You are allowed to make whatever art you want.
I know today Pyro updated his "boundaries" regarding shipping of his and his girlfriend, Maddy's, characters. I am here to tell you that you do not have to follow them.
Art is art is art. All art is derivative and all art can be derived from. To try and command people to only create certain fanworks based on your art, you are fundamentally misunderstanding how art and humans work.
I understand that people put a lot of themselves into their roleplaying work. Emotional bleed is a very real thing, and I can only imagine how much bleed there is in between the wishy-washy line of Minecraft roleplay. However, and I don't mean to be rude, creators simply have to deal with this. If what they are acting is affecting them in real life, that is something they have to find a way to work around. If what people are creating based on their acting is affecting them, they need to find a way to avoid seeing it themselves.
When you put something out into the world for people to enjoy, think about, play with, you cannot prescribe what they then do with it. If your partner puts something out into the world, you cannot prescribe what people do with it. If you are uncomfortable with what your partner is doing, have a talk with them about how they can change their behavior, whether that is no longer joke-flirting with people, no longer interacting with shipping content, or anything else. You cannot decide what their fandoms get to do, though.
Boundaries that actually work in situations like this, where people are uncomfortable with being shipped/their partner being shipped:
Don't send me or my partner ship works. If we see any ship works we will block you.
Don't talk about ships with me or my partner in either of our chats or discord servers. If you do, we will ban you.
(To other ccs/friends) Do not flirt with me on stream, and don't encourage shipping of me to fans.
Now, a lot of this has been said before, by people more articulate than me. I decided to make this post however because of one thing Pyro said on his stream that I think is very concerning.
Link
Transcript:
(In response to chat message that reads: I'm choosing to read this as "don't @ me or send me content that makes me uncomfortable, and I won't go looking for it in spaces (like tumblr or w/e)."
"um, if I hear about- I mean I have- I have my little birds in all forests, and if I hear about, um, if I hear about repeated offences, then, like, I will send my people after them. But, um, and I will- like, y'know, deal with that in ways that I deem appropriate.")
This is a threat to fans. He is threatening online harassment to people for the crime of shipping characters. He is saying he has full knowledge of his fandom, that you are never safe from his eyes, and that any step outside the lines (offense) is going to get people sent after you.
This is not safe. This is not possible, even. But this will create a community of fear and policing as people rush to "inform" other fans who create "boundary-breaking" fanworks that what they are doing is "wrong," and if they don't immediately fall in line, they will be harassed out of the community. Many of these fans, by the way, being teenagers.
Overall, this is a mess of a statement and stream that demonstrates a lack of care, and a lack of the knowledge and grace needed to be a public figure. I hope everyone who has participated and is participating in his fandom is well and okay right now. Keep creating, I wish y'all the best.
