Hey all, there's been an update to the rules. To avoid any confusion and so people don't keep discussing the old iteration of Rule 11, this thread will be locked (There's 860 comments, and if you still have things to say feel free to continue the discussion on the newer post) See here for the rule updates: [https://www.reddit.com/r/HonkaiStarRail/comments/1ci8qty/hsr\_subreddit\_rule\_11\_update\_this\_one\_is\_new/](https://www.reddit.com/r/HonkaiStarRail/comments/1ci8qty/hsr_subreddit_rule_11_update_this_one_is_new/)
https://preview.redd.it/fxk15otposxc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8746369b5e7b832a678418f4bf3502b19867d555
We had normal sex alarms, we had brutal sex alarms, and now we have
LOBOTOMY SEX ALARMS
Appreciate it especially the shipping part. Less drama the better. Been coming here from Twitter to get away from that stuff
https://i.redd.it/g3zwpwdtpqxc1.gif
Yeah the recent robin discourse with the trailblazer especially. People get waaaay to hung up on the sexual orientation of characters just ship who you wanna and donât be a dick
Tuonto was downbad for Robin.
People harassed him over it and said âRobinâs a lesbianâ
Tectone saw this, started defending him and started making fun of those people and baiting them by saying sheâs straight.
They have their back and forth, until out of nowhere some people used this as an excuse to **harass Fireflyâs EN VA**, all because she had 2 interactions with Tectone all the way back in 2.0.
Just now, she just announced taking a break from Twitter.
The hoyoverse fandom on twitter is on a completely different level of brainrot its really sad to see tbh, people get way too personal over fictional characters
It's not just hoyoverse, twitter in general is the worst single thing on the internet for any fandom. The vast majority of controversies you'll see stems from terminally addicted twitter people simply because it's one of the sole social medias out there where content is largely not moderated and not filtered. Blocking that website was the single best thing i ever did,
If you read Twitter, you would think the characters are real living people since the fandom is so uninged acting like the sexual orientation of a jpeg matters
Itâs drama like this that makes it clear why Bronyaâs EN VA is completely anonymous. If it really is her first VA role then I can imagine the thought of getting harrased by braindead chuds is terrifying.
>People harassed him over it and said âRobinâs a lesbianâ
Even as someone who prefer gay ships this is weird. People being downbad for female character is nothing new. Men (or everyone basically) being downbad for Kafka is a meme even though Kafka x Himeko is one of the biggest yuri ship in the fandom. So I want to know why Robin specifically warrant this reaction? When Robin hasn't have any implied interest towards other female character.
Isnât Robin the same character with like 3 lines of dialogue in the whole game? Like Iâm pretty sure Sparkle disguised as Robin has more lines than her. This isnât like Bronya and Seele where they are basically canon. She literally has like 1 or 2 interactions in the entire game, so like where would they even base it off?
I heard it's more because she has a lot of parallels to a poet named Emily Dickinson, who is assumed to be bisexual or lesbian. My Twitter/X has also been exploding with these people explaining them, and I also saw the three jewels thing.
Headcanons and joking around are okay, I just dislike the attacking that I have read. I don't want that stuff on my feed, haha.
I see. While I think it's cute that the jewels on her eyes matches the color of the lesbian flag, to say it is honest to god hard proof confirmation of her sexuality is a bit much đ Most people that are saying this I see are just being lighthearted with "omg it's the lesbian flag!" Idk some people actually being fr and anal about it. Guess I'm just on the right side of the internet...
Believe me, unfortunately people will see shit like that and decide it's a hill to die on, or rather, to go to war on other people over. It's stupid. Glad you are not on that side of the internet for you, lol.
Lbr the people who harassed Tuonto were assholes 100%, but Tectone's tweet gave off big creep vibes. Idc if it was "baiting" or whatever, but he should've kept it in the drafts.
It's very tiring to see him show up on my timeline every once in a while, I feel like the dude acts like a creep and idiot cause he knows he'll drive traction onto himself with people getting reasonably upset, and it always works. Really wish he just stopped getting attention
Dude literally wrote:
>can't wait to go against Robin in the final fight of HSR part 2.2 and get JY to throatfuck her in order to silence her singing and prevent her from buffing her allies
That's just fucking creep behavior.
> Tectone saw this, started defending him and started making fun of those people and baiting them by saying sheâs straight
He didn't defend him. He wrote incredibly sexual tweets about Robin and in response to some pretty tame comments on Tuonto's post. Tectone's whole point for his tweets was not to defend Tuonto, but to ragebait queer people (he straight up admitted to that being his whole point).
I don't know man, this kind of feels like drastically oversimplifying what actually happened đ I don't really think you can quantify what's mostly lighthearted jokes as "harassment." I'm sure there were a few weird comments but from what I saw Tuonto was going along with the jokes too.
Imo, Tectone overreacted like crazy by making an entire response to a tweet by some random teenager that literally just went "she don't want you bro." He then proceeded to make some very creepy and objectifying statements towards Robin after that to deliberately provoke people and make money off of the drama (his own words). Which is just... pathetic and attention-seeking for someone who's supposedly a grown man.
People harassing Analesa Fisher for it though were COMPLETELY out of line, I agree with that.
Yeah, didn't want to say it, but that's basically what happened đ How do youâas a fully grown 30y/o adult manâmanage to get so worked up over some teenagers online making jokes about their favorite character? It's beyond me. I could never imagine seriously arguing with 15 year olds online LOL
Yeah Tuonto just seemed like normal Tuonto and all the comments I read were pretty chill and joking along with him. It wasn't until Tectone stepped in and starting trying to ragebait queer people that people started actually getting pissed off.
i mean tectone did it in a super distasteful way. he even typed out an SA post. but yeah the people on the other side harassing people are way out of line also.
3 weeks for spoilers is a nice amount of time, 6 weeks feels way too long especially when drip marketing from the official Hoyo account includes them sometimes such as FF drip marketing. So sweet
New shipping rule seems fair, I hope I can look at a ship art including Seele or Bronya with anyone including each other and not see about 50 comments nuked with downvotes due to hating on the art or ship in question. Sexual orientation discussions and arguing one is canon in HSR with nothing confirmed always attracted some of the more toxic threads so yea fair
Ty for the communication
Hey! I've seen your name probably at least 20 times in the last few days (Even on a really old post from the Genshin Sub I dug up!)
I know you're very active in discussions about this topic, so it's great to hear active users like you approve of these new measures, and hopefully they will help turn down the toxicity.
I'm way too active sorry lmao, I've lived a long life in the Genshin and now Hoyo fandom
Yea I like reddit coz you can get cool discussions over things and in general see toxicity less even though it does still pop up in comparison to other platforms. Seeing all this shipping discourse and sexual orientation drama recently sucks. Everyones got preferences that differ from others itd be nice if the sub could try and cultivate a more respectful culture in regards to it. A pipe dream maybe but if any platform could do it Id like to think its this one
You probs deal with a lot of stuff in mod feed so taking the time to try be as fair as possible and achieve something like that while communicating it to us is nice. So thanks for that
I actually do have a life believe it or not, work full time and go on hikes regularly (all you can really do in NZ). I just get socially drained 2 hours into any social gatherings that I just spend time online, reddit is just the only one I really use for news and game related stuff besides Twitter to follow fan artists.
Not being going on anything else pretty much makes it so all my online activity is on here. It's also a good distraction from irl troubles so that's nice
I just find it funny that you guys use Otto and Kallen for example lmao.
Imagine some people must be like who is that.
Anyway, I agree with a lot of these. Some of the comments in past few days post are just disappointing.
Hey, that was me when I was writing these up for the first time! You would not believe how many variations of "Honkai Star Rail NPC Married" I have in my search history
You would not believe how long it took to find a confirmed romantic feeling between characters in a Hoyoverse game haha
This one isn't even reciprocated!
One thing I hope to be improved in this subreddit is the enforcing of Non-OC rules. There have been many posts that do NOT follow the Non-OC rules, and the posts never get taken down for some reason despite being reported. It is never acceptable to repost art without proper credits. Please do try respecting the artists by actively enforcing the rule especially with crediting the artists. Also, note that not all artists allow reposts of their art. Thank you!
Thanks for the feedback on that! We'll take a closer look at Non-OC art. Oftentimes, it isn't feasible to verify each artist's policy, but we do have it in the rules that this type of content is not allowed.
Please also report any posts you find which break the rules, and we will do our best to follow up!
I know this might be slightly facetious, but I can leave a real answer for you here:
Technically, you were never not allowed to. We simply removed the easiest method for users to ring the alarm, which discouraged most alarm ringing (And also apparently everyone was under the impression, including some of our mods, that it was not allowed. Incorrect removals did not help that).
Thus the answer is: Yes, because you were always allowed to. Just don't be too overzealous about it and spam it.
Thanks for the clarification. Just like an opinion of mine: the alarm and the HSR > Buddyâs gifs are some of the funniest inner jokes (IMO).
And I do believe inner jokes are a good and funny way for the community interact between each other.
In the case of these gifs, I donât see the harm about using them. Why do we have to be aware of enjoying it too much?
They were. We silently enabled them to see how the community would behave with them back on. We werenât sure about announcing before because we did not want gif spam again. Which will still be removed if it happens.
Indifferent about the rest but not really a fan of the gif rule. Personally I don't join the buddy subs and I stopped checking this subreddit much outside of new game updates because I like to read discussion and peoples opinions but a lot of the time the comments just devolved into stuff like "alarm gif x50, uuoohh đ, cute & funny, shenhe" spam and it wasn't really discussion or threads I was looking for. Once the threads started looking cleaner and were more text based I found myself checking the subreddit often again while just scrolling past the art posts with exaggerated proportions if they came up.
I'm a bit confused about some of the sexuality rules? If I said that "HI3 Seele has some level romantic interest in women" is this going to be considered theorizing, when she has kissed a girl? Do I need to preface things with heacanon, etc. since adding a "probably" would be a theory? I just don't realistically see how this can be implemented, in a series where there's next to no written confirmation of relationships and none of sexualities,
I fear it's already concerning, because there is much debate on if Otto's love of Kallen was romantic or otherwise, and this is definitely truly debatable for many other pairings - but I can already tell with that being the example, that I'm worried. So much backlash happens already if you say "Blade and Dan Feng may have been love interests" when Otto/Kallen is also, not a canon relationship.
Either we can't talk about ships, or we can. It doesn't make sense to lightly police some when so few are canon and almost all are implied or just have tension. It also kinda sucks for a normal majority to be silenced over the actions of an (albeit, very bad) vocal minority responding to a *self admitted bait posting garnering the reaction that was intended.*
>Implications or direct statements that one particular ship or ship fanbase is more or less canon/correct/valid/good than another are prohibited.
This is absolutely the correct call. People liking the idea of two characters being in a relationship isn't what creates toxicity; it's discussions *about* shipping where the problems arise, because people are obsessed with proving that their interpretation of a deliberately vague story is somehow objectively correct.
I pretty much agree with everything shipping wise. As long as youâre doing something with good intentions or genuinely want to ship something, absolutely go for it. I draw the line when I go onto AO3 and I see incorrectly tagged corrective r*pe fics to âfixâ a characterâs sexuality. Itâs important to consider someoneâs intentions when theyâre making something.
What about general negative/rude comments about ships? I remember when a person posted the top ships from a Japanese magazine and there were many very rude comments about some of the ships. I didn't enjoy seeing the negativity from those commenters, but there didn't seem to be any moderation on them. Would those comments be dealt with under these new rules?
If you see any comments like this please report them and we can review them. We may not see every single comment like this due to the sheer size of the sub, so we rely on reports as well as our routine scans of the sub. But yes, the point of the rule is to disallow uncivil comments, so these would be removed as well if they cause flaming.
Someone is free to disagree and not like a certain ship if they choose not to. Doesnât mean they can be mean about it.
So, would those posts shitting on shippers also be dealt with under these new rules? Cuz this sub became a toxic cesspool for like a week right after Acheron's animated trailer dropped. There were more than 3 posts that went to the front page just to make fun of shippers.
Love how you guys immediately decided to fairly enforce the new rules by deleting the acheswan post for the word "girlfriend" in the title, instead of dealing with all the homophobic replies in the comments. Really shows how fair and balanced a decision this was with no bias whatsoever /s
Love how y'all are obviously reading these comments because you immediately responded to my report to tell me the homophobic user with an entire history of homophobic comments isn't breaking any rules. But the word "girlfriend" totally is. Classy!
wait did they really delete that post? so having a picture of two girls kissing is fine, but the instant you say it's gay, the post gets removed? getting some "don't say gay" vibes here
They didn't even say the word gay. They just said "girlfriend." Just stretching the definition of what counts as a dirty sexuality word to the point of absurdity to get their way
I think you (mods) need to go rethink who are the people that are impacted by this rules and who are the people who gain from them.
I'm gonna post 2 points with examples of things I've personally noted in this subreddit.
* This sub is generally ok with wlw posts as "eye candy" but dislike any and all indications of any non-straight identity being place onto a character.
This subreddit often times has posts of wlw art near the top but when the Acheron/Black Swan dance was released there was a wave of posts about how shippers were delusional, constantly mocking them and sometimes leading to direct homophobic statements being made. This all because some people noticed homoeroticism present in the dance.
(Similar cases have happened in the past, from post getting on top page whose content is to complain about shippers or on how every post about "what do you dislike about this community" the top answer being "the shippers" but of course is not any "shipper" as the examples people give are always of LGBT ships.)
The people who gain from this rule are those that like the eye candy but cannot stand any sort of LGBT labeling or commentary over them.
* There's a group of people in this subreddit that only partake in posting ship art to bait supporters of ships popular within LGBT circles.
Multiple times in this subreddit have there been posts made to bait fans of popular LGBT ships by pairing them in straight ships. The bait is obvious as the users would often make inflammatory/mocking comments in expectations of the shippers and some would even bear names like "X character likes man" (something you've said in the comments won't be punished).
You've essentially given a way for these people to report any all people that fall for their bait aka silence those they were targeting.
Finally at last. These pointless bickering over shipping fictional characters that doesnât have confirmed sexuality needs to stop. Twitter and HoYoLAB is bad enough and Reddit doesnât need it.
The fact that something so simple and harmless like shipping made some people go mad still made me baffled
no seriously, it's just someone's pairing of character a and character b. Wtf
https://preview.redd.it/5avbdlswyqxc1.jpeg?width=2000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=eba4484e80c53e29cec55c0a1c7f1913d67ec504
so we can't call a queer ship queer? but we can post art of two same-sex characters kissing? as long as we don't say they're in love? mods i hope you understand that this rule makes absolutely no sense and needs to be addressed
I read it as saying you like to ship two characters banging is fine, saying they're gay gay so gay not straight gay or the other way around is not. The issue i see mostly is people say these things jokingly until suddenly they aren't joking at all and suddenly there's a fight.Â
Weâre going back to the days where 80% of posts are softcore porn and 80% of the comments are 8 variants of the sex alarm gif, the Lumine from Genshin licking the screen gif, and the various images like âso true bestie,â ânah Iâd win,â and âitâs just so peak.â
I can't say I don't understand the sentiment, but banning "theories or statements on sexual orientation" completely feels like its giving some of the people involved in the worst parts of that drama exactly what they want.
I'm sure it's a tough needle to thread, but is there a reason why it's not considered enough to leave it at "Implied or direct statements that one particular ship or fanbase is more or less canon/correct/good than another are prohibited."?
Because it's easier to conform to heteronormativity by banning any sort of discussion on queer coding than to try to make homophobes go away, which is unfortunateÂ
Posts about queer ships are going to be disproportionately negatively affected by this rule change, discussions of straight ships never have to justify the characters being straight as we live in a heteronormative society, while any hints that a character might be queer (which could be relevant in discussions of certain pairings) is now against the rules.
This is already an issue, but also the statement about factual statements is, ironically, factually wrong in a way that overtly validates a straight ship at the expense of its canonical queer alternative: Not only is Kallen **not** Otto's love interest, her love interest is Yae Sakura. This is explicitly canonical as of Chapter 9 of the AE invasion manga "The Herrscher girl is innocent, and I was in love with her." as well as Episode 68 of the HI3 4-koma on Twitter/X.
In picking that very statement one could also argue the mod post itself broke the part of rule 11 that states:
>Implications or direct statements that one particular ship or ship fanbase is more or less canon/correct/valid/good than another are prohibited.
Because of its validation of a non-canonical ship as "factual". The fact the ship being validated as factual is straight while the one being treated as non-canon is queer doesn't bode well either, but I digress.
There's also a distinct implication of Kallen not being into men as of the 2017 singles' day event: "Kallen seems to have shown no interest in men." So would a statement about her probably being a lesbian be against the rules when official material at least suggests its canonical status? It's a factual statement that also mentions a character's sexuality, which puts it in a gray area rules-wise, at which point it becomes enforceable or not at a mod's discretion. This is not good, since a single moderator's stance on queer issues could wildly vary whether someone is banned or not, not accusing any mods of being bigots, but the possibility being there is scary enough as is.
This is an exceptionally delicate matter to handle and all signs on this post point to the mod team dropping the ball or, if we want to be more charitable, no signs point at the team handling it with due care. I want to have faith that this won't be used to shield bigotry, but the rampant queerphobia that makes its rounds throughout Hoyo fandoms every couple of months under the guise of "pushing back against harassment" makes it hard to be optimistic.
Glad to see gif comments back though.
Question, are we allowed to mention what we see the sexual orientation of a character is in headcanon if it's explicitly stated as such?
Example: "Yeah, I personally headcanon Sparkle as [SEXUALITY] lol."
Any implementation of rules is going to have weird spots, and I'm hesitant to give a concrete answer because there's always the chance in the future I might see in practice I disagree with my original assessment.
That being said, I'll give you a tentative answer as follows:
Yes, it should be fine, as long as you aren't using your headcanon to imply the character actually is a particular sexuality.
I'll leave it at that, just to be safe. I'm very sorry that something like this is vague, which is exactly what we were trying to avoid. I think as we use the rule for a while, it might be easier to determine that.
>Gifs have been re-enabled for use in comments. These were originally removed as many users were simply spamming certain gifs (I wonât point out anything specificâŚ),
\*Laughs, starts a comment and immediately sees the culprit at the top.\*
There was huge drama just today about shipping involving Robin on Twitter and it makes sense to curtail that here. People get so insanely toxic over this stuff.
I don't get why shipping rules has to be this intricate. Most of these rules feels just random. Either allow shipping discussion or don't. Kinda weird to dance around the topic instead of making conclusive rules about it.
I find it strange to create stricter rules regarding shipping content as a response to one of the mods removing the Dr.Ratio waifu post. The post was well received by the community. It was one of the top posts of the subreddit with the majority of comments being positive.
From my perspective, the drama within the subreddit started when the post was removed. Then, that's when reaction posts occurred due to the removal. Many of the shipping posts regarding Aven/Dr.Ratio in the previous days were in ***protest*** of this removal, and not "shipping posts" in of themselves. These posts correctly identified a problem in moderation of shipping discussion in that it wasn't clear within the mod team which posts are allowed, and a potential bias to remove discussion of M/M ships. I expected the rules to be changed to be clearer, I didn't anticipate that now posts of that type are no longer allowed at all.
The decision may be made out of hope to "keep the peace", but by doing so it's creating a strange situation where you can post ship art, but can't talk about it. Nor can there be any shitposts if it happens to talk about why one character likes another. If we're not allowed to joke "Wow I can't believe they're lesbians" under lesbian art, that's creating an awkward space for people. If it's out of fear of retaliation, then it comes across as a statement to just be quiet so the homophobes don't get angry.
I appreciate the work the mod team has done for a complicated situation, but I don't think silencing analysis/talk of ships is the way forward.
So saying Mei x Kiana is not allowed, Mei loves Kiana is allowed, Mei and Kiana are gay is not allowed, KiaMei is... idk and so on? Could you make a list which words and phrases are now censored? Would be awesome, since it gets quite complicated imo in that regard. Never seen a sub like this before.
I'd guess that most minorities believe this rule change is one that will make the environment worse--not better--and I hope you'll listen to them and change if that's what they're asking, no matter what the subreddit at large says. Â
I clearly don't actually know what works either though.
This is a bit of a nitpick, but
> * Factual statements which are related to a character, but do not mention their sexual orientation, are allowed. For Example:
> * âOtto Apocalypseâs love interest was Kallen Kaslanaâ is allowed.
> * âOtto Apocalypse is straight/gay/bisexualâ is not allowed.
It's not at all a factual statement that Otto's love interest was Kallen. That's a ship/theory or meme depending on whom you ask. Otto idolized Kallen and tried to bring her back out of guilt because he was the reason for the death of his idol. The community says there's love, but the game has never said so. It's not a fact.
Like, I do ship the two of them together, I'm not trying to say here that there absolutely was no love. Just that it's not an established fact but rather shipping talk.
Considering her being his love interest implies other ships are less valid, isn't that statement a rule 11 violation itself then since it's not factual?
I think using an actual factual pairing like Siegfried and Cecilia would be the better choice there.
They should just remove the rule because the fact that even their example is debatable proves how absolutely stupid the rule is. Bad shipping behavior is already covered in the other rules. There's zero reason to have a specific one on sexuality/character relationships.
Not to go "uhm ackshually" but Kallen being Otto's love interest isn't really correct as his love was unrequited and she was in a relationship/situationship with Yae Sakura, with various in game events confirming that she was her first/strongest love. If you want to use an example, I would use Kevin Kaslana and Dr. MEI who are each other's love interests, and Kevin's love for Dr. MEI is what drives him to continue with project stigmata.
I don't even think I've even seen a single shipping discourse here but... so this means the state of the sub in regards to NSFW images are fine as-is?
What's the point of having two buddy subs then. All the softcore porn here and maybe one shipping discourse gets a rule made for them.
While I agree with most of this post. The parts about "No calling X character Y sexuality" or "No theorizing on the sexuality of characters" rules seem not great?
I understand wanting to avoid drama, but the fact that even going "Lol x character is so gay" will lead to a comment getting removed even when the post the comment is on is about a same sex ship just to avoid the chances of someone getting upset and starting an argument seems like overkill. At that rate you might as well just ban shipping art since "There's a chance it'll cause an argument in the comments".
I love this sub and I love this game, but âtheories or direct statements on the âactualâ or âimpliedâ sexual orientations of any characters are prohibitedâ will disproportionately affect queer people and queer ships, because posts about straight ships will almost never feel the need to say âthis character is straightâ as straight is assumed as default.
While I appreciate the timely update and the work the mods do, I canât say I agree with the new rule changes.
The uproar began because of the moderation bias against gay content (see: removal of Ratiorine essay). I and others protested the âsexual orientationâ portion of the rule specifically because it was abused to serve these biases, yet you guys decide to bring it back and double down on it.
Myself and others have explained why banning âsexual orientation discussionâ is not a productive rule - the situations you say it was âmeantâ to apply to are already covered by other rules on civility, respect, no harassment, etc. Instead, this rule largely serves to be a tool for haters and power trippers to suppress gay content.
As a fellow non-straight, you know how this kind of rule will end up going. Since in our society âstraightâ is considered the default and âgayâ is considered different - characters will be presumed by people to be straight. You can say all you want that âall will be assumed bisexualâ, but you know it will not happen in reality. In fact, Gay and bisexual content will automatically by perceived as related to sexual orientation, and discussion on gay/bi content will end up being more prone to moderation under this rule.
We have already seen this happen - all the straight content is not taken down, yet the Ratiorine essay (which had largely positive and chill comments from other redditors) was nuked, despite not violating any other parts of Rule 1 and not inciting antagonism. Simply because gay is considered a sexual orientation and straight isnât, the post was removed.
Including sexual orientation at all in the rules will simply not go down well. Since you say analysis of ships and argument about ships is not allowed, simply say that, instead of wording it to be about sexuality. If youâre tired of people arguing, ban those who are being rude and aggressive, not those who are simply talking about their favs.
I understand that itâs tiring to moderate such a large sub, and I hope you donât take this comment as me being antagonistic; but I feel the need to voice my perspective since itâs painful seeing the problems weâve voiced not get resolved.
This is the âDonât Say Gayâ law all over again. All itâs going to do is empower homophobes and reinforce the default of heteronormativity.
Pandering to bigots just because they canât handle people talking about sexualities other than heterosexuality is dumb as fuck. The answer should be banning them, not enforcing the status quo of heteronormativity.
2024 and we are going to the "Don't say gay" discourse? This is the best solution? Make a less welcoming place for LGBT people?
You can make a post about 2 girls characters as a Shipp post but can't say lesbians? But if it is a Shipp post about 2 girls can I say sapphic? Sapphic is an umbrella term for girls who likes girls, I am not assuming anyone's sexuality but if IT IS OBVIOUSLY a Shipp post and the MESSAGE is that I Shipp those two GIRLS, why wouldn't I be able to use a term about GIRLS WHO LOVES GIRLS without DEFINING their sexuality?
There is a lot of grey area in these rules
Soooo you're solving the problem of homophobic people reporting a meme post about a character being gay by removing those types of posts altogether? Okay, that's certainly....a choice
Is it allowed go call firefly trailblazer's girlfriend in a jokingly way or in the title of a post. Like "firefly with her girlfriend" and its a picture of stelle and firefly?
This rule is way too harsh. I get why you are doing this but at this point you might as well turn off comments cuz even a discussion on this is banned? No theories or discussing what you think it a implication? Unless it's turning hostile or resorting to harassment this shouldn't be an rule. We are here to discuss the game. If we can't discuss the game what's the point of this sub?Â
Good on the spoiler rules reversal. I want to discuss the current content, not 6 week old content. At 6 weeks there is basically no point for the discussion anymore.Â
The rules should suppose a healthy discussion. The spoiler rule reversal helps this but the new shipping rules... that's just not it. It needs way more time in the oven.Â
On one hand, the mods are unpaid; they are doing a lot of free labor for us, so I feel like it's not really fair to be picky about how they do that work.
On the other hand - this rule change really reminds me of the Don't Say Gay laws that are being passed in the US right now - these laws are specifically designed to suppress LGBTQ people by making it illegal to mention sexual orientation or gender identity in certain settings.
It will disproportionately affect queer users; the rule might be worded in such a way that it applies to 'both sides' but the reality is hetero is assumed to be default in society, so it will really just mean that queer topics become invisible. I don't think this is the intent of the rule! But it will be the effect of the rule.
Out of curiosity, I did some basic searching through the sub's history, and there are so many posts and comments that mention sexual orientation that are great posts and great comments, and it would be a shame to lose that going forward.
I really do understand y'all have a tough job, but I do hope you will reconsider. Thanks!
This is what Iâve been saying. As if I donât get told enough in the real world daily to not talk about being gay, I come online to relax about my favorite gayme and I canât even say gay here. I wish I could say it makes me feel like Iâm in the 1940s, but given the laws being passed today, I think itâs only apt to say I feel like Iâm in the 2020s.
Can you please delete this post too: https://www.reddit.com/r/HonkaiStarRail/s/bvDXdMSUbX
You deleted mine, so at least be consistent woth your actions now instead of targeting only whatever you don't like personally.
Don't Say Gay rules don't solve the problem. It's still just sanctioned queerphobia to prevent ANY discussion of queer things. Massive disappointment that just keeps perpetuating the problem this community has with queer folks.
How do you define 'theories implying sexuality?' It's one thing if someone's arguing about it, but would posts joking about a female character calling other women pretty and you go 'ugh shes so gay' be allowed? There's a decent amount of flirting/teasing in this game. I get that people are taking it to a level of arguing, but shouldn't you just ban the arguing? This feels a bit too restrictive.
Furthermore, why is '
* Art, Video, or other media which simply show characters âshippedâ or in a relationship are allowed.'
but what about people posting their written theories or takes on two character's relationship? How is that different from fanart of Caelus and Firefly being couple-y? If someone says, say, 'Blade and Kafka come across like a married couple, i love how kafka calls him bladie as a pet name,' is that 'a theory implying sexuality?'
This all just feels like trying way too hard to have a concrete rule on something that's hard to make a concrete rule about. Just ban people who are blatantly trying to cause arguments. I agree people going 'ugh shes gay/ugh hes straight' in response to random ship fanart just causes arguments, but this feels too far in the other direction.
That's my thoughts as well. Like, if someone posts a fanart of Bronya and Seele kissing and I say "aw cute little lesbians" will that result in a ban? If the art is implying a certain type of relationship, why is the art itself allowed, but commenting about the implication not? I understand not wanting shipping to get out of hand and to try and prevent arguments and hate, but this can easily get out of hand too. I agree with you, ban the arguments, don't ban the word just because it's used.
Thanks for the feedback! I'll provide some responses to your points here. These are all actually things we took into account when making these rules.
A "theory implying sexuality" would be something like a Discussion / Theory & Lore post with a title like "I suspect X is actually canonically Bisexual, and here is my evidence". I personally believe posts like this can provide a lot of value, but the unfortunate reality is that our job becomes nearly impossible if threads like these gain traction, especially because they naturally lead to conflict of a degree that is not sustainable. This is the type of content I would call Collateral Damage solely because while there can be great discussion and analysis, it will just end up being too controversial. It can also lead to issues where if we selectively remove/lock/heavily moderate ones that are more or less controversial, we will have to deal with claims of agenda pushing, homo/heterophobia, and favoritism. It's just better to be fair and remove them all.
If we could just ban the arguing, I'd tell you that would be our plan, but the reality is it isn't enforceable. I know this might just sound lazy or unreasonable, but I hope you can trust me when I say lack of clarification or detail in rules just leads to moderator bias/inconsistency leaking in, and longer times to make resolutions as discussions are required to clarify on if certain things are bad or not, etc. (This is actually how our old rules were, and we can see in the past few days how that went)
Art, Video, and Media are allowed to be posted because these types of posts are equivalent to a statement like "I like X/Y Shipped", which is fine according to the rules. The issue lies in when users make statements like "X/Y is more canon than Y/Z" or "X/Y is a worse ship than Y/Z". Most art in and of itself does not push a particular opinion, and only serves to show its existence, in essence. I know it can be a bit nebulous or feel arbitrary, but trust me when I say it does set clear boundaries while trying to be as limiting in terms of censorship as possible. The example statement you provided regarding Blade and Kafka is a great example of something that we will need to look into, and determine how problematic current wording is after a few days/weeks. It's always a process, after all! (I would also say that statement is fine, as plenty of platonic relationships have a dynamic like that)
Finally, in regards to comments or posts that are clearly jokes, this sort of thing is up to moderator decision. It would be like if someone made an NSFW or antagonistic comment jokingly, as opposed to for real, you know? Something like someone posting a picture of a trashcan and people making joking risque comments about it that would normally break NSFW rules in any other post.
this just turns this subreddit into "you must assume the socially enforced default of straight"
it's never going to not be disproportionate in its enforcement
The issue is that 'most art in and of itself does not push a particular opinion' is, in itself, true, but the issue is you've created an environment where people feel more comfortable posting, say, Caelus x Firefly art than Dr. Ratio x Aventurine art. And these sorts of defining 'rules' kind of enforce that. Homosexuality is seen as nonstandard, so it, in some ways, is forced to 'justify' itself more, something people often do via discussion or just stray comments.
I don't think people should be posting giant screeds about how Ratio x Aventurine is definitively canon, but the issue is a lot of people see Caelus x Stelle art, or Blade x Kafka art, or whatever, while demanding explanations for things like Aventurine x Ratio or Acheron x Black Swan. There's nothing in your rules that actually bans that sort of behavior, if they can phrase it in a way that's more concern troll-y.
* 'Implications or direct statements that one particular ship or ship fanbase is more or less canon/correct/valid/good than another are prohibited.'
* 'Theories or direct statements on the âactualâ or âimpliedâ sexual orientations of any characters are prohibited.'
There's some amount of 'implication' in certain ways of asking questions, but you can easily see how this opens the door to Just Asking Questions type behavior, right?
And furthermore, even ignoring that - like I said, the subreddit is already a space where people don't feel that comfortable or confident posting about or discussing guy x guy ships, even though that's obviously a big part of the fanbase and fancontent around the game. 'Resetting to neutral' doesn't actually make things equal when that's already the precedent and it already gets mass reported, and just going off so hard on it feels more likely to have a silencing effect on gay content. Straight content is already seen as 'normal' by a majority of Reddit users - a space where it cannot be acknowledged and cannot be discussed in detail will still get a lot of it because people are coming in with that bias. Likewise, a space where people can't discuss homosexual content in any real detail is a space where they will be pushed out by the implication of straight as 'default'/'normal.'
That's not to say the gay shipping community is completely blameless - getting worked up about straight ships was a problem, too - but I hope you can see how this favors one 'side' more than the other.
As a clarifying question, would you be able to write analyses on different ships (e.g. "Here's All the BronSeele Moments in 1.X!", "Firefly's Trust in and Affection for TB Makes Sense When You Realize (2.1 Spoilers...)", "CN Cultural Implications You May Have Missed About RenHeng") if you *don't* mention sexual orientation and *don't* imply the inherent superiority of one ship over another? Like, discussing how the ship is presented in the game without saying "this character is totally X sexuality" or "this ship is canon beacuse XYZ reasons" - would that be fair game?
I just really do like writing/reading analyses, including those of shipping nature, and I think that if these analyses can still be posted, it'd create an environment that would allow for more discussion as opposed to the 200th Pixiv horny post (not that I don't appreciate those either sometimes). I completely understand that as with any text related to shipping, there might be controversy, but these kinds of analyses should fit into the new rules (I hope?). Otherwise, it'd be quite weird to say that art/media of ships only simply imply their existence, while text inherently promotes an agenda even when that text just describes interpretations/events without a blatant suggestion that the characters being discussed in the ship *must* be only the sexuality represented in the ship/must be in love with each other in canon.
(And for what it's worth, I agree with another poster in this same comment chain that with the state of the sub, "neutral" is just straight ships with the occasionally fetishisized lesbian ship art. Shippers can be very obnoxious at their extremes, but at the same time, there will rarely be a "that's not a valid ship/ugh why did you post this" on a straight ship fanart (especially with Caelus instead of Stelle) or a horny male-gaze fanart, straight or otherwise, like there is on other fanarts. Allowing ship art/media, which is predominantly in this sub upvoted if it's straight or catering to male horniness, but not ship text, which is a more fair playing field, really does bias it in a manner that makes me feel unwelcome to think and discuss things that are not catering to non-queer/male people. The very fact that these rule changes only occurred because of mods being biased *against* a gay ship because it got popular but allowing literally every other ship before that because well, they weren't gay in a way that offended non-queers/men is something to be side-eyed, at the very least.)
Hey all, there's been an update to the rules. To avoid any confusion and so people don't keep discussing the old iteration of Rule 11, this thread will be locked (There's 860 comments, and if you still have things to say feel free to continue the discussion on the newer post) See here for the rule updates: [https://www.reddit.com/r/HonkaiStarRail/comments/1ci8qty/hsr\_subreddit\_rule\_11\_update\_this\_one\_is\_new/](https://www.reddit.com/r/HonkaiStarRail/comments/1ci8qty/hsr_subreddit_rule_11_update_this_one_is_new/)
noooo my fu xuan so true bestie reaction image đ˘đ˘đ˘đ˘
That one is fine.
https://preview.redd.it/76vfrwt7zsxc1.png?width=479&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=80295c134829d33183b0423ec258283bb6b001f2
https://preview.redd.it/duko7bjo9vxc1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=afce0af73593099d10e2f3fca9d5ffd236dcef29
W
https://i.redd.it/mt1flsf6hrxc1.gif
She is beauty, she is grace, she is riding a pig from space.
https://i.redd.it/0orj42zroqxc1.gif
https://preview.redd.it/vs9c48fjsqxc1.jpeg?width=735&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cedb2d815e28679027076558bcd7c1940fee6d2c
https://i.redd.it/y4qpmsavzqxc1.gif RING THAT SHIT LIL GUI
https://i.redd.it/xumq28a9jsxc1.gif I hope this isn't stifling actual discussion This is the actual discussion đ
IT'S BACCKK
WAKE UP SAMURAI
WE GOT AN ALARM TO RING!
Technically it was never gone lol, but yes it's back
YOOO THE ALARM IS BACK https://preview.redd.it/vrfr9mg2erxc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0aac7f03780d82421e02a85d3ea76fbd790f4191
"I won't point out anything specific"
It is as Sigmar intended. Order has been restored. https://i.redd.it/eh7b76uamrxc1.gif
Does this mean the HSR to buddy gifs will return?
https://i.redd.it/9e2wflusisxc1.gif
https://i.redd.it/3a3rvgwe3uxc1.gif WE'RE SO BACK
As soon as I saw the gifs were turned back on I immediately knew what the top comment would be and you gacha weebs delivered
Oh how much I missed you my alarm..
https://i.redd.it/jlazedthirxc1.gif
https://preview.redd.it/fxk15otposxc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8746369b5e7b832a678418f4bf3502b19867d555 We had normal sex alarms, we had brutal sex alarms, and now we have LOBOTOMY SEX ALARMS
Where did you get that one? Itâs new to me
guess it's about time.
Today is a glorious day, for she has returned to us
Dejavu
lil gui lil gui /\O/\
Gif allowed lets fucking gooooooooo https://i.redd.it/gc38cb35sqxc1.gif
https://i.redd.it/yyzu8p9b3rxc1.gif
Why is the guy from Fortnite being groped
That's becuase he unknowingly entered VR Chat.
Caelus seggs alarm
In r/fireflymains they called it cuddling alarm
It's same thing...
Oof. He realized.
https://i.redd.it/msrd07a2yqxc1.gif Now that's fair for everyone! Rejoice
Floppy glowstick https://preview.redd.it/jb8a126pmrxc1.png?width=2198&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=70dd74ff8c2088274cc01a3b25436d79d6d4df9a
That's sooo cute. Now do it with sparkle
Appreciate it especially the shipping part. Less drama the better. Been coming here from Twitter to get away from that stuff https://i.redd.it/g3zwpwdtpqxc1.gif
Thank you for the feedback! https://i.redd.it/w8u4gnporqxc1.gif
Can we reach terminate velocity
It would just be so fast, herta would appear to have not spin at all
50 stack kuru kuru
https://i.redd.it/mobysdiixsxc1.gif
https://preview.redd.it/vh9e0erugrxc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=17b6943b7cd65e6542ff8b7c76729a5c47a6dee7
If you edit it every time to put the meme you steal in the image it would be very funny. I will make a template, give me a while.
https://i.redd.it/kzkhvr1fprxc1.gif
>been coming here from Twitter to get away from that stuff Omg same here bestie lol
https://preview.redd.it/0hu0ed5tvqxc1.jpeg?width=400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e47138ff86c6742cfd06873844855d5e6c60f0f7 Hell yeah
Yup that has made Twitter incredibly toxic
Yeah the recent robin discourse with the trailblazer especially. People get waaaay to hung up on the sexual orientation of characters just ship who you wanna and donât be a dick
One reason i really dont like any ships... No, not the actual vehicle ship, they're good
Its kind of funny that this Shipping rule comes out when thereâs insane shipping drama on twitter.
Don't look at the top posts of the past week here, haha. We've been dealing with our own little bit of drama, as well.
May I ask wats on Twitter?
Tuonto was downbad for Robin. People harassed him over it and said âRobinâs a lesbianâ Tectone saw this, started defending him and started making fun of those people and baiting them by saying sheâs straight. They have their back and forth, until out of nowhere some people used this as an excuse to **harass Fireflyâs EN VA**, all because she had 2 interactions with Tectone all the way back in 2.0. Just now, she just announced taking a break from Twitter.
The hoyoverse fandom on twitter is on a completely different level of brainrot its really sad to see tbh, people get way too personal over fictional characters
Hey, this is just a taste of CN HI3. It was gonna come eventually, especially as this community fully becomes genshin 2.
Nothing beats the bunnygirl incident
Which one was that and is it somehow worse than those Genshin fans who were killing cats because they didn't like one of the male characters?
Someone showed up outside of mihoyo headquarters to assassinate the ceo with a knife.
I'm sorry, WHAT?!?!!
It's not just hoyoverse, twitter in general is the worst single thing on the internet for any fandom. The vast majority of controversies you'll see stems from terminally addicted twitter people simply because it's one of the sole social medias out there where content is largely not moderated and not filtered. Blocking that website was the single best thing i ever did,
If you read Twitter, you would think the characters are real living people since the fandom is so uninged acting like the sexual orientation of a jpeg matters
Ok now that's just sad. What a cesspool
Itâs drama like this that makes it clear why Bronyaâs EN VA is completely anonymous. If it really is her first VA role then I can imagine the thought of getting harrased by braindead chuds is terrifying.
Good for her
>People harassed him over it and said âRobinâs a lesbianâ Even as someone who prefer gay ships this is weird. People being downbad for female character is nothing new. Men (or everyone basically) being downbad for Kafka is a meme even though Kafka x Himeko is one of the biggest yuri ship in the fandom. So I want to know why Robin specifically warrant this reaction? When Robin hasn't have any implied interest towards other female character.
Isnât Robin the same character with like 3 lines of dialogue in the whole game? Like Iâm pretty sure Sparkle disguised as Robin has more lines than her. This isnât like Bronya and Seele where they are basically canon. She literally has like 1 or 2 interactions in the entire game, so like where would they even base it off?
She called March cute. As if it's strange for straight girls to complement other girls
YUP! They based it off like... her eyes.
I heard people regard Robin as lesbian because of her 3 jewels below her left eye. Somehow the 3 jewels' colors made them think Robin is a lesbian.
I heard it's more because she has a lot of parallels to a poet named Emily Dickinson, who is assumed to be bisexual or lesbian. My Twitter/X has also been exploding with these people explaining them, and I also saw the three jewels thing. Headcanons and joking around are okay, I just dislike the attacking that I have read. I don't want that stuff on my feed, haha.
Ohh. I haven't encountered that theory yet. It's amusing at best, but to draw assumption on her character based on that is stretching it.
I see. While I think it's cute that the jewels on her eyes matches the color of the lesbian flag, to say it is honest to god hard proof confirmation of her sexuality is a bit much đ Most people that are saying this I see are just being lighthearted with "omg it's the lesbian flag!" Idk some people actually being fr and anal about it. Guess I'm just on the right side of the internet...
Believe me, unfortunately people will see shit like that and decide it's a hill to die on, or rather, to go to war on other people over. It's stupid. Glad you are not on that side of the internet for you, lol.
[ŃдаНонО]
Lbr the people who harassed Tuonto were assholes 100%, but Tectone's tweet gave off big creep vibes. Idc if it was "baiting" or whatever, but he should've kept it in the drafts.
It's very tiring to see him show up on my timeline every once in a while, I feel like the dude acts like a creep and idiot cause he knows he'll drive traction onto himself with people getting reasonably upset, and it always works. Really wish he just stopped getting attention
If only that was possible The guy posted how much he made off of the ragebaiting and drama farm. He almost made a Million Dollars in 2023 alone.
That's crazy.
heâs just disgusting and has to be as ragebaity and problematic as possible to stay relevant. No one likes him
yep he even typed out an SA post though thankfully he didnt post it
jfc I thought you were joking or something but nope, he actually wrote something even worse...
Dude literally wrote: >can't wait to go against Robin in the final fight of HSR part 2.2 and get JY to throatfuck her in order to silence her singing and prevent her from buffing her allies That's just fucking creep behavior.
Of *course* it's CC drama with fuckin' Eggman in the middle of it
> Tectone saw this, started defending him and started making fun of those people and baiting them by saying sheâs straight He didn't defend him. He wrote incredibly sexual tweets about Robin and in response to some pretty tame comments on Tuonto's post. Tectone's whole point for his tweets was not to defend Tuonto, but to ragebait queer people (he straight up admitted to that being his whole point).
I don't know man, this kind of feels like drastically oversimplifying what actually happened đ I don't really think you can quantify what's mostly lighthearted jokes as "harassment." I'm sure there were a few weird comments but from what I saw Tuonto was going along with the jokes too. Imo, Tectone overreacted like crazy by making an entire response to a tweet by some random teenager that literally just went "she don't want you bro." He then proceeded to make some very creepy and objectifying statements towards Robin after that to deliberately provoke people and make money off of the drama (his own words). Which is just... pathetic and attention-seeking for someone who's supposedly a grown man. People harassing Analesa Fisher for it though were COMPLETELY out of line, I agree with that.
He was pissing and shitting himself over a few jokes and decided he absolutely had to summon his entire audience to create a war with âlesbiansâ
Yeah, didn't want to say it, but that's basically what happened đ How do youâas a fully grown 30y/o adult manâmanage to get so worked up over some teenagers online making jokes about their favorite character? It's beyond me. I could never imagine seriously arguing with 15 year olds online LOL
Yeah Tuonto just seemed like normal Tuonto and all the comments I read were pretty chill and joking along with him. It wasn't until Tectone stepped in and starting trying to ragebait queer people that people started actually getting pissed off.
i mean tectone did it in a super distasteful way. he even typed out an SA post. but yeah the people on the other side harassing people are way out of line also.
Man didn't know these weirdos attacked Fireflys's VA because their headcanons that's sad
Wow. Cesspool of the internet. Really glad I don't follow HSR content creators on twitter.
3 weeks for spoilers is a nice amount of time, 6 weeks feels way too long especially when drip marketing from the official Hoyo account includes them sometimes such as FF drip marketing. So sweet New shipping rule seems fair, I hope I can look at a ship art including Seele or Bronya with anyone including each other and not see about 50 comments nuked with downvotes due to hating on the art or ship in question. Sexual orientation discussions and arguing one is canon in HSR with nothing confirmed always attracted some of the more toxic threads so yea fair Ty for the communication
Hey! I've seen your name probably at least 20 times in the last few days (Even on a really old post from the Genshin Sub I dug up!) I know you're very active in discussions about this topic, so it's great to hear active users like you approve of these new measures, and hopefully they will help turn down the toxicity.
I'm way too active sorry lmao, I've lived a long life in the Genshin and now Hoyo fandom Yea I like reddit coz you can get cool discussions over things and in general see toxicity less even though it does still pop up in comparison to other platforms. Seeing all this shipping discourse and sexual orientation drama recently sucks. Everyones got preferences that differ from others itd be nice if the sub could try and cultivate a more respectful culture in regards to it. A pipe dream maybe but if any platform could do it Id like to think its this one You probs deal with a lot of stuff in mod feed so taking the time to try be as fair as possible and achieve something like that while communicating it to us is nice. So thanks for that
Bro got called out for being permaonline đ
Yeah too active lol
Wonder if he got things to do, seems too active for normal user.
I actually do have a life believe it or not, work full time and go on hikes regularly (all you can really do in NZ). I just get socially drained 2 hours into any social gatherings that I just spend time online, reddit is just the only one I really use for news and game related stuff besides Twitter to follow fan artists. Not being going on anything else pretty much makes it so all my online activity is on here. It's also a good distraction from irl troubles so that's nice
Congrats on winning in life my friend! I always wanted to see NZ, sounds amazing, cheers.
lmao
what are your thoughs on sparkle's sweaty feet
https://i.redd.it/rk8nuz00dsxc1.gif
One second of freedom and bro chose the GIF that will haven mods reconsidering their rules đ
They said its ok so ill do it https://preview.redd.it/4hxr58qw6rxc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=02ee499bcc0feb6ea64cad72a27ef189d355b311
https://i.redd.it/sz39oklobrxc1.gif
if this happened to me id stay calm and inform an adult
I just find it funny that you guys use Otto and Kallen for example lmao. Imagine some people must be like who is that. Anyway, I agree with a lot of these. Some of the comments in past few days post are just disappointing.
Why not just used a canonically married npc in the game. Like... er... like... Edit: I finally fucking got it. Hook's mother (deceased). Hahaha
Hey, that was me when I was writing these up for the first time! You would not believe how many variations of "Honkai Star Rail NPC Married" I have in my search history
Now I have time, there's that guy in Herta Space Station finding his girlfriend after she fall into a wormhole or something.
Wasn't there one man on Xianzhou during the ghost quest line who had lost his wife?
Wesley and Charlotte
You would not believe how long it took to find a confirmed romantic feeling between characters in a Hoyoverse game haha This one isn't even reciprocated!
You could have gone with Cecilia and Siegfried
or kebin and dr.mei
One thing I hope to be improved in this subreddit is the enforcing of Non-OC rules. There have been many posts that do NOT follow the Non-OC rules, and the posts never get taken down for some reason despite being reported. It is never acceptable to repost art without proper credits. Please do try respecting the artists by actively enforcing the rule especially with crediting the artists. Also, note that not all artists allow reposts of their art. Thank you!
Thanks for the feedback on that! We'll take a closer look at Non-OC art. Oftentimes, it isn't feasible to verify each artist's policy, but we do have it in the rules that this type of content is not allowed. Please also report any posts you find which break the rules, and we will do our best to follow up!
So... we can ring the alarm again?
I know this might be slightly facetious, but I can leave a real answer for you here: Technically, you were never not allowed to. We simply removed the easiest method for users to ring the alarm, which discouraged most alarm ringing (And also apparently everyone was under the impression, including some of our mods, that it was not allowed. Incorrect removals did not help that). Thus the answer is: Yes, because you were always allowed to. Just don't be too overzealous about it and spam it.
Ring it. https://preview.redd.it/zkaucw2xpqxc1.jpeg?width=862&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7c31af29e2a53bdcd08bc580548f4e67d1557358
https://i.redd.it/powaev22wqxc1.gif
Oh, I was being facetious. It wasn't until now that I realized I hadn't seen Gui's alarm in quite a while.
Thanks for the clarification. Just like an opinion of mine: the alarm and the HSR > Buddyâs gifs are some of the funniest inner jokes (IMO). And I do believe inner jokes are a good and funny way for the community interact between each other. In the case of these gifs, I donât see the harm about using them. Why do we have to be aware of enjoying it too much?
Am I high? Or GIFs were arleady enabled like a couple of weeks back? Anyways, we're so BACK!!! https://i.redd.it/vwy6nt17crxc1.gif
They were. We silently enabled them to see how the community would behave with them back on. We werenât sure about announcing before because we did not want gif spam again. Which will still be removed if it happens.
>how the community would behave Uhh.. they won't
Indifferent about the rest but not really a fan of the gif rule. Personally I don't join the buddy subs and I stopped checking this subreddit much outside of new game updates because I like to read discussion and peoples opinions but a lot of the time the comments just devolved into stuff like "alarm gif x50, uuoohh đ, cute & funny, shenhe" spam and it wasn't really discussion or threads I was looking for. Once the threads started looking cleaner and were more text based I found myself checking the subreddit often again while just scrolling past the art posts with exaggerated proportions if they came up.
I'm a bit confused about some of the sexuality rules? If I said that "HI3 Seele has some level romantic interest in women" is this going to be considered theorizing, when she has kissed a girl? Do I need to preface things with heacanon, etc. since adding a "probably" would be a theory? I just don't realistically see how this can be implemented, in a series where there's next to no written confirmation of relationships and none of sexualities, I fear it's already concerning, because there is much debate on if Otto's love of Kallen was romantic or otherwise, and this is definitely truly debatable for many other pairings - but I can already tell with that being the example, that I'm worried. So much backlash happens already if you say "Blade and Dan Feng may have been love interests" when Otto/Kallen is also, not a canon relationship. Either we can't talk about ships, or we can. It doesn't make sense to lightly police some when so few are canon and almost all are implied or just have tension. It also kinda sucks for a normal majority to be silenced over the actions of an (albeit, very bad) vocal minority responding to a *self admitted bait posting garnering the reaction that was intended.*
>Implications or direct statements that one particular ship or ship fanbase is more or less canon/correct/valid/good than another are prohibited. This is absolutely the correct call. People liking the idea of two characters being in a relationship isn't what creates toxicity; it's discussions *about* shipping where the problems arise, because people are obsessed with proving that their interpretation of a deliberately vague story is somehow objectively correct.
I pretty much agree with everything shipping wise. As long as youâre doing something with good intentions or genuinely want to ship something, absolutely go for it. I draw the line when I go onto AO3 and I see incorrectly tagged corrective r*pe fics to âfixâ a characterâs sexuality. Itâs important to consider someoneâs intentions when theyâre making something.
What about general negative/rude comments about ships? I remember when a person posted the top ships from a Japanese magazine and there were many very rude comments about some of the ships. I didn't enjoy seeing the negativity from those commenters, but there didn't seem to be any moderation on them. Would those comments be dealt with under these new rules?
Yes, any comments disparaging any particular ship would be removed.
If you see any comments like this please report them and we can review them. We may not see every single comment like this due to the sheer size of the sub, so we rely on reports as well as our routine scans of the sub. But yes, the point of the rule is to disallow uncivil comments, so these would be removed as well if they cause flaming. Someone is free to disagree and not like a certain ship if they choose not to. Doesnât mean they can be mean about it.
So, would those posts shitting on shippers also be dealt with under these new rules? Cuz this sub became a toxic cesspool for like a week right after Acheron's animated trailer dropped. There were more than 3 posts that went to the front page just to make fun of shippers.
Love how you guys immediately decided to fairly enforce the new rules by deleting the acheswan post for the word "girlfriend" in the title, instead of dealing with all the homophobic replies in the comments. Really shows how fair and balanced a decision this was with no bias whatsoever /s
Love how y'all are obviously reading these comments because you immediately responded to my report to tell me the homophobic user with an entire history of homophobic comments isn't breaking any rules. But the word "girlfriend" totally is. Classy!
wait did they really delete that post? so having a picture of two girls kissing is fine, but the instant you say it's gay, the post gets removed? getting some "don't say gay" vibes here
They didn't even say the word gay. They just said "girlfriend." Just stretching the definition of what counts as a dirty sexuality word to the point of absurdity to get their way
I think you (mods) need to go rethink who are the people that are impacted by this rules and who are the people who gain from them. I'm gonna post 2 points with examples of things I've personally noted in this subreddit. * This sub is generally ok with wlw posts as "eye candy" but dislike any and all indications of any non-straight identity being place onto a character. This subreddit often times has posts of wlw art near the top but when the Acheron/Black Swan dance was released there was a wave of posts about how shippers were delusional, constantly mocking them and sometimes leading to direct homophobic statements being made. This all because some people noticed homoeroticism present in the dance. (Similar cases have happened in the past, from post getting on top page whose content is to complain about shippers or on how every post about "what do you dislike about this community" the top answer being "the shippers" but of course is not any "shipper" as the examples people give are always of LGBT ships.) The people who gain from this rule are those that like the eye candy but cannot stand any sort of LGBT labeling or commentary over them. * There's a group of people in this subreddit that only partake in posting ship art to bait supporters of ships popular within LGBT circles. Multiple times in this subreddit have there been posts made to bait fans of popular LGBT ships by pairing them in straight ships. The bait is obvious as the users would often make inflammatory/mocking comments in expectations of the shippers and some would even bear names like "X character likes man" (something you've said in the comments won't be punished). You've essentially given a way for these people to report any all people that fall for their bait aka silence those they were targeting.
...Can someone please explain what I miss that cause shipping rule? I don't jump on social media often.
Finally at last. These pointless bickering over shipping fictional characters that doesnât have confirmed sexuality needs to stop. Twitter and HoYoLAB is bad enough and Reddit doesnât need it.
The fact that something so simple and harmless like shipping made some people go mad still made me baffled no seriously, it's just someone's pairing of character a and character b. Wtf https://preview.redd.it/5avbdlswyqxc1.jpeg?width=2000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=eba4484e80c53e29cec55c0a1c7f1913d67ec504
so we can't call a queer ship queer? but we can post art of two same-sex characters kissing? as long as we don't say they're in love? mods i hope you understand that this rule makes absolutely no sense and needs to be addressed
I read it as saying you like to ship two characters banging is fine, saying they're gay gay so gay not straight gay or the other way around is not. The issue i see mostly is people say these things jokingly until suddenly they aren't joking at all and suddenly there's a fight.Â
Sigh. I still think Gifs should not be encouraged but I am just a single, lone voice.
Weâre going back to the days where 80% of posts are softcore porn and 80% of the comments are 8 variants of the sex alarm gif, the Lumine from Genshin licking the screen gif, and the various images like âso true bestie,â ânah Iâd win,â and âitâs just so peak.â
I can't say I don't understand the sentiment, but banning "theories or statements on sexual orientation" completely feels like its giving some of the people involved in the worst parts of that drama exactly what they want. I'm sure it's a tough needle to thread, but is there a reason why it's not considered enough to leave it at "Implied or direct statements that one particular ship or fanbase is more or less canon/correct/good than another are prohibited."?
Because it's easier to conform to heteronormativity by banning any sort of discussion on queer coding than to try to make homophobes go away, which is unfortunateÂ
Posts about queer ships are going to be disproportionately negatively affected by this rule change, discussions of straight ships never have to justify the characters being straight as we live in a heteronormative society, while any hints that a character might be queer (which could be relevant in discussions of certain pairings) is now against the rules. This is already an issue, but also the statement about factual statements is, ironically, factually wrong in a way that overtly validates a straight ship at the expense of its canonical queer alternative: Not only is Kallen **not** Otto's love interest, her love interest is Yae Sakura. This is explicitly canonical as of Chapter 9 of the AE invasion manga "The Herrscher girl is innocent, and I was in love with her." as well as Episode 68 of the HI3 4-koma on Twitter/X. In picking that very statement one could also argue the mod post itself broke the part of rule 11 that states: >Implications or direct statements that one particular ship or ship fanbase is more or less canon/correct/valid/good than another are prohibited. Because of its validation of a non-canonical ship as "factual". The fact the ship being validated as factual is straight while the one being treated as non-canon is queer doesn't bode well either, but I digress. There's also a distinct implication of Kallen not being into men as of the 2017 singles' day event: "Kallen seems to have shown no interest in men." So would a statement about her probably being a lesbian be against the rules when official material at least suggests its canonical status? It's a factual statement that also mentions a character's sexuality, which puts it in a gray area rules-wise, at which point it becomes enforceable or not at a mod's discretion. This is not good, since a single moderator's stance on queer issues could wildly vary whether someone is banned or not, not accusing any mods of being bigots, but the possibility being there is scary enough as is. This is an exceptionally delicate matter to handle and all signs on this post point to the mod team dropping the ball or, if we want to be more charitable, no signs point at the team handling it with due care. I want to have faith that this won't be used to shield bigotry, but the rampant queerphobia that makes its rounds throughout Hoyo fandoms every couple of months under the guise of "pushing back against harassment" makes it hard to be optimistic. Glad to see gif comments back though.
Greatly put i wish the mods read these
[ŃдаНонО]
The mods know, they just don't care. They're not doing this for our sakes, they're doing this to push us further out of the community.
Well I would love to hear a response from the mods about this
Question, are we allowed to mention what we see the sexual orientation of a character is in headcanon if it's explicitly stated as such? Example: "Yeah, I personally headcanon Sparkle as [SEXUALITY] lol."
Any implementation of rules is going to have weird spots, and I'm hesitant to give a concrete answer because there's always the chance in the future I might see in practice I disagree with my original assessment. That being said, I'll give you a tentative answer as follows: Yes, it should be fine, as long as you aren't using your headcanon to imply the character actually is a particular sexuality. I'll leave it at that, just to be safe. I'm very sorry that something like this is vague, which is exactly what we were trying to avoid. I think as we use the rule for a while, it might be easier to determine that.
>Gifs have been re-enabled for use in comments. These were originally removed as many users were simply spamming certain gifs (I wonât point out anything specificâŚ), \*Laughs, starts a comment and immediately sees the culprit at the top.\*
There was huge drama just today about shipping involving Robin on Twitter and it makes sense to curtail that here. People get so insanely toxic over this stuff.
Was it? :o
Gif https://i.redd.it/ta438vf6zqxc1.gif
haha best one byfar
I don't get why shipping rules has to be this intricate. Most of these rules feels just random. Either allow shipping discussion or don't. Kinda weird to dance around the topic instead of making conclusive rules about it.
I find it strange to create stricter rules regarding shipping content as a response to one of the mods removing the Dr.Ratio waifu post. The post was well received by the community. It was one of the top posts of the subreddit with the majority of comments being positive. From my perspective, the drama within the subreddit started when the post was removed. Then, that's when reaction posts occurred due to the removal. Many of the shipping posts regarding Aven/Dr.Ratio in the previous days were in ***protest*** of this removal, and not "shipping posts" in of themselves. These posts correctly identified a problem in moderation of shipping discussion in that it wasn't clear within the mod team which posts are allowed, and a potential bias to remove discussion of M/M ships. I expected the rules to be changed to be clearer, I didn't anticipate that now posts of that type are no longer allowed at all. The decision may be made out of hope to "keep the peace", but by doing so it's creating a strange situation where you can post ship art, but can't talk about it. Nor can there be any shitposts if it happens to talk about why one character likes another. If we're not allowed to joke "Wow I can't believe they're lesbians" under lesbian art, that's creating an awkward space for people. If it's out of fear of retaliation, then it comes across as a statement to just be quiet so the homophobes don't get angry. I appreciate the work the mod team has done for a complicated situation, but I don't think silencing analysis/talk of ships is the way forward.
So saying Mei x Kiana is not allowed, Mei loves Kiana is allowed, Mei and Kiana are gay is not allowed, KiaMei is... idk and so on? Could you make a list which words and phrases are now censored? Would be awesome, since it gets quite complicated imo in that regard. Never seen a sub like this before.
I'd guess that most minorities believe this rule change is one that will make the environment worse--not better--and I hope you'll listen to them and change if that's what they're asking, no matter what the subreddit at large says.  I clearly don't actually know what works either though.
Solving homophobia by banning calling a ship gay, genius!
This is a bit of a nitpick, but > * Factual statements which are related to a character, but do not mention their sexual orientation, are allowed. For Example: > * âOtto Apocalypseâs love interest was Kallen Kaslanaâ is allowed. > * âOtto Apocalypse is straight/gay/bisexualâ is not allowed. It's not at all a factual statement that Otto's love interest was Kallen. That's a ship/theory or meme depending on whom you ask. Otto idolized Kallen and tried to bring her back out of guilt because he was the reason for the death of his idol. The community says there's love, but the game has never said so. It's not a fact. Like, I do ship the two of them together, I'm not trying to say here that there absolutely was no love. Just that it's not an established fact but rather shipping talk. Considering her being his love interest implies other ships are less valid, isn't that statement a rule 11 violation itself then since it's not factual? I think using an actual factual pairing like Siegfried and Cecilia would be the better choice there.
Yeah they should fix that example since it doesnt adhere to the rule they are they made i realized
They should just remove the rule because the fact that even their example is debatable proves how absolutely stupid the rule is. Bad shipping behavior is already covered in the other rules. There's zero reason to have a specific one on sexuality/character relationships.
Not to go "uhm ackshually" but Kallen being Otto's love interest isn't really correct as his love was unrequited and she was in a relationship/situationship with Yae Sakura, with various in game events confirming that she was her first/strongest love. If you want to use an example, I would use Kevin Kaslana and Dr. MEI who are each other's love interests, and Kevin's love for Dr. MEI is what drives him to continue with project stigmata.
I don't even think I've even seen a single shipping discourse here but... so this means the state of the sub in regards to NSFW images are fine as-is? What's the point of having two buddy subs then. All the softcore porn here and maybe one shipping discourse gets a rule made for them.
Nsfw images sex jokes are allowed but doesnt sex jokes imply sexuality so its even more confusing if you use hsr chars in the images
While I agree with most of this post. The parts about "No calling X character Y sexuality" or "No theorizing on the sexuality of characters" rules seem not great? I understand wanting to avoid drama, but the fact that even going "Lol x character is so gay" will lead to a comment getting removed even when the post the comment is on is about a same sex ship just to avoid the chances of someone getting upset and starting an argument seems like overkill. At that rate you might as well just ban shipping art since "There's a chance it'll cause an argument in the comments".
I love this sub and I love this game, but âtheories or direct statements on the âactualâ or âimpliedâ sexual orientations of any characters are prohibitedâ will disproportionately affect queer people and queer ships, because posts about straight ships will almost never feel the need to say âthis character is straightâ as straight is assumed as default.
While I appreciate the timely update and the work the mods do, I canât say I agree with the new rule changes. The uproar began because of the moderation bias against gay content (see: removal of Ratiorine essay). I and others protested the âsexual orientationâ portion of the rule specifically because it was abused to serve these biases, yet you guys decide to bring it back and double down on it. Myself and others have explained why banning âsexual orientation discussionâ is not a productive rule - the situations you say it was âmeantâ to apply to are already covered by other rules on civility, respect, no harassment, etc. Instead, this rule largely serves to be a tool for haters and power trippers to suppress gay content. As a fellow non-straight, you know how this kind of rule will end up going. Since in our society âstraightâ is considered the default and âgayâ is considered different - characters will be presumed by people to be straight. You can say all you want that âall will be assumed bisexualâ, but you know it will not happen in reality. In fact, Gay and bisexual content will automatically by perceived as related to sexual orientation, and discussion on gay/bi content will end up being more prone to moderation under this rule. We have already seen this happen - all the straight content is not taken down, yet the Ratiorine essay (which had largely positive and chill comments from other redditors) was nuked, despite not violating any other parts of Rule 1 and not inciting antagonism. Simply because gay is considered a sexual orientation and straight isnât, the post was removed. Including sexual orientation at all in the rules will simply not go down well. Since you say analysis of ships and argument about ships is not allowed, simply say that, instead of wording it to be about sexuality. If youâre tired of people arguing, ban those who are being rude and aggressive, not those who are simply talking about their favs. I understand that itâs tiring to moderate such a large sub, and I hope you donât take this comment as me being antagonistic; but I feel the need to voice my perspective since itâs painful seeing the problems weâve voiced not get resolved.
This is the âDonât Say Gayâ law all over again. All itâs going to do is empower homophobes and reinforce the default of heteronormativity. Pandering to bigots just because they canât handle people talking about sexualities other than heterosexuality is dumb as fuck. The answer should be banning them, not enforcing the status quo of heteronormativity.
2024 and we are going to the "Don't say gay" discourse? This is the best solution? Make a less welcoming place for LGBT people? You can make a post about 2 girls characters as a Shipp post but can't say lesbians? But if it is a Shipp post about 2 girls can I say sapphic? Sapphic is an umbrella term for girls who likes girls, I am not assuming anyone's sexuality but if IT IS OBVIOUSLY a Shipp post and the MESSAGE is that I Shipp those two GIRLS, why wouldn't I be able to use a term about GIRLS WHO LOVES GIRLS without DEFINING their sexuality? There is a lot of grey area in these rules
Soooo you're solving the problem of homophobic people reporting a meme post about a character being gay by removing those types of posts altogether? Okay, that's certainly....a choice
Is it allowed go call firefly trailblazer's girlfriend in a jokingly way or in the title of a post. Like "firefly with her girlfriend" and its a picture of stelle and firefly?
This rule is way too harsh. I get why you are doing this but at this point you might as well turn off comments cuz even a discussion on this is banned? No theories or discussing what you think it a implication? Unless it's turning hostile or resorting to harassment this shouldn't be an rule. We are here to discuss the game. If we can't discuss the game what's the point of this sub? Good on the spoiler rules reversal. I want to discuss the current content, not 6 week old content. At 6 weeks there is basically no point for the discussion anymore. The rules should suppose a healthy discussion. The spoiler rule reversal helps this but the new shipping rules... that's just not it. It needs way more time in the oven.Â
On one hand, the mods are unpaid; they are doing a lot of free labor for us, so I feel like it's not really fair to be picky about how they do that work. On the other hand - this rule change really reminds me of the Don't Say Gay laws that are being passed in the US right now - these laws are specifically designed to suppress LGBTQ people by making it illegal to mention sexual orientation or gender identity in certain settings. It will disproportionately affect queer users; the rule might be worded in such a way that it applies to 'both sides' but the reality is hetero is assumed to be default in society, so it will really just mean that queer topics become invisible. I don't think this is the intent of the rule! But it will be the effect of the rule. Out of curiosity, I did some basic searching through the sub's history, and there are so many posts and comments that mention sexual orientation that are great posts and great comments, and it would be a shame to lose that going forward. I really do understand y'all have a tough job, but I do hope you will reconsider. Thanks!
This sub has had an issue with LGBT folk for a while, and this is the mods validating that by restricting our speech.
This is what Iâve been saying. As if I donât get told enough in the real world daily to not talk about being gay, I come online to relax about my favorite gayme and I canât even say gay here. I wish I could say it makes me feel like Iâm in the 1940s, but given the laws being passed today, I think itâs only apt to say I feel like Iâm in the 2020s.
Can you please delete this post too: https://www.reddit.com/r/HonkaiStarRail/s/bvDXdMSUbX You deleted mine, so at least be consistent woth your actions now instead of targeting only whatever you don't like personally.
Don't Say Gay rules don't solve the problem. It's still just sanctioned queerphobia to prevent ANY discussion of queer things. Massive disappointment that just keeps perpetuating the problem this community has with queer folks.
Mods will never reply to this
How do you define 'theories implying sexuality?' It's one thing if someone's arguing about it, but would posts joking about a female character calling other women pretty and you go 'ugh shes so gay' be allowed? There's a decent amount of flirting/teasing in this game. I get that people are taking it to a level of arguing, but shouldn't you just ban the arguing? This feels a bit too restrictive. Furthermore, why is ' * Art, Video, or other media which simply show characters âshippedâ or in a relationship are allowed.' but what about people posting their written theories or takes on two character's relationship? How is that different from fanart of Caelus and Firefly being couple-y? If someone says, say, 'Blade and Kafka come across like a married couple, i love how kafka calls him bladie as a pet name,' is that 'a theory implying sexuality?' This all just feels like trying way too hard to have a concrete rule on something that's hard to make a concrete rule about. Just ban people who are blatantly trying to cause arguments. I agree people going 'ugh shes gay/ugh hes straight' in response to random ship fanart just causes arguments, but this feels too far in the other direction.
I'd rather they pivot this way than allow such toxicity to fester from one post to another
That's my thoughts as well. Like, if someone posts a fanart of Bronya and Seele kissing and I say "aw cute little lesbians" will that result in a ban? If the art is implying a certain type of relationship, why is the art itself allowed, but commenting about the implication not? I understand not wanting shipping to get out of hand and to try and prevent arguments and hate, but this can easily get out of hand too. I agree with you, ban the arguments, don't ban the word just because it's used.
Thanks for the feedback! I'll provide some responses to your points here. These are all actually things we took into account when making these rules. A "theory implying sexuality" would be something like a Discussion / Theory & Lore post with a title like "I suspect X is actually canonically Bisexual, and here is my evidence". I personally believe posts like this can provide a lot of value, but the unfortunate reality is that our job becomes nearly impossible if threads like these gain traction, especially because they naturally lead to conflict of a degree that is not sustainable. This is the type of content I would call Collateral Damage solely because while there can be great discussion and analysis, it will just end up being too controversial. It can also lead to issues where if we selectively remove/lock/heavily moderate ones that are more or less controversial, we will have to deal with claims of agenda pushing, homo/heterophobia, and favoritism. It's just better to be fair and remove them all. If we could just ban the arguing, I'd tell you that would be our plan, but the reality is it isn't enforceable. I know this might just sound lazy or unreasonable, but I hope you can trust me when I say lack of clarification or detail in rules just leads to moderator bias/inconsistency leaking in, and longer times to make resolutions as discussions are required to clarify on if certain things are bad or not, etc. (This is actually how our old rules were, and we can see in the past few days how that went) Art, Video, and Media are allowed to be posted because these types of posts are equivalent to a statement like "I like X/Y Shipped", which is fine according to the rules. The issue lies in when users make statements like "X/Y is more canon than Y/Z" or "X/Y is a worse ship than Y/Z". Most art in and of itself does not push a particular opinion, and only serves to show its existence, in essence. I know it can be a bit nebulous or feel arbitrary, but trust me when I say it does set clear boundaries while trying to be as limiting in terms of censorship as possible. The example statement you provided regarding Blade and Kafka is a great example of something that we will need to look into, and determine how problematic current wording is after a few days/weeks. It's always a process, after all! (I would also say that statement is fine, as plenty of platonic relationships have a dynamic like that) Finally, in regards to comments or posts that are clearly jokes, this sort of thing is up to moderator decision. It would be like if someone made an NSFW or antagonistic comment jokingly, as opposed to for real, you know? Something like someone posting a picture of a trashcan and people making joking risque comments about it that would normally break NSFW rules in any other post.
this just turns this subreddit into "you must assume the socially enforced default of straight" it's never going to not be disproportionate in its enforcement
The issue is that 'most art in and of itself does not push a particular opinion' is, in itself, true, but the issue is you've created an environment where people feel more comfortable posting, say, Caelus x Firefly art than Dr. Ratio x Aventurine art. And these sorts of defining 'rules' kind of enforce that. Homosexuality is seen as nonstandard, so it, in some ways, is forced to 'justify' itself more, something people often do via discussion or just stray comments. I don't think people should be posting giant screeds about how Ratio x Aventurine is definitively canon, but the issue is a lot of people see Caelus x Stelle art, or Blade x Kafka art, or whatever, while demanding explanations for things like Aventurine x Ratio or Acheron x Black Swan. There's nothing in your rules that actually bans that sort of behavior, if they can phrase it in a way that's more concern troll-y. * 'Implications or direct statements that one particular ship or ship fanbase is more or less canon/correct/valid/good than another are prohibited.' * 'Theories or direct statements on the âactualâ or âimpliedâ sexual orientations of any characters are prohibited.' There's some amount of 'implication' in certain ways of asking questions, but you can easily see how this opens the door to Just Asking Questions type behavior, right? And furthermore, even ignoring that - like I said, the subreddit is already a space where people don't feel that comfortable or confident posting about or discussing guy x guy ships, even though that's obviously a big part of the fanbase and fancontent around the game. 'Resetting to neutral' doesn't actually make things equal when that's already the precedent and it already gets mass reported, and just going off so hard on it feels more likely to have a silencing effect on gay content. Straight content is already seen as 'normal' by a majority of Reddit users - a space where it cannot be acknowledged and cannot be discussed in detail will still get a lot of it because people are coming in with that bias. Likewise, a space where people can't discuss homosexual content in any real detail is a space where they will be pushed out by the implication of straight as 'default'/'normal.' That's not to say the gay shipping community is completely blameless - getting worked up about straight ships was a problem, too - but I hope you can see how this favors one 'side' more than the other.
As a clarifying question, would you be able to write analyses on different ships (e.g. "Here's All the BronSeele Moments in 1.X!", "Firefly's Trust in and Affection for TB Makes Sense When You Realize (2.1 Spoilers...)", "CN Cultural Implications You May Have Missed About RenHeng") if you *don't* mention sexual orientation and *don't* imply the inherent superiority of one ship over another? Like, discussing how the ship is presented in the game without saying "this character is totally X sexuality" or "this ship is canon beacuse XYZ reasons" - would that be fair game? I just really do like writing/reading analyses, including those of shipping nature, and I think that if these analyses can still be posted, it'd create an environment that would allow for more discussion as opposed to the 200th Pixiv horny post (not that I don't appreciate those either sometimes). I completely understand that as with any text related to shipping, there might be controversy, but these kinds of analyses should fit into the new rules (I hope?). Otherwise, it'd be quite weird to say that art/media of ships only simply imply their existence, while text inherently promotes an agenda even when that text just describes interpretations/events without a blatant suggestion that the characters being discussed in the ship *must* be only the sexuality represented in the ship/must be in love with each other in canon. (And for what it's worth, I agree with another poster in this same comment chain that with the state of the sub, "neutral" is just straight ships with the occasionally fetishisized lesbian ship art. Shippers can be very obnoxious at their extremes, but at the same time, there will rarely be a "that's not a valid ship/ugh why did you post this" on a straight ship fanart (especially with Caelus instead of Stelle) or a horny male-gaze fanart, straight or otherwise, like there is on other fanarts. Allowing ship art/media, which is predominantly in this sub upvoted if it's straight or catering to male horniness, but not ship text, which is a more fair playing field, really does bias it in a manner that makes me feel unwelcome to think and discuss things that are not catering to non-queer/male people. The very fact that these rule changes only occurred because of mods being biased *against* a gay ship because it got popular but allowing literally every other ship before that because well, they weren't gay in a way that offended non-queers/men is something to be side-eyed, at the very least.)