#HOWEVER that is risky as I'll never get an honest answer considering proshippers are like

[finalshaper]

about the pro shipping post you are so fucking right. when i was 16 i had proship dni on an aesthetic blog that i ran and i had multiple people harassing me for it over months. i've also had them call me ableist and homophobic slurs and sexually harass me when i was 16-18 for untagged unsearchable posts that they had to have scrolled back months in my blog to find. i was in a fandom at the time that had a LOT of people like that and there were many other people who got worse and had proshippers being wildly racist to them. they say curate your online experience and then throw a fit when you actually do.

Hi i'm sorry I didn't respond to this sooner! I was most likely absorbed entirely in skyrim Once Again.

Yeah, the proship movement has a tendency to harbor the absolute worst people in fandom circles and when you say "Hey if your movement is Truly Safe for victims/people of color /disabled folks/kids/etc then why the fresh sam hill fuck are you harboring Actual Racists, Actual Pedophiles, And Actual Horrible People" they take it as "kys lol go die" and not a request to Actually examine how their stances on something as terminally online as shipping discourse and the culture that it founded has sheltered these types of people.

And it's this inaction and refusal to address it in favour of perceiving it as a siege in a war that isn't actually happening (for lack of a better way to word it, no, people aren't out to get you they're asking you to examine your fucking community and WHY so many people feel unsafe around it aside from other reasons) is why I, and so many others, are in dislike of proshipping culture aside from. well. gestures wildly to the rest of it.

They take it as a blow to their egos rather than a genuine honest "Hey if what you ship Truly Is Inconsequential why does the culture you cultivate harbor, say, Actual Offending Pedophiles or Those Pedophiles That Label Themselves As "No-Contact" For Some Reason As If That Makes It Less Bad that are utilizing fandom space and proship culture as a quick and easy way to get targets within their reach?"

Side tangent/note here: Over the years many people have said that I cannot be pro-dark media and anti-proship. These things are not mutually exclusive and many, and I mean MANY people in circles focussing on dark and transgressive media are FULLY AWARE of the connection between reality and fiction (and how they both affect one another, the best way I can word it is that if you focus on one color pallet soon your world will be monochromatic, you gotta learn to focus on all the colors. If you saturate your life with too much "dark" or distressing content it will color your worldview and that is not what life is about) and often emphasize the importance of this distinction.

They also do not go out of their way to overly-romanticize the content they read (the public perception/general society's consumption of Lolita [vladimir nobokov] has been a disaster for the human race. if u think lolita is supposed to be a cute romance story you're misinterpreting the book and need to step back and examine just why you think that way and actually sit down and analyze the book and humbert as a character dear god stop turning it into a cutesy coquette aesthetic, shanespeare has a fucking amazing video talking about it and as an added bonus it's shorter than the typical 4+ hour video essays I often indulge in) as they often know better to do so and shun the people who do, ESPECIALLY when you're talking about books like The Slob (Aron Beauregard, even though that novel is essentially misogyny, homophobia, gore porn, a lot of fatphobia and shit like that and is all-around poorly written)

proshipping culture also relies a lot on a fanfic/fanart medium which is a VASTLY inappropriate place to explore these things (on top of, well, the type of people the culture has a tendency to attract n shit vs transgressive/dark media corners) and People Do Not Want To See Headcanons About Their Favourite Characters Being Rapists And Shit Like That I Promise You You Aren't "Coping" You're Just Making (some not all) People Around You Uncomfortable And Fucking Miserable Because You Decided That Their Comfort Character Is A Shotacon Or Some Shit (and that is before I get into how unless that character is canonically a piece of shit, making x character into a freak is a gross mischaracterization).

People come into fandoms for escapism, or to enjoy characters and stories with people and, yes I am speaking from personal experience here not only as ex-proship but also someone who's been 'round the block when it comes to fandoms.

There is a difference between transgressive lit i.e Lolita and someone writing a fanfic about a father/daughter relationship and not in the wholesome familial way we all know and love. That is knowing your place, understanding that fandom is a WILDLY inappropriate place to explore these things (seriously people, just write an original book! you got it in you clearly! i believe in you and maybe if you do it right you'll write something that's very touching and profound and opens up a lot of conversations!) and that fiction and reality do in fact impact and shape each other in more ways than you'd initially assume.

anyways rant/tangent over, sorry I went on for so long, I'm Very passionate about this discussion despite everything that's happened to me at the hands of it.