How Many People Have Done This Already

A New History of Fandom Purges

On November 24th, 2018, I posted a list of major deletions of sites or of content on sites that stripped fandom of its history. A bunch of pro-shipper blogs had just been deleted, and people were nervous. I suppose I was thinking “All this has happened before…”

On December 3rd, 2018, Tumblr’s Department of Irony announced the NSFW ban. Thanks for providing this salutary lesson to The Youth and a billion reblogs to me, I guess.

Today, we have AO3 for writing. Audio, images, and video are in as much danger as ever, yet fans attack AO3 every donation drive. For those of you who forget our past…

HERE IS WHAT HISTORY HAS TAUGHT US!

1992 - Chelsea Quinn Yarbro forces a zine to be destroyed

1995 - Viacom/Paramount goes after fansites

1995 - Anne Rice gets IWTV fic deleted everywhere

1997 - Fox and Lucasfilm go after fansites

1998 - AOL goes after X-Files fansites

2000 - Warner Brothers goes after Harry Potter fansites

2000 - Anne Rice anne rices again

2001 - Tripod Massacre

2001 - Anne Rice goes after IWTV fic on FFN

2001 - The Bronze shut down as Buffy changes networks

2002 - FFN bans porn

2002 - FFN bans RPF

2003 - Gryffindor Tower implodes

2004 - FFN bans script format

2005 - FFN bans CYOA, Readerfic, 2nd person, Songfic

2005 - Sheezyart bans adult content; y!gallery founded

2005 - Viacom/Paramount goes after fansites again

2006 - Sakura Lemon Archive suddenly closes

2007 - Strikethrough, Boldthrough on Livejournal

2007 - Youtube institutes Content ID, deleting many fanvids

2008 - Slash Cotillion closes, taking much historical m/m with it

2009 - GeoCities shuts down, taking old fannish websites

2009 - Greatestjournal shuts down; RPGs deleted

2009 - Marvel gets scans_daily deleted

2009 - imeem, major vidding hub, closes suddenly

2010 - FFN forums purged for inactivity

2010 - DeviantArt purges adult fanfic

2010 - Literate Union goes after Twilight fandom on FFN

2011 - Delicious destroyed by Yahoo’s incompetence

2011 - China arrests women for writing m/m; destroys danmei.org

2012 - major FFN crackdown on porn

2012 - Megaupload deleted for piracy; also destroys vids, podfic

2013 - Max-Dan-Wiz.com purged of fan-generated content

2014 - Quizilla shuts down

2014 - China purges m/m story websites; arrests female authors

2014 - Blip.tv deletes vids

2014 - Viddler deletes vids

2015 - Journalfen’s servers become fully robust, deleting Fandom Wank

2016 - y!Gallery deleted

2016 - Elfwood goes offline

2016 - Audiofic Archive corrupted; major blow to podfic

2017 - Chinese author jailed after being ratted out over fandom drama

2017 - Parents get queer Warrior Cats fic purged from Wattpad

2018 - Tumblr deletes pro-shipper blogs

2018 - Tumblr announces NSFW ban

2018 - Wattpad deletes accounts/fics without warning

2019 - China purges weibo of m/m; more women jailed

This is only a small taste of the many times that:

Fannish moderators got bored, ran out of money, or had a falling out, deleting a site/list/forum along the way.

Sites got bought out and closed for being unprofitable.

Fandom got hit as governments targeted piracy or political dissidents.

Fans grudge reported each other.

Official forums got deleted when the canon finished.

It’s not always malicious. It’s not always about us. But we lose every time.

Some of these purges hit everyone. Many of them hit m/m content specifically or female gaze-y material in general. This is why antis are dead wrong. This is why anti-fujoshi policies end up being anti-m/m policies. This is why we need clear labeling, not content restrictions.

This is why we need AO3.

And it’s why we need a solution for audio, visuals, and video too.

I’m so fucked up about simon. His character arc in the main series was set up that ice king becoming a simon again was inevitable. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when and how.

but now that it’s happened, it’s the worst thing that could’ve happened to him.

he had friends! a special secret club of wizards he had matching rings and would go on roadtrips with! he wasn’t even really a problem anymore!

betty’s character is so fantastic. she traveled through time for him. She went insane for him. She become a god for him. But him being Simon was easier for her. Did she ever truly consider if it was what he wanted? She’s not even there with him. She’s not there and now he’s Simon and he’s more isolated than ever.

He lives with humans! At this point, Finn has known him longer as Simon than he knew him as Ice King. Ice King is just an old memory now. But Simon is over a thousand years old. “Simon Petrikov” is just an old memory too. He’s human again, but not really.

What’s worse is how smart he is. He’s an intelligent and emotionally competent man. So he really, truly, profoundly knows how deeply fucked up his life is. He’s so aware of it.

wouldn’t it be easier? If he was stupid and naive and magical? does he miss magic? maybe not ice, but magic itself? would he try to learn? Does he remember the password to Wizard City? Would they even still let him in? there’s a school. He could learn magic again. but would he? Doesn’t Simon Petrikov like learning about magic?

Everything Stays. He’s still here. But he’s different now. Everything is different now except it’s not because the world stayed the same and he’s the one who changed. He can’t go back. Except he did, in a way, and it wasn’t even his choice.

Because of my executive dysfunction, I have to treat every difficult task as a life of death situation If I want anything done. So when I end up failing the task, Or not doing it anyway; It feels like dying a little. I used to grin and bear it, but lately I’m wondering How much of me Is still left Before I’m completely Gone

Okay I’m gonna delete twitter.

"There's millions of Tumblr users" to you. To me There's only about 12 and we all reblog the same five posts from each other

Cyrano de Bergerac is such a pathetic wet little meow meow, I love him so much. He's completely consumed by love. He's emotionnally stunted. He's never received physical affection ever. He has so much self-esteem issues. He doesn't want to cry because he thinks he is so ugly that it will ruin the beauty of tears. He is dirt poor and starving. He's a filthy liar. He's a soldier, a killer, but also a poet and damn good at both things. He's bisexual. He faces a hundred dudes at the same time and kills them all to save a friend. He spits in the eye of the social hierarchy. He's so angry. He gets mocked by his rival and says "nah, your insults are not good enough, let me do it myself" and then kills the dude. He then is mocked by another rival who does it a little better, and what does he do ? Ask him for a hug. He's so character.

Terry Pratchett started his career as a crypto-monarchist and ended up the most consistently humane writer of his generation.  He never entirely lost his affection for benevolent dictatorship, and made a few classic colonial missteps along the way, but in the end you’d be hard pressed to find a more staunchly feminist, anti-racist, anti-classist, unsentimental and clear-sighted writer of Old White British Fantasy.  

The thing I love about Terry’s writing is that he loved - loved - civil society.  He loved the correct functioning of the social contract.  He loved technology, loved innovation, but also loved nature and the ways of living that work with and through it.   He loved Britain, but hated empire (see “Jingo”) - he was a ruralist who hated provincialism, a capitalist who hated wealth, an urbanist who reveled in stories of pollution, crime and decay.  He was above all a man who loved systems, of nature, of thought, of tradition and of culture.  He believed in the best of humanity and knew that we could be even better if we just thought a little more.

As a writer: how skillful, how prolific, how consistent.  The yearly event of a new Discworld book has been a part of my life for more than two decades, and in that barrage of material there have been so few disappointments, so many surprises… to come out with a book as fresh and inspired as “Monstrous Regiment” as the 31st novel in your big fantasy series?  Ludicrous.  He was just full of treasure.  What a thing to have had, what a thing to have lost.

In the end, he set a higher standard, as a writer and as a person.  He got better as he learned, and he kept learning, and there was no “too late” or “too hard” or “I can’t be bothered to do the research.”  He just did the work.  I think in his memory the best thing we can do is to roll up our sleeves and do the same.