Pro-ship versus Anti-ship: A short lesson for those of you that need to learn
Recently I've gotten some asks inquiring if I'm proship or not and implying certain things about the morality involved in that. Here's the thing. Some of you here in this space and in fandom in general have been misinformed about certain definitions and what they imply. You may also have been introduced to fandom through tiktok, which is lovely for certain things, but absolutely godawful for others. Tiktok, unfortunately, has turned fandom into a more supply-and-demand type thing, in turn causing people to treat fanfic writers like content creators or influencers. Which is just not true or fair.
THIS IS ALSO NOT HOW FANDOM WAS MEANT TO BE.
Once upon a time, fandom was a much less-populated, much more accepting place to inhabit. And I strongly believe we need to get back there.
So let's talk about proship versus antiship.
The definitions of these two words seem simple: Pro-shippers are people who are for all ships. Anti-shippers are against certain ships.
Now, reading this, most people might think they are anti-shippers. For example, I do not like reading Blackcest. For me, personally, it makes me uncomfortable. But am I anti-ship?
NO
Being proship doesn't actually mean you, yourself enjoy all ships. I could list thousands of pairings that I don't like, for whatever reason! It could be as simple as that I don't see those people together, or a more in-depth "hey, this thing makes me feel icky, I don't want to engage in it."
And that's okay! It's okay to set those boundaries! But:
Being proship means that you don't give a shit who people ship with each other because guess what? It doesn't involve you and it doesn't hurt anyone.
It means that I ship my ships, and you ship yours. It means that I don't CARE what you read or write about in your spare time.
Because here's the thing that I keep saying, and you all need to hear it:
What you read or write about does not make a comment about your morality or your desires.
I have spent a LOT of time writing about Barty and Evan fucking in morgues. As someone who gets anxiety attacks during funerals because I HATE dead bodies, I have no desire to do anything like that.
People who write canon-compliant fic spend a lot of time writing about death and murder, but odds are, they have no desire to kill.
And
People who read or write Dead Dove content most likely do not have any desire to do those things irl.
Sure, there are some people out there who might have things to work through, but I PROMISE you, I KNOW people who read and write Blackcest, and not ONE of them has expressed any interest in fucking their sibling. Why do they write it? I have no idea. I don't see the appeal. But I also DONT CARE, because it's FICTION. It doesn't mean ANYTHING and it DOESNT AFFECT ME.
When we try to censor certain ships (AKA BEING ANTI-SHIP) we are opening the door to censorship in fandom in general.
Many people I see expressing outrage at proshippers are young and they may not have been around long enough to know this but in the past, fandom HAS been censored. But it wasn't just the taboo topics you're talking about that were censored. It was MLM ships. WLW ships. Anything queer at all. Fics were just deleted from sites for being queer!
When you want to censor inc*st or CNC or NC fics, you are opening the door to censoring the things that YOU enjoy, too. Even simple, vanilla wolfstar.
The thing is, ao3 has a tagging system for a reason. USE IT. Filter out what you don't like. In order for fandom to be the open space it is, in order for your favorite fanfic writers to feel welcome to write what they want, in order for your favorite MLM ship to even exist, we need to Ship and Let Ship.
You do NOT have to go to your local court and lobby for inc*st to be legalized in order to be proship. You can still filter out anything that makes you uncomfortable. You can still say "hey, that's not my cup of tea!" But you have to leave people alone and stop judging, or fandom will stop existing.
And yeah...that's all I have to say on that.
Also for the love of GOD, writing Death Eaters a smol babygirls does not make you fasc*st for fuck's sake! People need to touch grass....
Edited to add: Especially to you younger people...You can be proship and want NOTHING to do with ANYTHING smut, whether it's 'normal' or taboo. You can, again, just simply say, "That thing makes me feel icky, I won't engage" and that's FINE! Setting boundaries is healthy and wonderful. But the message here is: we can't shame people even if we don't like it ourselves.
