not to start anything mean intended because i'm not that kind of person, but
i can't for the life of me understand people who claim to be sephiroth fans/have sephiroth based ships and go on and slap a capitalized "proship dni" somewhere in their bios/profiles
never understood this and never will, (for reasons i shall elaborate below) though i may get the potential reasons for it and just... it absolutely baffles me how misused the term proship is
that word literally means "in favor of shipping", that's what the "pro" part of the word is for. it doesn't mean you have to necessarily ship every ship that exists ever (that would be 1. insane and 2. not very feasible), just that you understand people will have different ships, you respect that others' preferences exist and mind your lane
it is basic fandom etiquette, it's literally old school "your kink is not my kink and that's ok". it's blocking folks with ships you dislike (notp) instead of trying to regulate what people do with narrative tools (characters) in a fictional space
sometimes other people are eating shrimp and you're allergic to shrimp. it doesn't mean the other people are immoral for eating shrimp
some people use proship to mean "problematic ship" (aka ships with dark thematics that wouldn't be ok irl) when 1. it doesn't mean that, and 2. you can dislike a thing without misusing a word
no, someone who's proshipper won't force you to ship their ship you may dislike, if you're wondering. that's not what the word implies at all
enter sephiroth
oh, you know him. sephiroth who took part in a genocide when young. sephiroth who took part in a war and very likely killed people. sephiroth who got betrayed by humanity so much that he chooses to torch down a small village and choose to become cosmic horror instead and haunt a twink
this is not a wholesome character!
like, i do believe that sephiroth has the potential to be cute/do good/work well as a slice of life protagonist if you frame him just right, but by canon definition, where he goes, someone dies
he's not fully good and not fully evil, he's a morally grey character reacting to the only life he knows and having multiple instances of terrible decisions. he's a victim as much as he's propagating evil
he's a very complex character and loving his character is understanding that not all that does or that happens to him is ideal. and that's ok, his very birth/conception alone is full of dark/taboo themes
and see, here's what i don't get: people who use "proship dni" in their bios, aside from the obvious performative flavor to that, (it's the internet! a sign won't stop people who are particularly mean!!) presumably don't want to interact with one or more of the following:
- people who ship anything in general (if going by the literal definition of the word)
- people who ship anything with dark/"problematic" thematics (by going by the misconception of the word meaning "problematic ship")
- people with a different ship that would be a notp or people who aren't into yumeshipping (oc/self insert x canon) (i'm not gonna get into my horror stories from twitter about this one but it exists, i was attacked once for trying to run a sc event)
if it's for the first reason, fair, but why only list one side of the discourse instead of just putting you're not into shipping? it feels like trying to bait people into a fight
the second is the one that baffles me the most. any ship you put sephiroth in has potential to have dark thematics, because sephiroth, as a shipping component, brings all these dark themes into it. unless you're redoing his whole life from scratch, he'll still have the history of having killed people, having fought a war, having been experimented on from pre-birth, etc. and if you have to redo this character's whole life to avoid dealing with his thematics entirely... do you even like him at all? are people who enjoy dark thematics forbidden from engaging with potentially wholesome thematics as well?
and the third is just hypocritical pettiness, really. you're not morally superior for shipping sephiroth with yourself or your oc or a different character that you prefer over some other character. sephiroth is still sephiroth, regardless of who he's with. he'll still do sephiroth things, whether positive or negative. you can dislike other ships without being morally performative about things. you can have notps!! you can dislike a ship for hitting you with the wrong vibes or because you like that other ship better
but in the end it all just boils down to it having the same vibes as antis using ao3: you're making use of the most proship thing out there is and saying proshippers shouldn't interact with you
i don't get it
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