Hello everyone! In light of everything recently in DC RP fandom, I think we need to sit and have a conversation as a community of fandom goers. This is a long one, but in my opinion very necessary. I am putting this under a cut, but I implore all who see it to please read, listen, and think critically about what they can do for fandom (and fandom for them), before you respond. I want a conversation, and I want understanding.
This isn't to attack anyone, or call any particular people out, or anything of that nature. The purpose of this post is to address an ever worsening phenomena I have noticed over my last ~15 years in fandom. Most notably, the last 5-6 specifically has had a sharp turn down an increasingly slippery slope.
As the year draws to a close I think about the things I would like for myself in the next year. I think about how and what I could possibly do to achieve those goals and feel successful and fulfilled. I have goals both personal and private, and also goals that are more general, and I have some fandom goals! This last year l had fandom goals too.
I believe, that to continue progressing in my fandom goals one thing I want to do is | sit and have a conversation about fandom Before Pandemic Times (BPT), and in the Post Covid Era (PCE), and what I have noticed in this window of time.
Six years ago come march, the world stopped. We stopped our businesses, our schools, closed our parks and recreational centers, anything not essential to life was shut down or heavily restricted. In some countries you could even face punishment simply for leaving your home to go on a walk outdoors even with a mask on, if your endeavors served no such purpose. We were all stuck inside. This meant that, over the course of ever-increasing weeks, people were looking for new ways to spend their time.
One pastime people turned to was fandom. At first it was lovely! People were coming into our space, our home in the company of other fans, and exploring with genuine interest! For the first time it felt like maybe it would be cool to have fandom be a more publicly discussed topic freed of the stigma and shame.
But all too quickly, many of these newcomers were coming across new terms and, instead of listening to people explaining things or asking what things meant, assumptions started to be made.
Terms being used for over a decade were being redefined or new terms being used altogether.
Language changes and evolves, trends and how we communicate with one another comes and it goes. This is fine.
For the most part, it was just mildly annoying to need to change and adapt from what we were used to in fandom, but it wasn't really a big deal. Some terms like OTP and NOTP have fallen completely to the wayside and are used by seldom few anymore and it's sad, because in fandom in this subculture there is so much lore and history and depth to it all!
But... it is okay. It was fine.
But please, hear me out when I say this, no term has been so irrevocably bastardized as the term proship. I have been told, several times, that I can not just decide what something's definition is out of nowhere when I have explained the origins of the term. But if I can not, what has made it okay for others to do so?
To fully understand why those of us who have been in fandom well over a decade get so frustrated with this change, I am going to explain some things about fandom BPT and even BVLD (Before Voltron Legendary Defender) to illustrate some key differences and similarities.
Fandom culture BPT and especially BVLD had a lot of different pockets and spaces.
You had the Problem Fandoms (Hetalians, Homestuck, Undertale), you had the incest shippers, you had the age gap shippers, the kink folks, the people who just like fluff, the multishippers (very controversial in some circles), you had the superwholock(stuck) folks, you had the Destiel fans, you had the anime fandoms, you had the weeaboos (yes anime fans and weebs were two distinctly separate groups), etc. etc. etc., and then you had the Anti-Shippers.
See, anti-shippers beliefs varied a little bit, some were against ship content at all and some were only against non-canon ships, some only against queer ships, or genderbends, or what have you. But at their core, they felt that their opinions mattered more than other people. That someone else's opinion was so invalid they had the right to stop them and say no that's not okay. They felt that companies and governments and website hosts should ban content they personally found morally objectionable for some reason or another.
They often harassed and stalked and doxxed people who they disagreed with. They would send death threats and some even sent packages with tampered foods and items to people in their hatred and closed-mindedness.
They believed in censorship and oversight of art and fiction at the whims of their moral standards. They also often did not like smut or LGBT content of any kind. They were called anti-shippers because they are anti- meaning against, being shippers. Especially of non-canon pairings and often also anti-lgbt and anti-self accountability, preferring that censorship to their moral standards determine what content can be on what platforms and exist in public spaces.
And then you had the proshippers. Which was literally everyone in every single other bubble. Everyone from people who only liked fluff and found family with canon straight ships, to the those who consumed and created the most depraved 'dark' content that would have in these modern days a trigger warning list as long as my arms. Being a proshipper had nothing to do with what content you like to consume, supporting acts that would be criminal IRL, or even what specific ships you liked.
Being proship means being pro- as in, in support of, ships/shipping/being a shipper. It means supporting creatives right to create fiction without the constraint of unreasonable censorship.
And like now, in the PCE, most fandom goers did not like incest, graphic rape, or CSA content (although in some fandoms, some of those topics or adjacent were more normalized due to canon source material, like Black Butler for example with SebasCiel, or Hetalia with Spamano, Ouran Highschool Host Club with Hitachiincest, and Ao3 was famously founded by Wincest shippers. Yes, really. Ao3 has always been for the freaks.) but the difference was, people were generally expected to be responsible *for themselves* on the internet, and especially in fandom specifically, BLVD. It was really between the VLD era and COVID that antis started getting more prevalent.
You see, BVLD you will probably hear stories from people about being bullied out of fandom. Either over the ships they liked, or for not supporting some specific ship or trope. I can almost guarantee you that if they were bullied out of a fandom over not liking a ship or trope, that they are leaving out the part where they harassed others over it.
There was a general understanding that, if you harassed someone, or started a witch hunt, that eventually that energy would make its way back to you too.
That's why really old or dead blogs often still have ANTI-DNI, because it signaled that that person would not tolerate anti conservative pro-censorship rhetoric.
In the VLD era the way antis were defined by themselves and others started to both shift, and there was an increase in the number of them. There was also more of a shift amongst antis from attacking ships to attacking peoples morality. This also came with a stronger shift in the belief that people should not be accountable for themselves but rather companies and the government should be deciding and censoring even more than ever before.
Then COVID happened. And what was a slight but manageable shift, quickly became an overwhelming tidal wave of change in fandom dynamics.
No longer was fandom a safe place for the freaks and weirdos.
Our spaces and our subculture was being changed by newcomers with zero regards or respect for those who came before.
The trickle of increase in anti sentiments became a fire hose. More and more people were demanding censorship and control of what is and isn't okay in fandom, and those voices were loud. They demoralized, attacked, and shamed those who don't comply with their views and moral standards.
Proshipper DNI became the modus opperandi in many fandom spaces.
Not even because so many people actually believed everything antis had to say, but because to speak out otherwise was to commit social suicide. And for people who were used to being outcasts, shoved in a box and told to go away, but then they were suddenly told their interests were cool and their art is good and their writing was phenomenal, the idea of becoming a social pariah once more is terrifying.
Proship or being a proshipper PCE most often is defined as problematic-ship. Pro-being short for problematic. BPT we simply called problematic ships or tropes what they were, problematic, or got really to the truth of the matter and just honestly said we didn't like/understand them or they squicked us out.
Because again, being proship had nothing to do with specific content, but rather the belief that all fiction has the right to exist.
Please note I want to highlight the word FICTION. Creeps and predators were shamed out of fandom just as fast if not faster than antis or anyone else who decided to just go around harassing people. That shit did not fly if it was caught.
But for fiction?
For fanfic and art and what ships you liked or what fandoms you enjoyed?
We didn't have algorithms telling us what we would like. We just blindly stumbled into shit and half the time it was over or under tagged. I will say one GOOD thing now is that people are MUCH better at tagging! It's a joy.
BVLD we also did not have the luxury of filtering out content on Ao3. Only searching for content, so it really was the Wild West out here guys. And that was only AFTER Ao3. And Ao3 didn't get popular in any of my fandoms until around 2014 or so and fanfiction.net, quotev, wattpad, livejournal, and even here on tumblr was so much harder to navigate than even Ao3 pre-filtering.
There is a LOT we are blessed to have in modern fandom.
Why do we need to keep the current harassment too? Why not combine the best aspects of then, and of now?
Why continue to let those who seek to shame and belittle determine the definitions of the words used in OUR communities, to cause division and hardship. Why continue to allow harassers to do damage to others’ mental health and reputations, whether allegations are true or false, with no repercussions just because they think a view or interest is immoral by their standards. I'm not necessarily saying we should shame and harass them back, like in the BPT, but even if they're right and someone does ship freaking wincest or batcest or a stupid big kinda problematic age gap... why does that mean we should excuse their harassment if that is how they call someone out for that?
Why can we not all just mind our own business and allow people to have their bubbles of peace. Why can we not be responsible enough to block and filter content for our own peace of mind.
Because it isn't like we are discussing CSAM or evidence of crimes. We are talking about fictional characters. They are not real. They can not be hurt. The content can not hurt us without someone being inconsiderate and not tagging appropriately, or someone deciding to harass another by intentionally sending them the content they do not like.
The key components of both situations where fiction can hurt us, both come down to PEOPLE failing to respect others. Not the content existing in the first place.
I know this has been long so I will get off my soap box for now, but I hope those who come across this read it and think about what I have to say.
As I said, this isn't an attack on any particular person. This post is meant to inform those who may just not know some of these things, and maybe even change some minds on the language they use and how they define terms that were never theirs to define anyways.
My biggest goal for the next year is to find peace and whimsy in fandom again, and seeing people persistently harass my friends is really cramping my style on that front. Have a good day/night/evening to all who see this.
And happy holidays, to all those who observe any in the current season.
