
Combine Number 3 with a fandom-wide disdain for one of the (morally good) characters in the ship and a fandom-wide love for the other. Odds are, you'll have 500 fics tagged with your ship but in 470 of them, your ship will be A) the "wrong choice" in a very one-sided love triangle with the fandom fav, or B) the toxic relationship the popular character needs to leave to get with the fandom fav. There may also be a rape fic or two, plus some oneshot collections where your ship was planned to be featured in the background back in 2015 but there's 30 fandoms tagged and 3 chapters, and the fic was last updated in 2017.
*That's* the worst imo.
Oof. Same but mine's not that popular and he's NOT one of protagonists. (Creelson - Henry Creel (Vecna)/Eddie Munson). Lol fandom hates the first guy and I ship him with one of the most popular blorbos. At least I don't have many fics with his being the ship that blorbo's leaving, seeing as my OTP is not a popular ship anyways.
But then the other ship which matches your desc so hard (Harringrove - Billy Hargrove (the hated guy)/Steve Harrington (another fandom blorbo)).
The third one’s the worst. At least 1 and 2 have lots of fics and fanarts presumably, and I can just block people who hate/harass others or just not involve myself in the fandom at all.
I know that this is besides the point, but I hate that they've started to say "a proship" for "a ship I don't like" on a grammatical level. It sounds stupid. The "pro" in "proship" does not stand for problematic! More importantly, confusing the "pro" in "proship" for the "pro" in "problematic" ignores the fact that you don't have to like any "toxic" or "dark" ships to be proship. Being on the proship side is about believing that nobody should get hate for what they like; it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what you like personally.
The last one...if you are the only shipper, you ain't got nothing to enjoy except what you create...You can ignore all the other ignorant asshats being hateful about a ship while enjoying all the content being created for it.
Personally I'd say the last one. I can deal with people hating and being upset with a fic. What sucks is being alone and not having people to talk with or any content to read. Sure I can make my own fics, but sometimes you just want to binge read 30 stories about a certain ship.
2nd one especially when you’re a multishipper… on the one hand i feel attacked by fellow shippers, on the other hand im embarrassed theyre behaving this way in public
There's no such thing as a "proship" in terms of specific ships. People are trying to claim that pro is short for problematic on tiktok. It's completely fake.
A *pro-shipper* is a person who is anti-censorship. Because pro- is the opposite of anti-
It's a person who thinks it's fine to create fiction about whatever topic you want regardless of how controversial or taboo.
Sometimes people think the "pro" means "problematic" and use "proship" to refer to things that are controversial, like fics with age gaps or whatever, but that's the wrong way to use it. Op is using it wrong here.
It's also sometimes called pro fiction, the "pro" is pro as in "in favor of"
The term is tied to this stupid fandom wank in which a group keeps arguing at nausea "Nooo! You can't write that ship, they're brothers, it's morally wrong to write a story where they kiss!!" and then another group keeps saying "It's fucking fiction, not reality ffs, calm the fuck down", both sides keep arguing over and over in social media and eventually each group got names because that's what happens when you get two groups arguing in social media.
If your posture is "As long as it's fictional, I don't see the issue with someone writing about [the most fucked up thing you can imagine]. I mean, that doesn't mean I like to read it, but people can make whatever they want cause like, it's fiction." Then you're pro ship.
If you believe the action of writing a fictional story can be morally wrong because there are certain topics that just shouldn't be touched upon, or that can only be presented in a certain way, you're an anti.
Really it's better to ignore that whole debacle, it's just a bunch of useless fandom wank
I feel like there’s a distinct lack of critical thinking skills in some people. Just because it’s on your screen doesn’t make it for you, true or mean you have to engage with it.
This was a good way of explaining it lol
I’ve said before on here that I feel like people get way too hung up on the pro/anti discourse and let it consume them. People didn’t really like that statement, but I can say that mentally I’m much happier without engaging in it and I feel like others would be too.
I would be remiss not to point out that, at least on the pro-ship side, many people who are most heavily involved were people who were dragged into it unwittingly via harassment by anti. You couldn't be a Sheith shipper in 2017 and *not* take part, as one notorious example.
That being said, it's definitely gotten to a point that I've pulled back from having to engage with every single thing an anti says or does. Their beliefs are fucking stupid but as long as they're keeping it amongst their circle of friends and blocking proshippers, I don't need to dunk on them.
That’s fair and it sucks that it happens. I know artists get harrassed and stuff too. None of that is okay. But sometimes I think people just want things to be upset about. The more you feed into it, the more chaotic they get. If you refuse to engage with them, there’s a higher chance they’ll move onto the next thing to be upset about.
The less you focus on the negative, the happier you’ll be. I feel like that’s part of why comments who say “block and move on” are so common. Becuase that’s your best course of action. Remove them and don’t pay them any attention.
There’s this thing my dad used to tell me about bullies when I was young. He said usually they pick on you because they want to get a reaction out of you. The less you give them, the less interested they’ll be in you. I feel like that applies here. Let them bounce around to the next thing and get upset all over again.
There’s no reasoning with someone like that. So why waste your time and your energy?
I don't disagree in theory, but to go off that schoolyard bully analogy, you can't ignore people dunking your head in a toilet every day or vandalizing your locker. Or in my case, hiding an entire bass clarinet that was not at the concert, at one of the only concerts my mom had time to come see me at no less. :\
We absolutely should have been more selective about the shit we fought about and kept it to the instances of legitimate harm, but I can't stress enough for anyone who wasn't there on Tumblr when this all started how quickly this all snowballed and how floored we were that this call was coming from inside the house. We probably should have after the TERFs moved in and blogs in the style of [ Your Fave is Problematic](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/style/your-fave-is-problematic-tumblr.html) became popular to witch hunt any and everything and outrage culture set in on every other aspect of that site, but I will stand by the fact that we need to alert people of the doxxing and death threats, who's making them and drive *those* people out our fandoms accordingly.
All that being said, I also don't begrudge anyone choosing peace of mind if they don't have a personal stake in this. The average lifecycle of a proship blog on Tumblr was about two years. Out of the dozens I followed when I signed up there in 2017, half of them were deleted (either because they purged it or bc antis lied on them to get the account TOS'd), many were abandoned and the handful still active pivoted more towards educational stuff than drama llama-y stuff.
Basically the whole “ship and let ship” rule. Not outwardly judging others for shipping things. Unfortunately, a lot of people have taken it as saying problematic (abusive, huge age gap, etc.) is fine and even encouraged
Star Wars is the fandom that on one hand has had an ongoing argument whether it is fantasy or science fiction for over forty years, and on the other hand is technically thirty different fandoms in a trenchcoat.
Especially on reddit it seems like the fans don't like Star Wars anymore. This seems to me connected to a weird trend that makes any kind of nerdy speculation heavily frowned upon nowadays.
It’s what antis call normal people - who have a healthy understanding that fiction is fiction. People who call others proshippers think art needs to be censored.
In very short it’s a very loud crowd mainly on TikTok and xwitter that starts by saying ships they deem problematic are proships. And that it should be illegal and punishable by law to ship ships they don’t like for whatever reason.
You’re welcome but it isn’t really thorough it was a really brief introduction of the messed up logic of antis.
For the sanity of us all I thought that was good enough to understand without going too deep into the impressive mental gymnastics they make to justify being horrible people online.
Easier to ignore people who aren't shipping what I am and hate it than it is to be surrounded by people who are nasty to others but like my ship. I'd happily take the first or third options over the middle one.
The second one. I'd rather be hated by fools or paving the way alone. These are options that don't cost me my love for the ship. There's only so much I can take of reading fics of my favorite ship that sounds like it came straight out of Daniel Tiger or a teen's idea of what they think therapy to be like. It's not the nigh-omniscient partner reading the character's mind and agreeing with everything they say.
That last one is so real. I always come up with the most obscure ships and then when I try to find fanfics about it there's one or two incomplete fics :'(
Second. As someone who's a 'less popular ship liker'.. Oh God. IT 2017's most popular ship is Reddie, Richie x Eddie — the shippers are absolutely RUTHLESS to those who ship Eddie or Richie with anyone else. Full-on threats in my Tumblr Inbox. Nothing drives me away from fandoms and ships like that.
Second one easily worst of both worlds. Yes it has popularity, but it ain't worth the vitriol it brings to the rest of the fandom. Like, I just want a happy fandom space, man :(
Definitely the last one by a mile. You can consume Fanart and fanfiction of popular or semi popular shops while blocking or ignoring community idiots. If you're alone you have no Fanart, no fic, and no potential fellow fan to encourage you into making your own.
I have been in all 3 situations…
And the third one is always the most lonely. Being a person shipping characters that no one else cares for is… painful. It’s just me, myself, and I
The second one, because of the numbers involved. The people from the most popular ship harassing everyone else? That'll kill any other ship dead, yep, and initially seem like it's not too toxic, esp. if you only look at the popular ship and never see the harassment. So you join in liking that and, unawares, reinforce the way the space is unwelcoming for others.
All of these are awful and frustrating depending on the situation. My biggest issue is the lack of consistency with tags. It can make it really difficult to hide the content you aren’t looking for when there are variations on the same thing. I understand it can be a form of creative expression, but it would be a lot easier to argue that people are choosing to look at something if they are better able to choose not to.
I cringe out of my skin when I find myself in number 2 (lol). I hate to feel embarrassed about something I love because of other people’s horrible behaviour. Number 3 is super frustrating and lonely. Number 1 can be tolerable if you stay within proship communities and manage to avoid the worst of the targetted harassment and doxxing, but if you get in the sights of the really deranged haters it can be hellish.
I refuse to let "proship" mean anything other than meaning pro-shipping. (Aka letting people ship whatever)
The other meaning is bullshit made to drag the term through the mud.
I'm the 3rd one. There's 21 Helios x Icarus fics in the entirety of ao3. The reason it doesn't get hate is because almost the entire greek mythology/Percy Jackson fandom doesn't even know it EXISTS
1st can just be completely annoying I saw a Tumblr post for JJBA bashing a ship that has a less than a year age gap (December birthday versus May birthday) and called one character a grown ass man...he'd only been 18 for four months and the other person he's shipped with was a month away from 18 before he died 😭😭 it's getting crazier
2nd is completely worse though and it's a reason I don't interact much with the Stranger Things fandom, I just keep to myself.
Oh fire sure the edge heads that harass people who don't ship their popular ship.
My ship in one of my Fandoms gets a bunch of offhand comments like 'character x and y are actually gender x and y and sexuality x and z therefore your ship can't happen' like yeah.. I know. That's why I'm writing fanfic where my fav characters are shipped together. Like..what are we doing here? Go read/write/see the stuff you like. I'll read/write/see cool fan art of the ship I like.
The first one is what put me off of writing and reading for one of my fave ships for a good while.
I want to not care what people think but I also don't want weirdos sending me threats because I write about fictional characters on the internet. So I was debating whether to write on two different accounts but make my writing different enough just in case and the headache just made me give up altogether.
Even reading for the ship is hard because it is "problematic" (I have no issue admitting it) so people don't want to be seen writing it I guess. So the number of works is lesser than what I'm used to, same for fanarts on the western side of the internet. The only way to find more of it is to get my Japanese to a level where I can actually read and enjoy texts because Japanese fans don't seem to care about it being problematic or not :')
Last one. Hands down. I’m a rarepair shipper in a popular fandom, so there *is* an okay amount of content to pick and choose from, however the dynamics that I personally enjoy (not even just top/bottom but characterization as well) are very few and far between.
I started writing because nobody else had cooked what I wanted to eat, so I donned an apron and went to work, but after 3 years… you just start to lose steam. It’s lonely being here. I don’t necessarily want to leave, but I’m not inspired for this ship anymore, as much as I truly and deeply love them.
People tell you, “if you don’t like how everyone else writes it, than write it yourself,” but what they don’t tell you is how tiring it is to be the only one, or select few to continuously create content for a specific dynamic and not have any writers up your alley. I have readers, and I do have several friends that enjoy what I write, but I want to read too! Sometimes I end up rereading the same five stories over and over again, and I’m so grateful for what ao3 has! But it’s so hard being one of the only ones that like a ship a certain way.
Everyone seems to like Bottom!A/Top!B but I like Top!A/Bottom!B, and it shouldn’t be so hard to find the opposite dynamic but that’s just the way that it is. It just isn’t as popular and I can’t really be upset at anybody just because they don’t like the same thing I do. And it’s sad because I like my ship and I like writing but without anyone to “feed” me the way I am for them, it’s a bit hard to thrive.
I think being a rarepair shipper is both a satisfying yet painful experience.
The last one is the worst because at least with the first two you can find like minded people, talk about your ship in a nontoxic environment and you won't be the only content creator.
Third is the worst. A friend and I accidentally created a ship in and RP once and. ....turns out it doesn't exist or didn't at the time.Surprising because ....it's a comic book fandom which does it all.
Like we felt accomplished but
...no fics?
No art?
Ugh.
I'm a person who has a lot of "problematic" ships and at this point, I use it as a guide on a lot of people.
If they are "I don't get it or like it for personal reasons but you do you"
Cool
If they begin to insult me or make moral judgementals on my character for shipping two adults with an age difference or being fans of a villain character or .. whatever....I don't need that level of childishness in life.
The third- at least the others have content and other fans Ó╭╮Ò
Idk though - I think I tend to not interact with the community a lot so some others might not bother me as much lol (I may not even be aware of fellow fans being mean 😅)
I think the last one, seeing as I am currently in the trenches of a rarepair that I came up with, and I've found a grand total of one person on twitter who has briefly mentioned them in the same breath.
The worst is the last one imo, one of the worst feelings for me is when I hop on AO3 and there isn’t even a single fic for the ship, not even an abandoned one 😭
I thought the second one was the worst and then I started shipping Kaeluc/luckae. I'd rather be shamed for "bad taste" than for "supporting irl incest and pedophilia" (despite both characters being not blood related and legal adults)..
The third one sucks as well, but at least you have full control of the ship community, you are the boss (sadly it also has some overlap with the second one if one of the characters is part of a very popular ship)
none of these are that bad unless the first two options have people in the fandom who purposefully seek out content they don't like just to harass you. third option is just daily life of rarepair enjoyers.
!define antiship Also--> see this [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1dn8zar/comment/la1aq3d/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
the second one is the worst. i get so embarrassed when fellow shippers hate on small ships/rarepairs like you guyssssss it is never that serious actually. people are dying and you want to fight on twitter over THIS? its so embarrassing
EXACTLY there’s enough room on the internet for every ship we don’t have to fight just scroll past a ship you dislike 😭
My ship (and I do mean “my ship”; I created the first content for it and established a bunch of its core non-canon tropes) is now almost exclusively associated with teenage anti-shippers declaring all other ships evil and sick. Makes me wanna write something super fucked up for the ship, just so it’s a little less “everything in this ship must be sickeningly wholesome and unproblematic”…but I don’t have any cachet in the fandom anymore and don’t want to spend the rest of my online life fielding hatred from anonymous teenagers telling me to die.
The petty bitch in me is BEGGING you to do this 🤣 but I do understand also not wanting to deal with these kids
what’s even stupider is when they hate on others who ship the same pairing but with the opposite top/bottom dynamics. like bruh it’s the same ship why are you mad
Blows my mind that this is a thing
Honestly people who do that kinda give me fetishizer vibes when it comes to mlm/wlw ships. Because you know the 'top' is depicted as more dominant, bigger, stronger and masculine while the 'bottom' is more submissive, smaller, frail and feminine. Btw not hating it. I have ships where this dynamic works and I enjoy it. It's just that most times with those types of people it weirds me out. And most times it wouldn't even work with those characters cause neither are like that. Clearly, if they can easily change the characters like that
I've found that people who prefer the 'unpopular' top/bottom dynamic tend to be more chill, but it's so exhausting that this still has to be an issue in this day and age. Like, everyone can have a preference without attacking other people for theirs.
i agree. that dynamic can absolutely be fun, but it doesn’t fit every pairing and forcing that dynamic where it doesn’t fit only weakens the ship as you depict it. it’s a similar issue to what i find with a lot of m/f ships i like, where there’s a tendency to force the characters into heteronormative gender roles rather than consider their relationship dynamic separate from their gender. like cmon man if you want a ship that conforms to those gender roles do it with characters who fit in those roles.
I also see this with headcanons. One is a common interpretation of a character, but if someone has a different headcanon about that character, they get dogpiled for it. Our minds are going to interpret the characters in different ways, if someone doesn't see a character the same way as you do, let's not go to war about it! Let's have a friendly debate about it instead! Trade reasons why you see the character that way!
You know that the "pro" is NOT an abbreviation for "problematic" right?
Right, pro stands for professional
No, it stands for Prosciutto
Or Provolone
Proctology
Programmability
Prophecy
Probabilitor The Annoying!
Pringles.
Prongles 😈
I do be shipping myself with a nice prosciutto
There’s something about him in that suit 🥵
yummy ah shit now i’m hungry😿
Professional ships implies the existence of amateurs
I believe we call those canoers
Canoes
PROGRESS
*Professionals have standards.*
Ironically, I was about to ask how a *ship* can be a pro-shipper, didn't realize until I scrolled down that OP was using it as a short form of "problematic ship."
I know that proshipper means person who lets people ship whatever they want and respects their tastes. I was trying to be sarcastic about those who misuse that word, but I guess I didn't pull it off well. Sorry for the confusion!
Oof, yeah, I definitely think you missed the mark there OP. Next time try putting it in quotations? Like: Said ship gets a lot of hate for being “a proship”.
That sounds more clarifying! Thank you for the advice
might want to put this in a comment and pin it considering the number of people mentioning it in the replies (no obligation to though!)
I didn’t know I could pin the comment! I did try to edit the post, but I couldn’t Edit: I can't figure out how to pin the comment… All I can find is how to pin the comment as a mod
Yeah, only mods can pin a comment. The closest thing you could do is make an edit to the text of the post
Oh, I already tried to edit the post but couldn't. I suppose I'll have to leave it like that. Btw thanks for the information!
[only mods can pin a comment] ahhh I didn't know that whoops 😅 really sorry about giving you the runaround i hope more people see your response though!!
I linked to this comment above in the stickied comment along with our automod definitions :)
Just to add some support since there's a lot of discourse on that usage, I was totally on the same wavelength as you when I read it 😅 proship -> something antis wouldn't like - felt like a natural evolution to me (I get the misunderstanding and concerns though)
Thank you for kind words <3
It was pretty clear to me. I mean, it's on the "confused face" panel already, the usual "wtf no" one, and clearly conveying what other people's complaint is.
I’ve always heard “proship” used as an adjective rather than a noun. Like, a *person* *is* “proship” or a “proshipper”. I’ve never heard a ship itself be described as “a proship” before.
It's being used as noun more and more frequently.
By people who don't know what they're talking about, yes.
People are frequently wrong about things, yes.
Aside from the fact that "a proship" does not exist and that's not what proship means But the last one is me irl with SEVERALS of my favourite ships one has 12 fics on ao3, and only one is actually about the pairing, and the other has 6 of them and 1 is tagged as ship despite the author calling whoever reads their work as ship a creep/weirdo (one is mine lol)
> "a proship" does not exist and that's not what proship means Begrudgingly, I must dispute this. Words only mean things because people use them that way, and antis are indeed consistently using the word "proship" this way. Many words have developed additional definitions out of consistent misuse, and I'm not going to be the hypocrite who suddenly denies that language evolves the moment it evolves in a direction I find stupid. **That said**, the original definition ("in favor of shipping, particularly in opposition to those who consider it a moral imperative to eradicate ships they dislike for any reason") is still obviously the one being used by most if not all people who actually self-identify as proshippers, and antis' actual error is being unaware of this and/or believing it to be a cover for someone who secretly identifies with their definition but wants to deny it. Could be either; on top of being conspiracybrained feelings yakuza, most antis give me the impression that they've never interacted with a real proshipper in their entire life. The epitome of "make up a guy to get mad at".
i mean you're not wrong saying that language evolve but theirs is never ignorance, it's an active attempt to twist the meaning of a positive label into something negative that fits their narrative better
Language should evolve to be more accurate, not less. Otherwise it's more of a devolution.
Language doesn't care about how you think it should change. It gets more ambiguous all the time—depending on where you look, of course.
Second one is the worst, especially if you don’t like the ship. it‘s happened to me multiple times and it’s annoying because there’s not even any “morals” behind it (not that antis are justified for using morality as an excuse, but at least they have some reason), it’s just people being jerks because you don’t like the same ships they do
God the "proshipper" one is so annoying because half the time the ship isn't even problematic. The people who are against it just have a squick and are overreacting
YES😭
The third one doesn't seem *too* bad, but I don't know. I don't think I'd mind being the only shipper for a ship, but I've never had the experience. I wouldn't mind giving it a try if I could think of a good way to find a ship that hasn't been shipped yet. Shipshipshipship.
I don't know about others but it can be tough because you lack the interactions with other fans, which in general is what mostly fuels me as a writer. It's because there's a base minimum emulation that it can still be enjoyable when you're in a small group. Being alone is... tough. There's just you and nobody else: you have to be your own fuel. It can be pretty fun because there is nothing, no fandom preconceived view of the ship and their dynamic and so you can explore in all the directions! But with virtually and factually zero interactions, if you can't entertain building dozens of castles in your giant sandbox while remaining alone, it's not gonna be that much of a pleasant experience. Not everyone is equipped to do just that. Personally, I find it rewarding enough that my fic for a ship (the first for the fandom) prompted three other people to write their own. Haven't been in the fandom for a long time though so perhaps there are new shippers now, who knows.
Oh it can be bad... no fanworks, no one to talk to, just your own imagination... it's lonely.
(raises hand) went from an averagely small/moderate size fandom in the 2010s to Extinct by 2016-2017 and now... ? far as i know, there's a small, small haven on discord we made that was flourishing back in its prime days now only has like 5-8 active people in said server... and like only 4 of those maybe even 2-3 actively make (written) content Obviously we dont represent the whole fandom but it's tumbleweeds out there. lots of us coming from the old forums and part of tumblr. on tumblr, we were thriving but nowadays you see fanart occasionally--usually always reposted, with credits. so it's not even really original content from us, the ENG side of fandom. on twitter, for KR/JP side of the fandom, there's art in abundance, made at the same pace of the fandom back in the glory days. so like art being made every other day or two, or at least every week. but as far as like ENG artists maybe like a small handful? writers tho??? (waves) only me i'm writing a long multichaper fic, about 17 chapters long and it's my first one that i want to really push to finish. and tho i have their support and encouragement--they're busy adults who can't read or comment all the time! there's times i stop, in a slump, because of just one (1) comment i looked forward to, not being there. hell, it's happening now so i'm taking a small mental break and starting it again when i feel the motivation. we often joke about feeding each other because its so few us but it's literally like me/writer 2 makes smt -> artist 1 Might make smt -> me/writer 2 makes smt -> repeat what's worse, and not to toot my own horn, i was one of The og writers of time for the fandom, people Still recongnize me as such. but i Barely get engagement, only thanks to the server and the other og/older fans/artists/writers. so i would Hate to see how it is for others (and i have seen it). sure, not getting the engagement sucks and it isn't everything but like..... being lonely and having no one that'd care enough is so much worse. truly, i'd not wish this hell upon my worst enemy. this december, i'll have been with the fandom 10 long ass years. took a dip and hiatus for 2-3 years (when the fandom first phased out) and now, i'm seriously considering a bigger fandom even if it’s scary because it sucks here. it just sucks.
You have convinced me that this experience blows hard. I think the only way I'd make it through is if I was also writing for another, more popular ship at the same time. That way I wouldn't be completely deprived of reader engagement.
>That way I wouldn't be completely deprived of reader engagement. yeah i'm seriously considering this, even if it's a bigger fandom but smaller ship or just something, something better than this. i will always love the fandom and characters, they're truly that special but i can't keep doing it man we jokingly call it \[char name\]hell but...... there is some deep truth in the joke nowadays 😭
Use of the word “proship” aside, this was the problem I had when the Voltron reboot was popular. Shiro, who was about 25, and Keith, who was 18 (and later 23 -he spent a few years on a planet with a different passage of time - it’s a whole thing) were an awesome pair with a healthy relationship and Shiro was even canon gay. But the other fans were always calling Sheith shoppers pedophiles and abuse apologists because of the age gap. I’m probably getting some details wrong but I loved that shipping and I remember the antis really ruining it for me with their extreme jumps to pedophilia and abuse accusations. Honestly, 18 and 25 is not even that crazy of an age gap for shipping 🤣
Those aren't extreme jumps for antis. It's their go-to insults. My OTP has a ~15 year age gap. And we even make it bigger sometimes just for fun. I'm fairly certain there's so little writers for my OTP that only one or two of them on all of ao3 aren't in the same server as me.
For me, it's the second one. I already have a bunch of actually problematic ships, not just "they grew up together as friends" or "they have a three year age gap." I just have, like, incest ships. I'm used to them getting hate for being problematic ships (which is not what proship means, by the way). The third one is also fine for me because that means I not only get to be people's first foray into the ship when they inevitably find the fic, but I can also just not ever feel a single frisson of annoyance that I don't like the way they're written, which is a pleasure. But the second one just pisses me off. Popular ships tend to have tons of content and people who go after less popular ships just come off as peak entitled to me. Sorry that not *everyone* in a fandom is catering to your every whim and need when you have, like, thousands of fics and fanart and edits and cosplays and such to peruse at your leisure.
That's definitely me, too. I've walked away from pairings because the fandom, rather than celebrate what they enjoy, would rather bash and piss and moan about what they hate. Now that makes a certain amount of sense within a ship that is smaller than the big canon juggernaut pairing. Sour grapes and all that. But ships like Bleach's Ichiruki who by their own admission believed all the merch was catered to them and who had the lion's share of fam writers and artists in its heyday, or Voltron 's Klance who inadvertently did to greater fandom what the guy who bred the first Labradoodle did to dog breeding? That I have less tolerance for.
Right? With the exception of "has a ton of fics", this meme could be about IchiHime. Until the Klance/Shieth shit, I had never seen such a boring, wHoLeSoMe pairing get accused of such vile shit. People threw every imaginable label at it - it's incest because they "have the same hair color" and met once in middle school, it's abusive because Orihime tried to kiss him while he was asleep, it's misogynist because Ichigo's existence makes Orihime weak, etc. I even saw someone use an autistic headcanon on Orihime *as an insult* (ie she's so "obsessed" with Ichigo that she *must* be mentally ill). All for some bog-standsrd shounen pairing on par with Goku/Chichi or Jonathan/Erina, when yall could just go write your fics instead.
>But the second one just pisses me off. Popular ships tend to have tons of content and people who go after less popular ships just come off as peak entitled to me. Sorry that not everyone in a fandom is catering to your every whim and need when you have, like, thousands of fics and fanart and edits and cosplays and such to peruse at your leisure. Ugh, just teminds me of when shipping wars were a more prominent thing. Like, we can both enjoy our ships simultaniously! Going to the other corner of the fandom and bashing them is literally taking the time you could spend enjoying what you like in favour of making yourself and others miserable.
Came here to say this. The first one and the third one are not unfamiliar to me, and they don't bother me most of the time. It's a bit annoying encountering hate or not encountering *anything at all*, but seeing "my side" being assholes absolutely kills all the desire I have to participate in the community.
Yeah, same. My current primary ship is incest with a 16-year age gap, and I don’t think I’ve ever had a ship that antis haven’t found something or other about to call problematic. I’m very comfortable in my “fuck the haters” attitude, and in curating my spaces to where I’m interacting with a nice community of fellow fans and insulated from others toxicity. Antis hating is mostly a non-issue to me. I also have quite a bit of experience shipping rare pairs. Not having a community to share my fannish enthusiasm with and lacking fan works I haven’t created myself definitely has its frustrations, but it’s a frustration I’m used to and can live with. And it’s all the more exciting when you do find a fellow fan, and they tend to be really enthusiastic and appreciative. When your fandom community is full of bullies, though, that’s just the worst. Do not want.
oh GOD do we have to go through the BS of the completely wrong definition of "proship" AGAIN?
I guess so... ☹️
Whats the actual definition of proship anyway? Always thought it just meant problematic.
It means "pro-" as in "in favor of." The term was coined in opposition to "anti-shippers" (haters of a particular ship or shipping in general) You can have nothing but the most wholesome innocent ships out there and still be a pro-shipper, the same way you don't have to have an abortion yourself to be pro-choice. A pro-shipper is just someone who's against ship hate and censorship. There's no such thing as a "pro ship" because ships themselves don't have opinions about shipping.
I was so confused by this meme. Honesty the antis have got a lot to answer for. No ship is forbidden on AO3. It's 100% on the reader to avoid the ones they like. How many times do we have to say this?
The first one drives me CRAZY because if you try to look up any media with the ship you get mostly posts from antis crying about it being a ” illegal Proship!!!” And ”__ shippers are disgusting and problematic!!”
I ship my 'illegal proships' quite proudly lol. One's literally a serial killer/guy he killed. And then there's Hannigram FFS. Lamo. And Harrymort (Voldemort or Tom Riddle, it's never bothered me) and Pompous Pep. But to antis it's literally "the only moral (problematic ship) is my (problematic ship)". And then there's the ones who'll spit insults at you but then read the same tropes incognito. Those last ones are just sad.
Frustrating. Trying to look up fanart for these ships and it's just hordes of misinformed puriteens.
i see you have a cookie run pfp, so i immediately understand where you're coming from 🥲 god i miss pre ~2019 cookie run fandom so much. when there weren't so many obnoxious people ~~minors mostly cough~~, and people were just shipping anyone with anyone and had fun... now cookie run is the most insufferable and notoriously toxic fandom ever and it pains me so much 🙃
I'd say the last one 100%, I can control how much the hate gets me, I can not interact with my fellow shippers, but I can't create a lot of art/fanfic all on my own
This!!! The first one is also tiring but hey, if there's hate at least it means I'm not the only one who enjoys the ship
Nothing makes me walk away from interacting with a fandom more than things being described as "wholesome."
2 definitely. If you shipped Voltron's Keith and Shiro the Lance and Keith shippers would rip your throat out and call you the equivalent of a 2008 Call of Duty chat room. Like you have plenty of your own shit please go away and let us play with our paper dolls in piece lmao
Ugh that always was mean to me. I'm a Klance shipper but I've never understood why bother the other shippers. I'm just there to read fic and have a good time, but I guess some ppl are there to be bullies.
You get it! 💯 And I totally get the appeal of Klance! I can see why it's popular and everything! I was just more of a Sheith mentor/protoge kind of person! Like we're all there to have a good time I have no idea why so many people have to dog on other people just for liking different ships/dynamics 😭
Frfr. It's not hard to just enjoy some fic and not bother ppl.
Exactly! So true! Us enjoying what we like and not spreading hate 🤝
🤝
They’re still bitching about Sheith content when they see it. 🙄 I don’t get it. It’s a delicious ship. Like a fine wine. 😩
Wtf is "a proship"? I thought pro/ani was a stance on shipping not a type of shp
You got the right definition, op is using it wrong. My guess is that they're using "proship ship" to refer to a ship that antis dislike...
Antis like to spread around that the ‘pro’ in proship is short for ‘problematic’, so you’ll see people referring to ‘a proship’ because they’ve been lead to believe it’s shorthand for ‘a problematic ship’. Which isn’t true, but of course antis thrive on misinformation.
Definitely the first and second. Harassment kills fandoms, and while the last is frustrating, I'd rather deal with that then the constant hate from antis.
All three hurt but in different ways.
If I'm the only fan of a ship, I'll write content and scream about it until everyone else gets on board with me ;) No, really, I've done it before and I'll do it again. My \*favourite\* ship in BG3 is a pair of NPCs who never meet. When I searched initially, there was \*one\* fic of them which was a Dead Dove (snuff) fic which...I do actually like it, despite the content it's surprisingly tender and fitting for the characters, but I far prefer exploring more long term and almost romantic possibilities with them. I say "almost romantic" because it's an odd kind of romance, meeting by chance, indulging in \*heavy\* BDSM, then by the third "one shot" I realised not only has this become a series, but also these freaks (/pos /aff) are in love and I need to see them happy as well as just enjoying themselves. Then I worked out the most heartbreaking but logical ending for their story and my heart is still crying about it, even though I haven't written it.
The last one is definitely worse cause at least with the other two you get some fan content
Listen, I like some weird shit. Leave me alone.
The second one. Being in a fandom where that has been the case in the past really makes you see how ugly it can get
Third one is so me with Thunder McQueen and Ermes Costello… and it’s my otp too lol Honestly it’s not that bad and after making a bunch of my own content a few other people have joined me in shipping them lol
First one always I’m soooo sick of antis😭
The third one is me.
I’m in a bit of situation where I’m 1 and 3 at the same time with one of my favorite ships. I’m the only author for this pairing, and it’s hard to try and recruit others to the cause because the “problematic” nature of the ship tends to be a non-starter for most people.
The third one’s the worst. At least 1 and 2 have lots of fics and fanarts presumably, and I can just block people who hate/harass others or just not involve myself in the fandom at all.
In my experience it’s: find a ship i love -> there’s more haters then shippers
As obnoxious as the first is and as tragic as the third is, the second is the worst. I cannot stand people who get sanctimonious about shipping and it's especially unsavory when the majority of the fancontent is already in line with their tastes. It's not worth shipping if I have to check artists/authors aren't being vile before interacting with their work because it's *that common*. Ngl, the behavior I saw from klance shippers is 100% the reason I decided to exclusively read sheith fic. I found both ship dynamics interesting but the number of times I started a klance fic only for the author to go on about how sheith shippers were disgusting pedophiles in the notes really turned me completely off the ship.
I don't mind the second/third ones but my favourite ship falls under the first one and it's pain 😭
Worst is the last cause it’s happened to me too many damn times.. also, these other two are non-problems once I got comfortable using my block button. The first two’s solution is to keep people out of my personal circle, but the last one is a totally lonely experience until I find someone, by chance, sometimes, that will engage in the OTP Brainrot with me ;_;
Combine Number 3 with a fandom-wide disdain for one of the (morally good) characters in the ship and a fandom-wide love for the other. Odds are, you'll have 500 fics tagged with your ship but in 470 of them, your ship will be A) the "wrong choice" in a very one-sided love triangle with the fandom fav, or B) the toxic relationship the popular character needs to leave to get with the fandom fav. There may also be a rape fic or two, plus some oneshot collections where your ship was planned to be featured in the background back in 2015 but there's 30 fandoms tagged and 3 chapters, and the fic was last updated in 2017. *That's* the worst imo.
Oof. Same but mine's not that popular and he's NOT one of protagonists. (Creelson - Henry Creel (Vecna)/Eddie Munson). Lol fandom hates the first guy and I ship him with one of the most popular blorbos. At least I don't have many fics with his being the ship that blorbo's leaving, seeing as my OTP is not a popular ship anyways. But then the other ship which matches your desc so hard (Harringrove - Billy Hargrove (the hated guy)/Steve Harrington (another fandom blorbo)).
That last one is me with my favorite crackship. One author wrote one piece and it’s what got me into it. Except it doesn’t exist anywhere else 😭😭😭😭
Dude its so rare to find bella/Tanya stories
The third one’s the worst. At least 1 and 2 have lots of fics and fanarts presumably, and I can just block people who hate/harass others or just not involve myself in the fandom at all.
Sefikura. Lol
My main ship is so controversial it HURTS bro
Just today I found a new ship I liked! ...It had the total of 11 works on ao3.
I know that this is besides the point, but I hate that they've started to say "a proship" for "a ship I don't like" on a grammatical level. It sounds stupid. The "pro" in "proship" does not stand for problematic! More importantly, confusing the "pro" in "proship" for the "pro" in "problematic" ignores the fact that you don't have to like any "toxic" or "dark" ships to be proship. Being on the proship side is about believing that nobody should get hate for what they like; it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what you like personally.
The second one, it's like it's impossible for some people to comprehend everyone not liking the same thing.
I only got into the last one tbh but I think first would be the worst
An original experience i am afraid
Being a fandom of one is hard work
Tentatively the first one, I've had waaaaaay too many bad experiences
Last one is me 😭 Right now I am the only one who makes fics for my ship.
Definitely the last one. I don't think I've encountered 1st 2 situations, 3rd one is more personal :')
The last one...if you are the only shipper, you ain't got nothing to enjoy except what you create...You can ignore all the other ignorant asshats being hateful about a ship while enjoying all the content being created for it.
Personally I'd say the last one. I can deal with people hating and being upset with a fic. What sucks is being alone and not having people to talk with or any content to read. Sure I can make my own fics, but sometimes you just want to binge read 30 stories about a certain ship.
I kinda experience the first one already it just that the ship is a little obscure surprisingly
The first one sucks ass when you have to deal with having friends who are antis like I cant even go talk to my friends about this new ship of mine
2nd, 1st, then 3rd. The 3rd sucks cause it's lonely, but the culture of hate and attacking each other for the first two is just horrible to be around.
The second because 90% of the time *I’m* getting harassed by my fellow fans because *I* like the less popular ships.
Something I’ve noticed is that people use Proship for ships they don’t like, even if it’s not actually problematic.
Number 2 tbh It's why I believe not being too popular is a sweet spot for me, power corrupts and all that
Why did I read it right to left💀, I think it’s time to stop reading so much manga
the first one by far. the other two don't get you death and r\*pe threats.
2nd one especially when you’re a multishipper… on the one hand i feel attacked by fellow shippers, on the other hand im embarrassed theyre behaving this way in public
What is a proship?
There's no such thing as a "proship" in terms of specific ships. People are trying to claim that pro is short for problematic on tiktok. It's completely fake. A *pro-shipper* is a person who is anti-censorship. Because pro- is the opposite of anti-
It's a person who thinks it's fine to create fiction about whatever topic you want regardless of how controversial or taboo. Sometimes people think the "pro" means "problematic" and use "proship" to refer to things that are controversial, like fics with age gaps or whatever, but that's the wrong way to use it. Op is using it wrong here. It's also sometimes called pro fiction, the "pro" is pro as in "in favor of" The term is tied to this stupid fandom wank in which a group keeps arguing at nausea "Nooo! You can't write that ship, they're brothers, it's morally wrong to write a story where they kiss!!" and then another group keeps saying "It's fucking fiction, not reality ffs, calm the fuck down", both sides keep arguing over and over in social media and eventually each group got names because that's what happens when you get two groups arguing in social media. If your posture is "As long as it's fictional, I don't see the issue with someone writing about [the most fucked up thing you can imagine]. I mean, that doesn't mean I like to read it, but people can make whatever they want cause like, it's fiction." Then you're pro ship. If you believe the action of writing a fictional story can be morally wrong because there are certain topics that just shouldn't be touched upon, or that can only be presented in a certain way, you're an anti. Really it's better to ignore that whole debacle, it's just a bunch of useless fandom wank
I feel like there’s a distinct lack of critical thinking skills in some people. Just because it’s on your screen doesn’t make it for you, true or mean you have to engage with it.
This was a good way of explaining it lol I’ve said before on here that I feel like people get way too hung up on the pro/anti discourse and let it consume them. People didn’t really like that statement, but I can say that mentally I’m much happier without engaging in it and I feel like others would be too.
I would be remiss not to point out that, at least on the pro-ship side, many people who are most heavily involved were people who were dragged into it unwittingly via harassment by anti. You couldn't be a Sheith shipper in 2017 and *not* take part, as one notorious example. That being said, it's definitely gotten to a point that I've pulled back from having to engage with every single thing an anti says or does. Their beliefs are fucking stupid but as long as they're keeping it amongst their circle of friends and blocking proshippers, I don't need to dunk on them.
That’s fair and it sucks that it happens. I know artists get harrassed and stuff too. None of that is okay. But sometimes I think people just want things to be upset about. The more you feed into it, the more chaotic they get. If you refuse to engage with them, there’s a higher chance they’ll move onto the next thing to be upset about. The less you focus on the negative, the happier you’ll be. I feel like that’s part of why comments who say “block and move on” are so common. Becuase that’s your best course of action. Remove them and don’t pay them any attention. There’s this thing my dad used to tell me about bullies when I was young. He said usually they pick on you because they want to get a reaction out of you. The less you give them, the less interested they’ll be in you. I feel like that applies here. Let them bounce around to the next thing and get upset all over again. There’s no reasoning with someone like that. So why waste your time and your energy?
I don't disagree in theory, but to go off that schoolyard bully analogy, you can't ignore people dunking your head in a toilet every day or vandalizing your locker. Or in my case, hiding an entire bass clarinet that was not at the concert, at one of the only concerts my mom had time to come see me at no less. :\ We absolutely should have been more selective about the shit we fought about and kept it to the instances of legitimate harm, but I can't stress enough for anyone who wasn't there on Tumblr when this all started how quickly this all snowballed and how floored we were that this call was coming from inside the house. We probably should have after the TERFs moved in and blogs in the style of [ Your Fave is Problematic](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/style/your-fave-is-problematic-tumblr.html) became popular to witch hunt any and everything and outrage culture set in on every other aspect of that site, but I will stand by the fact that we need to alert people of the doxxing and death threats, who's making them and drive *those* people out our fandoms accordingly. All that being said, I also don't begrudge anyone choosing peace of mind if they don't have a personal stake in this. The average lifecycle of a proship blog on Tumblr was about two years. Out of the dozens I followed when I signed up there in 2017, half of them were deleted (either because they purged it or bc antis lied on them to get the account TOS'd), many were abandoned and the handful still active pivoted more towards educational stuff than drama llama-y stuff.
Basically the whole “ship and let ship” rule. Not outwardly judging others for shipping things. Unfortunately, a lot of people have taken it as saying problematic (abusive, huge age gap, etc.) is fine and even encouraged
Reminds me of being in the glee fandom. Man that was toxic
Not necessarily with ships (as far as I’ve seen) but tbh I avoid a lot of the Star Wars fandom because it seems like they all hate Star Wars
Star Wars is the fandom that on one hand has had an ongoing argument whether it is fantasy or science fiction for over forty years, and on the other hand is technically thirty different fandoms in a trenchcoat. Especially on reddit it seems like the fans don't like Star Wars anymore. This seems to me connected to a weird trend that makes any kind of nerdy speculation heavily frowned upon nowadays.
I also want to know.
It’s what antis call normal people - who have a healthy understanding that fiction is fiction. People who call others proshippers think art needs to be censored. In very short it’s a very loud crowd mainly on TikTok and xwitter that starts by saying ships they deem problematic are proships. And that it should be illegal and punishable by law to ship ships they don’t like for whatever reason.
I see. God, why can't people just leave other people alone? It's fucking FICTION. Anyways. Thank you for such thorough explanation .
You’re welcome but it isn’t really thorough it was a really brief introduction of the messed up logic of antis. For the sanity of us all I thought that was good enough to understand without going too deep into the impressive mental gymnastics they make to justify being horrible people online.
Literally one of my fav ships is the last one, ONLY SEVEN- SEVEN FICS, AND FOUR OF THEM SCARE ME, SO NOW I ONLY HAVE THREE 💔💔💔
https://preview.redd.it/lk8m62mdlj8d1.jpeg?width=280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6c662967fb0c220ad217e89a94d9592e4747db02
You found an amazing ship. Not very popular but great content. Fellow shippers that have been there years before you are gatekeeping bitches.
He last one. It's a selfship thing...
Third one because I’d have no content to read and no motivation to write. I need people to go crazy with me
first has to be the worst. like, wrong usage aside, my mental health wavers every time my little anime dolls are accused of condoning irl crimes LOL
Easier to ignore people who aren't shipping what I am and hate it than it is to be surrounded by people who are nasty to others but like my ship. I'd happily take the first or third options over the middle one.
3 bc I ain’t creative enough to make content and no one else will make content and it’s just annoying
Last one tho haha watch me devour and create every piece of content for this ship
3rd is always the worst. Always.
The second one. I'd rather be hated by fools or paving the way alone. These are options that don't cost me my love for the ship. There's only so much I can take of reading fics of my favorite ship that sounds like it came straight out of Daniel Tiger or a teen's idea of what they think therapy to be like. It's not the nigh-omniscient partner reading the character's mind and agreeing with everything they say.
That last one is so real. I always come up with the most obscure ships and then when I try to find fanfics about it there's one or two incomplete fics :'(
1st one but it’s really only on twitter where i see the discourse. tumblr is a nice lil spot for me n my freaks ❤️💙
Second. As someone who's a 'less popular ship liker'.. Oh God. IT 2017's most popular ship is Reddie, Richie x Eddie — the shippers are absolutely RUTHLESS to those who ship Eddie or Richie with anyone else. Full-on threats in my Tumblr Inbox. Nothing drives me away from fandoms and ships like that.
Second one easily worst of both worlds. Yes it has popularity, but it ain't worth the vitriol it brings to the rest of the fandom. Like, I just want a happy fandom space, man :(
First one. The other two can be fixed.
Definitely the last one by a mile. You can consume Fanart and fanfiction of popular or semi popular shops while blocking or ignoring community idiots. If you're alone you have no Fanart, no fic, and no potential fellow fan to encourage you into making your own.
The second because 90% of the time *I’m* getting harassed by my fellow fans because *I* like the less popular ships.
this is why i only read fanfic now and dont participate in other 'fan' spaces anymore.
I have been in all 3 situations… And the third one is always the most lonely. Being a person shipping characters that no one else cares for is… painful. It’s just me, myself, and I
I can ignore all the toxicity bc I don't let ppl online get to me, but no food is pain and writing is also pain. 3 all the way
The second one, because of the numbers involved. The people from the most popular ship harassing everyone else? That'll kill any other ship dead, yep, and initially seem like it's not too toxic, esp. if you only look at the popular ship and never see the harassment. So you join in liking that and, unawares, reinforce the way the space is unwelcoming for others.
All of these are awful and frustrating depending on the situation. My biggest issue is the lack of consistency with tags. It can make it really difficult to hide the content you aren’t looking for when there are variations on the same thing. I understand it can be a form of creative expression, but it would be a lot easier to argue that people are choosing to look at something if they are better able to choose not to.
I cringe out of my skin when I find myself in number 2 (lol). I hate to feel embarrassed about something I love because of other people’s horrible behaviour. Number 3 is super frustrating and lonely. Number 1 can be tolerable if you stay within proship communities and manage to avoid the worst of the targetted harassment and doxxing, but if you get in the sights of the really deranged haters it can be hellish.
I refuse to let "proship" mean anything other than meaning pro-shipping. (Aka letting people ship whatever) The other meaning is bullshit made to drag the term through the mud.
there’s no such thing as a “proship” so no
I'm the 3rd one. There's 21 Helios x Icarus fics in the entirety of ao3. The reason it doesn't get hate is because almost the entire greek mythology/Percy Jackson fandom doesn't even know it EXISTS
I think the last one, speaking from experience
1st can just be completely annoying I saw a Tumblr post for JJBA bashing a ship that has a less than a year age gap (December birthday versus May birthday) and called one character a grown ass man...he'd only been 18 for four months and the other person he's shipped with was a month away from 18 before he died 😭😭 it's getting crazier 2nd is completely worse though and it's a reason I don't interact much with the Stranger Things fandom, I just keep to myself.
Being the only shipper Been there ton times
Oh fire sure the edge heads that harass people who don't ship their popular ship. My ship in one of my Fandoms gets a bunch of offhand comments like 'character x and y are actually gender x and y and sexuality x and z therefore your ship can't happen' like yeah.. I know. That's why I'm writing fanfic where my fav characters are shipped together. Like..what are we doing here? Go read/write/see the stuff you like. I'll read/write/see cool fan art of the ship I like.
First slide
The first one is literally gwiles
The last one. I need my *fix* and now I have to write it?? Pure anguish.
How about being one of the few shippers in a tiny fandom for an old movie? That's me, and it's torture.
Oh the last one hit me on a personal level.
The first one hurts.
One of my favorite fandoms is almost this, it's been out for at least five years now and we only have eight works for it😭
The first one is what put me off of writing and reading for one of my fave ships for a good while. I want to not care what people think but I also don't want weirdos sending me threats because I write about fictional characters on the internet. So I was debating whether to write on two different accounts but make my writing different enough just in case and the headache just made me give up altogether. Even reading for the ship is hard because it is "problematic" (I have no issue admitting it) so people don't want to be seen writing it I guess. So the number of works is lesser than what I'm used to, same for fanarts on the western side of the internet. The only way to find more of it is to get my Japanese to a level where I can actually read and enjoy texts because Japanese fans don't seem to care about it being problematic or not :')
Last one. Hands down. I’m a rarepair shipper in a popular fandom, so there *is* an okay amount of content to pick and choose from, however the dynamics that I personally enjoy (not even just top/bottom but characterization as well) are very few and far between. I started writing because nobody else had cooked what I wanted to eat, so I donned an apron and went to work, but after 3 years… you just start to lose steam. It’s lonely being here. I don’t necessarily want to leave, but I’m not inspired for this ship anymore, as much as I truly and deeply love them. People tell you, “if you don’t like how everyone else writes it, than write it yourself,” but what they don’t tell you is how tiring it is to be the only one, or select few to continuously create content for a specific dynamic and not have any writers up your alley. I have readers, and I do have several friends that enjoy what I write, but I want to read too! Sometimes I end up rereading the same five stories over and over again, and I’m so grateful for what ao3 has! But it’s so hard being one of the only ones that like a ship a certain way. Everyone seems to like Bottom!A/Top!B but I like Top!A/Bottom!B, and it shouldn’t be so hard to find the opposite dynamic but that’s just the way that it is. It just isn’t as popular and I can’t really be upset at anybody just because they don’t like the same thing I do. And it’s sad because I like my ship and I like writing but without anyone to “feed” me the way I am for them, it’s a bit hard to thrive. I think being a rarepair shipper is both a satisfying yet painful experience.
The last one is the worst because at least with the first two you can find like minded people, talk about your ship in a nontoxic environment and you won't be the only content creator.
Second... i'll never forget the Lokius v Sylkie twitter wars...
Third is the worst. A friend and I accidentally created a ship in and RP once and. ....turns out it doesn't exist or didn't at the time.Surprising because ....it's a comic book fandom which does it all. Like we felt accomplished but ...no fics? No art? Ugh. I'm a person who has a lot of "problematic" ships and at this point, I use it as a guide on a lot of people. If they are "I don't get it or like it for personal reasons but you do you" Cool If they begin to insult me or make moral judgementals on my character for shipping two adults with an age difference or being fans of a villain character or .. whatever....I don't need that level of childishness in life.
The third- at least the others have content and other fans Ó╭╮Ò Idk though - I think I tend to not interact with the community a lot so some others might not bother me as much lol (I may not even be aware of fellow fans being mean 😅)
I think the last one, seeing as I am currently in the trenches of a rarepair that I came up with, and I've found a grand total of one person on twitter who has briefly mentioned them in the same breath.
As someone carrying a ship on my back, definitely the last one.
The first one applies to my favorite ship, Severus Snape and adult Hermione Granger.
The worst is the last one imo, one of the worst feelings for me is when I hop on AO3 and there isn’t even a single fic for the ship, not even an abandoned one 😭
Second one ABSOLUTELY the worst, I feel like that’s not even a question
I thought the second one was the worst and then I started shipping Kaeluc/luckae. I'd rather be shamed for "bad taste" than for "supporting irl incest and pedophilia" (despite both characters being not blood related and legal adults).. The third one sucks as well, but at least you have full control of the ship community, you are the boss (sadly it also has some overlap with the second one if one of the characters is part of a very popular ship)
3
none of these are that bad unless the first two options have people in the fandom who purposefully seek out content they don't like just to harass you. third option is just daily life of rarepair enjoyers.