unholy whistling

“Proshippers” created fandom years before “proship” and “antiship” were even concepts. Antis don’t get to come in and change the narrative now that fandom is “mainstream”. This is where the weirdos (affectionate) gather and it’s always been that way.

I miss the simple days when, for the most part, people just minded their own damn business. I miss when the worst thing someone could say to me over shipping royed or something was “they’re not even gay, you freak!”, instead of immediately accusing me of literal pedophilia over a cartoon. I miss when fandom was chill and not a morality crusade.

twenty years ago, in my early teens, in the early-mid 00s, fandom spaces were absolutely fucking rife with unbridled misogyny and homophobia. people got hate for writing female characters sympathetically, people got hate for shipping the wrong girl with the wrong guy, people got so much hate for yaoi ships– things could be somewhat harmonious inside small specific groups but shippers fought like cats constantly over their OTPs. there was constant drama, hatemail, nasty comments, broken friendships, betrayals, and wank. does anyone remember the solid decade of insane drama between harry/hermione and ron/hermione shippers? holy shit. go look at some of the fandomwank archives.

i remember people getting doxxed, outed to their parents, their bosses at work, threatened with cease and desist actions by studios, mailed decapitated dolls of their favorite characters. people would get their fanfics ripped apart line by line in ‘sporking’ communities; people would get fanfics written about them where a character tortured them in intense detail. does anyone remember what ‘flames’ were, when people would say ‘no flames allowed!’ on their fic? flames were hateful, violent comments screaming at you that your fic was awful and you were going to burn in hell for writing something so terrible.