#I should also mention that all those people were 25yo or older

[anadiilua]

I showed the transcript of the Amanda x Dream insta dms to a few irl friends and family who don't know who Dream is.

I hid the names and didn't give much context and then asked them which one they thought was being accused of grooming and most of them thought that Amanda was the one showing the most "red flags" and that Dream's texts just seemed stiff and "polite but uncomfortable".

The rest of the people just looked me funny and asked "what grooming?"

After I told them the context a few of them got confused as to why someone would make these claims and some said that Dream should have stopped responding so not to encourage any kind of parasocial fantasy but that it was not a moral failure, just a "very amateur/naive mistake that was overlooked when it probably shouldn't considering how big of a cc he is". (Basically they called him dumb and immature but using more words)

[howlingmoonrise]

At worst, take this as a bit of fandom history?

Alright I’m pretty tired but it finally hit me that some antis legitimately believe that people are shipping a 25yo with teenagers and I’m still a bit dumbstruck. Then I mused a bit and realized it’s probably a fandom background/generational kind of thing, and this post was born. I’d appreciate if you read through it, and if you want I'm always open for discussion as long as it’s civil. 

There’s two main points I want to make on this post:

1) Creators’ words outside of the source content being automatically “canon” is a fairly recent thing. As in, last 2-to-5 years recent, and in new fandoms only. It’s not global.

If you go back to older and not-so-older fandoms, you'll see that most of them disregard stuff the creators have said outside of the source material or even source material content if it’s OOC, illogical, contradicts previous canon, etc. If a showrunner or a writer said something in a convention or in an interview, this wasn’t taken as canon and people didn’t assume that other people would know and adopt this information as official content, for a multitude of reasons.

We’re talking about creators queerbaiting/colourbaiting and saying or teasing outside of the books/shows/etc that a character was LGBT+ or Latin@ or something of the sort and getting kudos for being inclusive without any of the backlash. 

We’re talking about creators saying all sorts of canon-contradicting bullshit outside of the source material just because, or because they couldn’t even be bothered to keep up with the material they were supposed to be writing for. 

We’re talking about something having multiple creators and each having different views on the content and contradicting each other and even the very source material. 

We’re talking about creators taking a look at the headcanons and ships the fandom was creating and not liking them and doing everything to squash them to the ground.

I could cite a few examples, starting from queerbaiting on shows like Supernatural and Sherlock, the whole thing with Moffat and Doctor Who, Butch Hartman downright banning people and shutting down all LGBT+ headcanons and ships he sees of his shows for over a decade now, writers and producers Bryke for A:TLA stiffling the other writers and the pre-planned progression of the show in favour of their ship, even stuff like (NSFW) JK Rowling going ahead and tweeting that group masturbatory sessions in the Hogwarts dorms were a thing. 

None of this is particularly new. Creators putting stuff out there outside of the published material has been going on for as long as anything resembling fandom has existed. I’ve gone a bit more into this and the Death of the Author trope here.

Something that has also been going on as long as this is fandom creators taking all this, ignoring it, and doing their own thing. Creators say a character is definitely, for-sure, no take-backsies cis and straight? Nope. Trans and gay. Non-binary and ace. I’ve seen y’all doing this with Pidge even though she’s the one character to have canonly (in the source material) come out as any gender at all. Hermione has mentioned to be pale and to tan in the books? Let’s make her black. Alya’s family is from Martinique? Cool, it aligns with my headcanons but I’m not gonna push it into anyone else. Trans!Danny Fenton has been shut down by the creator in social media so hard you got whiplash? Keep putting him in binders, my dudes. This spreads to stuff like what the characters like to do for fun or their favourite colour or their birthdays. (you will pry hunk being cancer from my cold, dead hands.) Or, you know, ages.

People used to be legitimately sued and doxxed for writing fanfiction at all because it deviated from the creator’s original vision, the likes of Anne Rice making people afraid to post fanfiction for years, so that we’ve come this far and that we’re able to headcanon and take creative liberties with other people’s characters or worlds speaks a lot. This isn’t just about social justice and inclusivity. Extra skills for a characters? AU fics? Couldn’t. Coffeeshop slowburns included, considering it ruins the “integrity” of their work.

You see where I’m going with this, and this leads us to my second point.

2) Your opinions and feelings aren’t invalid, but I’ve met nearly no shaladin/pidge shippers who took the general ages lineup as canon. Though, to be fair, i don’t deal with all of them so I’m generalizing things a bit. You’ll notice I won’t mention She!th and that’s because I haven’t interacted with them.

I can assure you right now that, for example, Shidge shippers in general are grossed out at even thinking of a 14/25yo relationship. A good portion of them are even CSA survivors or minors, so you can see how much they’d like the mere idea of it. Shunk and Shance shippers, from what I’ve seen, don’t tend to roll with the “canon” ages either. If you’d like to argue that Shiro is coded as a clear adult or that Pidge is coded as a kid as opposed to the other paladins being late teens, I’ve argued against that in my comments here so feel free to take a look. If you’d still like to contest another point, I am more than willing to discuss your point and make my own.

I can sum up one half of this point like this: show a shaladin/pidge shipper a 14/25yo relationship, and they think it’s gross. A good portion think the same of 16/17/25. That they’re shipping shaladin/pidge ships regardless just comes to show that they really don’t see the age lineup as an actual thing. 

You have all the right to still feel uncomfortable with these ships or dislike them, though! It’s not for me to tell people what to like or not, nor to decide what affects them and their personal experiences or not. You also have the right to keep thinking that the age lineup is official and canon!

Picture the “creator’s word is canon” debacle like this: for me, the sea is blue. For you, the sea is green. Why? It depends on the depth of the waters, the weather, the environment beneath the waves, pollution degrees, etc. Neither of us is wrong here, but it depends on our own experiences and perceptions. In this case, those factors would be these: fandom background, personal opinions, previous headcanons, your own cultural background, and degrees to which you relate to a character. With a bonus of whether you think the creator is the worst thing since standardized testing or not, for some fandoms.

I’ve explained the fandom background on my previous point, but here’s a tl;dr: on recent fandoms and for people new to fandom, what the creators say goes; with less recent fandoms and fans, people do their own thing and only adopt what is said in the source content as canon, with the rest being taken as strong headcanons but not official canon. There are fans who even ignore sequels or certain episodes of their source materials due to it not fitting their standards.

This, coupled with the rest, obviously brings clashes of opinions, and sadly enough harrassment from both parts. Yes, I’m not discounting that there are shippers that are downright nasty, it’s a terrible reality we don’t have control over. We’re not a hive mind, and neither are you.

I’m not writing this to get any of you to ship or not ship a thing. I just want people to know where others are coming from, and you should respect other people’s history, culture, and experiences regardless of your opinion on the ships or on whether what creator’s say outside of the source material is canon or not. 

Throwing around suicide-baiting and harmful terms such as ‘pedophilia’ is unarguably not a good thing, especially when you’re attacking minors and csa survivors along the way. You need to respect that not everyone has the same background as you, and as such the age lineup isn’t canon for a good portion of the fandom and this does not make them pedophiles or supporters or anything resembling that. 

Respect. Other. People’s. Backgrounds.