Minor rant, but I recently found your blog and think you may find this amusing (of course ignore as well if i misjudged! 💕)
I got into a baffling conversation with someone I share a server with, and it reminded me again that “antis” just… don’t think. Ever. And I knew that, but getting hit in the head with the reality always throws me for a loop no matter how many times it happens.
In my current fandom, I tend to only write character studies, longer plotty fics, slice of life, and that type of thing. It’s simply what currently has my attention. I do have content on my AO3 antis would drop dead at, but for a different fandom than is for the above server, so I don’t think this person (or others) realise that. Shows that they do know how AO3 filters work, as they’ve said they filter for this ship/fandom on my page, but that’s a different issue all together
Anyway, this person was *stunned* when I said I ship and let ship, and am 100% proship, full stop, no matter what. She seemed convinced that all proshippers write and like “evil (her words) content”. I of course mentioned that I’ve written all of AO3’s content warning, read it in fic, published books, and said content is 100% in the book I’ve been slowly writing, and that i support it. But I digress.
Where the conversation truly lost the plot was when she brought up that I don’t like certain themes, and am admittedly picky af with what I read??? And yes, I am. As are a lot of people. She could not comprehend this. She (and a few others who jumped in) seemed to think that, aside from proship meaning problematic ship, it also means someone who is proship has nothing they don’t like. I just. Okay. Maybe I’ve curated my fandom and online presence too well, but I’ve thankfully avoided this line of thinking before. I’d say I hope it’s not common, but I feel like it probably is 🙃
I have so many boundaries and things i hate. I am, at my core, a hater. My dms with small friend groups are full of me hating on tropes, ships, etc, I hate. But I could not give a flying fuck if others like them, and wow she could NOT get this. I have writers on AO3 I’ve blocked because I don’t like how they write certain things, or just don’t like how often they appear in the tag. I have no issue with them as people, I just know how to curate my fandom experience.
One of the people who was contributing to the conversation reached out afterwards in DMs and seems to (hopefully) be rethinking things, and realising that they’re very much proship. Picky with what they like, but proship. Small and unexpected victories!
Every day I grow more concerned for society as a whole.
The 'proship means problematic thinking' thing I can vaguely understand because its been an anti-propaganda tagline for so long, and they're very effective at being loud enough to be convincing.
