Fandom Purity Culture and AO3
Some of my subscribed fics have “updated” with non-chapters that are notes by the authors. They want us to know they are leaving AO3 because AO3 won’t censor content they dislike, and want readers to follow them elsewhere.
Honestly, there are so many amazing fics by non-purity police in fandom that I don’t have time to read them all. I read at AO3 almost exclusively.
But here’s the crux of the issue: It’s lazy and entitled AF to expect others to curate your fandom experience for you.
They’re not your mom, and they don’t have to baby you, first of all.
Further, this is how Fanfiction.net turned to shit. Fandom purity police decided to advocate for censoring, and slowly the site banned content, ending with the great purge of smut (or as we called them back then, lemon) writers.
They start with something seemingly reasonable, but slowly they try to force out even innocuous content that they don’t like. I don’t like to say it’s a slippery slope, but *gestures frantically at FFN*
AO3 WAS CREATED SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE OF THIS.
AO3 makes it extremely easy to exclude tags from your searches. Sometimes asshole writers try to get around that, but most people are decent. If you click on a fic tagged “Author chose not to use archive warnings,” for instance, you do it at your own risk.
If you decide not to think about looking at tags, that is similarly on you. I’ve mistakenly not read a tag and had to yeet out of a fic before, and that was my own fault. I’m not gonna try to get the fic banned just because I don’t like it.
I am fandom old. I’ve admitted here that I’m 37, and I’ve been actively engaged in fandom since I was 16. Back then there were no internet archives like FFN. You either got your own website and curated your work there, or you tried to get someone else’s website to post your work. You had to go searching. There were no tags, usually no warnings. Good fucking luck.
But further, I also had to live through a time when we fandom olds had to unlearn these types of behavior. Back then, even in the US, we were bathed in ideas like being queer made your predatory, 24/7, and we had to unlearn that–even those of us who are queer. Fandom is now safe for queer folks.
It’s even more baffling when it comes to the fandom I’m currently in, The Untamed/Mo Dao Zu Shi. The publisher of the BL novel in China was cracked down on. Employees and writers were imprisoned for writing queer relationships. Frankly, it’s shocking the donghua, cdrama, manhua, and other content were actually greenlit at all in China. Even given the redactions from the original in these, the essential queerness is still there. We all know what it is.
Being queer or writing queer content in China is illegal. The government decided that, and they censor almost violently. And you can’t access AO3 in China because AO3 won’t follow China’s guidelines on what should and should not be censored.
Yet the fandom purity police of this generation wants to decide what is censored and what isn’t. Honestly it boils down to…
You don’t get to force your fandom (or any) views on others even if you think you’re right.
You don’t get to decide what content is allowed on a website you do not own, run, or pay to use.
Just like you don’t get to do so on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
So no, I won’t follow your fic to Wattpad or WordPress or whatever platform you’ve decided to use to “protest” AO3. Go ahead and leave. The fandom will continue without you.
Edit: Also, this is not an invitation to foist your traumas upon me to “justify” your desire to have your trigger banned. I have plenty of triggers myself, and thus I do my best to avoid them or deal with them. I am not your therapist.
dededos
romaincrisis
kianamaiart
blakekathryn
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