Ruh Roh Raggy

>looks inside

First off, this mindset is simply wrong—I'm ace and have always been a rampant shipper, I know tons of ace people who are the same, and I know lots of allosexual people who are not into shipping at all.

One's sexuality has literally nothing to do with your tastes in fiction. Nothing about you as a person necessarily has ANYTHING to do with your tastes in fiction.

Making that assumption is—and I'm not being hyperbolic—extremely dangerous and can lead directly to harassing other fans for what they enjoy in fiction, as well as harassing artists and writers because they created something you don't personally like. It's such an insidious disease that goes against the core values of fandom: ship and let ship, have fun, don't try to dictate how other people can have fun with their paper dollies. This entitlement in regards to other people's tastes in fiction often demonstrates that the people holding said beliefs are not yet very good at separating fiction from reality.

It's fine to be annoyed by a ship or characterization, and you can complain about too much of this headcanon or not enough of this one, etc. But insulting people who enjoy those things, and seemingly wanting to stop other people from enjoying those things is NOT ACCEPTABLE. It's not how fandom is supposed to operate, and if your goals are to control other people, then the only 'friends' you're going to find in fandom are other people who have that same controlling attitude, who will turn on you as soon as you like something they don't approve of.

This, as a lot of problems in fandom, is a trend issue rather than a personal one. It's cool that you enjoy shipping and you have fun with it, I wish you fair wind, but when a vast majority enjoy shipping more than any other form of interacting, it shows amatonormativity (belief that everyone has/desires to have a romantic/sexual relationship with one person, and that those relationships matter more than any other type)

I agree that one's preferences to see in fiction don't reflect them as a person whatsoever, but this isn't judging people for the act of shipping in and of itself. It's judging people for seeing two characters near (or not even that, see Bloodymary) and immediately assuming they must be romantically/sexually interested in eachother. Yes, some people after seeing ship content might complain or, in worse cases, harass the author, and they're obviously in the wrong for it. But OPs point, again, is not that nobody ever is allowed to ship anything or they deserve to die, it's that some people are often unwilling to explore anything beyond the amatonormative relationships.

I understand how this may sound aggressive, but from the way the post is worded OP probably meant "People should try to see characters from a perspective other than another's love interest and consider different interpretations" rather than dissuade from shipping entirely. (Oh my god "ship(ping) doesn't even look like a word anymore)

Anyway, I'm also aro, but I usually see people using 'allo' to refer to allosexual, so I assumed that was what op meant (and yes, I'm fully aware of what amatonormativity is).

That doesn't change my point at all, though, since my reblog was not actually about asexuality or aromanticism or amatonormativity.

I read your reply a couple of times, and I have some legitimate, non-snarky questions:

You said that people should be judged when they see two characters and immediately ship them. Why is that?

You said, "People should try to see characters from a perspective other than another's love interest and consider different interpretations." So again, why should people try to do that? If you enjoy a certain dynamic between characters in fiction, then why should you avoid reading the fiction you enjoy just because other people don't like it?

This isn't as much of a question, but you also said that hearing "nothing about you as a person has anything to do with your tastes in fiction" can get annoying when it's all you see (trust me, I understand being annoyed by the constantly seeing the same phrases, such as "ace/aro people don't like shipping or smut."). But that makes me wonder what exactly people are responding to when they say this? The only times I encounter folks talking about how your tastes in fiction =/= your morals or behavior is when they're trying to make the point that you can't judge people by what kind of fiction they enjoy, and that has nothing to do with aromanticism in particular? Obviously, I haven't seen every post on the internet, haha, but I can't imagine that phrase being used as a response to anything besides antishipping and general antifiction stances.

The issue here seems to be that op and others are conflating fictional preferences with irl behavior, which goes back to what I said in my previous reblog. Obviously, in real life, we shouldn't assume that sexual or romantic relationships are the only ones that matter. But again, we're talking about fictional characters in this thread. No one in fandom is out there creating blockbuster films that might have any influence on popular culture and reinforce amatonormativity. We're just goofing around with our headcanons and writing self-indulgent fanfic or making self-indulgent art that ten people will ever see.

I understand your point about how some issues are more about trends in fandom than individual behavior, but when you also say that people who readily ship characters should be judged, you're communicating two very different things.

I've seen a lot of young people in fandom gleefully jump onto harassment campaigns (I'm talking the kind where they have whole servers set up for this and make excel spreadsheets of hundreds of people in their fandom who are guilty of various Sins of Fiction, so I'm not exaggerating when I say 'campaign') that start out with them simply assuming someone's fictional tastes say something about who they are as a person. The original post that started this thread skates very close to that assumption, and I genuinely worry that they and others like them are a step away from doing very cruel things to real people because of different tastes in fiction.

-> Phonics For Adults <-

Me:

And you're like well. I'd rather trust myself to the fate of the world than anyone else. And I'd rather not let anyone else suffer the Torment Nexus just because of my own feelings. That seems kinda selfish. Alright sure.

So you enter the Torment Nexus. Each level has you pressing buttons like, [abduct innocent scientists to your vat: chances of humanity's survival increases by 0.005%] [everyone disliked that] [congrats! your moral goodness has decreased!].

The later levels get even worse. [blow up Antarctica: chances of humanity's survival increases by, ummm who knows ????] [total humans negatively affected: ????] [congrats! you're an ecoterrorist!].

Then you reach the final level. It reads: [through this door you'll break the news to your friend that he needs to die.] And you're like, wait he has to die??? I have to tell him?? But that's incredibly fucked up. After I went through the Torment Nexus as well. But it's the last level. So oh well. I can do this I suppose. Rather me than anyone else.

You enter the level and you friend is standing next to a cliff. You go over to him and say, hey this really fucking sucks but I've just learnt you need to jump off the cliff. Then we might be able to save humanity for real though. Maybe billions of people can survive if this works.