I Aim to Misbehave

[alixtii]

You know what what? In some ways, I think I miss the days when everyone in fandom thought fanfic was illegal. (I say this is as someone who entered fandom in 2004, so I'm not sure if there has exactly been a sea-change, but it sure feels like it to me.) Because now everyone's on about what we can do to look like fine upstanding citizens, and at least when we thought we were criminals we were more genuinely subversive. When we thought we were all committing copyright infringement, other things which may have been illegal but ethical, like providing porn to teenagers, didn't seem like such a big deal. But now the "fanfic is legal" zeitgesit is taking over, and everyone's calling for us to clean up our acts, and I have to wonder what exactly we're losing out on.

The specific post that got me to post this is this one, "Looking Ahead as Fen," but it's nothing new and mirrors conversations I've been seeing going on all through the FanLib and Strikethrough07 discussions.

I don't like disclaimers (and for the most part don't use them), don't like warnings (and only warn for rape), don't like ratings (I've switched to just using "Work Safe" and "NWS," and am thinking about a "Maybe Work Safe" option). I refuse to flock a post just because it contains adult content (even if that content is incest or cross-gen). I've ranted about most of these issues (often in metafandom-linked posts) before, and the idea that we have to start doing these things (making our art and literature fit into cookie-cutter boxes) to make ourselves acceptable to the Man just sort of makes me retch.

Let's be bad guys?

Comments

[princessofg.livejournal.com]

yeah, who's wanting us to "clean up our acts"? of all the things that's come out of the strikethrough07 thing, and the talk about FanLib and "An Archive of Our Own," I have not seen any urge that we need to somehow write less porny porn?

where have you picked up that idea that we need to pull back from the id vortex? am I not hanging around the same places you have been?

as far as i know, pornography in literary form is not illegal in the US, and it's not illegal on the internet in the US. So we're cool there. (Obscenity has a narrower definition and fanfic in general is not obscenity by US practices. That's oversimplifying and i am not a lawyer, but that's my take on it.)

Now CHILD pornography is something else again, but you're not talking about that are you? or are you?

the whole fair use or first-amendment-exception under copyright thing -- i'll have to say that cesperanza made me change my paradigm about that. but i don't want to stop writing nc 17 because of that. far from it.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

it was Ces, thank you! and me too--fair use, yeah, and no, not stopping me from writing adult stuff. what's stopping me is lack of freaking time and too much *work*!!!! *grumbles quietly to self*

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen many calls to write less porny porn--although I have seen some--but I've seen many calls to modify the way we distribute it to make it more acceptable to the government and to public opinion. Even if you go through the comments of Shallot's first post for An Archive of Our Own, you can see people trying to control how we write. Those trying to control what we write--for example, those suggesting chan not be allowed--were thankfully shouted down fairly quickly (although it should be acknowledged that they did exist at all), but there were others who were given much more time, especially those discussing how to respond to COPA's inevitable successor. Responses ranged from the nudge-nudge-wink-wink approach of requiring underaged fen to lie about their age in order to participate (which I'd accept reluctantly as a necessary evil) to those who want to cordon off soi-disant "safe" areas for them to play in. If you go through those comments, you can find my own comments pointing to places where I found the response troubling.

I have to say I like having Six Apart being required to deal with the legal issues (taking action only if forced, although obviously that's now ambiguous) and having do as thou wilt be the sum of the law.

Let me say that none of the suggestions that were made in the post I linked were ones that I saw for the first time in that post. They're opinions that I've seen again and again in these discussions and while I don't think they represent the majority view, I've seen them enough times to find the trend troubling.

[princessofg.livejournal.com]

so the issue that brought it up is the perennial one of people under 18 finding what is considered in the US "adult" material or X-rated material? and how to try to stop that? kind of like adult bookstores or ratings on movies?

hmm.

yeah, I have to confess that I did not look through all the many dozens of comments on that original discussion. i just did not want to devote the time to what is certainly a very preliminary discussion.

i have to agree that "18 and above only" is a very arbitrary way of dealing the legal issues that, at least in the US, define the "adults only content" issues, but I have no idea what the ideal system, or even a proper system, would be.

so yeah. i myself was reading explicit stuff when i was well under 18, but i am totally not up on the implications of all that for an archive. i probably need to go back and revisit some of these rules now that this is going on, huh....

all i know is, the fannish names i've seen associated with forming the archive are totally in support of nc 17 content, so it's not going to be another situation where explicit stuff is not allowed in this archive. i'm sure the legal issues are real but i am not informed enough to have an opinion on the best way to proceed at this point.

so much of the slash i love is explicit sex; and i think that view is shared widely, so i'm glad to have a better understanding of where you're coming from with your concerns.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I do trust the main names behind the project, indeed so much so that all of the recent talk about members voting rights is almost making me nervous--part of me would rather have Shalot as benevelent dictator.