I'm Going To Be Fully Honest, I Hate The Use Of Problematic As A Coined Term For Fictional Ships. I Feel

I'm going to be fully honest, I hate the use of problematic as a coined term for fictional ships. I feel like problematic has just become one of those terms tossed around at anything and everything and often used as a gotcha net.

"I don't care about your ships as long as they're not problematic."

Okay. Are we talking about incest or just a ship where they have clashing political opinions?

Am I not allowed to ship the sentient wolf creature with the twink or am I not allowed to ship the two middle aged store clerks who have different views on wanting children?

What if one half of my canon ship gets de-aged to eighteen? Is it suddenly problematic to ship them for as long as that character remains de-aged?

What kind of age brackets are we defining as problematic these days? What are the cut-off points for when its not problematic for two people to fall in love? What if one person has a birthday before the other one and for a few months they're not part of that acceptable bracket anymore?

Problematic is just being used as a one-word way to shut people down and force them to comply with your own expectations and boundaries. Problematic is thrown around as a way to box people into behaving and existing in ways that make you comfortable.

"I don't like the way that you exist so I'm going to brand you as this negative word that forces you to change to suit my preferences or be shunned by society."

Problematic means to constitute as or to present a problem. It is not the shiny new term for 'if you ship this thing you're a terrible person.'

I wish I had a place to post my fucked up arts without being cancelled 😭

Honestly I think the drawn arts have suffered perhaps the most out of modern censorship. Especially the communities, too, because when sites ban things to please advertisers, investors and the handful of people squawking about protecting the children, it creates this mentality of; 'if its been banned its bad, so whoever makes it or enjoys it is bad too.'

There will literally always be at least one person who comes after you for what you create. Lord knows I enough enough angry anons in my inbox on a daily basis and all I do is rant about antis and occasionally knock my braincells together with enough force to say something vaguely helpful.

My best advice for avoiding being 'cancelled' is to heavily, heavily curate your online space and the people you aim to include within it. This could be by:

Following specifically other blogs who post similar content or express interest in similar content to what you produce or your interests.

Pre-emptively blocking blogs who express disgust or hatred for the content you produce or like, blogs who express moral stances conflicting to yours, ect. This is expressly helpful on sites like Twitter where options to limit engagement are limited.

Tagging properly, and including trigger and warnings tags whom others are likely to have blocked. This prevents people from seeing something they don't want to, and also gives you coverage if they try to accuse you of 'spreading it around.'

In cases of art that may have more extreme content, try using spoiler flags or any filtration option that requires viewers to actively consent to viewing it. Relevant to above, nobody can cry wolf about 'being exposed' because they would've had to physically reveal the work to themselves.

DeviantArt unfortunately recently changed its policies to a frankly ridiculously constrictive degree, so while I previously would've recommended that as a place to host your artwork and find a safer community, I can no longer. Hopefully someone is successful in pushing for the site to reform to its previous rules soon.

ArtStation is an option. The site is not eligible to anyone under 18 and sexual, gore, fetish, and 'mature' content is allowed provided the usual stipulation that you aren't using it in order to cause, infer or threaten harm against someone. A lot of the site is geared toward marketing artwork, though, so you might be hard pressed to find more of a community aspect to it.

Rule 34.com is... Objectively one of the best places you can host your artwork if you create content that is based on sexual themes. The protective rights aren't the greatest, but anyone who uses Rule 34 has no leg to stand on regarding morality and censorship.

Reddit has a lot of subreddits for sharing art, and a bonus is you can find subreddits specifically geared toward artwork based on things like gore, violence, sexual content, ect. Filtering options and monitoring are basically non-existent, however. Also, Reddit sometimes spontaneously decides a specific post is against its TOS and yeets it.

There's also the option of building a Discord server based around sharing artwork of certain themes, which is objectively the format that allows you the most control over who views it, but it also means your art has a limited presence. (Can't be reblogged, ect.)

If you do check out any of the websites, always be thorough in reading the Terms of Service and the Community Guidelines.

Honestly you people need to start thinking about fanfiction like a restaurant.

You do not have to order the salmon if you don't like salmon.

If I order the salmon, I am not forcing you to eat the salmon. Nor are you obligated to order it just because I am.

If we are going with the intention of sharing food, that's okay! I happen to like steak too. I don't need to order the salmon. I'm capable of going to the restaurant and not ordering the salmon. We can order the steak.

There is a whole menu of things you can have. The salmon is just an option. We can even find a restaurant that doesn't serve salmon at all.

Yes, I know some people are allergic to salmon. But I'm not going up to them and force-feeding it to them. The only way my salmon can hurt them is if they come to our table and take the salmon.

The only way you'll expose yourself to my salmon and the unpleasantness of eating it is if I tell you my dish has salmon in it and you insist on having a bite anyway.

You're midway through your meal and realize it has salmon in it? Okay. Lets send it back and order something else. Maybe you didn't see it in the ingredients list. Or maybe the chef didn't put it down.

Its really that simple.

"Why don't you tell people what kind of fictional porn you like?"

Why don't you tell them you spend your free time telling real people to kill themselves and arguing about the rights of people who literally do not exist.

I'll tell my mom that I read about Tony Stark pounding Peter Parker until his ass is as open as a 24/7 McDonald's if you tell yours that you wholeheartedly tell people you hope their families burn alive and they get raped because they ship a human and a celestial being together.

While we're at it, sure, I'll tell my boss I like monsterfucking as long as you tell yours that your break-time hobby is scouring the internet stalking people and harassing them over their kinks.

I might be the freak with a tentacle dildo and a bookmarks page full of nasty, kinky incest, but you're the freak who could literally kill someone.

I know which one I'd rather be.

No, no, they're right.

But also, it does contribute to my analysis of how the approach to characters is different based on whether the canon content is geared more towards realism or fantasy.

Waiting for the thinkpieces about how Astarion and Billy Hargrove are extremely similar characters but only one was well written...

Think about this 1 point before you make claims about what is and is not acceptable to attack people for:

It doesn't matter if its incest, pedophilia or zoophilia.

Its fictional.

If you don't like it, you are welcome to take your own advice and move the fuck on with your day. It isn't aimed at you, it isn't for you, and if you don't like it, nobody is forcing you to engage with it.

I really do appreciate your sentiment, but fiction is not equitable to real life.

To all people who judge people based off of their ships, think about these 3 points before you do it: Is it incest? Is it pedophilia? Is it zoophilia? No? Then move the fuck on with your day and stop attacking people for something that isn't wrong.