Hi everyone! Time for a new sticky post. Here are some important, high-level things to note about me:
I am mostly inactive on Tumblr. I have the Tumblr app again now, but I still just don't really use Tumblr regularly -- my dash kinda goes too fast for me to properly respond to anything, and I mainly just use this blog for self-promo. That said, please do feel to talk to me / send me an ask here -- I'll respond. But yeah, if you want to get to know me as a person, Tumblr probably isn't the best site for that (I have some alternative places at the bottom of this post).
Fandoms: Very many and change unpredictably. Star Trek is the main one at the moment, but I like various JRPGs (Mana, FF, KH, Bravely Default). Soulcalibur and ReBoot are some fandoms I find interesting and dabble in on Tumblr.
I am a proshipper. Not in the sense that I wade into fandom discourse (as I don't like it and so try to avoid it entirely) but that my opinions on fiction and fictional ships 100% aligns with the proshipper position and I avoid antis and people with anti opinions like the plague. More on what I mean by these terms below as there has been a lot of obfuscation (often purposeful) regarding these terms.
More detail on these under the cut.
Inactivity on Tumblr:
I have tried to make changes to make Tumblr more usable for me, but I still don't really have a healthy relationship to the site and still find it socially isolating, especially as a venue for artists who post art. I do respond to messages and asks, and I try to reply to replies and tags as well (sometimes they fall by the wayside, sorry...), and I reblog once in a blue moon, but I mainly use Tumblr for self-promo nowadays. Also, I don't really like talking about my personal life out in the open, so if you want personal updates on my life, I'm much more active on Dreamwidth, which has better privacy controls than Tumblr.
I tend to complain about Tumblr (while continuing to use the site) so much that I have a tag for it (#complaining about tumblr on tumblr). If that kind of negativity bothers you, you may want to unfollow me or filter that tag.
Some helpful links and resources related to my inactivity and frustrations with Tumblr as a platform:
Tips to new users to make Tumblr more usable
My Dreamwidth pitch (and the more readable Dreamwidth version).
Not mine, but here's a guide to using Dreamwidth for Tumblr users.
Here's also my pitch for why dA is not actually a terrible site for posting art compared to Tumblr (but Tumblr still has its advantages).
Some posts I made on why I find Tumblr socially isolating and why I don't tag dive on Tumblr, which are both largely still true.
Proship? Anti?
Most of the time, you can go through fandom without ever running into the proship/anti debate, and this has pretty much been my experience in my JRPG fandoms (Final Fantasy, the Mana series, Bravely Default, etc.). I have unfortunately not really had this experience in Star Trek fandom, sometimes being blindsided by people who seem chill in public then reveal themselves to have kind of unhinged views of fiction and immoral ships in private, so I have decided to just start proactively identifying as proship to ward those people away and will now only join Discord servers of people whom I know are not antis, or which have an explicitly proship moderation line.
Since it is often unclear what people mean by "anti" and "proship," I'll provide my own definition to make it clear what I'm talking about here.
Antis are people who oppose certain ships and the existence of certain types of fictional content because those ships/stories are immoral. While there is quite a bit of variety in where antis draw their moral lines, some common types ships/content that antis view immoral include incest, underage, rape/noncon, power differential, age gaps, etc. as well as being fans of dark (e.g. abusive, genocidal, villainous, etc.) characters, especially if this fannishness has a romantic/sexual attraction sort of element. The general anti approach to fannishness and fiction is to treat people who draw/write/consume fiction featuring these elements and themes as perpetuating harm (sometimes serious harm) through their fictional tastes. Such harm includes normalizing/endorsing/excusing abuse/rape, and grooming or normalizing/promoting pedophilia.
These are pretty weighty accusations, and needless to say, believing that (a) you can tell whether someone is an abuser/pedophile/groomer/etc. based solely on their fictional output or consumption (including what characters/ships they like), and therefore (b) your fandom is filled with literal abusers/pedophiles/groomers/etc. operating completely out in the open, led to people sending death threats, organizing campaigns to chase these "predators" out of fandom, and otherwise raising the cost of people existing in fandom while being a fan of "problematic" ships, whether through a private or public harassment campaign, by doxxing people, sending messages to their employer, etc. etc.
The proship stance/proshippers arose as a reaction to this harassing behavior of antis to basically establish an alternate approach to fandom that allows people to ship whatever relationships they like and which recognizes that fiction and reality do not map one-to-one, and which believes that treating fiction as if it is entirely equivalent to reality, treating fictional characters exactly how you would treat a real-life person, policing the immorality of fiction, etc. tends to lead to unhinged behavior like this (doxxing, harassment, etc.).
There was a very strong backlash to the anti movement and the anti approach to fandom has largely been discredited at this point by being portrayed as "fans taking fandom way too seriously," which is in some sense, accurate. But I don't think that this means that antis and their approach to fiction is entirely gone, just that they are merely more quiet/underground/cryptic about their anti positions. Also, I am a bit unusual in that I don't think that it was only the behavior that was wrong (doxxing, harassment, death threats, etc.), although it certainly was very wrong! But I also think that behavior was the natural consequence of a set of beliefs that generally equates fiction and reality; that is uncomfortable with the eroticization of the dark, immoral, and taboo; and that views the "point" or "main activity" of fandom and fannishness as being to write/consume/love "good" ships/content only. So long as people possess that particular approach to fiction, they are (in my mind) an anti at heart and their approach to fandom is probably antithetical to my own.
I take an approach to fiction that includes:
A recognition that there are plenty of reasons to want to write about certain characters having sex (even titillating, pornographic sex) that aren't "I am literally attracted to the characters and would still be attracted to the same characters if they were real."
Not harassing creators or other fans over shipping or creative output.
The view that "thoughtcrime" is not a legitimate concept.
Being against the idea that enjoyment of art can lead to moral contamination through association.
Art is not (and cannot be) the same thing to everyone. From "I couldn't enjoy this art for moral reasons," it is incorrect to conclude that, "If people enjoyed this art, that must mean they are immoral."
Just being chill about fandom, fans, and creators -- having a sense of perspective that fandom is a minor part of life and a minor part of pop culture, that fandom is a hobby filled with amateur, self-published creators who are learning their craft as they go, and often using fiction and art to explore their own sexuality.
I find this write-up to be a good outlining of the anti vs. proship debate and how antis tend to behave in fandom. People often also classify the anti phenomenon and approach to fiction as a kind of "purity culture" derived from an evangelical Christian upbringing (which views bad media to have a corrupting influence and the goal of reading/fictional consumption is to read "good" things only), but with the Christian social mores rejected and swapped out for non-Christian secular social justice values (consent, diversity and humanizing/"good" representation, etc.), and this seems to me a plausible theory and is largely how I understand the anti phenomenon as well.
Also, very tenuously related to anti/proship stuff, but I am generally someone with low tolerance for character/ship bashing, and for "I ship this problematic ship in the RIGHT way while other people ship it WRONG" type posting, and generally for making snide comments about other people's fic/art in public. Don't get me wrong -- I love a good rant about fandom, even a good public rant if it's not my fandom and I can eat some popcorn as I read. I have ships I can't stand and am happy to rant about them at the drop of a feather. But sometimes you have to pick the right audience for a rant, y'know?
Anyway, I generally try not to wade into fandom discourse (this is a self-imposed ban as I know if I let myself post about it, it will consume my brain), but I don't want my overall silence on this topic to be taken as neutrality or indifference in the whole anti/proship debate.
Oh yes, and if it wasn't apparent already, I am a very tl;dr person.
Where to find me:
Art Tumblr: https://denahi.tumblr.com/
Dreamwidth: https://chacusha.dreamwidth.org/
DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/chacusha
Discord: chacusha
AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chacusha/profile
Communities I run:
Trials of Mana / Seiken Densetsu 3 fan community on Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/communities/trials-of-mana
Quodo discussion/fan community on Dreamwidth: https://quodo.dreamwidth.org/
Quodo fanart archive on DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/quark-x-odo/
My Discord for Quodo (18+ with a proship moderation line): https://discord.gg/VaCnMYvKu6
My Discord for the Mana series (all ages, also technically with a proship moderation line but the issue just never comes up in this fandom ¯\_(ツ)_/¯): https://discord.gg/6wFWwnRvJr
