trigger warnings

This carrd contains sensitive / triggering material that not everyone is suited for. Here is a list of all the potentially triggering topics and mentions in this carrd.All potentially triggering words are censored with the highlight feature. By selecting the censored letters or words, you can unhide them.

  • Proshipping (duh)

  • Pedophilia

  • Beastiality

  • Rape

  • Incest

  • Grooming

  • Emotional / physical abuse

  • Lolicon / Shotacon

shipping

Shipping is the act of supporting two or more characters being in a relationship.
Shipping is typically most common in fandom environments, with the subjects of the shipping most often being fictional characters from movies, TV, books, and other media. Generally, shipping is completely harmless and serves to deepen your love for certain characters, or the media that they come from as a whole!Shipping can also apply to real world people, but it's frequently looked down upon and considered controversial.You can recognize a ship when it's formatted with an 'x' between two names, or when two names are mashed together. (The latter is called a "ship name".)
I.E: Princess Bubblegum x Marceline (Adventure Time)
I.E: Aruani (Armin and Annie, Attack on Titan)While ships are usually romantic in nature, they can also be platonic (strong friendship).
Most ships are viewed as romantic, unless it's explicitly said otherwise by the person sharing that ship.A ship being canon does not make other ships invalid.
Just because a ship is made canon in the original media, doesn't mean you have to ship it. Likewise, your ships don't have to be non-canon either.An OTP is someone's favorite ship!
OTP stands for 'One True Pairing', and is used when someone is talking about a ship that they believe is superior to all others (in their eyes).A NOTP is someone's least favorite ship.
NOTP is a play on words, fusing the words 'no' and the acronym 'OTP'.

proshipping

What is proshipping?

Proshipping is the act of tolerating all ships, including morally reprehensible ones, as long as they are fictional, or only involve fictional characters.
The general ideology of proshippers is that "it's fictional, so it isn't hurting anybody", but their motto is "let people ship what they want, even if you don't agree with it".Not all proshippers indulge in (or enjoy) problematic ships, but many do, because the community welcomes people with those interests. Many proshippers will tell you that 'proshipping' is synonymous with 'anti-harassment', and that the real definition of proshipping is self-curating content in your feed, and ignoring ships you don't like, instead of harassing people about them (when this is really just a part of normal shipping, and isn't something exclusive to proshippers).Proshippers online, usually on Twitter, Discord, or Tumblr, may have 🌈🍖, in their usernames, bios, or posts to indicate that they are a proshipper, or support the proshipper ideology.🕊️⚰️ (Dead Dove: Do Not Eat) is also a popular proship term, created by proshippers for proshippers.
Dead Dove is a content warning label, most frequently used on Ao3, Twitter, or Tumblr. It prefixes content (such as fanfics, art, etc.) that contains morally reprehensible themes or tropes without condemning them.
While not all proshippers have interest in Dead Dove material, it is a staple of their community.For those of us who enjoy dark media that does condemn the morally reprehensible themes or tropes present within it, the term 'Darkfic' should be used in place of Dead Dove, to adequately separate it from proship material.There are several proship pride flags as well, and I've listed the ones I could find here, along with links to their origins and their meanings. (Please be aware that some may contain triggering content in their descriptions.)

Where does proshipping come from?

The terms for proshipping and proshippers come from the earlier days of Tumblr.
Originally, proshippers labeled themselves as "anti-antis".
The anti-anti label was used to describe those who were against antis, but was later amended. Anti-antis now call themselves proshippers.Antis are people who are vehemently against a certain ship, or certain kind of ship, for being problematic or morally reprehensible.While again, not every proshipper enjoys the following material, the proshipping community tolerates those of them who do.

  • Adult x Minor

  • Human x Animal

  • Lack of consent

  • Relative x Relative

  • Grooming

  • Abuse

  • Kidnapping

While the actual meaning of the word 'Proshipping' is somewhat disputed, the true etymology stems from the latin prefix 'pro-', meaning "to be in favor of", or "in belief of". Thus, proshipping means, "accepting, tolerant, or supportive of shipping, no matter how morally wrong by social standards".Contrary to popular belief, 'Proshipping' is not short for 'Problematic Shipping'.

Why is proshipping bad?

Proshipping actively endangers people by normalizing the problematic ships they tolerate in their communities.
While the proshipping community's favorite defense is that fiction shouldn't impact one's reality or mental health, the fact is that it just does.A fantastic example of fiction impacting our physical lives in the real world is the 'Jaws Effect', which you can find more information about in the FAQ tag, or in this article by SharkSpeak.Since fandoms are the most tied to shipping in general, it's to be expected that there are hundreds of thousands of minors drawn to shipping communities as a result.Not only do proshipping groups welcome minors with open arms, but the devastating truth is that there are far more predators hiding in plain sight within the proshipping community than they themselves believe and advertise.
And those predators are surrounded by people who not only accept, but ENCOURAGE their dangerous interests or activity. It is a breeding ground for groomers and abusive people, and gives them easy access to victims on top of it all.Tolerating, accepting, and supporting the problematic ships that the proshipping community does, actively normalizes them in the real world. It exposes people to the idea that it's healthy to be attracted to underage people, or attracted to animals, or attracted to family members, etc etc.
It is inherently harmful, no matter which way you look at it.Some proshippers may argue that they use problematic ships as a way to cope with their trauma. And while their reasoning is understandable, and their trauma is a valid thing, it needs therapy and a much better coping mechanism. Invading childrens' spaces and forcing your pedophilic proship rhetoric onto the characters is not healthy, and is especially not good for the children whose space you so rudely barged into.

This take (name censored for their safety) is, I believe, a good comparison to what goes on behind closed doors in the proshipping community. Racist caricatures that were drawn in the past were used to diminish the reputation of black people all over the world, and it has affected their real lives, even if it was "just a drawing". Art influences people, in every possible way.

frequently asked questions

Is there a word for being against proshipping?
Yes! Someone who is against proshipping may frequently be called an antishipper, or just 'anti'.Antishippers may have ❌🚢 (or similar combinations) in their usernames, bios, or posts. This does not mean that they are against shipping in general; just that they're against proshipping and do not support the proshipper ideology.

But fiction is fiction. How does it affect reality at all, especially if it's labeled fiction? Shouldn't people know it's not real?
Fiction can affect not only a person's mental health (as seen with the neurodivergent community and hyperfixation), but it can also influence real-world decisionmaking and even the perception of certain objects or beings.An example of this would be the 'Jaws Effect'. According to this SharkSpeak article:
"The 'Jaws Effect' is a term coined by Dr Christopher Neff (a public policy professor at the University of Sydney), specifically to describe the enormous, detrimental impact that the movie Jaws had on the general public's opinion of sharks (Neff, 2015)."
And, although the general human fear of sharks does predate the Jaws movie,
"—the movie capitalised on this fear; catapulting sharks into a demonic role and spawning an endless stream of shark monster movies, that are still being made today. For a public with little knowledge about sharks, these films make these animals seem extremely dangerous and vindictive.—"Since Jaws aired, the public opinion of sharks has turned in favor of mass killing them, and this opinion has not changed in the last 50 years.
"Even worse, is that government policies were affected by Jaws. In a landmark article in 2015, Dr Neff discussed at length how the Jaws Effect allowed the government in Western Australia to implement shark culling programs in response to a string of shark attacks, despite it being scientifically proven that shark culling is ineffective in preventing attacks on humans."While Jaws is not the only example of fiction greatly impacting the reality of our lives, it is probably the best one. Despite the movie being labeled fiction, and advertised as fiction, we now demonize animals that are no different from any other.

Why can't people who dislike a ship just ignore it and keep scrolling, the way we used to back in the earlier days of the internet when we saw something squicky, like a Harry Potter x Voldemort fanfic?
People are creating and publicly sharing visible artwork, which can leave a much greater impact than just an odd fanfic. On top of this, the internet is full of minors, now more than ever.When we were kids, digital art wasn't nearly as prevalent as it is now, which kept us from coming across certain content for a long time. It's just not like that anymore. While it's not solely our responsibility to protect them, we should still do our part to hide certain content from the public eye, instead of expecting these kids (and people in general) to know exactly what they should stay away from.Proshippers often argue that antis are incapable of leaving a ship alone if they disagree with it, which is blatantly untrue. A regular, normal part of shipping is to ignore ships you disagree with. Antishippers simply speak out against ships that are harmful, as they should be spoken against.

I use problematic shipping / art as a coping method for trauma that I endured at a point in my life. Is that really so bad?
Using art is a wonderful method of coping, but there is a fine line between a coping method using a display of trauma, and an erotic fantasy. Proshippers will frequently fetishize problematic things and use their trauma as an excuse to do so.Displaying your trauma through art to help you cope can be done without eroticizing it, and most certainly can be done without exposing it to minors and others with trauma who may be more sensitive to the topic. There's nothing inherently wrong with creating this kind of art, as long as it isn't made into, or made with the intention of being, pornography.

When I was a kid myself, I shipped minors together. Is that bad?
This kind of behavior is only problematic if the minors are being shipped sexually, shipped with adults, family members, animals, or with abusive partners (be it emotionally or physically).
So no, there's nothing wrong with shipping two minors if you're a minor yourself. Whether or not you're allowed to ship minors while being an adult is widely debated, but as long as it stays strictly non-problematic and non-sexual, there are usually no issues.It doesn't matter if you're a minor or an adult; encouraging problematic shipping is normalizing the real thing.

Are psychological horror novels, such as Killing Stalking, considered proship? Is it bad if I write a psychological horror involving problematic characters?
Psychological horror is a genre that generally attempts to display certain horrific things as horrific things. Traumatic, and something that shouldn't be taken lightly.I would not consider Killing Stalking proship, simply for the fact that the intention behind the story is not to showcase a relationship of any kind. It's to showcase the horrors of psychological and physical abuse.However, anyone who genuinely ships Yoon Bum and Sangwoo (the protagonists of Killing Stalking), and believes them to be a good couple, are considered proship, in light of the vast amounts of both physical and emotional abuse Sangwoo puts Yoon Bum through.Writing a psychological horror story and creating problematic characters to tell the story does not make you proship, or a bad person. It only becomes proship when you attempt to justify the abusive behavior and romanticize it yourself, as a person.

Who are the good guys?
Like with any group of people / community, there are good and bad eggs. No one side is exactly good, and the other bad.
Not all proshippers are inherently bad people, and not all antishippers are inherently good people.To shed light on some of the disgusting and vile things some antishippers have done, in one instance, a Tumblr user by the name of 'zoloft-paxil' admitted to raping a former friend of theirs, because she outed them to their family. Their excuse for this behavior?
"She had a fucking rape fetish. She wanted it anyway so it wasn't even rape probably"
(Screenshot below.)

In regards to proshippers doing vile things:In another instance, a web developer by the name of RedArcanine, also known as PokeMutt, was outed to be a proshipper and pedophile / groomer, shortly after an extremely uncomfortable poll was released on an art site he developed, Buzz.ly, attempting to discuss the site rules with the rest of its members.(Click to see full images)

What do I do if I see a proshipper encouraging or romanticizing problematic ships?
The best thing you can do, to protect yourself and others, is to:

  • Block and report. Especially on Twitter or Tumblr spaces, it's extremely difficult to reason with proshippers, and isn't worth the headache of trying to explain things they just refuse to understand.

  • Call them out. Notify your own followers, or others who are looking for proshippers to block. It's important that people know who these proshippers are, so they can avoid their interactions before they happen.

  • Do not harass them. Nothing good will ever come from poking the bear. If a proshipper is ever open to civil debate on their ideology, you are free to engage, but do so with decency, even if they're a horrible person that you detest. By harassing them and flaming them, you're only making yourself look bad, and proving to them that antis are bad people that have no basic respect.

sources

List of Proship Pride Flags
@proshipphobia on TwitterArticle on how despite being fiction, Jaws affected reality and continues to do so today
45 Years of the 'Jaws Effect' - SharkSpeakCompilation of deplorable actions performed by antishippers (people against proshippers)
*@shotarobbie on Twitter* Buzz.ly information and updates
@buzzlyarts on TwitterPokeMutt pedophilia proof
@CytricAcidArt on Twitter