just a reminder: people can ship whatever the fuck they want and it has no bearing on their morals or character. ‘ship’ is an expansive term that can range from “they live happily ever after and are super healthy” to “i just want to see how dysfunctional these two can be together” to “i just think this dynamic, regardless of amatanormative romance, is interesting to explore in a way that ship is a convenient short hand for.” assigning moral judgements of good and bad to ships by ignoring the often very personal context people ship them in (wish fulfillment, kinks, AUs, etc.) falls prey to a long history of conservative, puritan christian and leftover moral panics from the victorian era.
there are no ‘bad’ ships, there are just ships that make you personally uncomfortable, and people are not responsible for curbing or dissipating your discomfort.
nor do you owe anyone an explanation as to why they make you uncomfortable. (please see the term “squick.”) aging characters up and exploring them as adults in fanon - for any reason - is no different than writing a series of your own and having the characters age naturally in canon, except that you ‘own’ the latter and don’t own the former, and it’s hypocritical to police people who don’t have the privilege of ownership in the first place. and goes against the very heart of fandom since adult fans started it in the 60s.
“pro-shippers” are people. i had accusations of pedophilia hurled against me by grown ass adults when i was 16 and not giving my age online because i 1) believed in “don’t like don’t read,” not that content that makes me uncomfortable doesn’t have the right to exist & that people don’t deserve to be harassed for what content they make, and 2) shipped a singular thing that they had decided was irredeemable and bad (because they could ignore aspects of canon that didn’t fit with what they wanted in fandom, but i couldn’t, obviously /s)
i’ve faced harassment for the exact same shit antis hurl around. i’m tired of explaining why the anti / purity culture movement has led to an upswing in truscum and aphobic rhetoric. people don’t need to display all their trauma and personal information to write about things; some people like writing about dark shit regardless of whether they’ve experienced it, and regardless of whether they’re aware they’ve been through something similar. you don’t get to police people’s thoughts and actions through shaming and buzzwords.
i was the minor that people claimed to want to protect, and they used the system they were ‘constructing for that protection’ as a stick to beat me with, repeatedly.
so don’t contribute to it, think critically for yourself, and learn how to parse out your discomfort from “this is bad,” because most things that make you uncomfortable are actually important things to sit with, because your experience and preferences will literally never be exactly like anyone else’s. leave it and let it go. you’ll be much happier and far more accepting that way.
edit: i am literally ace and trans, have been out for a few years, and what antis are concerned with is literally my degree. nay sayers can block like adults and move on