Profiction / Proship FAQ - The basics.
What is “proship“ or “profiction”?
From my understanding profiction has been vastly tainted in the eyes of many people who are giving out false definitions of what it is to be profiction / proship, from spreading false information on what qualifies a proshipper to what it even means - to literally accusing all proshippers of being part of the MAP community. Many young fandom users have no idea what proshipping is because of the false information and lies being spread, so naturally they’d get riled up at someone being profiction or proship - because after all, if you had no knowledge and were impressionable and the first thing you heard was “it’s a pedophile den”, wouldn’t you be hostile?
Let me set it straight. To be proship is plain and simple.
It means you don’t care what people ship, stay in your own lane, ship what you like and don’t go out of your way to harass others over their shipping or fictional preferences. You block creators who make content you dislike, use filters / tagging systems to avoid said content and respectfully encourage others to do the same.
Proship and profictions follow the fandom mantra of SALS (Ship and let ship), YKINMK (Your kink is not my kink) and DL;DR (Don’t like? Don’t read/consume.) Abide by content warnings, tag your blogs / works / art, actively curate your space and for the love of God don’t accuse someone of being heinously disgusting things over fiction.
That is literally it.
There is nothing deeper to it.
But wait - I don’t like underage ships / incest ships / anything problematic, so I can’t be proship?
You absolutely can! Even if you hate problematic ships personally, so long as you believe in the core principle that nobody deserves to be harassed over fiction and actively curate your space by blocking others / filtering / not leaving shitty comments or hate, you’re profiction/proship.
Everybody has limits, triggers and trauma to work through. Everybody has things that make them uncomfortable. We’re all humans, therefore the expectation that you HAVE to like all incest ships / underage / etc. is toxic and not welcome since it goes against the core principle of being profiction. Anybody who gets mad at you personally for curating your space, staying in your own lane, having triggers, disliking a certain brand of fictional media and goes against you setting firm boundaries is not someone you want to be around and is not following in the spirit of what being proship is.
I’ve been treated badly by proshippers before in the past, I naturally don’t trust you guys!
I completely understand where you are coming from, given my own experience on either ”stances” as an ex-anti. I’ve met a lot of unsavoury “proship” dudebros who decided to send me loli gore because I said I didn’t like that content.
We do not claim these people, despite them trying to co-opt the label and “defend” us. It is abhorrent, disgusting, disturbing and downright unpleasant behaviour. I’ve also been groomed with said loli fiction as a younger teenager by an adult who would call me an irl loli and subject me to a lot of shit I was very upset by.
On the same hand, I’ve been abused by antis as well who groomed me into a false sense of security by telling me they were “out for” my best interests, goading me into a false sense of security and safeness with them. The ones telling me that liking xyz fiction was horrific and would turn me into an abuser were the ones trying to encourage me to do acts for them I never consented to.
The point is, no side or stance or group of people is perfect. Abusers and groomers and horrible people lurk in every space, from every part of the world, in every community. It is very difficult to seperate your trauma experiences from the people who hurt you as you desperately are trying to find something or someone to blame.
I made excuses for my abusers, blamed the fiction they liked, their political stances, opinions, because it was easier to do so than to just accept that some people are monsters and to fully accept that it was my abuser’s actions that caused my torment, through and through.
Anti, proship, moderate, whatever - labels and groups can spawn monsters in them no matter where you are or what you believe. Please do not shun all profictions or proshippers as malicious or evil - I can guarantee we aren’t, given I’ve met the most wonderful and kindest people around who have done so much for me and my wellbeing.
While I dislike antis as an ideology, I don’t think many antis are even evil or bad people. I still disagree with them and their takes on fiction, but I would not openly say all of them are abusers, Y’know?
Fiction affects reality, why do you all say it doesn’t?
I’m... really baffled by this one, honestly. I think it’s embarrassing people still think this is what profiction/proships believe? I’ve never even seen anybody ever say this out of, like, making fun or being sarcastic or whatever.
I think any proship or profiction person claiming fiction doesn’t affect reality 100% is wrong, it does, but not on a 1:1 scale. You don’t go around murdering people in a violent video game, tearing their heads off, beating them, torturing them and copy that behaviour if you’re, say, an average 20 something year old with an average functioning brain.
With children it’s more complicated. Children are more easily influenced with fiction due to not having fully developed brains, but a healthy adult mind should be able to diffrentiate between the two. This is why for nsfw+ adult works and dead dove content warnings are a MUST and adult curated spaces need to be kept away from the prying eyes of young, impressionable developing minds.
I think it’s also to note the scope of a work - something produced by disney and aimed at kids is likely to attract a HUGE audience of millions to watch it and also be consumed by children making it highly impressionable. My 18+ NSFW fanfic involving college kids fucking is likely to receive, if I’m lucky, 500 views and a few hundred kudos. It’s also for adults, marketed at adults and I really don’t see how you can turn and blame fanfic writers or artists who are desperately putting out warnings and trying to keep children away from them. We’re not a childs parent, we’re not their guardian - is it wrong to expect a child’s parents to step up and look after their kid online?
Tagging appropriately, keeping your nsfw off kids shows tags, blocking minors who try to interact - all of these should be the norm. I firmly believe adults and minors online should be kept separately when it comes to certain content.
But I heard it meant pedophile / abuse apologist / racist / etc?
I’m really sorry but you’ve been lied to by somebody who either heard it on the grapevine wrong or have been intentionally mislead / lied to.
The profiction community, like any, has it’s fair share of problems and issues that exist in any space but nowhere have I seen anybody greenlight or support actual pedophilia or MAPs.
If a proship or profiction person turns out to be racist, homophobic, transphobic - that’s on them, not the entire group and (at least) all my peers and mutuals would not hesitate to call them out and check them.
Dudebros are a problem. The twitter lolicons that throw around slurs yet claim to be proship or profiction are a menace to us as well! We don’t want them around, nor do we support them, nor do we want them interacting with us.
I .... just need to stress how heinous the lie is that profiction / proshippers are all pedophiles given that most of us are abuse survivors and actual csa / abuse victims. By spreading the lie that it’s a safe haven for MAPs you are actively encouraging and endangering people much younger than me to be exposed and drawing predators into the false narrative that pedophiles are welcome in our spaces.
How do I put this bluntly.
You are encouraging proship minors that do exist REAL human people to be endangered by actual predators that may try to infiltrate the community and actively groom / harm people, not in fiction but in real life. I cannot tell you how sick that makes me feel and how utterly evil that is.
On a more logical note, though... like I said, every group, side, stance is open to predators. There’s no magical group of predators that all congregate together other than I guess the MAP community, but given I’ve established profictions not being at all affiliated / in cahoots, yeah.
Look at what happened to CreepShowArt, a well known anti who turned out to be a serial abuser, stalker and in possession of actual nudes of a minor. Yeah. We can do the whole “well your group has x person in it so you’re all predators!!!” all day, truth is monsters can lurk under any community.
I’m still uncomfortable with the content profictions produce / create, I would rather not see it at all. How could you support that?
You’re absolutely valid to feel uncomfortable with certain content, whether it’s a ship or a character or incest content - whatever it is. Whoever tries to push that on you actively is wrong. You deserve your own boundaries and to be respected as a person.
I would strongly advise that if you are extremely triggered by a ship or content type to please block everything under those tags and block users who make it and create it, even ask a friend to do it for you if you can’t look at it.
I do also need to stress, digital self harm is a thing... the amount of people I’ve seen delibrately going on content they know will upset them just to hurt themselves / get angry / riled up is insane right now. If you do this - I cannot stop you, but I would advise you seek help from a therapist or advisor / guardian. It’s not weak to ask for help, nor is it a failing on your part.
What I do not advocate for, or support or tolerate is you taking out your own trauma and discomforts on others over ships or characters or series they enjoy. That’s unhealthy and borderline toxic behaviour that should not be tolerated. Starting witch hunts because you saw some adults nsfw art on their OWN personal blog that was TAGGED and clearly NOT FOR CHILDREN is not the artists’s fault. Under no circumstances are you ever, ever permitted to ask for someone else’s abuse history, trauma or speculate on why they enjoy x, y and z media. No where ever is it acceptable to treat a person like a subhuman over their damn fictional shipping preferences regardless of how triggered or emotionally compromised you are. You know the kind of person that takes their own pain out on others and delibrately goes out of their way to cause hurt is.... an abuser. Plain and simple.
So you wanna know why I’m not an anti anymore - Why did I change? Why am I proship?
Because I’m tired of not being able to enjoy a ship / pairing out of fear of being doxxed.
I’m tired of not being able to create the content I am passionate about because it’s too “problematic” or risky.
I’m tired of being told that I’m only valid if I’m a gold star survivor that ships the right things and like the right fictional drawings.
I’m tired of having to air out my personal trauma to justify shipping, actually, It sucks. I don’t want random people online to know my personal deepest fucking memories that hurt to think about.
I’m sick of being told adult age gaps are problematic or pedophilia.
Sick of american antis twisting non-incest pairings into incest and being xenophobic - see the kaeluc situation and the recent drama over the jjk pixiv ship list and how absolutely racist antis were being towards Japanese artists for being “freaks” for goyuu being the most popular pairing.
Sick of the rampant abuse and casual ableism thrown around by antis, homophobia, transphobia, bigotry, racism, the delibrate twisting of words like fujoshi.
Sick of being told I’m as bad as my rapist for liking a villain, getting told I deserved to be raped and abused, getting told I never was abused actually and having my entire trauma speculated over a fucking shipping preference.
Tired of the radfem rhetoric antis love to use and spew, anti-kink shit regurgitated directly from terf tumblr - and this shit is well documented. https://twitter.com/dionysiaca/status/1193263490540150784?s=21
I was tired of being, pretending, trying so desperately to fit in with a group that wouldn’t hesitate to call me a rampant sex offender over fiction at the drop of a hat.
I was tired of being scared of not standing up for myself and letting people push me around and dictate to me what I SHOULD feel and think about problematic fiction.
And I had the ample resources and proof to realise that not only are antis wrong on a surface level but they’re deeply wrong about the science behind fiction. Deeply, deeply so.
The list could go on. I have so, so many reasons for changing my beliefs, cutting off my anti friends and starting afresh.
I’m happier now.
This isn’t as serious as you make it out to be lol / Do you think this is normal behaviour?
It’s taken as seriously as it is because real people - often abuse survivors and victims - are being hurt not only online but offline. Doxxing, actual physical threats of violence - the works. For every single “lol this is just online drama” there’s someone trying to dox and ruin an artists career. Blacklist them from their work and even try to cut mutuals and friends off them over shipping. There’s a cold, cruel streak of approaching already vulnerable people and telling them to kill themselves and when they do it - when they try - well, ya’ll just spin it as fake and attention seeking.
Do you think that is normal?
Please - go ahead, see below just a small taste of what you’re also considering “normal” and only a really few examples of harassment in fandom spaces by antis.
https://twitter.com/theslowesthnery/status/1371828365083217922?s=21
https://youtu.be/68i4P1UxXkA
https://youtu.be/gjcIHD5620s
https://twitter.com/miracide_/status/1395108117168394240?s=21
Yeah.
Speaks for itself.
More, uh, funny examples here: https://twitter.com/4ntitak3s?s=21 just to highlight the ridiculousness of it all.
I also... question the use of normality heavily in anti spaces as an insult. Given proshippers and profictions are nearly always abuse survivors, mentally ill and often nearly communities of entirely queer people... we’re not considered normal by society anyway, for those reasons.
I do wonder sometimes if there’s a deep level of insecurity over perhaps not being normal or the odd one out that gets projected onto those who seem stranger to you, because I don’t know very many “normal” people in all honesty.
Like the way this gets thrown around by the same people who desperately want to be considered normal themselves, it’s just throwing stones at glass houses with an insult that’s pretty much the standard vitriol the neurotypical cishet dude throws at you for being different in any way. 🤷♂️
Perhaps it’s because I was an ex-anti, and a very insecure person at that - I wanted so badly to be normal and not secretly into some rather taboo nasty shit on the downlow. The guilt that knaws at you when you know you’re not a saint, feeling dirty and disgusting and just plain horrible for not being normal... yeah. I know that feeling.
But you know, it’s water off a ducks back now because I grew up. It’s something you get used to. I’m even happy to be considered different now, even in small intangible ways.
I think if antis had to perhaps see us as anything more than two dimensional villains, their world view might fall apart sometimes.
Yeah, anyways, I think I’m fine with not being normal now. Personally. It’s a blessing.
I guess the question is, are you?
A few poignant profic resources / posts for the curious that kickstarted me to becoming proship, feel free to add your own with reblogs.
https://psychexpressions.carrd.co/
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mn7iPglqMONo80DwsSlRzObTyCpT8QnxpzAZllYPGUQ/edit
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13Ry-MYL4Z5cIkuUFUQSRgXjAxNkZYLobcec9IpcZVho/edit
https://freedom-of-fanfic.tumblr.com/post/173070571094/the-straight-line-from-fandom-antis-to-swerf
