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It was also basic fandom etiquette to follow one simple rule: don’t like, don’t read. People respected tags, curated their own experience, and moved on if something wasn’t for them. Leaving snarky comments under someone else’s fic because you didn’t like the ship or the premise was considered rude and unnecessary. Fandom spaces worked because people understood that not everything was made for them, and that was okay.

What’s frustrating now is seeing newer fans treat shipping like a moral battleground instead of a creative exercise. Instead of simply filtering content they don’t enjoy, some are trying to push for censorship on ao3 because certain ships or themes make them uncomfortable. That completely ignores the political and cultural reasons spaces like AO3 exist in the first place. Fandom archives were created specifically to protect fanworks from moral policing, content purges, and corporate control.

Trying to sanitise or censor fanfiction because it personally bothers you doesn’t just affect one ship or trope, it threatens the entire idea of an open archive. Once you start deciding that certain fictional ideas shouldn’t be allowed because they’re “problematic,” you open the door to broader censorship that historically has been used to erase queer content, controversial art, and marginalised voices. Fandom used to understand that the solution wasn’t banning things, it was curating your own experience.

Fandom should still run on the same principle it always did: create what you want, tag it properly, and let people decide for themselves whether they want to engage. The freedom to imagine, explore, and write outside the limits of canon is the entire reason fanfiction communities exist.