Latest news about that fandom you're not in
(Except for five or so people in my flist & circle. In which case you probably already know.)
So, there's this site in the JA fandom (that's Jane Austen, you guys), which is atm the biggest site of all. It's called AHA. The meaning has changed from a novel based wanky one, to a non novel based (that I'm aware of) non wanky one since it became officially managed by a Board and all. 1 (Don't be confusing us with a democracy, though, the Board is not exactly elected.) Regardless of what the people who thought it up must've thought, that was not the end to all wankiness. I mean, this is fandom. What is more, this is JA fandom. (Of course, that may not mean a lot for many of you, but believe me when I say this fandom competes on wankiness level with HP, though the Cult of Nice has an iron grip on it.)
I've been a member of AHA since before the Meryton Board existed. That is not much time, but it's some. I've lived two (or three?) times of HG 2 going down, and believe me, I can appreciate the fact that AHA is incredibly more stable. And that its rules get enforced, somewhat.
Anyway, there are rules for posting. Pretty reasonable rules, at that. Basically, no paedophilia and bestiality, and warnings for violence at the begining of the story and the pertinent chapter (including sexual violence). That is, I will have you know, a pretty novel thing in this fandom. There are (were) various stories with rape that don't (didn't) warn at all, and for a long time, it was all the rage to warn in story. Like, suddenly, halfway through a chapter there would be scene breaks and a kindly author's note telling you that warning! rape unsafe things ahead! if you're impressionable and can't even read a little story, you should suck it up and deal skip over the next scene! (Patronizing subtext theirs.) I found them pretty hilarious, myself, though I'm not sure how useful they were for people with triggers, since the scene set up tends to be before the warning.
(Also, pretty faily rules about crossovers. JA fandom tends to look down on fans writing for fandoms still in copyright, you see. Pond scene and movie dialogue notwithstanding.)
Anyway. The rules have been there a while now. And more or less, people used to comply. But! With the Austen craze going on, the site has been getting bigger and bigger, and there are a lot of new authors. And there has been an increase on frequency of the romantic rape storyline, big time (it was not unheard of, though it was usually not literally rape). And there was a discussion, that without naming names, talked seriously about the trope (the discussion was fairly non faily and non judgemental at first. Of course, it can rarely stay that way 3). Now, I'm not entirely sure all these facts are related to what happened next, but... you know. Big coincidence.
Mods/Admins decide to institute an author confirmation. This means that the authors need to post a 'I read the posting guidelines and plan to follow them' boilerplate, if they want posting access to the appropriate subforums. Now, I do get it's annoying and bureaucratic, and everything. I totally get it if people decide to just stop posting there out of laziness (and in fact, I know and respect people who are thinking they will do that). But there have been protests. About 'forcing' people to either read the rules already in place or lie about it. There are authors that are deciding to pull their stories, to protest being made to do something that would maximum be 15 minutes, most of which they would spend reading rules they should've already read.
In this case? I think the mods are being too nice. They shouldn't make them read them. They're not children one has to calmly teach manners. I say ban the ass of every person who's careless and inconsiderate enough to not read the rules before posting, or to wilfully break them if they did. Or pull the stories. Or just, you know, contact the authors and tell them 'fix your story or pull it', if they feel like being nice and considerate. Just... action. I know they can do it. I've just not see them do it in any moment where it would be actually appropriate, vs a comment in a discussion that got too sarcastic (oh, Kent, how one should always keep to your good side. I still love you your stories).
1 - ^ cookie for those who can guess. First name is the opposite of a famous phrase Mr. Bennet tells Elizabeth in a moment of grave distress for her. Second one is the most safe alternative keeping the acronym.
2 - ^ The Hyacinth Gardens had a Queen. And pretty lax modding. It's also dead; oh, dangers of private management. At the time, the only reason I minded that is that I found a couple of homophobic comments that were not checked. Knowing that having active modding doesn't fix that--I kinda miss the more free environment.
3 - ^ The discussion was one mainly done to reflect about it, and afaik, it was not judgemental at all of people with rape fantasies. The ensuing comments got more heated, from both sides (though the judgemental comments got there faster, of course). It is my firm belief that you can't get people used to not hearing anything bad about their story, or 1) people use every opportunity they get to vent about the stories they didn't like/felt betrayed by, even 'slyly', 2) writers start taking wrongly even the most general and innocent of comments.
This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth. That post has
comment(s). You can comment there, or here.
So, there's this site in the JA fandom (that's Jane Austen, you guys), which is atm the biggest site of all. It's called AHA. The meaning has changed from a novel based wanky one, to a non novel based (that I'm aware of) non wanky one since it became officially managed by a Board and all. 1 (Don't be confusing us with a democracy, though, the Board is not exactly elected.) Regardless of what the people who thought it up must've thought, that was not the end to all wankiness. I mean, this is fandom. What is more, this is JA fandom. (Of course, that may not mean a lot for many of you, but believe me when I say this fandom competes on wankiness level with HP, though the Cult of Nice has an iron grip on it.)
I've been a member of AHA since before the Meryton Board existed. That is not much time, but it's some. I've lived two (or three?) times of HG 2 going down, and believe me, I can appreciate the fact that AHA is incredibly more stable. And that its rules get enforced, somewhat.
Anyway, there are rules for posting. Pretty reasonable rules, at that. Basically, no paedophilia and bestiality, and warnings for violence at the begining of the story and the pertinent chapter (including sexual violence). That is, I will have you know, a pretty novel thing in this fandom. There are (were) various stories with rape that don't (didn't) warn at all, and for a long time, it was all the rage to warn in story. Like, suddenly, halfway through a chapter there would be scene breaks and a kindly author's note telling you that warning! rape unsafe things ahead! if you're impressionable and can't even read a little story, you should suck it up and deal skip over the next scene! (Patronizing subtext theirs.) I found them pretty hilarious, myself, though I'm not sure how useful they were for people with triggers, since the scene set up tends to be before the warning.
(Also, pretty faily rules about crossovers. JA fandom tends to look down on fans writing for fandoms still in copyright, you see. Pond scene and movie dialogue notwithstanding.)
Anyway. The rules have been there a while now. And more or less, people used to comply. But! With the Austen craze going on, the site has been getting bigger and bigger, and there are a lot of new authors. And there has been an increase on frequency of the romantic rape storyline, big time (it was not unheard of, though it was usually not literally rape). And there was a discussion, that without naming names, talked seriously about the trope (the discussion was fairly non faily and non judgemental at first. Of course, it can rarely stay that way 3). Now, I'm not entirely sure all these facts are related to what happened next, but... you know. Big coincidence.
Mods/Admins decide to institute an author confirmation. This means that the authors need to post a 'I read the posting guidelines and plan to follow them' boilerplate, if they want posting access to the appropriate subforums. Now, I do get it's annoying and bureaucratic, and everything. I totally get it if people decide to just stop posting there out of laziness (and in fact, I know and respect people who are thinking they will do that). But there have been protests. About 'forcing' people to either read the rules already in place or lie about it. There are authors that are deciding to pull their stories, to protest being made to do something that would maximum be 15 minutes, most of which they would spend reading rules they should've already read.
In this case? I think the mods are being too nice. They shouldn't make them read them. They're not children one has to calmly teach manners. I say ban the ass of every person who's careless and inconsiderate enough to not read the rules before posting, or to wilfully break them if they did. Or pull the stories. Or just, you know, contact the authors and tell them 'fix your story or pull it', if they feel like being nice and considerate. Just... action. I know they can do it. I've just not see them do it in any moment where it would be actually appropriate, vs a comment in a discussion that got too sarcastic (oh, Kent, how one should always keep to your good side. I still love you your stories).
1 - ^ cookie for those who can guess. First name is the opposite of a famous phrase Mr. Bennet tells Elizabeth in a moment of grave distress for her. Second one is the most safe alternative keeping the acronym.
2 - ^ The Hyacinth Gardens had a Queen. And pretty lax modding. It's also dead; oh, dangers of private management. At the time, the only reason I minded that is that I found a couple of homophobic comments that were not checked. Knowing that having active modding doesn't fix that--I kinda miss the more free environment.
3 - ^ The discussion was one mainly done to reflect about it, and afaik, it was not judgemental at all of people with rape fantasies. The ensuing comments got more heated, from both sides (though the judgemental comments got there faster, of course). It is my firm belief that you can't get people used to not hearing anything bad about their story, or 1) people use every opportunity they get to vent about the stories they didn't like/felt betrayed by, even 'slyly', 2) writers start taking wrongly even the most general and innocent of comments.
This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth. That post has
comment(s). You can comment there, or here.