Non-Sharing Yumes + Thoughts
... and my thoughts being, why are people so weird about someone being non-sharing when it comes to yumeshipping / OC x canon? It's not the first time I've seen posts around like 'I don't believe in non-sharing, media characters belong to everyone' like ... ??? Why are you to dictate if ... it exists or doesn't? Does someone not wanting to see content of their f/o in a romantic light offend you? Do you think non-sharing people will grip their pitchforks and yell at you that you like or make ship content including their f/o?
This is more I suppose a personal gripe/vent blog post, but I've never understood the general catch-all mentality some people have that non-sharing people are 'hogging' a character, or that characters need to be shared. It's not one I often see, but the few times I have seen it baffles me.
This is not counting those who have seen non-sharing people who do go out of their way to harass others sharing their f/o's, or have ... weirdly aggressive DNIs (which I've seen as well, like literally the level of 'do not interact with me if you even simp for my very real boyfriends!!!'), but to lump most people which I know generally tend to stick to their own lanes into a bubble of 'you are wrong for wanting to keep this private' is. Weird as fuck to me.
I say this as a non-sharing person who does curate my space, literally block buttons exists, filters exist, not looking at blogs and sites exist. Yes, I could say the same that I can just opt to not look at the people who complain about 'non-sharing people', but it is frustrating to me when people look at others sitting in their own corners, doing their own thing, and think it's wrong for them to want to not see certain content of something that is a comfort to them.
No, I don't want to see Zhongli ships. I am happy for those who make OCs that kiss him, genuinely I do mean it cause he is a wonderful character, but I do not want to see it because my ship has an emotional comfort for me. I rarely will ever block someone for it, and if I can opt to filter tags, I will happily do so as well. But never will I go chase down someone because they have an OC/selfship with him, or they like some ship with him. All I ever ask, for those who do talk to me, is merely that if those topics come up, I will step out of the convo until it is over.
So again, it's why I'm always very confused why people treat non-sharers like we're hoarding characters or gonna chew out people who like/have ships with that character. Most people will just sit in their corners and do what makes them happy; it's the same energy as pointing to someone just standing in a corner and being like 'this person offends me'. God forbid people set up their own boundaries for their comfort and people get offended for it.
(The DNI thing will bring me to another tangent I also think about a lot, but TL;DR this tumblr post summarizes it very well as to how I feel about DNIs in this day and age on sites/rentries/carrds.)
Ah, I think I figured out why I dislike DNIs conceptually so much: they're attempts to set boundaries but are actually the complete opposite of how boundaries are supposed to work. A boundary is not a demand you make of someone else (which is what a DNI is) but instead an action you take against someone else's behavior. In this case, setting a boundary would be blocking people who violate the DNI criteria, not making a statement about how they shouldn't follow you. Making a DNI is requesting a courtesy from other people, but it is not establishing a boundary.
Anyway, that's all to say I'm rambling on and just very sad when I see non-sharing people like myself essentially get told that our comfort levels don't matter or exist or are supported, that because we'd like to keep our ships to our heart and not see others ... that we're 'bad' for doing so.