#proship thoughts

[juices-fridge]

I should make my first post actually,, I think about this tiktok I found where minors/antis commonly put fiction OVER reality and it genuinely made me realize how.,, insane it is tht they're right. There's a lot of instances of antis trying their hardest to make sure their fictional characters are safe while actual children and people are suffering irl,,

[senseichaos]

Me when "Father/Daughter Incest" tag..

[van1ll1am]

Was having a thought while walking to my train.

Why is it that antis are all for censoring media? Pro-shipping isn't something that's contemporary, it's been happening in literature for CENTURIES. As a BA English student, it worries me that critical thinking, especially critical thinking in regards to darker subjects, has been declining in my generation.

This is several paragraphs long, so,

TDLR : Critical Thinking is in fact a much needed skill, I am worried about my generation's ability to understand what's real and fictional, and worried for the future of literature.

I specialize in poetry, however I dabble in gothic literature, so I know what I'm talking about when talking about Wuthering Heights, hell, it was the very first book I ever properly analyzed.

Wuthering Heights has been touted as one of the greatest romance novels ever. Hell, Kate Bush even has a song about Heathcliff and Cathy, the two characters often seen as peak romance. To the normal person, this is normal, this isn't out of the ordinary. However, if you are well versed with the novel, you'll know this crucial fact.

Heathcliff and Cathy are adopted siblings.

That's right! There's incest in this beloved novel. There's also pet murder, abuse, death in general, implied necrophilia, and the list goes on. There was backlash for the novel in those times, but that was mainly for the fact that Heathcliff was a man of colour, and the general edginess of the book. Which makes me wonder, if Wuthering Heights was published in this day and age, would it have such a chokehold on the literature scene as it does now, or would it burnt to the ground?

See, people nowadays see writing about dark topics as ENDORSING the behavior. Which is. Extremely incorrect. I would never, ever endorse such a destructive relationship like Heathcliff and Cathy's, but the sphere related to dark media is full of, forgive me, literal children tearing apart people for what? Writing about the same thing Emily Bronte did? What's next, tearing people down for writing about horror? Tearing people down for writing about death, or trauma? There is a very steep hill here, and we are racing down it.

I was once an anti, but upon looking into literature and starting to analyze novels, have I realized it was wrong to be an anti. I now have access to the full sphere of media exploration, to Lolita, to Wuthering Heights, To Stephen King's IT. We need dark topics to explore and understand why these things are so wrong. Which is why I'm so terrified for the future of literature.

Will we end up losing these novels due to metaphorical book burnings because of censorship?

[rolkstone]

although antis are despicable in their choice to be cruel and igrnoant, I have to say I have learned some things about how to behave as a human being from observing them.

besides the obvious lesson of leave people alone if they're not hurting you, the other major lesson I learned is:

not everyone has the same idea as to what is "normal" or "right"

One major thing antis do is act like you should just "know" not to ship certain pairings or draw certain things. They are deliberately vague about their own rules about what is acceptable or not. But it's like they really do expect everyone else in the world to share their exact "moral" compass (I put that in quotes because antis do not behave in a way that suggests morality, imo). Basically, they expect you to read their mind and agree with them about what is right and wrong. You shouldn't have to be told not to watch that show or ship that pairing, you should just KNOW.

Similar to conservatives, as usual. Conservatives also tend to hold some imaginary bar of acceptability in their minds and just expect you to know where it is. And they will punish you if you fail. Same with antis; they go out of their way to punish or try to hurt real people who made the mistake of liking something they don't.

Anyway, I used to have a big problem with expecting other people to just know where my boundaries were, what is right behavior, what is not. I caught myself doing this just the other day because I got mad at someone who overstepped boundaries I didn't tell him. I just expected him to KNOW.

Well I'm going to work on that. After my experience with antis and other similar bullies, I figure maybe I should give people the benefit of the doubt more and ask questions and verbally enforce boundaries instead of just expecting people to read my mind.

anyway, antis make the conscious choice to make things more painful and distressing for others in fandom, but I can at least learn from them how to do better.

[missmisdemeanor]

it's really revealing when someone is a staunch anti except for the one "problematic" thing they like