Hi to whoever found this and wants to take the time to read my personal thoughts on something I investigated and spent some genuine reflection time for several weeks.
If anybody has been following my posts, you’d know that I commented on the Encanto fandom’s TW/Madrigalcest shippings and gave a respectful heads up that I wouldn’t be commenting much on it, although I am proship. I wanted to follow up on that and come out here to say that I am no longer against it and for me to have been against it reveals my own hypocrisy in proship. This absolutely does NOT mean I condone incest in real life, nor does it mean anybody else who creates works for it does. I just wanna take this time to dive deeper into why properly discussing proship within fandoms is becoming increasingly important in understanding how people engage with each other. The Encanto fandom is still quite young but the tendencies occurring within it must be discussed respectfully.
After exploring the Encanto fandom spaces across social media, there is without a doubt an extremely large audience that indulges in Madrigalcest, canon x oc pairings, nsfw, and all different kinds of head canons. I have nothing against this, in fact, I encourage it. On Twitter, some of the Encanto animators have been questioned whether or not they are aware of all of this “sinful (as the morally righteous fans would argue)” fan content being made and they’ve acknowledged it in a positive manner by stating that they don’t mind and enjoy seeing how other people interpret their works. The animators have literally answered before that they are not disturbed nor against it.
Does this mean you, whoever you are, have to be proship/tolerant too? Of course not! Everybody is free to interpret media in their own ways and find comfort in whatever way suits them because SHIPPING DOES NOT EQUAL MORALITY. Fictional writings, works, drawings, etc. are NOT always a direct introspective look into the artist. In 2022, I would’ve thought that internet fandoms would be “woke” enough to understand that there is no reason for anybody to harass fans through public callouts, threads explaining why they are horrible people and should harm themselves, or wish sexual abuse upon others over FICTIONAL CHARACTERS. If anything, we’re approaching a limit where I am STUNNED by how many younger fans are the very ones smiting each other with such violent words. There are many adults inappropriately engaging in this disgusting behavior as well with little to no regard that there is another human being behind that user screen. Where is the humility when it comes to REAL fans and internet users? Is it only reserved for fictional comfort characters or for people who strictly agree with you?
I have a high tolerance for what people will interpret/create in their fictional works because I understand the human complexity that exists in trauma works. Does everybody forget that some of the most famous works were written out of needing to cope with trauma, such as death and abuse? But I also understand that sometimes people just create things for the hell of it! Both are perfectly fine. I believe that any attempt to put a morality spectrum on somebody’s fictional works, unless they are explicitly meant to portray moral correctness, is a waste of precious time and energy.
The Encanto fandom is an interesting example of where the international majority across Tik Tok, YouTube, and Instagram is rooted in understanding that most of their fan works are fictional and most importantly, for fun. On Twitter and other parts of Instagram, there is an extremely resilient American minority who attempts to oust the majority who exhibit proship tendencies and overall tolerant towards differing fanon opinions/art. Their fandom discourse has become so extreme to where trending hashtags such as “#ShutUpGringo2022″ were used in opposition to the minority who keeps attempting to police how the majority enjoy Encanto and other Latine works. This is such an unfortunate event and it saddens me to see how it is also not the only instance of this fandom’s conflict. There is no point in policing somebody’s experience online in fandom spaces unless they are directly harassing or causing harm to you. We have so many methods of blocking and muting users/tags, yet people will still go out of their way to express their anger against other fans.
I could understand the upheaval of the minority if Disney or the Encanto animators directly spoke up against it. However, they do not. Why wouldn’t they? Hello? Any sort of fandom attention is better for their product than no attention at all lol. It wouldn’t be the first Disney controversy either. Until then, I don’t understand why would anybody go out of their way to express such deep opposition when majority of the international fandom across various social media accounts will post Madrigalcest...
ANYWAYS, I still won’t post much about those ships because I can appreciate it from the distance without having to trash others for enjoying it. Cmon, stuff like this is supposed to be fun. It’s 2022, just let people do what they wanna do online so long as it’s legal and it doesn’t endanger anybody. Most of us are strangers to one another anyways. It’s just as easy to hit the block/mute button and get on with your life with good vibes. Peace. ✌️
