#fandom mentality

You could be in one fandom where the most popular ship has a large age gap. Within the fandom this is normal, in fics the character ages are changed to be a lot closer, since they are fictional anyway... and there's nothing wrong with it. In most cases it's not even that the character needs to change in any other way, but the original writers stated they are x age, and that simply doesn't make sense for them. You couldn't guess that's their canonical age neither by looks nor behaviour...

Then you switch to another fandom, and see people rip into someone who ships something with a much smaller age gap. If the popular content creators decided this is an awful ship for the age gap, that person is done for in the fandom. Even if it's something like, 24 and 28, you'd be sitting there watching the blogger's name get added to all sorts of lists.

You can join a fandom where everyone's extremely worried about consent. They make sure to clearly separate the character from the person who voiced them, and add disclaimers that they don't ship the actors only the characters, condemn rpf, and anyone who forgets to clarify might make the creators uncomfortable so they're immediately cancelled.

...Then the next moment, you switch to a fandom where the content creators openly flirt with each other in and out of character. Just fully dgaf. Grown men telling each other "I'll steal your boyfriend" but the other two aren't even boyfriends, just voice characters that have chemistry.

Then you blink twice and you're in a fandom where the artist is so confident that he's willing to kiss another guy for the lols (looking at Ryan Reynold and Andrew Garfield for example. Does it even count as spideypool? Who's to say)

Then you encounter an rpf fandom where the ship is straight up a selling point. Kpop, Thai bl shows... these are real people, but they make money off your obsession with their love lives, so they exaggerate on purpose. This kind of fandom would put members of the first one in a coma.

After seeing so many approaches to the same topics, it suddenly becomes less clear where the line "should" cross. This was taboo, but in this other fandom everyone does it... and I thought this was okay, but in the other fandom they highlight so many problematic aspects of it...

Then you realize, the moral guidelines you adopted simply because they were the most popular in that specific fandom may not be correct after all.

We've placed such an obligation on addressing and trying to fix or hold ourselves accountable for the negative aspects of things that we've essentially barred ourselves from unadulterated happiness and positivity.

I probably sounded like an ass to the person who mentioned "fandom politics" as a reply but it was just such a blatantly unnecessary comment that really proved my main point. People are so hammered into the belief that if we don't constantly force ourselves to acknowledge something that we are The Problem or making The Problem worse.

It gets so bad that whenever someone even dares to criticize a certain conduct of the celebrity in question, their fans immediately fall on the person making the criticism and bring out their “defense squad” strategies, which tend to include behavior that isn’t exactly nice to the person who dared to “attack the celebrity”. When, really, all that was being criticized was that celebrity’s specific behavior at a certain point in time, it was not an attack on their worth as a human being. We all screw up at times and that doesn’t mean we’re all awful people, why would these people be an exception? Why is it that we can never criticize any behavior we find problematic in a celebrity without their “stans” coming out to protect them ready to chop off heads? Why can’t these fans recognize that some of the things their idols do are not okay and are not an example of appropriate/nice behavior? Why is it that everything a celebrity does immediately earns them a “precious cinnamon roll” reaction from fans?

Yes, you'll get scorn for portraying it at all, but also people should be smart enough to be able to tell that positively portraying incest is just... Characters experiencing their lives?? Weird shit happens! I certainly don't know your plot but I can sure believe that incest can happen if you so write it - because shit happens. Two siblings having a positive incestuous relationship means nothing in reality itself; they're just characters. That do incest. And are happy. That's all there is too it.

You're not "glorifying" anything. It's that age-old discussion of perspective: write it from the perspective of the siblings, or someone in their environment that supports it, and it will be positive. Write it from the perspective of perhaps their parents, disgusted and horrified, and suddenly it's not so "positive" even if the siblings get a happy ending.

I wish you the best of luck for the story, though, anon, no matter your choice. Remember that having fun is more important than this bullshit and prioritize your health at all costs!!

You make a good point about reading from perspectives. All too often people fall into the trap of reacting to a story as The Reader, and evaluating the story from the perspective of The Reader rather than recognising the actual character perspectives the story is written in and for.

"If you don't acknowledge inequality and bigotry and suffering in every single moment of your life you're a horrible racist bigot that perpetrates genocide!"

the fandom that im currently in is.. very toxic. someone got harassed to the point of having to delete their account bc they "supported" a proshipper (it was literally just them saying that u shouldnt harass this person just bc theyre proship-). a lot of my friends were very supportive of this person and agreed that ppl shouldnt be harassed over shit like that and many of them seem to have similar viewpoints as me (anti harassment and all that) but prefer to stay away from that stuff

the fandom is basically ran by antis. theres a small corner that some ppl have made where they talk about proship stuff freely (love those ppl so much theyre genuinely so nice) but overall its. not the best place to be if ur proship. which is interesting to me bc theres actually a shocking amount of proshippers that just... dont say anything. on my side blog ive had multiple ppl interact that i thought were anti (or at least just. not proship in some way) but would literally go and like all my posts about incest ships of the characters.

and sometimes i think about it and how theres actually a bunch of proshippers but we're so heavily harassed and silenced that we just- dont say anything. but the fandom is small and we cant exactly separate ourselves from it if we really like the show. and i feel especially bad for some of the bigger blogs that ppl love and adore bc i know wut would happen if somehow ppl found out and made some big post or wutever.

i dont pretend to be antiship but i dont outright say im proship unless i really trust that person

im currently trying to make my own lil space with some friends so at least if anything goes wrong i at least have a few ppl but its a bit scary to think about honestly-

Although it can be full of snot-nosed superiority complexes, I do recommend using the AO3 Subreddit in order to find likeminded people for your fandom. The very vast majority of the AO3 Subreddit is proship or at least proship neutral. Antis are generally eviscerated on sight whenever they try to poke their nose into it.

If you have any other fandoms that you are active in or have friends within, there's also no harm in introducing them to your small fandom.

From what I understand the Marvel fandom did kind of the same thing you're describing with the Starker shippers, but they flourished and supported each other anyway.

I know its easy for me to simply say 'do it anyway' as someone who generally could not give a fuck about anyone's opinion of me, but honestly. Do it anyway. Form your little collective. Support each other. Learn how to write and draw and make GIFs so you feed your own portion of the fandom. You physically do not need those people, it just unfortunately takes a bit of effort and means potentially a bit less content until you start really generating your own.

Fandom spaces do not start out from nothing. Promote the shit out of your fandom. Draw people in. Comb through the proship tags and send asks to blogs like mine asking other proshippers to check out the source material.

People in small fandoms are easy to bully because you're so enclosed into this circle of the exact same people. They happen to be the majority in the room and they're weaponising it.