Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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fandomsecrets2024-08-16 07:10 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2024-08-16 07:10 pm
[ SECRET POST#6433 ]
⌈ Secret Post #6433 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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[Steven Universe]
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06. [SPOILERS for Deadpool and Wolverine]
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #919.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
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(Anonymous) 2024-08-17 06:16 am (UTC)(link)On the other hand, Steven Universe is such an intentionally gay (especially lesbian) show that I feel like ignoring all that subtext and the various wlw relationships it features or alludes to in favor of het pairings, including ones without any basis in canon, is reading so far against the intent of the show and ignoring its themes that it's going to come off as pretty cringe unless you cancel it by making it clear you are aware of all the lesbian subtext in the show, it just doesn't particularly interest you.
And to be clear, there's nothing wrong with cringe! Also, I've absolutely been in this situation myself -- I read most of CLAMP's manga and always came away hating or being annoyed by the juggernaut slash ship and latching onto some random het ship instead. I know what it's like to be Missing the Whole Point of Canon in my shipping tastes that puts me at odds with the rest of fandom and which reads very far against the intent of the text! There's nothing wrong with being cringe in fandom; that said, fandom is famously bad at not dealing well with cringe if it intersects with an axis of social justice (het relationships in a very LGBT show, in this example) and will absolutely hound/bully fans for the "crime" of being cringe, because there is social justice language easily at hand for interpreting those uncomfortable cringe reactions (i.e. someone who passes over all the canon gay ships to ship the random het pair isn't missing the point of the show in a way that's embarrassing; rather they are "erasing" canon gay characters). My reaction to that is generally "fuck off" -- people don't ever have to ship canon pairings, and that doesn't change if the canon pairings happen to be gay. You can choose to interpret shipping tastes as "erasure" but I find this a very stupid lens through which to analyze shipping behavior.
On the final hand, I gotta say that identifying as an "exclusive het shipper" does raise red flags for me. I get what people are saying above that there isn't some quota for gay ships that people have to ship lest they are a homophobe, and again, the heart wants what it wants. That said, I have just never met someone in fandom who was an exclusive het shipper who wasn't also homophobic. Not necessarily in the "I hate gay people and think they are gross/deserve to die" or "no one should ship these pairings because they are sinful" sense of homophobic, but in the sense that they had been raised with the notion that homosexuality was wrong, and even if they themselves are fine and lovely to real-life gay people, there is still something in them that thinks gay pairings are wrong or inappropriate and they're still wrestling with that. Depending on their social circles, such exclusive het shippers might even justify their shipping tastes as not liking "fetishization" of gay people or discomfort with making a children's show sexual (which would not be out of place in e.g. pro-LGBT anti spaces). Or they might just say they've never seen a gay pairing that grabbed them and leave it at that, but yeah, I've literally never encountered an "exclusive het shipper" who didn't come from a very conservative Christian background and was still wrestling with the anti-gay ideas that come with that upbringing, even if they themselves weren't a frothing-at-the-mouth homophobe. I guarantee you that someone in their social circle when they were growing up WAS. (Well, I might be proven wrong one day, but that has been my whole fandom experience so far.)
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(Anonymous) 2024-08-17 01:13 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2024-08-17 01:33 pm (UTC)(link)How can something be "not in a bad way," but also a red flag severe enough to warrant blocking?
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(Anonymous) 2024-08-17 02:31 pm (UTC)(link)Also there is nothing wrong with blocking. I don't need severe reasons. You do you. *I* don't want to communicate with you for some reason or other. Maybe you hate my favorite character, or maybe you spam tag with reader fics. Or maybe you are Christian who finds gays icky. I am blocking because I am not interested not because you are necessarily a bad person.
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(Anonymous) 2024-08-18 03:32 am (UTC)(link)Look, have you actually thought through what you're saying? You're contradicting yourself with almost every sentence.
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(Anonymous) 2024-08-17 01:41 pm (UTC)(link)The third paragraph of this comment is unreal. "You may be accepting of gay people appearing in the media you consume. You may have no problem with other people shipping slash. You may treat gay people well. You may support and defend gay rights. But despite all of that, if you're a het person who only ships het, you're still a homophobe."
Hey, question for all of you: do you also think het people are homophobic for not entering into same-sex relationships from time to time? Because the entire vibe of this comment section really comes across as, "heterosexuality is a problematic choice, not an inherent sexual orientation."
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(Anonymous) 2024-08-17 05:16 pm (UTC)(link)I'm going to assume you're taking about my fourth paragraph and not my third paragraph.
Even still, I cannot make sense of your response to it. Just to clarify what I was saying, on no occasion did I ever think an "exclusive het shipper" was homophobic *on the basis of their fictional shipping tastes alone.* What I am saying is that over the years I have known several people who were exclusive het shippers in fandom and when I asked them about their shipping tastes, attitudes toward sexuality, and the basis of those beliefs, every time it turned out they had had a very conservative Christian upbringing and thought there was something wrong with being gay. They weren't loud about it; they weren't blaring their opinions over a megaphone; they weren't stopping people from shipping gay pairings. It was just something they quietly believed and were willing to tell someone frankly if asked non-judgmentally about it. That's why being someone who identifies as an exclusive het shipper is a *red flag* for me and not IDK, a smoking gun / definitionally homophobic. Because it's not actually intrinsically homophobic to have no slash ships. I am just saying that IN MY EXPERIENCE, whenever I have scratched a bit deeper into that situation, I have found a concrete discomfort with gay people stemming from a conservative Christian upbringing and THAT is the homophobia I am referring to. I said nothing about those people supporting gay rights (I said they were interpersonally pleasant to real-life gay people, which many people who opposed gay marriage are!)... because those people did NOT support gay rights. So yeah, I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. I DO have concrete evidence that those people had homophobic attitudes, not in their shipping tastes but in their attitude toward gay people that they were willing to divulge to me because I was speaking to them as a non-judgmental friend. The label as an "exclusive het shipper" was just extremely correlated with the attitudes toward gay people that the people declined to advertise front and center.
I also have no idea why you have brought real-life sexuality into it either. Plenty of het people ship slash pairings. Heck, sometimes people who ship slash pairings are homophobic! I don't really see a connection between someone's real-life sexuality and their shipping tastes, except I guess people who are gay are less likely to be homophobic (for obvious/self-interest reasons) and so less likely to avoid ALL slash pairings on principle. It still happens, though -- it's just much rarer! But like the anon above, some of the hettest dudebros I know acknowledge/understand the appeal of M/M juggernauts (they might not be actively fannish about them but they get it) and love F/F ships (because straight guys tend to find women particularly appealing and two women doubly appealing) -- those are the non-homophobic het guys. I have even met homophobic het guys who hated M/M but still loved F/F ships... I know fewer homophobic het women, but the many non-homophobic het women I know have come in many types, some favoring het, some favoring M/M (for the similar reasons as the guys) but I don't know of many straight women in fandom with just ZERO M/M or F/F ships -- it's exceedingly rare. And as I mentioned, the only straight people I knew who had no slash pairs at all turned out to be religious and with a concrete anti-gay conviction. (And uh, I guess I should probably mention that not ALL the people who were homophobic "exclusive het shippers" turned out to be straight, although when they were in their "exclusive het shipping" phase, they certainly did self-conceive that way.)
So yeah, I don't think someone's sexuality is at all a determination of their homophobia, nor do I think shipping behavior indicates homophobia either. I just think it's vanishingly rare for someone to happen to have *only* het ships unless it's a moral conviction. Even the straightest people I know (and I consider myself in this category -- I am SUPER straight) have at least one or two gay ships they like!
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(Anonymous) 2024-08-17 06:07 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2024-08-18 03:25 am (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2024-08-18 04:40 am (UTC)(link)Yep, this matches my own experience too. Like, my best guy friend is straight and doesn't ship M/M stuff himself but even he picks up on vibes (his verdict upon finishing a canon that we were both consuming together was "those two (the main male villains) are DEFINITELY fucking"). Most of the people I know who are primarily M/F shippers are more canon shippers than anything else and will ship an M/M or F/F pairing if it's canon, they're just not that big into non-canon ships in general so their ships end up being largely M/F just because that's 95% of canon ships.
But like you, I've also never met a straight person who didn't like a single gay ship at all who wasn't at least somewhat homophobic on some level. Not having gay ships doesn't make someone homophobic in and of itself, but there is absolutely a correlation between the two things in my experience.