I really, really hate fandom policing. I hated it when I was twelve and was so afraid to read slash because OMG DICKS TOUCHING WHAT and I hated it when I was fifteen and was smuggling the yaois under my mattress so I would always have a supply of top notch garbage to read, and I am 24 and I hate it now.
Here is the thing: YOU CONTROL what you take in. I am not responsible for your consumption of Hydra Trash party noncon, I am not responsible for your consumption of pegging smut, and I am not responsible for your consumption of fluffy sickfic. I am not responsible for you consuming anything.
I might be responsible for writing that noncon or pegging or sickfic, but I did not make you read it. I did not hand it to you, I did not give it to you. I created it, and made it available for those who want to enjoy.
If you don’t like it, if you don’t want it, then you don’t have to read it.
That choice made, the choice not to consume a type of fic or art, also means you don’t get to drag the person who wrote it.
That is a damn slippery slope.
Fandom is a “safe space” but not in the way that it protects you from things that you don’t want to see or don’t like or are offended by. Fandom is, and has traditionally been, a space for people to create and explore with out being told “no” by outside media. Fandom is where you can find out if you don’t fit in the boxes society tells you to, or it you just really, really like reading about Bucky getting repeatedly rammed in the ass by Hydra agents sans lube.
And no matter how well-meaning you are, you don’t get to tell other fans what they can and cannot write, or draw, or enjoy.
When you start telling people what they can create or enjoy, you invalidate the purpose of fandom, and create a situation where instead of free exploration, we have something similar to mainstream media in which certain tropes or topics are not allowed. This limits the free expression, exploration and innovation so highly prized in fandom.
Maybe what they draw is illegal in five states, and highly restricted in several countries. Maybe it’s offensive, maybe it’s inaccurate, or just plain bad.
It doesn’t matter.
You don’t get to tell fans how to enjoy fandom. You mind your own path, your write your own fic, you write meta on why x trope is offensive/problematic/bad but you do not tell other fans how to enjoy fandom.
“Fandom is a “safe space” but not in the way that it protects you from things that you don’t want to see or don’t like or are offended by. Fandom is, and has traditionally been, a space for people to create and explore with out being told “no” by outside media.”
THIS!!! THIS is the TRUE definition of fandom as a ‘safe space’. It is a ‘safe space’ for creators.
“You do not tell other fans how to enjoy fandom.”
This needs 99,999,999 notes.
There comes a point where you, not your teachers and not your parents or guardians, are responsible for what media you consume. It’s not for others to censor themselves to protect you from what you don’t want. Heed warnings. If something doesn’t have warnings, either don’t read/watch/listen to it or search out reviews that will tell you if it’s something you would be OK reading/watching/listening to. Descending on a creator or creators and demanding they not create something or shaming them for doing so because you don’t approve is censorship and furthermore, it’s hubris of the highest order.
Tag Archives: fandom
The Three Laws of Fandom
If you wish to take part in any fandom, you need to accept and respect these three laws.
If you aren’t able to do that, then you need to realise that your actions are making fandom unsafe for creators. That you are stifling creativity.
Like vaccination, fandom only works if everyone respects these rules. Creators need to be free to make their fanart, fanfics and all other content without fear of being harassed or concern-trolled for their creative choices, no matter whether you happen to like that content or not.
The First Law of Fandom
Don’t Like; Don’t Read (DL;DR)
It is up to you what you see online. It is not anyone else’s place to tell you what you should or should not consume in terms of content; it is not up to anyone else to police the internet so that you do not see things you do not like. At the same time, it is not up to YOU to police fandom to protect yourself or anyone else, real or hypothetical.
There are tools out there to help protect you if you have triggers or squicks. Learn to use them, and to take care of your own mental health. If you are consuming fan-made content and you find that you are disliking it – STOP.
The Second Law of Fandom
Your Kink Is Not My Kink (YKINMK)
Simply put, this means that everyone likes different things. It’s not up to you to determine what creators are allowed to create. It’s not up to you to police fandom.
If you don’t like something, you can post meta about it or create contrarian content yourself, seek to convert other fans to your way of thinking.
But you have no right to say to any creator “I do not like this, therefore you should not create it. Nobody should like this. It should not exist.”
It’s not up to you to decide what other people are allowed to like or not like, to create or not to create. That’s censorship. Don’t do it.
The Third Law of Fandom
Ship And Let Ship (SALS)
Much (though not all) fandom is about shipping. There are as many possible ships as there are fans, maybe more. You may have an OTP (One True Pairing), you may have a NOTP, that pairing that makes you want to barf at the very thought of its existence.
It’s not up to you to police ships or to determine what other people are allowed to ship. Just because you find that one particular ship problematic or disgusting, does not mean that other people are not allowed to explore its possibilities in their fanworks.
You are free to create contrarian content, to write meta about why a particular ship is repulsive, to discuss it endlessly on your private blog with like-minded persons.
It is not appropriate to harass creators about their ships, it is not appropriate to demand they do not create any more fanworks about those ships, or that they create fanwork only in a manner that you deem appropriate.
These three laws add up to the following:
You are not paying for fanworks content, and you have no rights to it other than to choose to consume it, or not consume it. If you do choose to consume it, do not then attack the creator if it wasn’t to your taste. That’s the height of bad manners.
Be courteous in fandom. It makes the whole experience better for all of us.
Yup.
Slaps onto blog.
THIS
There are a couple of things about current shipping culture that confuse me.
1. The focus on whether or not a pairing will become canon as a reason people should ship something or not. Do you not understand what the “transformative” part of “transformative works” means?”
2. This idea that saying “I ship that” means “I think that, as presented in canon,this is a perfect, healthy relationship that everyone should model their relationship after.”
Sometimes shipping something does mean that. Sometimes shipping something means “Person A is a trash bag who doesn’t deserve person B but I would love to explore how Person A might grow to deserve Person B.” Sometimes it means “I want these characters to live together forever in a conflict free domestic AU.” Sometimes it means “I want Person A to forever pine after Person B. Nothing is beautiful and everything hurts.” And sometimes it just means you like their faces and want to see Person A and Person B bone in various configurations and universes.
Listen to your parents, kids.
This really should be one of a handful of Public Service Announcements randomly and chronically inserted into one’s dash.
its not always about sex condoning a ship or actions in a show doesn’t mean that you’re committing to say that’s a healthy relationship? you cannot/should not petition the writers of a show with your opinion to change the show purely to satisfy your ship. shipping something doesn’t give you the right to shit on other people’s ships??? if you’re shipping a typical relationship and someone else wants something dark and awful just to explore those mental dimensions then fucking let them
#Ship and let ship.
Another way to support your fandom writers.
I’ve been seeing a lot of posts lately about how fandom can
be better to its writers. They’re all
wonderful posts, with lots of good things to say about the importance of not
just leaving Kudos, but also comments.And this might seem self-serving, but I’m going to say it
anyway. Right now, most of fandom is
located on Tumblr, and I think these posts are leaving out a very important
step that’s just as simple as hitting the Kudos button.Reblogs.
I cannot tell you how many people who commented on Mise said
that the reason they read it was because they saw it appear so many times on
their dash. And I can’t tell you how
excited it makes me to see it appear on my dash because someone else is talking
about it. Honestly, sometimes I think I
get more thrill out of being on someone’s rec list or seeing someone else
promote my story than I do from getting that Kudos email.(I do love that Kudos email, though, don’t get me wrong.)
I feel like this used to happen more often. Even a year ago – I’d see the reblogs of “New
Chapter” posts for stories I followed before I’d see the original post. And it was great, because I’d see the excited
squee of other readers and that would in turn get me excited to read, and then I’d jump in even more excited than I
would have been otherwise. These days…
yeah, not so much. I can’t tell you the
last time I saw a reblog of a story I followed.
Or a story I didn’t follow, honestly.
I’m not sure what changed.Here’s the thing: just like with artists… if you “like” that
art post, only the artist will know. But if you reblog it, then you’re giving
someone else a chance to like it too.Want to support your favorite fandom writers? Want to make sure they get all the love and
attention they deserve? Then reblog their story announcements. Share
their stories on Tumblr or Twitter. (AO3 even has a handy little button that lets you do it super easy.) It takes all of a minute to do – less, in some cases.You don’t have to be a fic rec blog to tell your flist you like a fic, and that they should read it too.
YES. This is so, so true. I so appreciate reblogs of fic posts, and they tend to be rare. People will like a fic post and then sometimes go back and unlike it later, which always freaks me out. Did they decide they didn’t like the fic after all? (I’ve since learned people will sort of use likes as bookmarks.)
But yes, please reblog fic announcement and fic rec posts! It’s word-of-mouth advertising and we appreciate it so much.
Yes, THIS!! I can’t tell you how excited I get at reblogs, because then I know my fic will come in contact with a larger audience! Likes are awesome, too, but reblogs means (to me) that you like it–or my writing in general– enough to want others to read it (or maybe you just want to support me, and that’s brilliant, too)!!
This is especially important because in fandom we have a bit of a thing against self-promotion—especially outside of our own blogs, but even sometimes within them, too. We need you to reblog and rec and promote us, or our stories fizzle out and die in the sand. We need you to create buzz about our stories, because we can’t really do it ourselves without treading on some unspoken lines.
We need you.
I’ve been on the internet for 19 years, since I was 15 years old. I find it HILARIOUS that the teenagers think they discovered the net and it’s only for them and that it’s weird that adults use it too. I mean, when i first got on the net there were grown ass men and women in the fandom. People with kids and mortgages and jobs. I never thought it was odd. There were one or two creeps, but generally they were super nice people who I became an extended child to. They were people I could ask awkward questions that I couldn’t ask my parents. They were the older siblings I needed. The ones that said, “Don’t date that guy, he sounds like he’s abusive” and “don’t kill yourself, I know you’re really feeling alone right now but it’ll get better” and “don’t change yourself for that guy, he’s not worth it. He’s a moron” and “I think maybe it’s time to ask your parents to take you to a counselor”
But hey, if you think it’s creepy that I exist, don’t follow me. I’m a 34 year old woman and I’m only getting older. But if you need someone to ask weird and embarrassing things, like what it’s like how to brown meat or how to look for an apartment or short cuts to getting unsightly dirt rings off your bathtub or you need someone to look over your art portfolio or what it’s like to have an IUD or get a breast reduction I’m your adult. I’ll be your big sister. Because God knows *I* needed someone to be mine when I was your age.
#I think the hard thing is that when many of us were the young ones in intergenerational spaces we looked up to older people#and now when we see the ‘ew grow ups on the internet go away!!’ thing it’s like#shit#how did we miss our window?#but the truth is fandom grow ups built shit like ao3 and dreamwidth#and fandom grow ups were so helpful to me when I was a flaily teenager and college student and young adult#and it’s hard to see people talking like nobody over 21 belongs in fandom or even exists#which is crazy when most of the best writers I know are definitely at least that age or older#writing skills usually get better with time!#anyhow this all ties into fandom having lost touch with its own history#from the adults who started cons#to the adults who converted this new internet technology into a place for fandom#so if you aren’t aware that fandom has always been intergenerational and until the last decade mostly composed of adults#that’s a sad failure of our community
I see you hiding your thoughtful meta in your tags, sophia-helix, and I drag them out into the light.
No for real in 2k15
Can fandom bring back the concept of a squick
A “squick” was a trope or topic that made the reader deeply uncomfortable, even might cause anxiety or intense emotional reactions
Everyone’s squicks were personal and diverse, and it was considered polite to say, “sorry I can’t read this because it squicks me, but you have fun in your corner doing what you doing”
Can we bring that back and reserve “trigger” for MI people who mean “if I see this I will have flashbacks and dissociate for hours”
I wasn’t aware this concept had fallen out of fandom. Seriously, bring it back, it’s useful as hell.
Key to the concept of “squick,” as it was first explained to me lo these many years ago, is that it is not a value judgment. If I say “mpreg is gross,” that’s a negative statement about mpreg (and, by extension, about those who enjoy writing or reading about it). If I say “mpreg squicks me,” that’s a value-neutral statement about me and my emotional reactions and how they affect my enjoyment of fiction.
And, as OP says, it does not carry the implications of intensity or trauma that “trigger” does. (Although I will point out that a trigger doesn’t have to cause flashbacks or dissociation. There are people a lot better qualified than I am to talk about that.)
THIS PLEASE. I still use the word – it’s very useful. Frex: incest squicks me – no value judgement, but it is so very not my thing. Gunplay downright triggers me, and will send me into a full-on panic attack. There’s a difference.
I think we should point out that triggers can be a lot less obvious and insidious than just “causing flashbacks and panic attacks”, but I do agree. Explicit sex tends to squick me (though I don’t mind sex being present, I’ll just skip over it if there are too many details/fluids), but dubcon can trigger me pretty badly sometimes even if there are hardly any details.
Squicks are such a good filtering tool without co-opting MI terminology.
Advice for VC fandom newbies?
advice? ADVICE? Um, wowww… so I usually have strong opinions on ALOT of things, especially VC-related, but this sort of knocked me speechless. For about a minute. Then I wanted to write a thesis on the subject but managed to keep it to this much.
I would suggest that:
- If you want to RP as one of the characters, or an OC, you really have to read at least the first 3 books. And lots of fanfiction 😉
- We have awesome fanfiction and AO3 aims to protect it.
- Did I mention the fanfiction? It fills in the gaps that canon leaves. And it’s also just delishus.
- The RPers on here are SO fun to follow. Try finding some in the vcdirectory or the vcdirectoryold (I don’t know the difference, but hey, go investigate!)
- With the canon: you should have an open mind to Crazy Shit Happening
- DUE to the Crazy Shit that Happens later in the series, you are not required to consider it all canon 😉 Alot of people don’t consider books 5-10 to be canon. Or 4-10. Or wherever they want to draw the line. That is FINE.
- Brace yourself, because Prince Lestat is coming. No, not like that, you filthy thing! ARRIVING. 10/28/14. And, depending on its crackiness, there is going to be a divide between people who consider it to be canon and people who do not, and that is FINE.
- There’s a divide between People of the Page and People Off the Page, described here.
- In general the People Off the Page are a low-drama fandom, but we do have our spats, even the illustrious human behind i-want-my-iwtv has experienced a few direct situations, and that’s just life, bc people are people, after all. I’ve accepted my share of the fault in these situations and learned from the experiences. I’m not perfect, nobody is :-
The bottom line is that it’s a fandom that only in the past year or so has really come back to life, we were in hiding bc Anne Rice disapproved of fanfic and waged war on us in the 90’s for it. Now that she seems to have lowered her weapons about that, and even praised some VC fanart – permanentglitter for example! – and with the announcement in March of the new book, well, we’re all coming out into the light and making friends and it’s been wonderful!
I hope you see this, Anon, because we all know there’s a human behind that gray face, too, and I want to personally welcome you and anyone who’s just joining us now… we are a different kind of vampire fandom, that’s for sure.
This is awesome advice, but I think it’s worth adding that the etiquette around linking to specific fics is tricky in this fandom. AO3 is willing to take the risk of hosting our fic, but because of the tortured legal history of Anne Rice vs. her fans, and because AO3 is yet to have its principles tested in court, people are often uneasy about being publicly linked with their fic in case Shit Happens again.
For the same reason, it’s risky to link to fic hosted in places other than AO3, which lack its finances/willingness to deal with the legal fallout. Basically, it’s only been five years since Anne Rice lawyered an RP forum out of existence, so short of an outright “Here’s a rainbow to promise I’ll never
flood the earthdestroy the fandom again, guys!” message, a lot of us are still treading carefully.That RP exists openly on Tumblr is a wonder and a delight to me, but the history suggests that we have this happy situation only because none of the People Of The Page have taken it upon themselves to shove links in Anne’s direction. (One individual did link to the official IWTV manga, which was published in Japan but not elsewhere years back, and AR, having apparently forgotten about this, went to defcon 1 before someone apparently reminded her what it was.)
But most people will talk your ear off about their favourite fics if you send them an ask – we’ve basically been living under a rock, fandom-wise, while other fandoms grew, so we’re super-welcoming to new people and will love you and hug you and
call you Georgewant to hear all your headcanons and stuff.
cloudsinvenice just improved this post by 10,000%! Damn. All that is TRUTH which needed to be articulated.
Some RPers have also added their thoughts on whether u need to read canon/fanfic to RP well, so read the notes on this post for that. I stand corrected once again!
I-want-my-IWTV 