'Tisms Zone

I’m frustrated with some of you. I’ve tried to temper my frustration while editing this because I think a lot of it is just obliviousness, but I apologize in advance if my frustration comes through in how I write this.

To be blunt, as someone who is still fairly new to submas fandom, I am disheartened and kind of disgusted with how normalized and insidious the contempt towards blankshippers is within the submas fandom. Whether you like it or not, blankshippers ARE part of submas fandom. Blankshippers, particularly in Eastern fandoms, continue to help build and maintain the fandom. We draw art, we write fic, and yes, sometimes we even create works that have nothing to do with shipping. I think to deny that, whether you personally like the ship or not, is ignorant.

And yet, English-speaking submas fandom has normalized bullying people over a ship and over kink content. The obsessive stalking and harassment that has been on full display the last few months is the most obvious example, but I think it’s easy for most people to point at these more extreme instances and say “This is not what we stand for; we do not condone this; this is Bad Behaviour.”

It’s the quieter aspects of it that feel largely unaddressed. It’s the words that jump out at you during an average scroll through the submas tag on tumblr, or that you might see from someone you just recently followed on twitter. It’s a death-by-a-thousand-cuts situation; it’s not the sole action of one person, but the accumulated small actions of many.

It’s the sort of thing that keeps me from pressing the follow button, even if I like the work someone posts. It’s the sort of thing that makes me scroll past a piece of art I like without making a comment, even though I really would like to. I don’t even bother entertaining the idea of signing up for group events or projects in the EN space, because I’ve seen them fall apart over shipcourse time and time again. I have to consciously weigh if it’s worth the risk of receiving a scathing reply to my earnest compliment. I have to decide if it's worth following someone whose art I enjoy, but might end up catching strays in their casual posts and comments. I have to decide if my very presence might be offensive to every new person I might want to quietly follow. I have to decide if I want to bear the burden of knowing that commenting on someone’s work might get them in trouble.

It’s the casual “kill blankshippers” in twitter replies that goes uncontested. It’s the obnoxious “Not blankshipping! Don’t you dare get it twisted!” disclaimers on selfcest art (as if blankshippers aren’t aware of selfcest shipping from the JP side of fandom? We know how to tell the twins apart — so who is that disclaimer really for?). It’s tagging fics on ao3 with “blankshippers DNI” in an attempt to exclude us from even interacting with gen/platonic works. It’s casually calling the ship “gross”, or insisting that you “don’t approve of it” as an unnecessary side note to your criticism of harassment campaigns.

(And I have to ask; do you still enjoy art by popular Japanese shippers? Do you make an exception for people who have reached a certain threshold of skill, who have a style you like, who might feel more distanced due to a language barrier? If so, why is that, I wonder?)

It’s insidious and moreover, it’s isolating. This fandom treats us like we’re a freakish spectacle, or like we’re crazed sexual deviants who are trying to insert our ship into every piece of fanart we come across. We are treated like one ship we enjoy defines our entire personalities. We are treated like everything we create – shippy or not — is tainted.

And yes, some blankshippers might be obnoxious because every fandom has obnoxious people. You can block those people. I block those people. But most of us are just regular human beings with jobs and hobbies who enjoy multiple interpretations of the twins and are just as happy enjoying platonic art and fic of them as we are enjoying shippy art of them.

Blankshippers can do everything “right” — make a separate account for shipping content, tag appropriately, avoid mentioning the ship in non-shipper spaces — and we are still treated with contempt casually and out in the open, and expected to just take it without being upset or angry about it.

Well, I am angry. It’s exhausting, and frankly it’s fucked up that it’s gotten to a point where treating half of the fandom as undesirables is seen as normal. (It was illuminating, by the way, to hear someone outside of submas fandom describe the treatment of blankshipping as "one of the most hostile they'd come across in a fandom space" when I vaguely brought up the ship, but that's for another post.) Whether you mean to or not, the widespread attitude towards blankshippers in this fandom divides us and isolates us from each other, and we spend more time spinning our wheels on this stupid, meaningless shipcourse instead of creating things and inspiring each other.

The consequences of alienating a subset of creatives in your fandom may not be immediately obvious, but it has already created a hostile environment for everyone — not just the blankshippers, but for everyone. The surveillance, the hyper-vigilance, the accusations; no one benefits from this. I saw it in the fandom I was previously in, and it created an incredibly high turnover rate; people would average about three months before moving on. I lasted about a year but I eventually got sick of it, too. I think that’s the kind of fandom we are trending towards if this kind of behaviour continues.

I also want to emphasize that this is not an issue of establishing boundaries to me. I think it’s your god-given right to block any and all blankshippers you come across if you don’t want to risk ever seeing it on your feed. I think it’s absolutely fair to ask people not to tag your art with a ship name if it wasn’t created with that intent. I think if a blankshipper oversteps your boundaries, you have every right to correct them or block them. Hell, if you want to be mean in a private discord or group chat, I don’t fucking care, as long as I don’t have to see it.

The casual flippance and disgust towards shippers is unnecessary, and it doesn’t go unnoticed. Is it that hard to stand in defence of someone being treated unfairly without passing a moral judgement on their shipping preferences? Are you defending blankshippers at all, or just the people being mistaken for them?

It sucked when a bunch of non-shippers were accused of being blankshippers on tumblr, right? It sucks when people pester you with questions about whether you’re a shipper when you’re clearly not, with the insinuation that that’s a bad thing, that that makes you a bad person. In other words, it kinda sucks to be a blankshipper, right?

I have very little sympathy if you’re doing or saying these things performatively, or if you’re worried about your internet clout; look at the way you are actually talking about people and treating people. At the end of the day, you can make whatever comments you want in your space, but I think you should be aware that we can and do see them, and you should be aware of the effect it has.

If you truly consider yourself neutral and anti-harassment, then I sincerely ask for you to just consider what it might be like to be a blankshipper in this fandom. I ask you to defend us from unjustified harassment, not in spite of our ship, but because our ship should be allowed to exist; I ask you to defend us because we are people in the same community, loving the same characters.

And to the people in this fandom that do speak out on our behalf, when a lot of us feel as though we can’t without the risk of attracting more negative attention, please know that we appreciate you so much, even if you’ve never seen us say it publicly. I can assure you that your kindness and understanding also doesn’t go unnoticed.

I love blankshipping fandom. The majority of people rallying behind this ship have been nothing but kind and welcoming, passionate and eager to share art and fic and fandom history with a newbie like me. I do truly think this is the most welcomed I’ve felt to a fandom in a while. But they’re also exhausted and wary, because they’ve been burned so many fucking times. There’s a lot of blankshippers that want to be able to interact with more of the fandom without the scrutiny and the judgement, but the fandom has largely offered hostility in return.