Don't Let The Muggles Get You Down, or Why I Joined OTW
As some of you know, I'm the chair of Community Relations for OTW, and this week is a celebration of Why I Joined OTW on otw_news. I'd highly encourage you taking a look at some of the posts being compiled here. There are some fabulous posts from various individuals inside and outside the organization talking about why they chose to be involved with the Organization for Transformative Works.
Forgive the length of this entry, but in order for me to adequately explain why I even threw my name into the ring during the call for volunteers, I have to go through a bit of history regarding Strikethrough and its aftermath because my experience this past year with LJ and 6A highly, highly influenced my decision to be involved with the organization. (I should also say that this is a personal recounting and all opinions expressed herein are entirely my own; others I'm sure experienced Strikethrough and Boldthrough in very different ways. This is just an accounting of what I myself dealt with and how it influenced me personally. *g*)
When FanLib raised its head back in May of last year, I thought it was a negative thing, trying to make money off of what we do. But, to be completely honest, though I was aware of the movement to build An Archive Of Our Own and kept one eye on the discussion, I was far more involved at the time in my own fannish world. I'd just found bandom a few months prior and I was into the shiny, and of course, there was the closing of HP canon to both look forward to and to fear. The discussions of a fan-run archive sounded interesting to me, particularly any that would allow me a place to archive my RPS (since neither of my current archives accept it), but they weren't top of my mind.
And then Strikethrough 07 happened.
I'd been a member of pornish_pixies from the start....in fact, I was one of the individuals who posted a fic there on the very first day it opened. I loved pornish; it was a huge part of my fannish development and it helped me become comfortable both with expressing my own sexual self in writing and with accepting others' erotic interests. From the beginning it's been a community that celebrates kink and fantasy and openness about sexuality. And when I was asked to take over modding the com, I couldn't say no. For four years the community went under the radar, not hiding itself but not being noticed by those outside fandom.
I never expected what would happen last year--not once, but multiple times.
When Strikethrough first happened, I wasn't aware of it. I was on a plane, coming home from a long Memorial Day weekend in which I'd gotten to meet my brand-new nephew for the first time. I got back to my apartment that afternoon, posted a flocked I'm home message, made lunch, checked my email, and just happened to accidentally click on my user info page. I have a list of the comms I moderate there, and just as I was about to click back off, I saw the strike going through pornish_pixies. My heart stopped for a moment. I had no idea what had happened, no idea what was going on. I hadn't received any notification. So I wrote to Abuse with a bzuh? message and at 3:45 I posted to my flist alerting people that we'd been suspended.
By 6:15, I had a response from Abuse. Pornish had been suspended for the simple reason of having incest listed in its interest list on the profile page.
Let me just say this for full disclosure. For personal reasons, incest tends to be one of the fic topics that I'm incredibly wary about. (Hence the fact that I can't ever quite get into the Wincest side of SPN fandom.) However, I don't think what I like or dislike gives me any right at all to say what other people can or can't write or enjoy. It's not my place, and hell, I have kinks (like mpreg and crossdressing and kidfic, hi) that squick other people. *shrug* That's fandom. It's one of the things I love about it--the wide variety of stories we like to tell.
So I found myself mad as hell because the point of the matter was that pornish didn't censor. Wouldn't censor. We never had, and we never will.
The next two days were a bit hellacious, I'll admit. People in fandom hit the roof; people not in fandom hit the roof. A huge number of innocent communities--both in and out of fandom--and individuals had been hit in the sweep. LiveJournal, various users and communities, fen and the Harry Potter slash fandom found ourselves mentioned all over the blogosphere--I will tell you there's absolutely nothing more heart-stopping than seeing your erotic fanfic comm referenced on Wired.com or cnet.com. (Or having a post from your journal linked all over the Intrawebs, outside of fandom, for that matter...)
I don't think I can ever adequately explain my emotions of that time. There was a lot of fear, yes, and a lot of worry, and very little sleep, and a few tears late at night, and there were moments I was quite certain that somehow I was going to end up on an FBI pedophile watch list or my mother was going to find out that I ran pornish and I wasn't quite sure which was worse, though I kind of think having my mom know would have been more horrifying overall than the FBI. The FBI, after all, doesn't call me twice a week.
However, there were a lot of really incredibly positive things going on behind the scenes during those two days. I was put in contact with fandom lawyers; fannish members of Abuse and Support were giving me advice; non-profit organizations dealing with cyber-freedom were being approached on behalf of pornish and the other comms and individuals affected by Strikethrough. People were amazing, coming to me and other fen affected with offers to help, with people I could call, with resources I could make use of if I needed to. I honestly had no idea where to turn to when Strikethrough first happened, and then suddenly fans showed up offering legal and practical assistance.
And there was fandom as a whole with so much overwhelming support--even from people who were skeeved by the idea of Harry Potter erotica.
LJ reinstated pornish on May 31 along with other users and communities, and it was the biggest relief ever for me. I felt like we'd won. Fandom had defeated Goliath.
When the Willing To Serve call came out for OTW, I immediately put my name in because this is what we needed, I thought, an archive that we as fans ran that wouldn't pull the rug out from under us because of financial concerns or advertiser support, an organization that could put into practice on a larger scale what I had experienced behind the scenes during Strikethrough. One that was prepared, one that could organize to defend fen like myself and the mods of the other erotic comms that got caught in Strikethrough as well as the individual fen who were suspended. One that could help us.
That necessity of an organization like this was soon underscored in my mind. On July 19--smack in the middle of the UK HP con, Sectus, mind--I came home from having drinks with my co-workers to find out that LJ had banned underage PWPs. And we were back to the races again, trying to pin LJ down on what they meant, to no avail.
I can recall exactly where I was when I was officially handed the chair of Community Relations for OTW. It was August 1, and I was sitting in the Air Canada lounge at Logan, checking my email and waiting to board my flight to Toronto for Prophecy, the HP con. Little did I know what was going to happen two days later.
While a chunk of fandom was at Prophecy, two HP fanartists had their accounts suspended for artwork they had posted in pornish_pixies, with LJ's claims that their art was child pornography. And with that, Boldthrough 07 began.
It was horrifying, this time. Almost the entirety of the HP slash fandom was terrified, aghast at the idea that just because we drew (or wrote, though that seemed somewhat safer) Snape with Harry or Draco or Hermione or Ron or any cross-gen pairing, we could be called pedophiles and have our journals--all our journals on LJ not just the offending one--summarily suspended without warning.
There was no recourse, no chance to delete offending material. Those two artists were just gone, permanently suspended with no option of opening another LJ period and branded child pornographers. For their art.
I remember sitting at a table in the hotel pub with a group of slashers, writing a post to let everyone in pornish know that the community was going to be locked down. It was a decision I never wanted to make--I felt strongly that the fic should be available to any and all who wanted to access it--but LJ gave me no choice. The writers and artists needed to be protected more. I'm so grateful for everyone who understood why this decision had to be made.
About 90% of my Prophecy memories revolve around group discussions of Boldthrough and how it would affect us as a fandom. It was the best timing for this to happen, I think. So many of us HP slashers were there together. We could talk through plans; we could organize. I know it helped me to be supported by so many fen. For me, that is one of the things I will always hold dear about the HP fandom.
LJ finally agreed to reinstate the deleted journals if the owners wished to return and said that they would offer warnings before suspension after that, but there were still so many questions. So many things that weren't clear. A number of HP fans (and even fen outside of it) spent the great majority of August trying to get clarification from 6A in some way, through posts and comments on lj_biz and open letters and emails to 6A.
Then we had two more members of pornish_pixies hit with notices that their art was in violation of the new policy.
I finally ended up, after my email correspondence with 6A petered out, posting what I understood the policy to be with notations of what I felt needed clarification. To this day, those questions remain unanswered.
Over the next few months, the HP fandom began to move off-LJ. A number of comms and individuals took up up residence at Insanejournal. Most of the holiday fests this year took place on IJ or JF. As of January 1, pornish_pixies has moved fic and art posting to our IJ community.
This split between IJ and LJ is hard. Really hard. Most of us in HP keep multiple journals on both IJ and LJ (and some on JF or GJ) because we have friends and fandoms that aren't leaving LJ. We're caught in a juggling act of sorts, trying to follow and post to two flists, and it can be difficult. But we still do it because it's the only way many of us can feel safe. But the aftereffects of Strikethrough and Boldthrough are forever going to affect our fandom. How could they not?
So what does all of this have to do with my joining OTW, you ask?
I'm not an academic. I'm not a theorist or a meta writer. I'm just a fic writer and a community mod who got caught in a whirlwind of insanity from people who really didn't "get" fandom.
I don't think any fandom should have to go through what HP has been hit with this past year. I want an organization in place to protect us. I want an archive that I know isn't going to change policy based on advertiser dollars or the hope of a buyout. I want a safe haven. I want a place where I can house my underage Harry or Draco fics, my cross-gen Snape/Draco and Snape/Harry, my Peterick RPS without fear of being TOS'd and all my work disappearing. I want us to stand up for ourselves. We did it in Strikethrough. We did in Boldthrough. And we may not have won completely, but you know what? We made them back down at least a little. We did that. Fandom.
The days of us not being noticed are gone. Without us going out and seeking attention, it's come to us. Take bandom, for instance-- the actual people we're writing about admit quite freely to reading our stories. Harry Potter fic has been the subject of numerous articles in mainstream media for several years now. Jason Isaacs says he enjoys some of the more "out-there" Lucius fics. We've got the light shining on us now, even if we didn't ask for it or want it. I'll admit, it makes me a bit uncomfortable. I prefer the days when we were writing or drawing without outside scrutiny. Without people eyeing us and considering us perverts or pedophiles or just plain odd. But the fact of the matter is that we are attracting notice from the mainstream, whether or not we like it.
I joined OTW because it's important to me that fen are protected. Because this sort of thing comes out of the blue. I never expected Strikethrough. I never expected Boldthrough (though perhaps that was naive of me.) I lived in a little fannish bubble, certain that no one cared about what we were doing, that no one noticed. I was wrong. And the more fandom is noticed--and we can't stop that now--the more opportunities like Strikethrough and Boldthrough are going to arise. Because people outside fandom don't understand fandom. It's up to us to defend ourselves; it's up to us to explain what our community is to them; it's up to us to provide a safe place for our fanworks.
Being part of OTW is a lot of hard work. But it's worth it. I look around at the OTW volunteers and the discussions that take place on otw_news and off, in other journals and blogs and forums, both positive and negative, and, you know what? I'm proud of fandom. I'm proud of who we are, whom we've been, and whom we're going to become.
Don't let the Muggles get you down, Ron writes to Harry in the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. And I think that's a bit of wisdom for fandom to cling to. No matter what happens, no matter what we're faced with from perplexed outsiders who don't quite understand what we do here, we won't let them get us down.
Forgive the length of this entry, but in order for me to adequately explain why I even threw my name into the ring during the call for volunteers, I have to go through a bit of history regarding Strikethrough and its aftermath because my experience this past year with LJ and 6A highly, highly influenced my decision to be involved with the organization. (I should also say that this is a personal recounting and all opinions expressed herein are entirely my own; others I'm sure experienced Strikethrough and Boldthrough in very different ways. This is just an accounting of what I myself dealt with and how it influenced me personally. *g*)
When FanLib raised its head back in May of last year, I thought it was a negative thing, trying to make money off of what we do. But, to be completely honest, though I was aware of the movement to build An Archive Of Our Own and kept one eye on the discussion, I was far more involved at the time in my own fannish world. I'd just found bandom a few months prior and I was into the shiny, and of course, there was the closing of HP canon to both look forward to and to fear. The discussions of a fan-run archive sounded interesting to me, particularly any that would allow me a place to archive my RPS (since neither of my current archives accept it), but they weren't top of my mind.
And then Strikethrough 07 happened.
I'd been a member of pornish_pixies from the start....in fact, I was one of the individuals who posted a fic there on the very first day it opened. I loved pornish; it was a huge part of my fannish development and it helped me become comfortable both with expressing my own sexual self in writing and with accepting others' erotic interests. From the beginning it's been a community that celebrates kink and fantasy and openness about sexuality. And when I was asked to take over modding the com, I couldn't say no. For four years the community went under the radar, not hiding itself but not being noticed by those outside fandom.
I never expected what would happen last year--not once, but multiple times.
When Strikethrough first happened, I wasn't aware of it. I was on a plane, coming home from a long Memorial Day weekend in which I'd gotten to meet my brand-new nephew for the first time. I got back to my apartment that afternoon, posted a flocked I'm home message, made lunch, checked my email, and just happened to accidentally click on my user info page. I have a list of the comms I moderate there, and just as I was about to click back off, I saw the strike going through pornish_pixies. My heart stopped for a moment. I had no idea what had happened, no idea what was going on. I hadn't received any notification. So I wrote to Abuse with a bzuh? message and at 3:45 I posted to my flist alerting people that we'd been suspended.
By 6:15, I had a response from Abuse. Pornish had been suspended for the simple reason of having incest listed in its interest list on the profile page.
Let me just say this for full disclosure. For personal reasons, incest tends to be one of the fic topics that I'm incredibly wary about. (Hence the fact that I can't ever quite get into the Wincest side of SPN fandom.) However, I don't think what I like or dislike gives me any right at all to say what other people can or can't write or enjoy. It's not my place, and hell, I have kinks (like mpreg and crossdressing and kidfic, hi) that squick other people. *shrug* That's fandom. It's one of the things I love about it--the wide variety of stories we like to tell.
So I found myself mad as hell because the point of the matter was that pornish didn't censor. Wouldn't censor. We never had, and we never will.
The next two days were a bit hellacious, I'll admit. People in fandom hit the roof; people not in fandom hit the roof. A huge number of innocent communities--both in and out of fandom--and individuals had been hit in the sweep. LiveJournal, various users and communities, fen and the Harry Potter slash fandom found ourselves mentioned all over the blogosphere--I will tell you there's absolutely nothing more heart-stopping than seeing your erotic fanfic comm referenced on Wired.com or cnet.com. (Or having a post from your journal linked all over the Intrawebs, outside of fandom, for that matter...)
I don't think I can ever adequately explain my emotions of that time. There was a lot of fear, yes, and a lot of worry, and very little sleep, and a few tears late at night, and there were moments I was quite certain that somehow I was going to end up on an FBI pedophile watch list or my mother was going to find out that I ran pornish and I wasn't quite sure which was worse, though I kind of think having my mom know would have been more horrifying overall than the FBI. The FBI, after all, doesn't call me twice a week.
However, there were a lot of really incredibly positive things going on behind the scenes during those two days. I was put in contact with fandom lawyers; fannish members of Abuse and Support were giving me advice; non-profit organizations dealing with cyber-freedom were being approached on behalf of pornish and the other comms and individuals affected by Strikethrough. People were amazing, coming to me and other fen affected with offers to help, with people I could call, with resources I could make use of if I needed to. I honestly had no idea where to turn to when Strikethrough first happened, and then suddenly fans showed up offering legal and practical assistance.
And there was fandom as a whole with so much overwhelming support--even from people who were skeeved by the idea of Harry Potter erotica.
LJ reinstated pornish on May 31 along with other users and communities, and it was the biggest relief ever for me. I felt like we'd won. Fandom had defeated Goliath.
When the Willing To Serve call came out for OTW, I immediately put my name in because this is what we needed, I thought, an archive that we as fans ran that wouldn't pull the rug out from under us because of financial concerns or advertiser support, an organization that could put into practice on a larger scale what I had experienced behind the scenes during Strikethrough. One that was prepared, one that could organize to defend fen like myself and the mods of the other erotic comms that got caught in Strikethrough as well as the individual fen who were suspended. One that could help us.
That necessity of an organization like this was soon underscored in my mind. On July 19--smack in the middle of the UK HP con, Sectus, mind--I came home from having drinks with my co-workers to find out that LJ had banned underage PWPs. And we were back to the races again, trying to pin LJ down on what they meant, to no avail.
I can recall exactly where I was when I was officially handed the chair of Community Relations for OTW. It was August 1, and I was sitting in the Air Canada lounge at Logan, checking my email and waiting to board my flight to Toronto for Prophecy, the HP con. Little did I know what was going to happen two days later.
While a chunk of fandom was at Prophecy, two HP fanartists had their accounts suspended for artwork they had posted in pornish_pixies, with LJ's claims that their art was child pornography. And with that, Boldthrough 07 began.
It was horrifying, this time. Almost the entirety of the HP slash fandom was terrified, aghast at the idea that just because we drew (or wrote, though that seemed somewhat safer) Snape with Harry or Draco or Hermione or Ron or any cross-gen pairing, we could be called pedophiles and have our journals--all our journals on LJ not just the offending one--summarily suspended without warning.
There was no recourse, no chance to delete offending material. Those two artists were just gone, permanently suspended with no option of opening another LJ period and branded child pornographers. For their art.
I remember sitting at a table in the hotel pub with a group of slashers, writing a post to let everyone in pornish know that the community was going to be locked down. It was a decision I never wanted to make--I felt strongly that the fic should be available to any and all who wanted to access it--but LJ gave me no choice. The writers and artists needed to be protected more. I'm so grateful for everyone who understood why this decision had to be made.
About 90% of my Prophecy memories revolve around group discussions of Boldthrough and how it would affect us as a fandom. It was the best timing for this to happen, I think. So many of us HP slashers were there together. We could talk through plans; we could organize. I know it helped me to be supported by so many fen. For me, that is one of the things I will always hold dear about the HP fandom.
LJ finally agreed to reinstate the deleted journals if the owners wished to return and said that they would offer warnings before suspension after that, but there were still so many questions. So many things that weren't clear. A number of HP fans (and even fen outside of it) spent the great majority of August trying to get clarification from 6A in some way, through posts and comments on lj_biz and open letters and emails to 6A.
Then we had two more members of pornish_pixies hit with notices that their art was in violation of the new policy.
I finally ended up, after my email correspondence with 6A petered out, posting what I understood the policy to be with notations of what I felt needed clarification. To this day, those questions remain unanswered.
Over the next few months, the HP fandom began to move off-LJ. A number of comms and individuals took up up residence at Insanejournal. Most of the holiday fests this year took place on IJ or JF. As of January 1, pornish_pixies has moved fic and art posting to our IJ community.
This split between IJ and LJ is hard. Really hard. Most of us in HP keep multiple journals on both IJ and LJ (and some on JF or GJ) because we have friends and fandoms that aren't leaving LJ. We're caught in a juggling act of sorts, trying to follow and post to two flists, and it can be difficult. But we still do it because it's the only way many of us can feel safe. But the aftereffects of Strikethrough and Boldthrough are forever going to affect our fandom. How could they not?
So what does all of this have to do with my joining OTW, you ask?
I'm not an academic. I'm not a theorist or a meta writer. I'm just a fic writer and a community mod who got caught in a whirlwind of insanity from people who really didn't "get" fandom.
I don't think any fandom should have to go through what HP has been hit with this past year. I want an organization in place to protect us. I want an archive that I know isn't going to change policy based on advertiser dollars or the hope of a buyout. I want a safe haven. I want a place where I can house my underage Harry or Draco fics, my cross-gen Snape/Draco and Snape/Harry, my Peterick RPS without fear of being TOS'd and all my work disappearing. I want us to stand up for ourselves. We did it in Strikethrough. We did in Boldthrough. And we may not have won completely, but you know what? We made them back down at least a little. We did that. Fandom.
The days of us not being noticed are gone. Without us going out and seeking attention, it's come to us. Take bandom, for instance-- the actual people we're writing about admit quite freely to reading our stories. Harry Potter fic has been the subject of numerous articles in mainstream media for several years now. Jason Isaacs says he enjoys some of the more "out-there" Lucius fics. We've got the light shining on us now, even if we didn't ask for it or want it. I'll admit, it makes me a bit uncomfortable. I prefer the days when we were writing or drawing without outside scrutiny. Without people eyeing us and considering us perverts or pedophiles or just plain odd. But the fact of the matter is that we are attracting notice from the mainstream, whether or not we like it.
I joined OTW because it's important to me that fen are protected. Because this sort of thing comes out of the blue. I never expected Strikethrough. I never expected Boldthrough (though perhaps that was naive of me.) I lived in a little fannish bubble, certain that no one cared about what we were doing, that no one noticed. I was wrong. And the more fandom is noticed--and we can't stop that now--the more opportunities like Strikethrough and Boldthrough are going to arise. Because people outside fandom don't understand fandom. It's up to us to defend ourselves; it's up to us to explain what our community is to them; it's up to us to provide a safe place for our fanworks.
Being part of OTW is a lot of hard work. But it's worth it. I look around at the OTW volunteers and the discussions that take place on otw_news and off, in other journals and blogs and forums, both positive and negative, and, you know what? I'm proud of fandom. I'm proud of who we are, whom we've been, and whom we're going to become.
Don't let the Muggles get you down, Ron writes to Harry in the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. And I think that's a bit of wisdom for fandom to cling to. No matter what happens, no matter what we're faced with from perplexed outsiders who don't quite understand what we do here, we won't let them get us down.