#also anon proship isn't used like that. like the word. it isn't. you're using it wrong.

[quietwingsinthesky]

Can you delete your bad fics or private them? I kudosed one and sent it to a discord but then i went to your orofile and found you ship incest in other fic. I dont want my friends to know that I read proship. Youre a really good writer. so you should delete it anyway more people will like you

okay okay holy fucking shit this is. one of the most anon asks of all time. let's break this down.

(1) "Can you delete your bad fics" <- this is like all that i could see on my phone notif which. you can imagine how wild that was to glance over and see out of nowhere. and then it just does not get more normal. "or private them" ????????

(2) "I kudosed one and sent it to a discord" so okay the existence of my other work or that i wrote them in the first place does not actually disturb you so much that you want to stop consuming the work that you do like. you just don't want there to be evidence that you liked my tainted work. how is this my problem.

(3) "but then i went to your orofile and found you ship incest in other fic." look on the one hand. yeah? we do incest here. i'm not going to apologize for my work. but also like that honestly isn't the most extreme stuff i write, why is it always the incest people focus on. i wrote about a guy getting eggs laid in him by a hellhound once. no one ever comes to me accusing me of being morally despicable for the hellhound egg fic, and it makes me feel very unloved. sorry, distracted. where were we.

(4) "I dont want my friends to know that I read proship." Do you know what's extremely abnormal, both on your end and of your friends'? For you to feel the need to do like. a fucking background check on me. before you even read completely unrelated fic??????? Look, I'm being a bit of an asshole to you here, I understand that, but you must see how unreasonable your message is (assuming you did not send it with malicious intent in the first place, we'll get to that.) But. Genuinely. Anon, this is not normal for you to expect of yourself or for your friends to expect you to do. This is extremely concerning control behavior. You are in a cult. If you're afraid of your friends turning on you because of something you didn't even read, just came into contact with accidentally by association, they are not your friends and you are in a very bad situation. Get the fuck out of there.

(5) "Youre a really good writer. so you should delete it anyway more people will like you" However, having said that, lol. lmao. The last bit where you go oh but you *are* good, you just need to do what *I* want to earn more attention makes me extremely fucking suspicious that you came here with ill intent from the start. If I was not, well, me. If I was, say, someone with a lot more need for that attention or praise, or someone who was more insecure in my writing, this would be a good fucking trap to lay, wouldn't it. And don't think I missed how you positioned your earlier situation as something that would be my fault if I didn't take my fics down, as if you or your friends' actions are my responsibility. Take your suggestion and shove it up your ass. I hope no one you've preyed on with that ever listened to you.

[skumhuu]

not at all the other anon (and very VERY much proship leaning) but the "proship means you're against harrassment" definition has always seemed flawed to me because... i was an anti once. And from my direct experiences there are so many antis who have horrible opinions of proshippers but are also very firmly against harrassment—they're still antis and still hate us, viscerally even, they just keep it to themselves and to their friend circles. That doesn't make it harrassment and also doesn't make them less of an anti, they still believe awful things about us and would likely be hostile if we ever interacted.

The definition i typically use for myself to determine whether or not someone is a proshipper or not is if they believe someone's taste in fiction has any bearing on their real-life moral compass or not. If you believe it does, you're an anti. if it doesn't, you're proship.

(This isn't to step over your opinion at all—just sharing mine! I really apologise if this comes off as disrespectful in any way haha.)

No no you’re fine! 💚

This kinda goes back to the unfortunately widespread idea that proship=pedo/problematic. Because like, those people just sound like they identify with being an anti because all of their friends are antis, they have the wrong info, or are too scared to speak up.

Also please remember that my aggressiveness lately isn’t due to hate, I am more than okay with former antis and people who don’t know better, but at this point I’ve dealt with so much harassment and hurt that I’ve lost my patience.

Aligning oneself with the face eating leopards to stay safe doesn’t mean they’re going out to eat faces themselves, but they are enabling that behavior. Even if they aren’t hurting people, by displaying “proship dni” they’re okay with isolating particular kinds of people out of the fandom. They’re okay with inciting harassment, or standing by while others do it for them. And like, they can say they’re against harassment all they like, but they’re still siding with the face eating leopards, hoping they don’t eat their faces next.

Adding proship to my bio wasn’t what I wanted, but I keep getting people acting betrayed when they discover that I’m proship and attacking me that I felt forced to add it. I simplify proship down to ‘proship means you are against harassment’ because I keep having to have this same song and dance where people show up in my askbox demanding I explain myself, when in reality I’m a random sanscest artist like 😂😂😂 the situation is very nuanced! But y’all I’m just trying to make the skeletons kiss

I keep linking studies, and info about the situation, and the way you explained being proship is exactly what I keep saying over and over but in different words :0 I’m too tired to be sympathetic with the people who call me an unsafe pedophile over fiction, who fill my ship tags with hate/disgust while I’m trying to vibe, and I’m not going to tolerate the people who side with that anymore. Like I don’t care if they aren’t harassing others themselves anymore.

Literally look at the tmnt fandom, they ended up turning on “neutrals” and bullied the ever loving shit out of everyone, even those who didn’t care. If we tolerate that here, eventually it might get that bad too. I refuse to let that happen. I will NOT let the face eating leopards in

[tsbs-ship-hate-confessions]

Honest to God there is nothing more hypocritical of a bunch of whiny proshippers complaining about hate

yet preach free speech as long as they get to jerk off to kids getting fucked by their parents.

The hypocrisy is appalling.

'oh oh proshipping doesn't mean that stuff anymore, we're Clearly anti censorship oh oh the horrors of being called a creep for making celestialcest smut and giggling about siblings diddling each other. but we totally don't glorify dark topics why would you say such a thing'

like pick a fucking struggle. deal with the consequences of your actions. None of this is okay.

And mind you, this is coming from someone who is a major proponent of dark fiction. people should get to write whatever fucked up shit they want to. coping, venting, idc the reason

but you cannot honest to God be stupid enough to assume you're not a walking red flag. No one owes you trust that you're 'doing it for the right reasons' or 'don't support the morally stripped content' just like how you don't have to owe anyone an explanation. That street goes both ways

It's even stupider, when these fucks are all like 'u should clearly know I don't condone this'. I'm sorry, are we all a hivemind now? Are we above communication? It literally cost nothing to add a note of 'hey btw I think this shit isn't okay in case you can't read the room'. if ppl decide to assume bad faith after that then that's on them. but being a fucking mule about it? really? thought we were supposed to be adults here

speaking of which

"Children shouldn't be reading this anyway, My audience is smarter than that" ok thanks for infatizing and being ablest. nothing says fun like attempting to grow and try new things regardless of learning disabilities. or do you think we all roll over and die before highschool?

Also are we gonna brush past the part where the sun and moon show is literally made with kids in mind? Why again are we so desperate for smut over a show literally built around found family? 'everyone here is so immature' yeah bud, it takes one to know one. we were all kids. all of us were the newbies of the internet at one point. I ain't saying ya gotta hold anyone's hand or babysit but is throwing a hissy fit over finding spiders in a jar labeled spider the hill you really wanna die on? if you don't like it, leave

you literally preach that same shit yet seldomly follow your own advice.

Actually, let's go a step further: you're not welcomed here anymore than the gore anons are

P.S.

The reason why murder and gore is more acceptable than pedophilia smut is because one of these attracts actual predators. Porn is still porn at the end of the day, whether it's video or a picture, or words. and if it's on a screen it will fuck your head up the same way you can't have just one cigaret. it's always 'one more can't hurt' until it's an addiction you cannot escape from. And once someone is in that cycle, it gets worse. because soon the same thing that got rocks off doesn't work anymore. so then you find something stronger to get that high. then you have to find another stronger way to get that same effect

And that is exactly how convicted pedophiles go from using fictional kiddy porn to actual csem. There is actual fucking evidence for this shit with neurobiology and psychology to back it up

TL;DR violent video games don't create serial killers because people can only have a dopamine addiction. video game addiction is like sugar addiction Porn however can most definitely create pedophiles and rapist because of the involvement of dopamine, oxytocin, norepinephrine, vasopressin. porn addiction is like meth or heroin

These 2 are Not remotely comparable to the other 2

ALL, actions have consequences. It does not matter if you are a celebrity, or a fic author with 3 views. You are not an exception, and you feed the machine that gets kids groomed, trafficked, and even killed when you choose to sexualize and normalize pedophilia and incest.

So if you're getting shamed for getting giddy over shipping shit like Killcode and Bloodmoon or Sun and Dazzle. maybe you should think long and hard about why that is.

This is so much bigger than fighting over 'making dolls kiss'.

Get the fuck out of a fandom filled with kids before you get someone hurt

-

[damnfandomproblems]

Since one ask in response to Problem #4927 has generated several replies in a short time, I've decided to consolidate the ones I've received into one post.

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Anon:

You know when you see an ask that's so off the mark, and you wonder to yourself hm, which of the blogs I recently blocked for having 'proship dni' in their bio (because no reasonable and properly informed person would have that in their bio) could this be? This. This is that ask

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Anon:

I wish I could block people who send anons to other blogs because sometimes the take is just so misguided don't even want to try unpackong it

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Anon:

Most people seem to agree this is an ice cold take, but I want to add this too (without assigning blame to anyone who does this, since there isn't actually anything blameworthy about the example): I think part of the problem with all these people (including anon) thinking proship means "I ship (thing)" is bolstered by the fact a ton of people who ship certain uncomfortable, or controversial, dynamics often have "proship" in big words at the top of their blog. And anyone who sees this ends up conflating "proship" with "I ship (thing)"... Even though the causation is actually the inverse. As in, they ship (thing), so why wouldn't they be proship, a stance that says ship and let ship? Would be awfully dumb if they weren't. Meanwhile, a lot of proship people who don't really have controversial or dark or whatever else ships tend to not have "proship" at the top of their blogs, which just solidifies the conflation of "proship" meaning "I ship (thing)". Some do, but most don't. But like another commenter said, I feel like we might need to just move away from buzzwords all together, because clearly people won't stop trying to repackage what they mean, and or misinterpret them based on first-glance, passing observations. That second part is mainly why I think "proship", while the root is pretty damn self-explanatory, still confuses people.

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Anon:

"stop calling yourself a proshipper if you only like mix-raced and other such safe stuff," Okay, two questions: 1. Do you realize mixed race ships are actually super controversial and dangerous to ship, because some antis will say you're either fetishizing (even if you're not), or accuse you of "tokenizing" a non-white character by shipping them with a white character? 2. What are your parameters for what qualifies as "safe"? Because you're already showing one of the biggest anti (or pro-censorship, if you really don't want to use "fandom words") hypocrisies in the book: attacking certain subject matter while giving other kinds of subject matter, which are arguably just as taboo, a free pass. For instance, most antis don't bat an eye about shipping Hannibal and Will Graham (Hannibal NBC series) because that, despite the plethora of physical and mental abuse, is just that. It's not sexual taboo, just every other kind of taboo. So I ask, what are your parameters for what is "safe"? Because chances are, they will either be contradictory in some way, or just make no sense.

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Anon:

["Make a new term" fucking lol. Should proshippers go make their own Ao3, too?] My reaction exactly, lol. Also, for anyone who didn't already know: AO3 literally was created by proshippers. One person actually shipped Wincest and Thorki, and wanted a censorship-free (within the confines of US law, obviously) space to archive that stuff. Hence AO3 was born. The people who made AO3 are now middle aged or nearly there, and aren't going to take your shit. So in that sense, it's more like: listen up, all you annoying-ass censorship-happy babies: AO3's source code is public, it's all there, you're free to make your own space, if you don't like the one WE created, then YOU came barging into, then YOU started screaming about containing stuff you didn't like.

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Anon:

I am a fandom oldie and I miss when "proship" and "anitship" were just terms used in fandom with no deeper meaning. You could be both a "proship" and "antiship" person simultaneously because it was a ship by ship basis. I miss when they literally just meant "I like this ship" and "I do not like this ship". No argument on morality one way or the other. No harassment. Just people loving their fictional characters' dynamics and enjoying them with other people. Example: a NaruHina proshipper meant you shipped Naruto and Hinata for any reson (maybe you liked their chemistry). A NaruHina antishipper meant you probably not only didn't like the ship, but were actively against it for some reason (could be any reason like you shipped NaruSaku or something, that you didn't like their dynamic, or any other reason). It wasn't about the ship being "problematic" or whatever. It was just a personal feeling.

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Anon:

For Christ’s sake, a lot of issues could be solved with a Google search (proship means anti-harassment, anti-censorship, ship and let ship) or just blocking and moving on. Or just resolving misunderstandings instead of leaving dirty laundry out in public. I do not use the proship label. I am very against censorship, hence the meaning of the label, but I’m not slapping a label on myself that essentially boils down to, “I don’t like this, so I’m not gonna look at it/imma block people or tags because I don’t like it” and then moving on. And because ironically, people who have easy access to the internet where, again, Google is free, will slap on a false accusation on me over fiction. And that is something I do not want to deal with. Before someone goes, “I have been harassed by proshippers more than antis,” those people are NOT proshippers, those were actual antis. Or alternatively, “there was a kid that got groomed by proshippers,” again, those people are NOT proshippers, those are predators. Again, Google is free, look up terms, and wash the bias you have for specific people out of your eyes and out of your ears. Use your critical thinking skills.

[banavalope]

Not to be rude but it’s not really ridiculous for somebody to get prickly when you reblog an article that whines about people softblocking the author for being fine with somebody creating erotic pedophiliac content.

I want to tell you that I genuinely appreciate you being the first of, like, anybody to actually tell me what your interpretation of the article was. It gives me a jumping off point for something I've been thinking about all day, which if you're not in the mood for that feel free to tune out after the first paragraph responding directly to you. Otherwise, I'm just using this as an opportunity to open the floor for discussion.

That was not my takeaway from that article, nor has that been the takeaway I've seen other people have, including people I had to ask in my real life about it. I assumed I must have read it wrong by the strong reaction I got. So I would say that, from my perspective, it was in fact very ridiculous. I also respectfully disagree with your interpretation. To even call it whining I find is an incredibly poor read of it. Maybe there's some layer of discourse I'm not privy to, they left names out so I can't investigate these accused artists for myself.

But this perfectly segues us to what I really want to talk about. The entire article is from a japanese artist aimed at a japanese audience, explaining how the word "proship" is an american fandom centric term that has no specific meaning, and therefore cannot be taken at face value. I understand the people coming at me for reblogging it feel that we all unanimously agree proship specifically refers to being pro incest/pedophilia, but I regret to inform you it's not as unanimous as you think.

As someone who was around in 2015 when the words "proship" and "anti" started to enter the common fandom vernacular, the muddling of what proship actually meant can be pinpointed to bad actors in the MHA twitter fandom at the time, popularizing the use in order to attack people that shipped BakuDeku, or fans who wanted Endeavor to have a redemption arc. This is when the meaning of being "proship" or "anti" began to get extremely conflated.

I'll take a step back real quick to say that the words "pro shipper" and "anti shipper" have been used since the 90s to mean, quite simply, someone who wants to talk about shipping or someone who doesn't. There was no laundry list of ulterior meanings, it was a way to identify who in fandom had no interest in shipping. This is also coming from someone who's been around in these spaces long enough to know this as fact from experience.

Somewhere along the way it started meaning pedophilia/incest/abuse, I find that very suspicious the way it shifted meanings from something so literally innocent, to something so ambiguously ill intended, when you can just say "they fetishize incest" without having to bring shipping into it. You can just call someone a MAP, what does shipping have to do with it. More people should be questioning why that is.

Who benefits from ambiguous terms the most? What kind of people are looking for ways to get around calling themselves pedophiles? Why let them feel safe in fandom spaces by giving them ample opportunity to hide behind something that has nothing to do with them. Shipping isn't your problem dude, you like children, fucking go to therapy. (not a statement aimed at you, the anon)

People are taking issue with the article even wanting to have a nuanced discussion about the word proship, when they should actually be taking issue with the fact nobody knows who our enemies and allies are anymore because we keep inventing new ways to include our personal """squicks""" (for lack of a better word, not huge on the word squick tbh) into it. Just say what you hate, it's fine. I hate people who abuse children, I hate people who abuse adults, I hate terfs, I hate fascists, I hate incest, I don't like pregnancy, eye stuff is weird, death makes me really upset, I think I should be allowed to kiss Rom the Vacuous Spider. Really easy to just say that in no uncertain terms. Anybody of all languages can pick up what I'm putting down.

If someone from another country cannot understand the point you're trying to convey without you first giving them a fandom history lesson as to what it really really means for REAL to be called a proshipper, idk maybe just say you hate pedophiles instead, coward (not calling you, the anon, a coward. I have aimed this at God himself).

And keep in mind too, this is barely a fraction of a tangent to a larger discussion that could be had about this, philosophically. We haven't even touched on the effect media has in real life, the dissolution of fandom minors being able to have safe friendships with fandom mentors, or even how the recent infighting of fandom, and fandom """""Purity Politics""""""" of the last 5 years, can be traced back to decisions made by corporate web3.0 wanting to monetize its 3 biggest platforms SO BADLY that it refuses to create spaces for minors to escape adults. A minor cannot even play roblox without being under threat of a 30 year old content creator existing near them, and I think that's fucked up.

A real plethora of nuanced discussion here to be had.

[toh-proship-positivity]

My apologies, but looking at the list, it seems incredibly biased. I could point out quite a few people on there that 100% aren't antis or even anti-affiliated. Despite saying the list isn't for harassment, it feels like you just put certain people on there so they'd be pushed out of the fandom, and from what I hear you won't even let people plead their case. Lists like these never end well regardless of what the original intent is in the first place, but this just seems like it's, at least partially, personal bias.

It's to warn people, and it's not biased, several people on this list have stalked and harassed (and still might be stalking me) for a YEAR, they literally bullied a friend of social media ENTIRELY, they're gone. I have no way of reaching them, no way of knowing how they are doing. Me and several others have been slandered by these people, am I supposed to keep silent and not do anything to warn others? they've done it once, they'll do it again once they found their next target. I've lost people who I thought were my friends, but only because decided they to believe the words over someone who's popular. Others have been brought to my attention by other people and I do look at profiles to see. And if it's true then they are added to the list, in some cases it's personal experience such as one of these people trying to get a mutual harassed for posting "pedo shit" and then they threw a temper tantrum when I called them out on their behaviour. Funny you should mention pleading cases, the only person who did that also pretty much guilt tripped me because "it was giving them anxiety" Yeah and me being stalked isn't anxiety indusing? And that person is also friends with someone who's an anti and BOTH basically went on a massive "woe is us" spree and badmouthing me when my twitter got exposed by no doubt several people on this list. Oh the person who tried to plead their case also TRIED to start shit in a discord server I was in. And their anti friend literally tried to guilt me when I said I was fed up with their bs and just didn't want to talk to them anymore over voice chat. And yes it has been pointed out some of these people are 'secretly proship' but here's the thing anon, you don't throw other people under the buss just to save your own skin, if you are proship but still pretend to be an anti and attack others who are proship just to stay face then you might as well be an anti. The point of being proship is that you don't harass people over fiction, if you harass others over fiction or sit on the sidelines and watch someone be attacked rather than telling your anti friends to knock it the fuck off then you are not proship. But if that makes me biased in your opinion, I don't care. I also want to point out you're literally hiding behind anonimity I know DAMN well that if I turned off anon asks you wouldn't have send me this at all. Have a good day.

[proship-selfship]

@ prev anon, wanna say first off, honestly, it's valid for ANYONE to cut off ANYONE ELSE for WHATEVER reason, it's your life, live it. no one can control who you want to interact with and who you do not want to interact with.

but also, you are literally 13, you probably cannot understand the complexities that is human morals. hell, we're barely 21 and WE don't even understand it (as a system we use we to refer to ourselves collectively, to clarify). there are a lot of things we have better grasps on as an older person, but there are things that we're still uncertain about

plus, fiction is not the same as reality. yes, someone might be "weird about fiction" (for lack of better wording lol) bc they have the same opinions in reality, but liking problematic ships isn't inherently a sign of being an abusive person (and same with not liking problematic ships doesn't make someone inherently good/nontoxic)

so yes, set your boundaries, don't let people be weird about fiction to you as a young teen, but realize that there are nuances to this concept that you can later on (when you're older and have had experience with fandom and shipping and morals in general) start to question and form your own opinions about!

(also, when you're young, below like 16-18, being on the internet without safeguards (like blocking tags that make you uncomfortable and blocking people that are weird to you) is kinda dangerous, so you, too, be safe. and maybe don't interact with proship accs bc tumblr (or insert other social media here) may end up suggesting you proship content and it'd make you feel worse, just block and do your own thing in a safe space of your own)

[also sorry for ranting a lot but i have opinions, as a system who was traumatized online from a younger age than 13 lol]

Hey, no problem. You're right tho,

[diabolocracy]

Proship general search is a treat. I wasn't the anon but I can't help but answer in a separate post 'cuz I'm bored lol.

We aren't on the tick tocks. It's called rape and people with a rapekink who search for it in fiction typically* do not. Which is a good thing, you'd know if we did, rapekink is an extremely common if not the most common kink.

We still aren't on tick tock, you can type out pedophiles, it helps people who have the word blacklisted on tumblr or via an outside app actually avoid it. All you're doing with this obfuscation is making their lives a little more difficult, lol.

Anyway: I support pedophiles seeking out external assistance if they fear that they might offend. The average predator isn't a pedophile, the average predator is an opportunist looking to exert power over something that can't fight back (similar to the average rapist really).

The average lolishokodocon isn't a pedophile. They might be, and the hentais and the mangas and the fanfics and the fanarts are a good outlet, but usually--no.

See, in the idealized hentai world, the 'children' are also idealized. They aren't whiny little snot-nosed brats. It also helps to keep in mind that the average -con imagines themselves in the little role (similar to how the average rapekink enjoyer, at least from my observations, is fucking subby as shit).

Incest*

More often than not there's an unhealthy dynamic in play.

But if there isn't and it's perfectly consensual, such as if it's two siblings or cousins of the same generation who agree to be child free (mostly for the sake of the child's psyche--inbreeding doesn't effect genetics much unless it happens a lot, over generations, iirc), personally, I don't give a fuck. It isn't my life. If it makes them happy and no one's getting hurt then who fucking gives a shit?

You can't even bring legality into this, really, because in some countries it's legal -- even in some US States it's legal under certain circumstances.

And none of that means I've ever entertained the thought of fucking my brother. I'm not even attracted to dudes. Though I did declare once when I was like, six, that I was going to marry my dad, lol.

None of that means I support Catholic priests or youth pastors or P. Diddy.

And none of it means I support rapists outside of a kink context specifically wherein it's CNC and it's a person playing a role that their partner wants them to play.

*I'm not going to get into baiters--that is, people who go out of their way to tempt people into raping them--and yes that's a thing but it sort of takes the safe and sane out of the whole affair.

Welcome to human sexuality. It isn't a place for black and white morality.

[rokkazu]

Are you proship/comship? (Asking because your username is eagledile and hawkodile and eagleator are foster brothers. I'm not judging, I'm profic myself, just curious.)

Hey there anon! bit of a loaded question you got there! I'm honestly not sure if this is bait to get me to admit to being "problematic" or a genuine question, but i'm feeling nice and explanatory today so i'm gonna break this down for ya. I have a lot of thoughts on everything you just said so... sorry if this post gets really long. (spoiler alert it does)

first of all, the proship thing. i don't really think there's a way to be brief about this without someone twisting my words and making me out to be a literal pedo apologist or something, so i'm just gonna say the pro/anti dichotomy is dumb as hell and does nothing but cause unnecessary confusion. the question of "is fiction depicting things i find gross and unacceptable allowed to exist" is just complete fucking nonsense. there isn't one answer to this. i have friends who cope with and process their sexual trauma with things that people consider unacceptable under any circumstances because they can't comprehend that anyone would have a nuanced relationship with the things that hurt them. it is not my business to decide what is and is not allowed, and i choose to judge people based on their own individual situations. if that makes me proship then whatever i don't actually care. just because something can cause harm doesn't mean it has no use or purpose, or that it should be destroyed or hidden away. i am not saying pedophilia or incest is good, actual sexual assault is obviously horrible, i do not like those things even as fictional scenarios personally. I'm just fucking normal and don't judge people before i actually know why they're doing what they do. please for the love of god think with your brain and treat people like people i'm begging you.

(btw this isn't directed at you anon, im not assuming you're going to be weird about this right off the bat. i know some people would though, so i'm being clear just in case.)

OKAY now that's out of the way we can get to the fun part, character analysis of an inconsistently written kids cartoon for 8 year olds! I do not think eagleator and hawkodile are brothers. i straight up just don't buy it. that may sound confusing at first but let me lay it out for you in excruciating detail because autism. okay so, i've been in this fandom since like mid 2020? so i don't have ALL the context but i do have a good amount. i was around when the concept of them being adoptive brothers was first spread around. and yes, this is not an old concept. literally NOBODY thought this before like, mid 2021. so what happened? Imagine you're scrolling through the #unikitty! tag. It's a slow day in mid-late 2021, not much going on. you notice a post from someone listing off a few of their favorite ships, and one of the ones they mention is eagleator/hawkodile. You're me in this scenario, so you're naturally interested in someone mentioning your rather niche favorite ship, so you read through, maybe you notice there's a couple comments on this post, so you check them out to see what's up.

This is what you see. If you're not familiar, this is the tumblr account of Careen Ingle, one of the directors of the show. She's known for being one of the crew members who interacts a lot with the fandom, answering questions about certain things, usually on Twitter. Now, as far as i'm aware, i was one of the first people to notice this. At first, this really confused me, because like, while the ship wasn't common it also definitely wasn't unheard of? people have very much watched The New Nemesis and immediately posted "so that was kind of really gay right? it's not just me?" no one really took it that seriously, but it was definitely A Thing. Why would she say something about his now, nearly a year after the show had ended? why not say something earlier? To be honest with you, i still don't know. I don't know why she said this. She has never, ever elaborated on this, and no one even asked. About the only thing i heard of this was people either posting this exact screenshot or referencing it, appended with something like "if you still ship them after this block me and never speak to me again." This still baffles me to this day. There was no confusion, no push-back, anyone who thought this was even remotely questionable seemed to just disappear from any discussion of it. it was a complete echo-chamber of "this isn't okay anymore because Careen Said So" and then radio silence on the topic ever since.

Now, if you're not very familiar with the show itself, this might not seem that strange to you. but, and maybe this is just my perspective.. there is no indication of this in the actual text of the show itself. Absolutely none. In fact, i would argue some episodes actually contradict this idea! At best, what i get from the few episodes that actually touch on their relationship is that them being brothers would be a perfectly fine viewer interpretation, something to headcanon maybe, but absolutely not set in stone or obviously spelled out for you.

Seriously, if you don't believe me, go watch every episode that's relevant to this. there's like, 3 of them. That's just over half an hour of runtime. Here's a list, actually: S1E3 "Action Forest"

The first episode that establishes Hawkodile and Eagleator's relationship. Notice how they refer to eachother as "bro"(as in the non-literal slang term for a close friend, i assume), but never once a full, played-straight "brother", even when hawkodile is doing his dramatic backstory spiel. Also the song that plays when they hug is reused in a scene with master frown and brock in Beach Daze, who are like no-question canonically gay. Hmmm.

S2E12 "Hawkodile Sensei"

Eagleator isn't in this one, and some of the flashback scenes straight up contradict things that happen in Action Forest's flashback scenes (i personally choose to interpret this as hawkodile just being a very unreliable narrator for my own sanity) but the main relevant takeaway here is the fact that when hawkodile is basically emulating the way Sensai Falcomodo taught him, Unikitty makes a comment about him "[...]going to be a great dad", which Hawkodile immediately rejects by saying "i'm not gonna be their dad, i'm gonna be their sensei!" which.. seems to imply that Hawkodile very much does not see Falcomodo as a parental figure, just a mentor/teacher, that those two things are completely different to him. Kinda throws a wrench in the whole "foster brothers" thing, don't it?

S3E14 "The New Nemesis"

Okay, i really need to skim over this one because this post is already getting obnoxiously long, and to be honest this is the one episode i could pick apart for hours. Just.. just watch it. This episode is pretty much half the reason anyone ships them in the first place, and i'm still wondering how one of the directors can whole-heartedly believe that these two characters shouldn't be shipped when this whole episode is... the way that it is. i could genuinely make an entire post just about this episode if anyone even wants to see that.

So yeah, in conclusion, not pro or anti ship but a secret third thing called thinking with my brain. if you use either of those labels i'm ignoring it and asking you what you actually fucking mean by that. i ship eagledile because, from my perspective, there is now way anyone could have known they were "supposed to be brothers" from the content of the show itself, and i'm not going to change my whole view of these character's relationship just because someone on the team said so, somewhat rudely, in the comments of a post made by someone who didn't even fucking ask, and failed to give any reason or evidence for why i should even believe that. Death of the author and all that. Hope this clears things up!

[mallowstep]

<you aren't obligated to post this anyways but i do request you don't if it sends as an off anon ask Somehow because idk if it would cause Discourse and i don't super. want that>

honestly hard agree w your tags on the queerhollyleaf post. like. i'm not necessarily proship! i'm not necessarily anti! i personally think it's a topic that can't be narrowed down to yes or no and uhhh a lot of the fandom just doesn't seem to understand that. it's like you (the general you) see one word and the part of your brain that controls complex thought goes dark

okay! i tried to write an answer by myself earlier and it wasn't working so now we're both going to do it. everyone say hi mari. mari says hi everyone. for those of u who don't follow us on main: we = matthew-and-mari, i = matthew, and "m: ..." = mari. not that that's TERRIBLY significant, but so you know.

also for context, my tags were:

✨✨✨unless it’s not proship in the sense that I refuse to label ‘being a reasonable person’but that might just be mexd

sorry that copied kinda weird.

okay so anyway.

we're going to only be discussing fannish media because that's the main focus of this blog. other topics can be forwarded to @fencesandfrogs yadda yadda yadda. we're all here for the fic, aren't we?

m: i do not write fanfiction i am here solely for making sure matthew doesn't go off topic again

right. anyway.

we definitely feel that the conversation can fixate so much on this false axis it can even become harmful. we firmly believe many antis are only antis because of social pressure and a lack of understanding of the proship opinion. we also don't feel the proship position is really wrong. "do not harass people, and tag work responsibly," is our position and it is the proship position, as we understand matters.

that said, there's so much misinformation about what it means to be proship that (a) i don't feel super comfortable identifying as proship (influenced by bad actors as well) and (b) saying you're proship activates this hard wall in a lot of people's minds. we saw people's opinions change while they were following us, but as soon as we explicitly said we weren't an anti, those people unfollowed us. they're within their rights to do so, ofc, and we don't follow up with them, because that would be stalking and weird, but the point is, it's like a magic word.

i don't run this blog to change people's minds. ship discourse has ALWAYS been toxic, as long as we've been on the internet. before it was the modern incarnation of pro/anti-ship, it was voltron bullshit (for us --- not being able to partake in fandom because of the toxicity is actually why we stepped away from fandom for several years), and before that, it was something else. nonsense internet discourse isn't new.

but this is a particular flavour of nonsense that we are frustrated by. five-or-so years ago, our opinion was the default, neutral position. people understood that you tagged content appropriately, that you didn't put nsfw of work aimed at children in the main tags, and that was it. you didn't tag nsfw for mlp as mlp, and you put a content warning up, and that was that. yes there's nuance here, we're not going into all of it.

m: matthew's wrists WILL regret it also we said most of this in the post about abusive rare pairs

so we feel like we shouldn't have to label that.

also, not labelling ourselves means people can't assume our positions. for example, when i'm not trying to be problematic to either (a) piss someone off/out of spite/etc or (b) explore themes, i usually choose to write out problematic content. the example i like to use is that if i want to write moth/misty, then in that fic, misty was never moth's mentor. i might not say/explain it, but it's true. because apprentice/mentor makes me really uncomfortable. so they just never have that relationship.

uh. mari is reminding me that antis usually don't support writing shit out and ALSO that's not even an opinion.

right.

what we mean is, people have a lot of Ideas about what it is to be proship. we don't see ourselves as proship to begin with (see: our opinion is the opinion the average person on the street would have, trust us, we've asked), and we don't want people to make assumptions about our opinions based on that.

at the end of the day, we don't like using pro/anti ship as terms. for clarity, we will use them, but we prefer to think of the average fandom member as a reasonable person, and call antis puritans.

because that's what they are.

we want to restate that our opinions on published media are a lot more complicated and nuanced (and we also think that's another thing this discourse often misses: fanworks and published media are not the same), just because it feels disingenuous to NOT make a point of that. we don't really care if someone is writing fanfic smut that glorifies abuse: we do care if a book is published that glorifies abuse.

anyway.

we're going to leave it there, but basically, yeah. pro/anti discourse is a really ugly flavour of internet nonsense discourse that not only do we have no desire to be in, but fundamentally do not understand.

m: no this is true. regularly we will see something and not understand how someone could hold that belief/opinion/etc. like, matthew finds these posts and we look at them and can't make sense of them. neither of us can remember an example, but yeah.

so, yeah. we feel you hard.

<3