#fiction is not real life

[jinkieswouldyoulookatthis]

Let's talk about what the term "proship" means, shall we?

Now some folks seem to think that someone who is proship likes problematic ships, but while that may sometimes be the case, I for example do ship Sam/Dean, it doesn't actually mean that.

Someone who is proship thinks that it is okay to ship.

That's it. That's what the term means.

That is what gets everyone's panties in a twist.

Being proship means that you don't judge other people for the type of fiction they like to sit around and daydream up scenarios about.

Being proship means that you understand the fundamental difference between reality and fiction.

Fiction comes in all sorts of different varieties and it is not indicative of someone's morality or character. It is also a terrible way to determine what someone likes or wants in real life since our fantasies are quite often not things we would want to engage in in our real lives.

Human beings tend to become pretty good at distinguishing fantasy from reality by the time that they become teenagers, as discussed in this article. But, there are various levels to this progression. Things that obviously break the laws of physics, like cartoons, are easiest to distinguish, while learning that sexual fantasies can and often do include things that people would never actually want to experience in real life, tends to get figured out later, after going through puberty and sometimes much later in adulthood.

Articles like 25 Sexual Fantasies That Are Totally Normal highlight some of the more common things that people fantasize about, but barely scratch the surface of kink and the prevalence of darker fantasies. Our brains are full of connections, some desirable, some embarrassing, some flat out disturbing. But what lights up those connections doesn't define us as people. No, what defines us is what we choose to actually do in real life.

So while I, for example, really like to think about Sam and Dean Winchester fucking each other (because they're really hot, and because it's wrong, and it's bad, and they shouldn't) that does not mean that I think things like rape (which includes all pedophilia) or any type of assault are at all okay.

So, to recap, Proship is the acknowledgement that...

In fiction, anything goes.

In reality, be good people.

If you cannot understand this, maybe you aren't as mature as you like to think you are.

[aesethewitch]

When I was a kid, we moved into a house that had a huge lilac tree out front. It was mostly rotten, and it needed to be taken down before it fell. It took a while, but eventually, it was gone.

Mostly. A couple years later, little lilac babies popped out of the ground in its place. My mom was determined to get rid of them, because she'd planted a beautiful flower garden there, and the lilac trees would overshadow and kill the whole garden. I insisted on saving at least a few saplings. She said fine, but I had to dig them out and put them in pots myself.

So, I did. I spent days digging little lilac bushes out of the ground and putting them into pots. Some couldn't be saved, but some could. When all was said and done, I had five brand-new lilac saplings. Seven or eight years old, and it was my absolute pride and joy.

Three died due to sun scorching, severe drought that no amount of watering could save, and perhaps just being moved from their place in the ground. But two survived, and I was awfully proud of them! I'd go out and talk to them every single day. I watered them by hand and made sure they were fertilized properly. I learned all about their favored environments, and I was determined to make sure they lived.

One of my mom's friends saw what I was doing with the lilacs. She asked if she could have one to put in her backyard, and I agreed on the condition that she take very, very good care of it.

It's now fucking enormous. I'm talking ten feet tall and bursting with beautiful purple flowers every spring. My mom still gets updates each year as they start to bloom, which she forwards to me. And all I can think is, "That's my friend! Thriving some twenty years on, there it is."

The other tree nearly died, too. It lived in a pot for far, far too long. I wanted to plant it somewhere in my parents' yard, but my mom was reluctant. Eventually, we agreed to put it in the far back garden. It grew okay for many years, despite the shade, but in all these years, it's never bloomed.

Last year, the massive tree casting massive shadows over the lilac and the garden cracked in half and fell. It tumbled into the garden, crushing part of the nearby shed and destroying a few plants beneath it.

It missed my lilac by inches.

The clean-up is long done. The rest of the tree has been cut down, and my lilac has full sunlight for the first time in fifteen years. It won't bloom this year, I know. But it's got new shoots up. It's taller than ever. I spent half an hour a few weeks ago praising it for surviving all this time, dreaming about its future and telling it how I believe it'll become the tall beauty it's always been meant to be.

I think next year, I'll see flowers.

[daisywords]

One of my biggest nitpicks in fiction concerns the feeding of babies. Mothers dying during/shortly after childbirth or the baby being separated form the mother shortly after birth is pretty common in fiction. It is/was also common enough in real life, which is why I think a lot of writers/readers don't think too hard about this. however. Historically, the only reason the vast majority of babies survived being separated from their mother was because there was at least one other woman around to breastfeed them. Before modern formula, yes, people did use other substitutes, but they were rarely, if ever, nutritionally sufficient.

Newborns can't eat adult food. They can't really survive on animal milk. If your story takes place in a world before/without formula, a baby separated from its mother is going to either be nursed by someone else, or starve.

It doesn't have to be a huge plot point, but idk at least don't explicitly describe the situation as excluding the possibility of a wetnurse. "The father or the great grandmother or the neighbor man or the older sibling took and raised the baby completely alone in a cave for a year." Nope. That baby is dead I'm sorry. "The baby was kidnapped shortly after birth by a wizard and hidden away in a secret tower" um quick question was the wizard lactating? "The mother refused to see or touch her child after birth so the baby was left to the care of the ailing grandfather" the grandfather who made the necessary arrangements with women in the neighborhood, right? right? OR THAT GREAT OFFENDER "A newborn baby was left on the doorstep and they brought it in and took care of it no issues" What Are You Going to Feed That Baby. Hello?

Like. It's not impossible, but arrangements are going to have to be made. There are some logistics.

[olegianote]

Do you ever feel the urge to get stuck in the conversation forever, even if you have nothing else to say, because speaking with a person brings you so much joy? Yeah..............

[malinaa]

if i think about the hunger games in peeta's perspective i WILL start sobbing

[alihsi]

Once you draw a line, who’s to say where the line will finally stop? It’s the same with book banning. Once US state executives say books where characters have sex in them can’t be shown to people under 18, you can then lump books about the LGBT+ or queer experience into the pile of books that shouldn’t be shown to people under 18 because that’s associated with sex (even if it doesn’t contain sexual acts), and then say books about POC experience can’t be shown to people under 18 because violence is also not something people under 18 should be reading, books about the Holocaust aren’t okay because people get killed in terrible ways and that’s inappropriate for those under 18, and the list goes on until people under 18 can only read books off an approved list of appropriate indoctrinating texts. 

Fiction of all sorts should exist, but it doesn’t mean that I have any interest or desire to even look at it. If someone IRL is being actively harmed, report it, but there’s enough people that enjoy books like 50 Shades of Grey that I don’t expect to rape and enjoy noncon IRL. The insides of people’s heads can be disturbing, but only rarely does it translate to real life. However, it is very easy to push thinking into black and white  territory or  good vs bad  territory, when real life is rarely that easily defined.

I'm starting to find evidence on twitter of antis encouraging each other to shun friends and family for not being one of them and I am deeply concerned. This is some cult shit.

"should I shun my friend for being proship even though they're my only irl friend?"

"Should I shun my mother for being proship?"

The answer to both of these is GET HELP. You are being brainwashed into thinking that your friends and family are dangerous when you know that they wouldn't hurt anyone. See a therapist, take some time off the internet, reevaluate your situation. Fiction does not take precedence over your loved ones.

I'm tagging this with "antis please interact" because I think they need to see this too, and hopefully it helps someone. Your loved ones are not dangerous because of their taste in fiction.

[ferocioustrout]

(person who physically cannot care about a character unless theyre hot and can be shipped yaoi style voice) no you don’t understand it’s not that I don’t like women it’s just that all of them in every piece of media are horribly written mary sues who are evil and bad. not my epic male blorbo who I ship with some guy he interacted with once and has every superpower, committed war crimes, and had 3 lines though. he’s awesome and well written and if you really think about it he’s the best character in the series

[valtsv]

trying to save someone whose throat has been cut is such a fantastic catch-22 of helplessness honestly. you either do nothing and watch them bleed out because of your inaction, or attempt to staunch the bleeding by putting pressure on the wound and watch them asphyxiate with your hands around their neck. either way they'll drown, and your only choice is whether you're going to watch it happen, or help to push them under.

[spicyraeman]

Northern Hick!Lae’zel, Manhattanite!Sheart

Thoughts?

110% down, im such a sucker for country boy x city girl pairings, Shearts gonna get drawn in by the hick rizz and then they're gonna fall in love washing each other off with a hose after Lae takes her mudding

[screwpinecaprice]

Just a silly guy, with silly silly thoughts.

@glowweek Day 2

Casual | Surprise

A casual surprise?😬😬😬

[aquarines]

lestat de lioncourt being cancelled by taylor swift fans on twitter only 24 hours after he debuted...can you name a more iconic vampire? absolutely not!

[macrolit]

I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story. - G.K. Chesterton

[v1olent-l1ttle-th1ng]

Violet Sorrengail has a man who quite literally sold his soul for her and I can’t even get a text back.

[wesfcfanas]

Inside Mercedes F1 by Matt Whyman

[mysteriouslypinkconnoisseur]

Oda: Here’s my new character! He’s a cyborg (but only on the front) who is fueled by cola that he stores in a fridge in his stomach!

Also Oda: Indiscriminate violence against a population for the actions of a few is not justice, no matter what the actions of the few entail. A ruling government built on colonialism and violence has a vested interest in rewriting the historical narrative and will do anything to protect their own version of events. This includes atrocities against citizens, including their own, if it furthers their narrative. They will demonize the survivors and victims to make them seem like villains and terrorists, and lie to the world at large. It is our job to listen to the survivors, and make sure their stories are not forgotten or distorted.

[annabelle--cane]

in isolation I think it's fine as a writing move for sasha and melanie to misattribute people weird to them at their Spooky Jobs as being because of misogyny, that is a reasonable conclusion for those characters to make when they are unaware of the Spooky Reasons that people don't want them involved, but alas it leads to this weird thing I see sometimes where fans get boiling mad at these characters and start saying "this stupid bitch thinks she's experiencing discrimination in the workplace when akshually she's being iced out for completely logical reasons due to her lack of skills, something she might realize if she weren't so self-centered with such a massive victim complex." like guys. you don't actually need to say this.