There are no Righteous Warriors of Right and as we age, we see more and more how complex the world is and how statements of absolutes and of black and white are almost always more harmful than not. Censorship is almost never the answer. Contextualization IS. Discourse IS. Communication IS. Information IS. Be open-minded. Approach life with love and good faith. Do no harm. And if you do, for the love of all that is good, make it right. Do not leave a fellow fan in tears. Do not take something given in confidence and good faith and weaponize it.
Mrs. Hudson has it right: “Live and let live, that’s my motto.”I am nearing 60 and I have been writing fanfiction for 50 of those years. I have been around, Will Robinson, and none of this is new. Back in the early days of TV fandom, when only Anderson’s dinosaurs walked the earth, anyone who wrote slash, even mild slash with fade-to-black sex scenes, was bullied, doxxed, outed, humiliated, and often banned from the fandom communities. Slash panels were not allowed at regular fan convention, and ‘zines sold under the counter. When fandom went on-line, on-line links to slash stories were secretly passed around to those in-the-know because your website could get shut down if someone found it and pointed out “that gross slash porn” to the provider. A convention like 221B-Con with a discussion on Gender Politics on the same program with panels about Sebastian Moran and Granada Holmes and Watson through the Ages? And an actor in the same building, much less on fan panels while next door people creat flash fanfiction? Never would have happened then, and most of us would have been incredulous at the idea that 20 years later we could be having a fan convention with all these things going on at the same time.
We’ve come a long way, baby.
What an excellent response to the discussion going on right now. I wish everyone would read it…
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thescienceofobsession: dkwilliams: foiledmonsters: There are no Righteous Warriors of Right and...
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