#protect fandom

[scullymurphy]

Policy Changes

I wasn't involved in the recent bookbinding auction, but I've seen a lot of the fallout from it (no pun intended, I swear!). So I figured it was as good a time as any to update my own polices, which I'm doing entirely to protect myself and fandom. The below is from my AO3 profile page. Thanks everyone! Xoxo ~Scully

[kuriquinn]

Call to Arms

If you care about fanfiction remaining free and respecting the work of fanwork creators:

go to the Fanfic Pocket Archive App and leave a 1-star review calling them out for what they are doing.

if you download the app, you can then report data mining for profit from a non profit website via whatever App Store you use

Spread the message to all of your creator friends to do the same.

The only thing people like this understand is money and ratings. So let’s take them out that way.

I’ll repost this message every few hours so people get the message.

[yeswevegotavideo]

Support AO3, or don't, but leave it the fuck alone

(I wrote this rant quite a while ago and never posted it, but seeing as people are On That Bullshit again, I figured it was time.) 

I feel like people (you know which) who bitch about AO3 holding fundraisers to support their business, even though said business hosts content they don't approve of, are rather analogous to anti-vaxxers, or anti-unionists.

The online fanfiction world before OTW/AO3 was much more dangerous and much less regulated and much harder to control, and innocent people were getting hurt all over the place.

Content creators could destroy other people's work with impunity under "copyright infringement" claims that weren't even valid. Web hosts could discover that a fic writer was posting written erotica or fanfiction in general (see copyright infringement above), on their servers (usually after being alerted to it by someone with a grudge) and respond by taking down their website, deleting their work, and banning their IP. They didn't even have to tell you if they did this, you could discover it by accident. And this happened a lot, because companies were skittish about anything even potentially legally problematic, so they erred on the side of enormous banhammers.

And on the fan creation side, there were no real content standards. There was no way to know whether what you were reading was potentially triggering. Tagging wasn't a thing. Warnings weren't standardized. There was no system, no way of either protecting yourself OR your work. And trying to find things you wanted to see was sometimes even harder, and involved associating with people you might not want to. I entered fandom (at 17, I might add) at a time when the primary way to get fanfic was through Yahoo!groups. Message boards. I had no control over who I did and didn't have contact with. I honestly don't even remember if there WAS a way to block people. And there were definitely some creeps. There were definitely some people I would never want to associate with.

When the OTW was created, it set out to fix both of these problems at once. The legal side dealt with the fair use and transformative aspects of fanwork, and AO3 dealt with the content moderation aspect. And I think they've done a damn good job with both. Of course it's not perfect, nothing is perfect, but the fact that I can go to AO3 right now and filter out just about anything I don't want to see with extremely good results tells me that they've achieved what they set out to achieve.

But people who weren't here for the before don't see the former world. Anti-vaxxers don't think of disease as a threat because they haven't been exposed to it. Anti-unionists think unions are worthless because they weren't there for life before the 40 hour work week and child labor laws. They only see what they can criticize now.

And beyond that, they come to their criticism with misinformed, ignorant, and harmful ideas about how the whole thing works. Like anti-vaxxers and their autism myth, and anti-unionists and their worship of capitalism, these people have a worldview that, frankly, scares the shit out of me.

They seem genuinely convinced that writing about something means fully endorsing it. That only the sick and twisted and perverted would ever, could ever, write offensive or gross things, write about characters who enjoy those things, explore scenarios that would be horrific in reality. That fiction not only influences and is influenced by society, but creates reality, IS reality. That abstract concepts in a story are, themselves, crimes against humanity equivalent to rape and murder. That these things ARE rape and murder. That writing a story that doesn’t explicitly condemn rape or abuse is not only endorsement but incitement. As if fiction writers were causing these things to happen in real life, to real people. They’ve said as much. If you write rape fantasies, you’re a rapist. If you write incest, you’re a pedophile. Period, end-of, no gray area, no exceptions. Though of course, the only writers for whom this is true are fanfiction writers.

Funny how they’re not going after the published authors like this. Is anyone seriously going around calling Stephen King a pedophile because IT has a weird, uncomfortable and frankly unnecessary child orgy in it? Because it totally does, for some weird fucking reason. (Coke. The reason was lots, and lots, of coke. Also the 70s.) He made thousands of dollars off of that story, he will collect royalties on it for the rest of his life. But no, he’s fine, we can leave his career alone, his book can stay on the shelf. We should definitely instead destroy the unpaid passion project of some 40-year-old housewife who writes out her fantasies to feel just a little less alone, some 16-year-old abuse victim trying to make sense of the things currently happening to her, some 25-year-old receptionist whose only escape from her soul-crushing job is exploring the inner workings of human dynamics through the characters she most resonates with, or finds the most fascinating, or most inspire her to write. These are the real villains, am I right?

AO3 protects ALL OF FANDOM and yes, this includes the unsavory and the distasteful, because it must. Because content censorship is creative death. Once an authority is allowed to decide what is and isn’t acceptable subject matter, it’s a matter of time before those subjective, arbitrary decisions start affecting people it shouldn’t. What happens when one of the decision makers goes power-mad? When they get into a disagreement with a writer and decide, oops, all their shit is banned, and anyone who commented positive things on their stories is banned, too. When somebody gets hired to do the job, and you know what they really find inappropriate and gross? Interracial dating. When somebody decides to erase all the stories involving the “wrong” kind of trans person. Or all trans people. It’s not remotely farfetched to imagine something like this happening. One trip to Fanlore and you can find dozens of incidents like it in the past. Over, and over, and over.

And the thing is, once these tools are put into place, they are never, ever only used as intended. They are never, ever only used to the benefit of the “good guys”. We don’t want censorship on AO3 for the same reason we don’t want a leftist president with unlimited power - because the people in charge today might not be the people in charge tomorrow. Because no one should be allowed that kind of authority, even people we agree with. Because humans are fallible and make mistakes and make bad choices, and we have no choice but to let them, but we sure as hell can prevent them from doing too much damage.

Writing down a rape fantasy that someone is already fucking having because they are among the most common sexual fantasies on the fucking planet does not cause tangible harm. Destroying someone’s creative outlet? Tangible fucking harm.

These people want to take away the only bastion against the wider world that fandom has, because a small percentage of it contains upsetting, triggering ideas. Not calls for action, not instruction manuals, not advocations - just ideas, put together to make stories. The site HAS self-censoring mechanisms, that's one of the reasons for its existence, but the ability to actively avoid the content they don’t want to see isn’t enough for them. That scares me, and it should scare you, too. Because once they decide you’re “problematic”, you’re next.

Because they are advocating for authoritarianism, and authoritarianism is not your friend.

[kiko--murda]

I’ve been noticing a lot of fandom memes featuring “trad wife” and because fuck nazis, it is my duty to explain that she is a white supremacist dog whistle.

She is a light skinned, blue eyed, blonde haired woman who is submissive to her husband. She was created by the nazis on 8chan to display the ideal body and she should not be invited to the fandom table. We must protect our Jewish friends, we must protect our black and brown friends, we must protect our queer friends. We must protect our fandom spaces. Do not let these assholes get a toehold in this thing we all love and devote so much time to.

Fuck the altright. Fuck nazis. Fuck this bitch.

[mrchalamet-mrstyles]

WOW, we really are surrounded my mindless idiots. This is reminding me of Larry (Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles from One Direction). That is their ship name, and I was a part of the fandom since earlier stages and dumb immature fans used to send them stuff like that and scream “Larry is real” in their faces. It was a complete mess and the sane fans could tell that they were holding back from showing too many emotions when they were together. Fans need to calm down! This acts can hurt people :(

It is a sad state of affairs, nonny. I really can’t understand what these ‘fans’ think they really accomplish by throwing other fans under the bus like that. I mean, surely they don’t think it earns them respect in the eyes of the ones they claim to adore. There’s no point system for ‘best fan’. And allowing fandom space and fandom-centric views to leech into the sphere of these actors / singers / whomever, is a horrible thing. We need to protect fandom community and keep this stuff to ourselves. It really can ruin the very thing we claim to love. Check in on the Sherlock fandom if you don’t believe me. This shit is real and we need to stop allowing fellow ‘fans’ the opportunity to do this.