Ever since I was a preteen, I've been involved in fandom to some degree. It started with DBZ, then Saiyuki and so on and so forth.
The fandom spaces have always been unique in their own way, but much the same when it came to certain dynamic especially when it came to the fanfiction scene. If you didn't like a ship/character/storyline of said fanfiction-it was etiquette to move on. 'Don't like, don't read' was a common phrase I came upon scrolling through fanfiction.net and livejournal. (And Deviantart....yeah, I go that deep....I did purge my account of all deviations though.)
I've noticed recently however, especially after joining the Kimetsu no Yaiba/Demon Slayer fandom, that there are lot of those who get upset if you don't ship the popular/canon ships. Or they treat headcanons as canon.
Browsing reddit I came upon someone's art post, and they happened to ship ObanaiXShinobu. While I didn't think much of it, as ObanaiXMitsuri is one of the few canon ships I love, a lot of fans were rude about it in the comments. And it made me wonder....
Are people not allowed to even crack-ship anymore?
Back in my Kuroshitsuji/Black Butler days, I had a lot of random crackships. BardXSebastian, BardXMeyrin, Charles GreyXMeyrin etc etc. It was harmless and I had a lot of fun with it, no one bothered me about it (my account had over 1,000 followers at the time.) But this was pre-2020, and I've noticed people on tik tok and tumblr talk about it before that covid is when things began to really shift within the fandoms.
I want to say I don't ship Shinobu with anyone, I headcanon her as aromantic/asexual (because of her circumstances). And yes, I do ship Sanegiyu, but I don't hate on anyone that doesn't. If someone ships ShinoGiyu in a post, I move on.
Do fans not go by the 'don't like, don't read' rule anymore?
I just want to know if it's just my observation of someone who's semi-active in the DS fandom, or if this is just the norm for most fandoms especially Demon Slayer.
