Top/bottom Discourse In The Genshin Fandom Is Annoying

top/bottom discourse in the Genshin fandom is annoying

hear me out, I don’t have anything against people who like one fixed dynamic only. Unless they go out of their way to harass other fixed/switch dynamic shippers

and that’s exactly what happened to a zine artist. The zine is for profit, also still in the making but they announced a guest artist who doesn’t care about strict dynamics, they occasionally lean towards the other dynamic (let’s call it vanilla) but would draw the fixed dynamic (chocolate) for this zine

people who wanted chocolate only were angry about the fact that an artist who leans more to vanilla was invited for a chocolate zine. They called it “false advertising” and “being lied to” and “how can we make sure this person will only draw chocolate?!” and “how dare you invite a VANILLA artist for CHOCOLATE!”

the harassment was so bad that the artist deactivated their twitter and I’m really sad to hear that. What more, there were Chinese fixed shipper in the comments who insulted the zine mods and artist, making comments like “it looks you slept with each other” or “if you don’t get why were complaining, you’re stupid!”

and I’m just like… this is no big deal.

This zine is not out yet. No one lost money, no one was hurt by “false advertising”. The zine mods protect the artist and said switch shippers are welcome as long as they draw the fixed dynamic the mods decided on, which the artist will do or would have done. If you don’t like the product, you don’t have to buy it! It makes me sad that something so little exploded into something so big

Unfortunately this isn't just a Genshin issue. Fans are fucking rabid about top/bottom discourse and it usually boils down to some kind of heteronormative-vaguely-sexist flavor.

You see it most often in ships which have very obvious dynamic and personality differences. The "little sunshine one" is always the super feminine uwu bottom. The tallest one is always the top, though some people like to add a little spice by making them a submissive top.

And don't get me wrong—I'm not immune. I have the odd pairing where I'm more fixated on a set sexual dynamic, but I'm a switch shipper through and through. And I'd certainly never try to dictate that my preferences in fanon are the universal rule.

In all honesty, I'd have cancelled the zine. People need to learn that actions have consequences. If you want the fun fandom thing, you have to be respectful. Too many people have caved to fandom pressure and harassment and just aided in educating people that being cunts effectively gets them what they want. People need to learn there are consequences to ruining it for everyone else.

(Because lets be honest, you are going to be nobody's favorite person if everyone knows you're the reason they lost out on something.)

Minnie! I need your help 🥺

https://www.wattpad.com/1122388642-marvel-smut-welcome

This is a huge collection of 46 STOLEN Marvel ship stories, including a lot of Stucky content from some familiar names on AO3. The uploader has openly admitted they simply stole them off AO3.

I'm trying to track down the owners but its a lot of work, and there's a lot of different ships. Stony, Thorki, HawkIron, ect.

If anyone recognises where the find the authors or can help me get in touch with them to alert them, please do! 46 stories have been wrongfully stolen.

Uggghh you're kidding me, not again?? 😒 This is despicable, I don't understand how people who steal other people's work justify their actions to themselves, especially when people explicitly tell them how not cool it is??

Thanks for letting me know about this, nonnie! Let's hope the authors can be tracked down and that they can get this account taken down asap 🙏🏻

If anyone recognises any of the fics in this collection, please let the author know and also please report the account if you can! Thanks again ❤️

YOU CAN NOW REPORT STOLEN CONTENT ON WATTPAD WITHOUT BEING THE ORIGINAL CREATOR

Wattpad Help Center: Reporting 'Published' Content If You Are Not The Owner

You can now report stolen content which has been wrongfully uploaded to Wattpad by thieves if you are not the original content owner by reporting it as a 'copy' of existing content.

I do not currently have any first-hand information on how reasonable or effective this is. Wattpad is not known for its readiness to protect content owners, however this is absolutely a step toward reforming the website and its policies on copyright and content protections.

However the only way to actually prove how important it is to protect copyright and just how badly Wattpad needs to start taking content theft seriously to actually and properly use this feature. If you are scrolling Wattpad and see "collections" or "re-uploads" of stolen works, please take the time to effectively report it.

Wattpad is full to the brim of stolen fanfiction and fanart. This is a step in the right direction toward teaching people proper copyright and consequences.

Agree or disagree: a lot of people seem to be more concerned about looking like an activist who's doing activism rather than about actually helping the people who need help?

Nuanced agree.

I do think that for a lot of people there's a significant concern about how they're perceived by their peers, and that it fuels a lot of misguided "activism" but this stems from fear rather than something like laziness, deliberate manipulation, ect.

It ties into what I talked about on another post where people also place misguided responsibility and demands on people they deem as "capable" or "obligated." And where some people are also just point blank dickheads about moral signalling and knighting.

If you're constantly facing harassment and pressure to be seen as doing X, pretty soon you're going to get overwhelmed and you're going to try to prevent it by doing X in an overly visible, performative manner. You're going to want to stop people coming after you by visibly waving a neon sign saying "I'VE DONE THIS THING!"

We saw it with the social media blackouts. We saw it with spamming Free Palestine and Palestine flags. We saw it with the BLM logo. We see it with Facebook profile banners.

Being Known As Not A Bad Person becomes almost tantamount to actually not being a bad person.

But then, of course, you've also got the other side of the coin where there's people are genuinely do just want the recognition and clout of being deemed as an activist and a good person over actually wanting to be an activist and good person.

(Like that female influencer who was caught pretending to pick up trash, and the man who goes around shoving a camera in homeless people's faces and forcing them to perform for his audience if they want help.)

I think if we as a society were less concerned with forcing people to prove to us that they're not bad people and that they're Actually Doing Something, a lot more would actually get done.

You're the one making an assumption here... I never said everyone who ships is bad. I mean that there's enough of a problem with shipping that I and others feel uncomfortable associating with shipping culture. I'm saying more people should try to address issues with bigotry in their fandoms instead of acting like reality and fiction *never ever* interact. Proship is just a bad term and I hate that it's so common (so is anti)

Where did I make the assumption?

When you said:

"I'm not an anti, but I'm still going to criticize people for ignoring female characters or characters of color for the sake of only ever shipping boring white men"?

How about when you said:

"Proship sounds like you just ship totally uncritically which isn't any better than ONLY criticizing"?

And then there's:

"Proship is a bad term and I hate that its so common."

If you can't even recognise, understand and respect the literal definition of and history of a term, you are simply not ready or in a position to be trying to grandstand about it or argue about it. If you want to talk about bigotry, how about the female actors who get paid a fraction of what their male co-stars do?

How about authors of color who are told to use a white-presenting pen name in order to sell more books?

How about the fact that abortions are being controlled by religious fascists who are coming for birth control next?

How about the fact that China won't allow any form of queer representation in movies even if its only implied?

No? You're just mad that people aren't buying into the ship where the female character's sole role in the movie is to be the 2D love interest who's entire personality boils down to owning breasts and being either quirky or hypersexual?

I see.

I'm not an anti but I think it's disingenuous to say that proshop is "anti harassment" because, just like I've seen antis engage in harassment, I have also seen proshippers engage in that behavior. Antis claim they just block not engage, and the same is true with proshippers, even if there are demonstratable cases of harassment carried out by the person claiming there's "no harassment". Harassment is rampant in fandom spaces and there are always going to be assholes. That's just the reality of it.

Its one of the core values of proshipping. Whether or not individuals comply with that or consider it part of their personal claim to proshipping is entirely up to them and out of my control.

However, again.

SALS.

Pro-ship.

Its not disingenuous to state one of the inherent criteria of something. Only disingenuous to claim that everyone complies.