Finished Blog Post

Note: I started writing and changed my topic again, because I ended up just looking at fandom censorship anyway and not at the general internet. I hope this is alright!

Fandom. Born through publications such as Star Trek fanzines, the birth of the internet opened a new world for people of similar interests and tastes to form friendship and camaraderie. The anonyminity of this new system helped even the most shy to express their feelings, and everyone felt safe.

Today, fandom is not safe.

But, you might say, censorship on the internet is practically non exisistant! How could anyone hope to control the flow of information over such a huge space?

Then what of the ongoing Six Apart Livejournal controversy? (A.K.A., Strikethrough 2007) In May of last year, Livejournal purged over 500 journals from its community, claiming them to be endorsing pedophilia. Many of these were fandom journals, especially those focusing on Harry Potter slash and fanart, though numerous others suffered. There were also personal and roleplay journals caught up in the storm. And after all that, clever fandom detectives managed to find journals of several real pedophiles, who had no affiliation with the fan community and who had escaped untouched. It was a huge error on Livejournal's part, and proof they weren't really looking too hard at what they were doing if they were, as they said, really intent on getting rid of actual crime. In fact, perhaps what they were doing was getting rid of things that looked bad for the site, and ignoring the parts that weren't obvious to the first time user? It was a question many of us asked, but was never really answered.

Did this mean, then, that fandom looked 'bad' for Six Apart?

A report of the issue was compiled here, and though the most startling rumours were proven untrue, one clear thought remained: Six Apart considered our fandom to be parallel with criminal behaviour. And if such outrage had not occured, they would have never reinstated the journals who didn't deserve the treatment they recieved. Yet, they never actually apologised

Links between pedophillia and fandom have sadly always been prevalent, with even police officers making exaggerated statements meant to give a disgusting view of people with more 'geeky' interests. As the person in that article points out "...I could go to a science fiction convention and be less likely to find that 99%+ of the attendees were "hard-core Trekkies"."

Sadly, Six Apart continued its attack on the community, this time focusing on fanartists. Though before they had hidden behind the group Warriors For Innocence, they no longer had this option, leaving them forced to admit they had decided themselves to ban anyone posting art that they personally disagreed with. They even went so far as reporting one girl to the FBI.

In a place were people had once been able to freely share their more deviant interests or even just friendly ones, artists were scared to upload and writers were terrified if they were to be next.

In truth, however, fanfiction has always been under attack. The 'oh so wonderful' Lee Goldberg expresses a very common view of fanfiction authors in his blog, something he likes to talk about often. Just don't be fooled by the man - he writes novels for tv programs such as Monk, and thus is a fanficcer himself. I don't think I need to state anything clearer about the hypocrisy now, do I?

Mr Goldberg is also part of a group of writers who all write tie-in novels. Tie-in novels are in reality fanfiction. They did not create the characters or worlds they write about, and yet, because they are paid for their work, they feel justified in feeling better than us lowly fanfiction writers. Even the website itself makes a blunt statement about the issue: "Fanfiction does not qualify." Fanfiction, it is apparent, does not mean anything in the eyes of the literary world, no matter how talented you may be.

Fanfiction as well tends to suffer more in the public realm, and at the front of the media right now is a case that displays this more clearly than anything else. The war in court between the Harry Potter Lexicon and J.K. Rowling herself.

Stever Vander Ark's attempt to create a Harry Potter Encyclopedia has been smashed by the author herself. And while this is not fanfiction, it is created by a fan, and yet is of academic merit. At no time has SVA claimed to be creating an official piece of work. But Rowling has taken it upon herself to stop anyone from doing anything with her series. Her words have been unecessarily harsh, and for someone who she praised so much before, she has managed to turn a huge amount of people against him.

It appears that the moment a fan tries to move beyond a worshipping poisition and do something for himself, he is crushed. The one time a fan moves off the internet and into the world, the full force of a multi-million dollar company comes crashing down upon him. As said by the New York Times: "So long as the Lexicon was a free Web site, Ms. Rowling looked kindly upon it. But when Mr. Vander Ark tried to publish part of the Lexicon in book form — and (shudder!) to make a profit — Ms. Rowling put her foot down." And honestly, how much would a small time book really effect the sales of a giant like Rowling?

Fortunately, many are still supportive of SVA, especially Orson Scott Card, who makes some very valid points about Rowling and her ability to take ideas from other people's novels. I can only hope that the Lexicon will win and will be allowed to be published, thus hopefully bringing on a change of opinion of just what internet writers can do.

And things are looking up for fanfiction. The Organization for Transformative Works hopes to protects fanfiction writers, (which will hopefully expand to include fanart) though Lee Goldberg making his unhappy opinion about that as well shows that many may never accept fandom as a 'real' form of writing or art.

In both the real world and the internet, we are seen as outcasts, freaks, and dangers to society. For some unknown reason, choosing to create stories or pictures about the characters we enjoy makes us no higher than scum. We apparently produce nothing of artistic merit.

Only in recent months did Six Apart attack again, this time deleting highly rated user interests from its database. Within those interests were the words 'writing', 'fanfiction', 'yaoi', and several applicable to people's choice of sexuality. Together they were lumped in with words like 'depression' and 'pain'.

Again, fandom caught them, and again, they quickly changed what they had done. But the memory is still there.

Hopefully, fandom will continue to fight for the recognition we deserve, and the chance to not be seen as the dirty secret the rest of the world sweeps under the rug.