Proshipper Vs. Antis Essay (Kinda??)
I really needed to talk about this because its been hanging out in my mind for a while now. It won"t be very refined and will be my pure unadulterated thoughts. Lets start with the terms.
Proshipper: A person who believes that others should do what they want with ships, art, and fiction they create and that it doesn't have much effect on reality.
Antishipper: A person who does not think people should do whatever they want with ships, art and fiction and that it does have effect on reality.
Both these terms are flawed and I don't care what either side has to say. They are both bad.
Antishipping is purity culture, and shows that anything bad automatically normalizes it. But Proshippers think that fiction has no effect on reality, and that in turn creates so many problems.
Let's go over both sides problems.
Antishippers will literally harass people just to get their point across and its disgusting. For example, when AO3 got attacked being sent literal child p*rnographic content because the people who sent were mad about problematic fics. Fucking disgusting. I might have been given misinformation so if anybody can fully prove this was the reason AO3 was being attacked that would be good. Here is some half proof that it happened but doesn't explain the reason why: Proof kinda.
But we can't act like Proshippers are fucking innocent. Fiction can have effect on reality and that isn't lying. Young kids read fan fiction and go on social media too. People who can get seriously hurt by the stuff exist as well. I'm sorry but making underage and incest crap can effect people who can't even fathom what these things mean. When we write problematic stuff, we desensitize ourselves to that problem. And art is even worse. At least with fanfics there is a barrier for who reads and who doesn't, but art literally shows it in HD, and then claims its okay because it isn't "real".
I don't want people to think that I'm defending either sides. But I'm going to pick and choose parts of each side to create a new one. I'm a semi-shipper. I know, it sounds silly. But I wanted to create a term that can help people who feel just as confused as I am about this.
Semishipper: A person who believes that fiction can have effect on reality, but will not harass people who create this content and will not do much more than avoiding the content.
But, how do we fix this discourse? That's a question I'm still asking myself. But I think I have an answer. We first of all need to make sure "vunerable" people will have more of a barrier to these things on sites that are more known like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Next, I have a little website idea. Bare with me here.
It should be called Dead Doves Shoudn't Be Eaten (A play on words from the popular fanfic term, Dead Dove Do Not Eat), or something along the lines of that. It should be for problematic content that isn't already taken care of by various sites. Basically it's a archive for problematic content so we can differentiate problematic sexual stuff and non problematic sexual stuff. I know it sounds stupid but I don't have the website making skills to do this. Maybe one day. You can try if you want but I highly doubt that anybody is gonna care about my idea pitch.
This is a problem that will take a long time to solve and even then, it might never be solved. Please tell me your thoughts on this because It's been stressing me out. Do be respectful though. I have been thinking about this for a while now so if you've gotten this far, thanks for reading.
P.s. When fanfic has this stuff I care less because fanfic has tags for a reason so you can easily avoid it.
theartofmadeline
romaincrisis
gracieabrams
origamiaround
vaporwave
dailybridgerton
germansingergirl
yousharknotpass
