Who ever brought back proship/antiship discourse deserves to step on lego what happened to critical thinking and understanding that the borders in fiction are more nuanced than real life but that doesn’t mean its okay to ship adults with 14 years olds
I’ve been on and off for a while, and a lot of shit has gone down.
For a while, I somewhat doubted my stance on shipping. It seemed like antis had become so ubiquitous on this platform that at best, I had to compromise my opinions to use it effectively, and at worst they must be right. I only used this blog occasionally, and internally I stopped considering myself pro-ship. It’s just shipping discourse anyway; it wasn’t something that mattered enough to take a hardline stance on when it could hurt me.
But then something else happened. Someone close to me ended up hurt by a group of friends who were deep in anti rhetoric. Things they held onto for comfort were treated as flaws these people had to overlook, and that they couldn’t mention without being required to qualify things. Without going into detail, they were also made to feel like a horrible person; it hurt them even after they pulled away from that friend group.
This is to say, I’m very sure again, and I’ve seen first hand the damage that antis can cause, especially to people in their spaces. People are afraid of tripping up or liking the wrong thing, and they feel horrible for a while after. And for this reason, I think I’m going to return to this blog.
That said, I have softened my stance a bit; fiction obviously CAN harm people, and it is worth looking at how it does this. Fanfic isn’t going to have the influence that mass media does, but it’s not beyond criticism, especially if it perpetuates harmful stereotypes or promotes discrimination. But I stand by the main part: assuming things are tagged; it’s perfectly fine to explore dark and unpleasant topics in fic, and shipping is just another form of that. Any two characters can probably form a relationship dynamic worth exploring, but it should always be tagged for people uncomfortable with it.
As always, ship what you want, and fandom is a place for exploration and fun.
hey, are you openly proship? you’re valid and very brave, your transparency and kindness is unbeatable
are you proship only in safe-spaces? that’s ok, self care comes first, you are simply amazing
do you have anti-harrassment or proship-alligned morals but dont consider yourself proship? thats ok, you dont gotta get involved in this whole fiasco, you know your moral basis and that should be enough
ok so is it just me or are anti’s really salty when it comes to ex-antis? like i don’t like it when a proshipper becomes an anti, but thats because i don’t like saying good bye to people that i liked and now they either hate me or wanna show how to change (when it ends up hurting people) but any time i somehow end up an some anti’s blog, theres always something about ex-anti’s being bad and not in a way they hate proshippers, but like adding your partner cheating or something like they treat them like a kid who turned out not believing in god and is trans when the anti is the evangelical christian
Listen. All I’m saying is if decades of step-sibling/step-parent porn on the biggest porn sites hasn’t normalized fucking your family members then we don’t need to worry about some random fanfic for a fandom that died ten years ago.
This blog is neutral towards anti vs pro shippers, however I tend to agree with proshippers on most issues. If you don’t like that you can block or unfollow me.
A response I gave to Liz’s form about why and how survivors cope with trauma through fiction:
It’s Mouse, feel free to identify me, I’m happy to speak publicly about it. I’m currently too broke to afford a therapist, but as someone studying to be a therapist and surrounded by therapist colleagues who agree with me, I’d say my points are perfectly backed.
After multiple abusive relationships which (in such an unfortunate coincidence) both heavily involved gaslighting, codependency, and lovebombing, I began to struggle more and more with feeling crazy, feeling like maybe my abuse wasn’t that bad because good things sometimes happened in the relationship, that maybe I should be grateful I had someone who felt dependent on me, and other things similar. I decided to explore many of those feelings in my writing, and thinking and processing them in a way where I could stop at any time really helped me come to realisations and understandings about what happened. I now am comfortable in the knowledge that the romantic moments, the more “cutesy” aspects of codependency, etc don’t make the abuse any less terrible. In fact, that contrast highlights even more how unpredictable and violent they were.
I want to write dark stories about relationships with similar themes to highlight how it feels as a survivor. Sometimes it’s a whirlwind romance, but there’s a sinister undertone. This is the reality for many, and that passionate feeling interspersed with bouts of horror can sometimes become pathologised into a form of hypersexuality where abuse is a precursor to romance. Sometimes the opposite happens, and all sex becomes terrifying and repulsive. Sometimes it’s both in alternation. Aka it’s my trauma I get to sexualise it or be repulsed by it as I please, and I can work out those feelings in writing by venting and exploring if I want to. I think this can also help people who aren’t survivors empathise with how we process things, how it takes many survivors a lot of time to leave, and how many survivors still love their abuser, or at least the parts of them that had the capacity for kindness. Our abusers string us along with moments of ideal romance, and that can be confusing and lead to false hope and mixed feelings. As to why I share other than being an exercise in empathy for non-survivors: for other survivors, it lets them know they aren’t alone, and we’re all in this together. And we are.
On “hypersexualising” and “romanticising” abuse in fiction, by a survivor and psych student who sought answers about what happened to me:
TW sexual assault, love bombing, abuse
//
Don’t sexualise trauma, don’t romanticise abuse, these are all anti talking points. Get them angry enough and they’ll say, “If you liked it so much how is it fucking trauma?”
They’re terrified of accepting the harsh truth about many abuse cases: the abuser will try to convince the victim it’s beneficial to stay, or that they secretly liked it. They’re unknowingly perpetuating the very words abusers say because they’re often dead set on believing all victims experience abuse that’s nothing but never-ending torture that they would immediately run from given a chance to escape. While this applies to some, the reality is a lot different in many abuse cases. Gaslighting and manipulation convince the victim they’re better off just powering through the pain. That’s what happened to me.
“But why are you hypersexualising it? What’s so sexual about rape?”
It is called arousal non-concordance. If you eat a sandwich, you can’t stop your body from digesting it for nutrients. If you receive sexual stimulus your body instinctively reacts by making you aroused. If you have a vagina, you will instinctually become wet, and you may have an orgasm during the assault. If you have a penis, you become hard, and may ejaculate. This creates cognitive dissonance that worsens the trauma.
Your body having a natural response to stimulation DOES NOT MEAN you wanted the assault. If you tickle someone, they laugh, doesn’t mean they think it’s all that funny.
Often this dissonance between instinctive response and conscious awareness causes hyper or hyposexuality.
Feeling your body being out of sync with your mind is very upsetting.
“Why romanticise it if you hated it so much?”
We did hate the pain. It was the rare moments of relief that kept us hoping. Hoping we’d be okay again. That’s not our fault, that’s the design.
Often abusive relationships use lovebombing, an emotional abuse technique designed to give you hope and string you along that the abuse will stop.
They abuse you, and then they act like a wonderful partner afterwards, so you think “they do clearly love me, they’re being so kind now, maybe it will stop, maybe they were just mad and regret their bad behaviour and will be loving again from now on”.
It’s not “romanticising” abuse when THE LITERAL ABUSE was USING ROMANCE as a means of control. They ARE romantic, it IS romanticised, that’s the point, that’s how they manipulate you into staying. It’s realistic to write abusers being romantic AND abusive.
To say otherwise to any of this is victim blaming and shows how little you know (or are ready to come to terms with) about trauma. Work on that.
No but seriously though. Socmed absolutely despises survivors and our ways of coping if we’re not crying in some picturesque way, or worse, dead. As long as we’re meek and silent they’ll support us, but when we cope in some ugly way, they turn their backs.
And the fact that so many people get up in arms over coping with FICTION, rather than any of the other horrific coping mechanisms around, shows that. They don’t care about us, they care about our image.
Yes, this was provoked by someone I used to admire in the horror genre saying we need professional help, when professional help fucking recommends using fiction to cope. Horror has always been survivors’ genre, our place to explore and process the terrifying and often deeply disturbing nature of reality, of our experiences. If you’re a horror creator, respecting the survivors who you profit off of is a bare fucking minimum.
