I Find It Funny How People (antis Usually) Think That Discourse Regarding Fiction And Reality Is A Recent

I find it funny how people (antis usually) think that discourse regarding fiction and reality is a recent internet phenomenon. The terms "proshipper" and "antishipper" are relatively new, but the basis of it all has been going on for way longer than that.

In the novel "Madame Bovary" (1856) by Flaubert, the anxiety that readers, specifically women, would be brainwashed by fiction is channeled by Bovary herself, who "made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries". With the "books" in question being romance novels, Flaubert not so subtly implies that works of fiction are the reason why Bovary ends up idealising her idea of love to the point that she commits acts of adultery in attempt to escape a reality that had become monotonous as a result of her novel reading.

Even in "Northanger Abbey" (1817) by Jane Austen, the protagonist, Catherine Morland, has a warped sense of reality, and it is said that it's because of her love for Gothic novels. Different from Flaubert though, who seemed to discourage women from reading romance novels altogether, a major plot point of Austen's novel is how Catherine needs to learn how to separate fiction from reality, meaning that a good relationship with novels can be achieved if only they aren't seen as a blueprint for living life. She also mocks her fellow authors who belittle their own readers while still publishing the books they strive to censor, and blames the reader's ability to differentiate fiction from reality, rather than the novel genre itself.

While terminology might have changed, the topic has remained about the same at the bare essentials, which are perfectly reflected in what both antishippers and proshippers argue about on the regular. The former believing that fiction affects reality on a 1:1 basis and that problematic elements must be identified as such so not to brainwash the reader into romanticising them, while the latter sees a distinction between fantasy and action, thinking that it's not the piece of fiction that perpetuates misconduct, but that the responsibility lies within the reader and their discretion.

The fact that this discourse now happens online rather than in the novels you study in class, does not take away any validity from it. Fandom spaces and ships are treated no differently than how novels were in the 19th century, with antis doing anything they can to censor whatever they deem to be problematic, as they fear that readers may glorify the (fictional) abuse irl, similarly to how Victorians censored works in order to "shelter" women.

At the end of the day, it's not only about being an antishipper or a proshipper, it's whether you consider yourself to be pro censorship or pro artistic freedom, and there's simply no other way to put it.