uh hi, just wanna ask something about proship and all that jazz .
im anti hara for a reason: i just block people if i don't like something, but im deeply uncomfortable with certain ships and the romanization of complex topics.
i feel like a lot of darkshippers (saying that to not generalize) are doing it for coping reasons, but some definitely seem groomed into it.
so i just. don't know what i am?? i consider myself unaligned but not neutral. im DEFINITELY not neutral about lolicons.
but also, if proshipping IS about letting people ship what they want, does that extend to fully romanticizing very complex and/or sensitive topics? (i am very particular about terms and their "proper" use)
thats all! im very open about hearing both sides, but i can't deal with certain things being seen as "good" or "hot" when i lived through them and they weren't.
Hello! Sorry for getting to this late, I wanted to spend some time to think about how to answer.
For one thing, I'll say that dark shipping is not necessarily always the same as romanticizing the topics involved. This is where the line between fiction and reality needs to be drawn. I would say that fully romanticizing a topic would mean glorifying it happening in reality. The context of the ship and of the fictional content is important.
To give an analogy, it's like if someone really loves FPS (First Person Shooter) games. Like, they go home after school/work and play FPS games every day. Maybe they like all FPS games just because the mechanics of shooting a character on screen happens to be fun for them. This doesn't mean they think shooting a real gun at living beings in real life is fun. But shooting things in the context of fiction may be fun.
So I'd say that's the first thing to know about dark shipping or about being proship -- it's distinguishing that people can and do enjoy things in fiction that they could even be disgusted by in real life.
The second thing is that it's about separating oneself from what they see in front of them, even if it's "relatable". It can feel like a personal "attack", where if someone finds something "good" or "hot" in fiction, that feels like it means they would think that happening to you in real life was "good" or "hot". But that's not the case.
Like using the example from earlier, let's say someone has been shot before. Then, if they met the FPS fan, even though this person loves FPS games, if they found out what happened to the real person in front of them, it's likely they would be horrified. Because something terrible happening in fiction is one thing, but a terrible thing happening to a real person IS horrific.
And the third thing is just that it's completely valid to still be uncomfortable with certain topics, and it's also important to recognize that discomfort doesn't make something immoral.
Like, you shouldn't have to "deal with" anything that makes you uncomfortable. That's why blacklisting triggering topics is important. But if you run into someone talking about enjoying that content (in fiction), the best thing is to move on. It's uncomfortable, but that doesn't make them a horrible person. (If they didn't tag their content appropriately that's a different story, but social media does also deserve some blame for sometimes showing posts to people they weren't intended for.)
If you imagine someone close to you that has always advocated for you and you KNOW they don't support anything harmful happening to real people, especially whatever you went through, and then you one day learn they like some dark fictional content, that doesn't mean their support was fake. If they continue advocating for you and make sure not to discuss things you're uncomfortable with around you, then that's what shows how they feel about those things happening in real life. Not their fictional tastes.
That's all that being proship is about. There's definitely content I never want to see in my life that would probably disgust me, but I know that it doesn't mean the people making it are inherently immoral. I'll base that judgement on their actions toward real people.
