#and I’m a little paranoid writing in front of my family 😂

[the-lonelybarricade]

This is Mr. LB’s first trip to the states and I’ve been having the time of my life getting him to try all my favorite things from childhood

Yesterday I got him to eat one of those really soft sugar cookies with the neon frosting and you would have thought I gave him curdled milk from the expression he made 😂

[cann1ballistic]

Hello!!!

I just wanted to say I’m a fan of your art!!! Both here and on twitter!!! Unfortunately I’ve never said anything before, I also don’t follow you on twitter because of the antis. It’s also why I’m dropping an anonymous ask instead of showing my account.

I’ve watched the trolls movies before but the third movie was what got me into looking for art and fiction cause I wanted to see more of Branch and his family. And new official content takes a long time to come out, so I decided to look for more content online since there are many artists and writers that are always creating more content!!! Sometimes it’s even better than the official stuff 😂!!! I was looking for more stories about Branch and his brothers growing up together and stuff like that, more family centered stuff.

I was however, a little surprised with the Trolls fandom base because of the antis, I’ve been reading and seeing art from different fandoms for many years now and so far, at least for me, I’ve never seen such intense anti pro shippers. In fact, I’ve never quite understood what the word meant before, I thought it had to do with problematic ships, which I thought had to do with shipping for example heroes and villains or if two people have a big age difference.

I never even realized that incest was part of it. In all the fandoms I’ve read stories that include incest before magic or technology or natural biology, etc solved all the problems. Same with age differences, some characters would be aged up. Villains would turn out to have tragic backstories or one of the supposed good guys was tricking the protagonist. And I never noticed people being overly vocal about it. I mean I knew there were antis out there but it never got out of hand. An example of that, at least for me, was the Harry Potter fandom, I never had problems with antis or feared being blocked by certain artists because of what I read or who I followed.

But with the Trolls fan base some artists are very vocal about it. If a certain artist sees that you follow a pro shipper artist or if they see you comment on any of their art or if you say anything about the subject that they don’t like you are immediately blocked!!!

And twitter isn’t very private, everyone can see who you follow, your likes, retweets, your comments, etc and that makes it super easy for the antis to block you immediately!!! To avoid that, any pro shipper art I like I bookmark it, since that is the only thing other people on twitter can’t see. I don’t leave comments or like the art, cause I know if any of the antis find out about it they will block you, screenshot your account and tell everyone to avoid and block you cause you are a pro shipper or neutral. And I really don’t know what a neutral is!!! I’m guess it’s someone that doesn’t care either way, I think?

The antis will also talk shit about you behind your back!!! I also don’t leave comments on the stories on AO3 and I’ve considered making a second twitter account so that I can follow the pro shipping artists from the Trolls fandom I like in peace but!!! I’m so paranoid about the fact that the antis will discover my original account somehow that I haven’t done it!!! Here on tumblr you can at least keep your likes and who you follow private.

There are so many amazing Trolls artists out there, unfortunately they are for the most part very outspoken antis, at least from what I’ve seen.

Sorry!!! I’m venting a little here, it’s just… for the longest time I was ok with whatever showed up in front of me, story and art wise. For me it didn’t matter the pairing or anything else as long as the story was interesting!!! I’ve read stories where the only thing in common with the cannon content was the names and appearances of the characters everything else was completely different and I was fine with it because the story was super interesting!!! And there’s also the fact that it’s FICTION!!! Just because you are ok with what people write or draw doesn’t mean you’re ok with it in real life!!! I mean there are authors out there that write horror, gore and murder mysteries but that doesn’t mean that they want to actually kill some in real life!!!

The Trolls antis got me so out of sorts that I actually had the balls (metaphorically speaking) to ask my psychologist if it was ok to like this sort of stuff!!! And I told them about the antis, liking stuff like incest art and stories, the whole just because you are ok with it in fiction doesn’t mean that you’re ok with it in real life, etc!!! And they agreed with me!!! Told me that I shouldn’t worry about it and that some people just take somethings to seriously!!!

So… Again sorry for venting, but I wanted to share my experience and opinion with you.

I also want to say that you and all the other artists and writers that are ok with pro shipping should keep producing your amazing content and ignore all those nasty antis!!! Cause you are amazing!!!

So please keep up the amazing work!!! And don’t let anyone get you down!!!

Thank you for the encouragement, i appreciate it! To be honest i’ve become so jaded over this topic in general that it’s nice to be reminded that there are people online who do in fact enjoy fandom more than starting slapfights lol (not scolding you for talking about it of course, feel free to vent!)

my own rant below the cut lol

I’ve found that a lot of fandoms with audiences who skew to the younger side tend to be the most combative, so it checks out that you’ve found the Trolls fandom to be like this. A stark example that i’ve seen is the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fandom, specifically around the Rise of the TMNT series, which came out in….2018, i think? (i didn’t get into it til 2022 so idk) BUT fans have been shipping the brothers together in that fandom since the 80s and largely nobody bat an eye until Rise happened, and brought a lot of the younger crowd into it. NOW, suddenly it’s Too Far to ship characters that have been shipped since before most of the new fandom members were born 💀

a lot of these younger fans had the misfortune of coming into fandom around the same time that a lot of TERFs and other conservative types were getting REALLY vocal on here around 2015-2018; of course, they grow up into really conservative types who spread the same nonsensical rhetoric to those younger than them, and so on and so forth.

i cannot emphasize enough that NO fandoms were like this (on a wide scale) pre-2015. this is coming from my perspective as someone who had VERY vanilla tastes for most of my fandom career…the fact that the term proship even exists is a testament to how much fandom has changed; proship is a term that popped up as a reaction to people using Anti Shipper as a way to tout their fandom activism (derogatory) & purity politics.

(being Neutral, btw, means basically nothing afaik because being Proship means that you mind your business, and people who are neutral just say that they mind their business and want nothing to do with the entire argument. Antis call them pros and pros also call them pros so idk how it’s even useful as a label 🤷‍♀️)

ALSO I FEEL THAT SELF DOUBT!! talking to your therapist was a good idea though, it’s good to get a reality check when you need it, haha. I had a moment several years back where i was questioning why i, as an adult, was into a fandom whose target audience was teenagers, before i realized that it’s not that deep and you can do what you want forever lmao

I would love nothing more than to dismiss the entire pro vs anti argument if i’m honest, but i can’t ignore the real life abuse that comes from it. I understand why you’d be afraid to be public with your opinions; especially on a garbage website like twitter, where reporting accounts only ever seems to work for the wrong people 🫠

The best way to do fandom has always been and continues to be to find your group of friends and be insane with them. (AND TO BLOCK LIBERALLY!) I hope you can find some people to chill with 🫂