Must-know for Japanese fandom: the meaning of "proship" and the concept of "proshippers" in Western fandom

Must-know for Japanese fandom: the meaning of "proship" and the concept of "proshippers" in Western fandom is an essay article written by マロミチャン (maromi_ika) in February 2023.
It describes how maromi_ika, the Japanese-speaking author of the article, who is a fan artist, was harassed by English-speaking anti-shippers, who accused them of being a proshipper. maromi_ika then learned about the associated discourse previously unknown to the author and other fans in Japan, and decided to take a stance against anti-shipping because the author doesn't want fanworks to be censored. In conclusion, it recommends other Japanese fan artists not to engage with people who start interactions with proship accusations.
It was written in Japanese to inform Japanese-speaking audience, and it soon got translated into English. Both versions were widely shared, prompting reactions of many Japanese-speaking fans and English-speaking fans and discussions about the larger anti/pro-ship discourse. Most of the reactions were supportive to the author.
Before publishing the article, maromi_ika tweeted in English a summary of what had happened and their thoughts about it: . In the thread maromi_ika describes the episode as a result of cultural differences between Japan, where "[A]ll that is required to publish a work (...) is zoning" (separating spaces by the use of warnings, ratings, tags, etc), and other countries where that is not enough. However, other fans tweeted further explanations of the terms anti and proshipper to the artist, and the essay itself contains sections acknowledging that they had initially been misled: "Thanks to my statement about proshipping, I was able to hear from many people, and was relieved to learn that antis are just a small part of English fandom, and that the attitude of so-called 'proshippers' is in fact the default."
maromi_ika approved マロミチャン (maromi_ika), https://twitter.com/maromi_ika/status/1627738799769001984 オレンジア (orangiah)'s translationhttps://note.com/orangiah/n/n437e262ce2ce.
==Topics discussed==
*Anti-ship
*Anti-anti
*Harassment
*Problematic
*Western fandom and Japanese fandom
*Don't Like, Don't Read
==Reactions==
Among mainstream creators, Gengoroh Tagame,Rainy Studios (SamAburime), https://twitter.com/SamAburime/status/1627828231838613506 a gay manga artist, and Yasuhiro Nightow,Dimitri Monroe (DimitriMonroeZ) https://twitter.com/DimitriMonroeZ/status/1628350141609480192Evidence on the Internet Archive. https://web.archive.org/web/20230220210137/https://twitter.com/nightowa manga artist known for Trigun shared the article.
The original essay contained a reference to a Japanese term, "feelings yakuza", and the conclusion that anti-shippers were just "American feelings yakuza". The translator explained that it was an "internet slang term referring to 'those who turn their personal discomfort into a social evil and try to erase the target completely'". A lot of English-speaking fans commented that they liked the term and discussed whether to adopt it instead of "anti-shipper".
Fail_fandomanon discussed the essay and their feelings about "feelings yakuza" here and here.
dorkery shared a link to the essay in a tumblr post that had over 28K notes as of early March. by dorkery, 21 February 2023. As of 6 March 2023, this tumblr post has 28,814 notes. This reblog had another fan commenting positively on the term "feelings yakuza".
Reportedly, Japanese fanartists on twitter spread the word and recommended blocking anyone with "proship DNI" in their profile., tweet by espasolnikaeya, Feb 19, 2023. Then news spread on English twitter that anti-shippers were removing the DNI and replacing it with something less recognizable so that they wouldn't be blocked from seeing Japanese fanart., tweet by ProfictionPuppy, Feb 21, 2023., tweet by unashamedfully, Feb 20, 2023., tweet by espasolnikaeya, Feb 24, 2023., Feb 25, 2023. (It is unclear where this news originated, and one person whose tweet was screenshot as proof protested that "i'm not an anti. that's why i took it out of my bio. On account of i changed my opinion on the matter months before this current discussion was a thing. Sorry i didnt give you all the memo"., Feb 27, 2023.) Some people then posted updates on the new keywords to use in identifying and blocking antis."一部のアンチは [proship dni] から [problematics dni] に変更されているようですので、それらにも注意してください。必要に応じてブロックできます " Machine translation: "Some antis seem to have changed from [proship dni] to [problematics dni], so keep an eye out for those too. Can be blocked if desired". , Feb 26, 2023., tweet by kankanryuu, Feb 26, 2023.
==References==
Category:2023 Meta
Category:Japanese-Speaking Fandom