#anti shyan

[ashamedmadej]

I hate coming across cute fanart for watcher and it being tagged "shy*n" LIKE PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE

[orlamccools]

gonna give one of my coworkers an old notebook w class notes in it and why on earth did i go through on a rant about shyan in the literal middle of a lecture in 2018?????

[helloitshaley]

did i really just see a shyan post....in the year of our lord 2022

[holleratyourbouyancy]

"I'm not gonna say I'm giving you a reach around, I wouldn't want to encourage-"

I keep forgetting they know about shyan

[thecozmoking]

Also if you are seriously going to threaten violence on others or tell them to kill themselves over a ship, you really need to step away from the internet and reevaluate your life and world view.

There are people dying, climate change is nigh irreversible at this point, inflation is through the roof, people are in danger of freezing to death this winter because of energy costs, and we’re constantly on the verge of living in a even more brazen police state.

People writing about two Internet personalities being in a fictional relationship should be the least of your worries, my friend.

[geniepuppet]

Just a reminder that I do not condone shipping sh/yan in any context and that if you do to please unfollow me.

I find shipping real people invasive and gross and I don't want to be connected to anyone who does that. Please don't argue in the replies/reblogs/tags about the 'morality' of shipping or what have you, just unfollow/block me if you ship that (or any 'ship' of irl people tbh)

[mummifiedgoose]

I forgot how horny the shyan shippers are

[cryptidjeepers]

People that still ship shyan and make content about them being boyfriends in 2022 are so fucking weird full offense

[claired3lune]

when the fanart was pretty, but then you checked the blog out and op ships real people :/

[littlekingbergara]

Shane pretends to be really REALLY into the idea of hunting mermaids and plays off his previous discomfort as culture shock. He tells the king how he loves the idea so much that he’s assembled his own mermaid hunting fleet. What he doesn’t say is that his ships look for any lost or injured mermaids that had to suffer seeing their pod being killed for fashion before they can be captured to be used as nothing more than a status icon. Shane picks out some rooms that aren’t used so he can have an extension built for the aquarium. He includes a movable wall to hide it when anyone from the other kingdom comes over so they don’t know that he’s the one that’s been “stealing” from them. (Also, just thought about it, the other king is now brent)

what a COOL turn of events now he's a mermaid PROTECTOR. like a little rescue and rehab facility for hurt mermaids. and causing dramaaa.

poor brent becoming the villain in every shyan au lmaooo. i was also picturing him.

[ashamedmadej]

I can't believe shy/an shippers are still a thing in the year of our lord (Concupiscence McNasty)

[levyfiles]

Since it happens a lot less frequently now, I have less cause to say it but one train of thought hits me every time an anti decides to start a misguided crusade all "hurricane in a box" style. The train of thought follows the memory of all the fans in the past who made it their most important mission to shame, bully and harass anyone who participated in fan spaces for themselves; not the creator. Who didn't follow a subset of rules they just made up.

What I think about is how content must have seemed to them, the deeper they got into it. Every time Ryan or Shane would do something particularly fond for each other, I'd see at least twenty comments spread out on the video, in the tag, or even in the Twitter mentions going "Ahh, the shippers are going to be SO ANNOYING about this".

And were we? I mean if I were an anti, and I was thinking that and my first thought is to hate-scroll through my blog. I remember posting on my own blog, reblogging from the shyan tag, posting in the shyan tag, cackling in group chats. There was a while there when some antis liked to screenshot things we said on our blogs or on servers (some who were lurking in group chats) declaiming how annoying and twisted and creepy we were. It didn't really get anything done. It annoyed a few people but we moved on because the content continued to be fun; the guys kept doing their thing and having fun doing it.

My point is that every time one of these righteous crusades bombs, I catch myself thinking about what it must be like for that anti. To watch something and to be thinking about how someone else is receiving it, how that someone else is someone I have an irascible hatred for is probably somehow going to have more fun with it than I ever could. Because I'm so busy receiving each moment, teeth clenched that it might vindicate someone having fun in their own spaces when I've explicitly said It's Wrong.

And it's like? Yeah, of course, I'm not having fun. Every time Ryan or Shane makes some dumb joke about how close they are or their body language shows fans just why these two started a company together, that would be intolerable to me because I'd be thinking so hard about how much a stranger online probably liked that more than they're "supposed to". Work husbands??? Why did they say that? Now the shippers are definitely enjoying the content and I'm uncomfortable because I gotta think about the implications of the phrase "Work husband" and between my irl responsibilities, have to craft some reasoning as to why homosocial male friendships are a bitter victim to the love spectrum.

I'd get so bored; the content wouldn't bring me any joy. So imagine how that person who decided to make a second blog to craft a 2017-era "breaking my silence" call-out post about Simone is going to experience content now. They won't be able to so much as make it through five minutes of a video without thinking of every single damn fan who told them their post was dumb and how much more fun y'all are going to have as the social media posts get all the more funnier; how Simone's fandom origins give her a good and easy insight into why we enjoy Watcher. Every time there's a promo and it becomes obvious that thanks to Simone's hard work editing clips she knows we'd like, the bloopers are a fans smorgasbord lol.

In the end, is it ever really a surprise why vocal antis leave fanspaces? They dive bomb into spaces to start a fight instead of making friends and end up with a bitter scar that ruins the content for them.

Best I can say is RIP, ya know?

[milkybottombergara]

Isn't it funny how antis are literally the only ones who ever try to bring Ryan and Shane's attention to Shyan?

[thecozmoking]

To the vehemently anti-Shyan blogs who re-tumble my posts? I hate to tell you this bestie…

[ghostfilecabinet]

why is there almost nil shyan fics now? :(

I've been noticing and thinking about this for a while now, and even had a small conversation with @popkin16 about it. From what I can see, it's not just that there's a lack of Shyan fics - there's also falling readership when it comes to the fics that ARE being published. A lot of the time the hits tend to be around the 100-300 even after a month or so. I think that can have a huge impact on people's desire to write for a fandom - especially when a fandom used to give a lot more hits and kudos. (I'm thinking of starting a little spotlight project for fics at some point so people aren't always reading the same 1000+ kudos fic, but that's a conversation for another day).

I do notice there's an uptick in hits and kudos for certain types of fic - long fic, explicit fic and beloved tropes like demon Shane fic, so it could be that fandom is a lot more selective in what it clicks on or wants to read, which is a theory that needs a lot more exploring because there's a lot to it that needs to be thought about. Is there a disconnect between what fandom wants to read and what fandom is writing? How did such a disconnect occur? What does fandom want to read? What does it mean that fandom only seems to want to read certain kinds of fic and will seemingly ignore the rest?

I do think whether or not the above theory has any weight, it looks like the fic aspect of Shyan fandom may be shrinking. It could be that people are a lot more casual about shipping, or don't ship at all. Has anti-shipping had an impact? Who knows! Or maybe the shippers that are around aren't readers/writers, but people who just love a discussion about how close Shane and Ryan sit.

Are there RPF readers and writers whose limit is "as long as they aren't married it's okay"? It could be that Ryan's wedding and Shane's engagement means that some shippers feel less comfortable with writing about them - I saw that a few times in other fandoms.

Sometimes fandoms just slow down, and you'll get fic less frequently. Every few months some amazing writers who have been diligently working on a fic will post something lovely, and the hits and kudos will come slower, but they will come. Alas, it's the fandom cycle.

[thethirteenthcrow]

the tension between people who actually like this move and see the reasoning behind it and support watcher, and those who are really mad and against it is almost stronger than the shyans vs antis back in 2018