i just wanted to say thank you so much for always standing up for those who like taboo ships. the kindness is such a breath of fresh air when a lot of us are so used to being harassed or just seeing untagged hate wherever we go. we're just trying to live our lives like anyone else, y'know? <3 hope you're having a good day!
Yeah no problem!! I had let myself get peer pressured into being against most taboo stuff for a while, and it's one of my biggest regrets. Thankfully I was never the sort to harass people! (I did stand by while one friend was hurt, but I have since talked with them about it and apologized, and we're all good now.)
And, honestly, I just don't think any fandom can thrive if you drive out the taboo shippers and other freaks (affectionate)! You just create a sterile environment where people are afraid about what they are allowed to post, and you end up letting the worst people in fandom, those most willing to harass others, dictate what is and isn't allowed.
Okay, getting off the soap box I didn't super mean to get on, but that is to say, this will always be a safe space for taboo shippers! And I can only hope that the Homestuck fandom, and fandoms in general, are able to go back to how things were pre 2015-ish when "ship and let ship" was the mainstream belief!
I really appreciate your commitment to the no ship hate/negativity. It's nice to see honestly with the amount of negativity towards more taboo ships that comes from it seems not that big of an actual demographic
Thanks!! I'm always afraid I'm a little too anal about it (as I've mentioned several times), so thank you for letting me know you appreciate it!
Yeah, I don't know if I've just gotten better at blocking people, if people who hate the ships have gotten better at avoiding the ships, or if the negativity has truly died down, but it does seem to come from a smaller group of people.
Unfortunately a lot of the time it's from a group of people who all follow each other, so if one of them reblogs a ship they don't like (or a rule they don't like) and complain about it, then it makes it more likely for their followers to pop up and do the same.
And I get people are squicked by taboo ships! That's why I tag all of the incest ships "shipcest" (I might grab another tag for age gap ships with the rarepair tournament coming up in a few weeks; I didn't have one for the Karkat x Everyone, but never too late to make a new tag!).
And the thing is, incest shippers are some of the more chill shippers! I think there has been only two times where incest shippers were approaching ship hate, but I don't think I've ever had to warn any of them! Honestly, it's tempting to push up the all incest tournament, despite the hard work, because with that pattern, it'll be a breath of fresh air to not attract hostility to ships (just potentially to the tournament, which is easy enough to deal with).
(To be clear: that's not going to happen; the next tournament will still be Troll x Everyone (most likely Eridan), and after that will be the rarepairs.)
I don't like being a hardass, and I don't like blocking people from this blog (though my roommate says I'm far too lenient and should block more lol), but like, even ignoring me wanting to keep this a chill place for everyone, *I* don't like seeing ship hate! Or ship negativity or whatever! Even about ships I don't like!
I think it's really cool when people post about why they like their ships — it's won me over on a few I was meh on! And that's the sort of thing I want to encourage on this blog. If you don't like a ship, I get it! If you're squicked by a ship, I super understand! So post about why the other ship should win beyond "uhhhh it's not GROSS!!!" or whatever. Put some thought into what about the pairing you're voting for is neat!
Hey! This post isn't going to reach the people it needs to reach, so maybe I need to change the phrasing on the "no ship hate" (a friend has suggested "no ship negativity")
But
Hating incest ships counts as ship hate! Saying you don't want an incest ship to win counts as ship hate!
And @'ing me in a post where you complain about a ship or me asking you not to post ship hate in the notes is an instant block!
(I have had a case where I was @'d in a ship hate post by someone not the OP, and I will not take that out on the OP. Making your own post complaining about ships is perfectly within your rights and something I encourage if you have complaints!)
I try not to bog the blog down with too many or too convoluted of rules, but there are a few I have! The intention is so as many people as possible can have a good, fun time, and to keep everything clear, but they're also so I, personally, can have a good, fun time lol
If you have questions that aren't answered in this post or the linked tags, feel free to send in an ask or submit it to my strawpage!
Under the cut for length!
General FAQ:
"What ships are allowed?" All of them! As long as they're in Homestuck Acts 1 - 7.
"Why only Acts 1 - 7?" A few reasons! There are plenty of people who hear about Homestuck, read the comic (preferably through the Unofficial Homestuck Collection or similar sources), and either don't know about or just never look into anything else. There are also just a TON of characters and potential tournaments in Homestuck alone without digging into anything else. It also makes things less convoluted in general. And, personally, I prefer to focus on the actual canon!
"Wait, you say 'all ships' but surely you don't mean..." Yes, those ships, too!
"But aren't they..." Yep! The ship is still allowed!
"What if I have a problem with that?" Then you do not have to participate and can block this blog.
No Ship Hate
Tag: Ship Hate Rule
Explanation:
I want everyone to have a good time, and a big mood killer is to look in the notes of your post and see that someone has said bad things about your ship/character you like. It can also get out of hand really fast, turning into accusations of bigotry and wishes for violence! So I want to put a stop to that as early as possible and make this fun for everyone.
FAQ:
"What happens if I post ship hate?" It depends on the severity. In most cases you'll get a warning, and I'll keep an eye out for repeat offenses or line toeing, which can eventually earn you a block. If it's just very blatant or extreme negativity, it's almost always an immediate block.
"Does this count as ship hate?" This post and This post have examples. But most of the time people ask, they're not actually posting ship hate.
"What about this ship I think is morally wrong?" Still don't post ship hate!
"Well, I actually hate the character, not the ship!" Still counts!
"But I said it wasn't hate!" Case by case basis, but it probably still falls under ship hate.
"But I only said I prefer yuri/yaoi!" Did you? Or did you imply that whatever gender pairing it was up against was inherently worse? Did you erase canon bisexuality? Did you imply that only straight people or bigots wouldn't vote for your ship? None of that is allowed. We love all gender pairings here!
"What if I have a problem with that?" Then you do not have to participate and can block this blog.
No Harassment
This one is so simple I don't even have a tag for it, and I hope it stays that way!
Don't harass other people! Don't harass them based on my replies/reblogs. Don't harass them based on the ship they do or don't like. Don't harass them for any reason! If I find out you're harassing people, you will be blocked!
Don't tag as June
Tag: June Rule
TL;DR: It's misgendering John. I mean you can see that wall of text; there are a lot of other reasons. But honestly that should be enough.
Full explanation:
There is only so much I can control when it comes to this blog. I cannot control if people ship Vriska/Jake solely based on their dubiously canon interactions in PesterQuest. I cannot control if people don't like DaveJade solely based on the dubiously canon Epilogues. And I cannot control if people view a character as a gender they aren't in the original 7 acts of Homestuck.
Roxy, as far as I'm aware, didn't change their name. John has or, at some point, will. (I don't know if this has actually happened in Homestuck 2 and I do not care to find out tbh).
Thus, the only thing I can attempt to control to keep things within my rules of "if someone can read Acts 1-7 and have no idea what you're talking about, then that is not something that exists in this tournament" is ask people not to tag any posts with John as June.
"Why does it matter if I view a character as a different gender?" Because there are people who would never ship John and Vriska or June and Dirk, so if I have a John x Vriska poll and people who wouldn't vote for John, the boy character from original Homestuck, with Vriska, then they should be aware that that's what they would be voting for by clicking the John x Vriska button.
"Isn't it transphobic to refer to June as John?" Yes, IF someone had posted June. I am not posting about June. I am posting about John.
"But what if it's for tag organization?" Get a new tagging system. People will tag all Egbert posts as "Egbert" or "Jegbert" or similar if they want to reblog both John and June and don't want separate posts. Also maybe stop tagging posts about John as June unless you know the poster is okay with it in general?
"But aren't they the same character?" It depends on your perspective. I go more into the different perspectives on this post. For the sake of this blog, John is a boy from Acts 1 - 7. June is a girl who may or may not exist in Homestuck 2 right now. Thus, they are different characters, and the latter doesn't exist in Acts 1 - 7 and so does not belong on this blog.
"But isn't everything after Acts 1 - 7 canon since it was Hussie or official teams working on it?" No. Hussie explicitly stated that people could ignore or even "pave over" anything after Act 7.
"But what if I want to vote for Grimdorks like it's June x Rose and Dirk x Roxy as though it's transmasc Roxy anyway?" I can't stop you, but the votes will be counted as John x Rose, thus MF, and Dirk x Roxy, again, MF. At least Roxygen is MF either way lmao. (Or NB/F/M? Listen I think I heard that Roxy was going more masc in HS2 but I, again, do not know everything that's going on there and do not care to find out.)
"What if I tag John as June anyway?" This has only ever come up a few times, and the people doing it were doing it in extremely bad faith and got immediate blocks. If you accidentally do it, I might warn you. If you deliberately do it, I'll block you.
"What if my blog name has a June ship in it?" This is an incredibly niche question, but just in case it comes up again: I'm not penalizing people for their blog names! Even if they're reblogging like John x Dave and their url is something about June x Dave. It's your blog name!
"What if I have a problem with that?" Then you do not have to participate and can block this blog.
The results will stand as they are! I'll be reblogging the bracket with my usual mini stats, then start on the Round 4 stats and making the brackets for the Quarterfinals!
I am going to be harsher about blocking people for posting ship hate! If you are the sort of person who is worried about whether something counts as ship hate, I am most likely not talking about you.
However! If you repeatedly toe the line despite warnings, even if you don't go full on ship hate, you will be on the blocking chopping ... block lol
I will be changing the URL of this blog shortly to something like "welovehomestuckships" (I haven't looked up if that's taken or not lol) so just a heads up!
I will make another post clarifying the rules/guidelines and make it clearer that the "no ship hate" is a link to the tag explaining the rule/guidelines.
Gosh dang even my tl;dr is too long lmao
Further explanation:
Keeping the results
I did a deep dive into my thoughts about whether it was botted or not in replying to this ask, so I'll just summarize it here.
~300 jump in total votes in ~14 hours BUT two people confirmed it got shared around an extended friend group and beyond.
There were more notes on the post for jaderose in that time period BUT a lot of people just vote and move on, and the jaderose notes were from the same few people sharing it the whole week
The bracket was neck and neck basically the entire time and ended with a gap of 166 votes BUT it's still less than a 10% difference in votes and jaderose alone has more votes than all but 2 brackets in all tournaments so far.
I'm worried about being biased toward daverose since there was a lot of ship hate for daverose BUT I can't then be biased toward jaderose to counteract it.
There has also been a recent resurgence in Daverose in the past few weeks, so it's understandable that people are extra excited about it right now.
Daverose was winning by more than a handful of votes the last time I checked before waking up to the much bigger difference in votes.
I talked it over with one of my unbiased friends who agreed that ultimately, this really just seems like an enthusiastic group of friends shared it with their enthusiastic group of friends right as the poll was closing, which led to a huge boost. That is exactly the sort of engagement I want from this blog: people being excited about ships they like! I would hate to discourage it because it looks like it could be people botting the polls when it's not even a 10% difference in votes between the two ships.
Blocking for ship hate
I like to give warnings when someone posts ship hate rather than immediately blocking, since I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. Previously, my line for immediate block was accusing people of bigotry for not voting for their ship, suggesting violence on people not voting for their ship, and similar. It's fairly uncontroversial that those are clearly unacceptable things to add to the notes.
However, sometimes people just post clear and obvious ship hate that is intended to be clear and obvious ship hate that comes just below saying or implying terrible things about people voting for the ship they hate, or just hating the ship on the principle of the type of ship it is (mf/incest/has specific character/etc).
Examples of ship hate standards from the most recent rounds (again, don't look these people up or harass them!):
Was blocked immediately:
"lowkey the worst poll from homestuck tumblr... both ships suck ass"
There was another example that now I can't remember (I usually take screenshots when I block immediately explicitly to have examples for posts like this), but it was someone I was going to warn about ship hate, but this blog was blocked right after they added said ship hate, so I couldn't warn them and mutually blocked so they couldn't unblock/reblock and cause trouble in the future.
Will most likely block on sight in the future:
Another reason for me to block for ship hate more frequently is the people in this category are more likely to share these brackets in their circle of people who have similar opinions, and the hate piles on. If I can get better about nipping it in the bud, hopefully I can prevent the people more inclined to post ship hate from engaging with the blog. (This has also happened when people have argued with me about rules that I was giving the benefit of the doubt when explaining them more clearly.)
"normal vs incest"
"this is literally everyone gets a puppy vs diarrhoea forever WHAT ARE YALL DOING"
"no way peak is losing to fucking [incest ship]" (I did get an apology for this one and the person was quite young, so, you know, situation dependent)
Tagging me in posts about ship hate, especially for ongoing brackets (this is more up to vibes than some others).
Replying to my warning as "it's not ship hate because" then proceeding to describe ship hate.
Will give fewer warnings for before blocking:
I have been giving some people a lot more warnings for just barely not posting stuff like the previous examples. I had intended on cracking down harder on this after last time, but I just don't like being a hardass! I want as many people as possible to be able to vote for their ship and encourage other people to, but I'm going to start giving "I will block you next time" warnings to people instead of hoping they just stop skirting the line.
I am a LOT more trigger happy with the block button on my main social media accounts, and my roommate has pointed out that maybe I am swinging too far in the opposite direction on this one.
"this ship is making me angry"
"not serious/hate, but" then proceeding to describe ship hate.
Hating on characters involved rather than the ship (this still counts and I might adjust some language to make that more clear)
Not ship hate as long as it doesn't escalate:
"I assume this is adult [character] because [other character] is an adult."
"Aren't they related?"
"Isn't [character] not attracted to this gender?" (I haven't seen this specifically but figure it's another good example.)
Not technically ship hate, but I would prefer you say why you like your ship:
Legitimate analysis about why you don't like the other ship (this is something I would probably reblog on main if it was a separate post because I love analysis!)
Also about prev: There has been someone reblogging with detailed analysis of both ships saying why they like one or the other, or why anyone would like one or the other, and that's absolutely fine since it's taking the time to think through both ships and emphasizing their personal preferences when deciding. A lot of these decisions are very situation dependent!
"everyone prefers [ship] stop lying lol"/other implications that people are voting against a ship instead of for a ship. (this is way more borderline ship hate, but the context for these examples I saw was there being significant ship hate toward [ship], so it's not my *favorite* reaction, but I think it belongs in this category.)
I do want to say that the Jade x Rose vs Dave x Rose bracket also had a LOT more positive interactions than I usually see! It was fun seeing people post an image for their ship, then another person (that I assume they were friends with) edit it for *their* ship, then go back and forth a few times! There was other ship fanart as well, and I really love to see that much enthusiasm, especially when we're not even in the quarterfinals!
Just to show that it's not all negativity here lol
URL Change
I want to make it more clear that this blog focuses on loving your ships! As I've mentioned before, some ship tournaments are way more accepting (and even encouraging) of ship hate (and even botting), and are just in it for the pure tournament experience. And that's super cool of them! I have no problem with that! That's just not what this particular blog is about.
I know I talk a lot about people who ship something not wanting to look in the notes and see negativity, but the truth is *I* don't either! I see plenty of negativity for ships and characters and kinds of ships and everything else on my other social media accounts, and I just don't want to deal with it here, too. I have read Homestuck many times, and each time I read it, I gain more of an appreciation for all characters and ships.
So! Even though people rarely pay attention to blog urls, and even though I will never be able to stop people from voting against ships rather than for them, I'm hoping that it will help give off the vibe that this is a place for positivity!
Yet another post about the rules
I don't think I have the rules clearly laid out anywhere. I mean, I have the short "no ship hate"/"don't tag as June"/"no harassment", but as you can see with just the ship hate, there's a lot of wiggle room in what counts as what, with some people worrying about posting ship hate that absolutely isn't. I have links to tags that talk about the rules (except for no harassment, which I think is a lot clearer), but then you have to dig through a lot of posts, many of them me answering specific questions.
I know rules explanations typically go in the main post itself, but since I'm trying to keep links to all the tournaments and suggestions and everything else, I feel like adding detailed explanations will just make the pinned post even more cluttered than it already is. So! I think making one post that I can go back and edit, and one that I can link first and foremost with the tags as additional information, that will be helpful!
Plus, people don't usually look at the pinned anyway, and having something easy to link on each post will make it at least a little more likely that someone click and check it out if they have questions. Which I will also try to make clearer it's a link and not just underlined for emphasis lol
Final Thoughts
I am constantly walking the line between "not wanting to be a hardass" and "wanting this to be a fun experience for everyone, including me!" Between "wanting to make sure poll results (and seeding) are fair" and "not wanting to over-correct for my own bias."
I do NOT walk the line between "wanting to keep things simple and concise" and "wanting to make sure people understand the full context" because by god if you want to read the full context, it WILL be available to you as this is simply the way I function lmao
I DO feel bad for having this "here is what I'm doing about the bracket results" turn into yet another post about ship hate, but, unfortunately, the more excited people are about a ship, the wider the reach, and the more likely people who only want to shit on ships/characters they don't like see the polls. So, you know, might as well hit on that, too lol
What really sucks is I feel we were doing pretty well about not having almost any ship hate up until the last day or two of the poll! There were a few one offs, but it definitely escalated toward the end.
Still! I'm hoping the positive energy I saw on this one keeps up! I absolutely didn't expect it to get as much attention as it did, and I'm looking forward to more (positive) surprises in the future!
A Reminder About the NO SHIP HATE Rule Ahead of the All Kids Tournament!
No ship hate includes shipcest! I will be tagging all shipcest polls with shipcest, so please mute that tag or unfollow/block this blog if you don't want to see it! (Please let me know if I forget to tag, but I will do my best!)
Do not harass ANYONE no matter what they say in the notes! If you don't like them supporting or being assholes about shipcest, block them!
People were pretty chill about Karkat/Kankri, so I hope that carries forward!
I will be vigilant in giving warnings and blocking people for ship hate and harassment.
You all have been a fantastic community overall, and I trust that you will be fantastic with this as well! I just want to emphasize this and give people a warning that this is coming so they can add tags to mute, or unfollow/block if they so choose!
Ship Hate Can Be a Blurry Line, So Here Are Some Examples:
I hit the image limit. I was originally only going to give three examples each, but some of these have such a wide range, I wanted to give a larger sample size.
Do NOT try to find the people who wrote these things in the notes and harass them! I have left their names out for a reason!
Nowhere close to ship hate:
Okay, but I wish you would focus more on why you like your ship:
Depends on how much radfem vibes are radiating off of you, but maybe don't:
I almost moved a few of these to the "Okay" section or even not included them at all, so I don't want it to seem like saying anything about preferring yuri or yaoi is eyebrow raising. It's just, as you'll see in the following sections, some people got really really bad about it for some brackets, and that's the environment I might be viewing these sorts of tags in. We love all ship gender combinations here! Don't be weird about one gender pairing being better than another!
Borderline, might receive warning depending on repeat offenses, vibes, etc.:
Bad, will receive warning, obviously ship hate imo:
