The Three Laws Of Fandom - A Final Word
…before I turn on Notification Block and get my notifications page back to something like normal (with over 3300 notes this week, I’m missing too much else I want to see).
When I wrote the Three Laws of Fandom earlier this year (the title came from Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, not from any notion that these are in any way enforceable) they were written as something of a guide to myself, taking concepts I’d learned and thought were good from people who’d been in fandom many years longer than myself. People who’d been around in the early days of fanzines and lawsuits from authors, people who’d had a hand in creating Ao3 as a safe space for creators.
I never expected them to spread as far and wide as they have (almost 47,000 notes to date, the VAST majority reblogs and likes of the original post, with only a few dozen dissenters). I never expected them to get their own Fanlore page.
I certainly never expected to be accused of being a racist, misogynist, transmisogynist, biphobic, lesbophobic, homophobic, Nazi, ableist, paedophilic, rapist-defending piece of shit.
Yes, those are all insults that have been thrown at me. I’m a bit surprised that Islamophobia and anti-Semitism wasn’t included in the list but considering the Americentrism of Tumblr, maybe I shouldn’t be.
All the people who threw those insults, who took issue with the Three Laws for ‘giving a free pass’ to discrimination of any kind, who shouted about the Three Laws being ‘designed to protect creators’ missed the point.
Yes, the Three Laws are designed to protect creators. Here’s why.
Without creators, you wouldn’t have fan content to consume.
And every fan creator I know… LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE ONE… has at some point received nasty bullshit comments on their work. From “where’s the smut, I feel cheated!” to “I don’t like your writing style” (at the end of a 70,000 word fic the reader read all the way through) to much worse; doxxing; demands that the writer kill themselves; continuous anon harassment (23 messages an hour?) right up to and including actual death threats in real life.
Here’s the thing that I think too many people are forgetting. This was originally said in a post by @scottstilesliam (which has since been deleted, probably because they got sent hate for it) but I’m borrowing the sentiment because it’s so well put.
No ship, or any aspect of a fictional universe, is important enough to treat another real life human being badly.
As a fandom creator, I have long since accepted that I cannot please everybody. As a fandom consumer, you need to accept that not all fandom creators can please you. Thinking that they should is the most incredibly self-entitled mindset. People don’t all like the same movies, TV shows, books; why should they all like the same fanworks? Why should all fanworks be catered to YOUR personal tastes?
I’m going to add here an extract from a wonderful post called If you are anti-darkfic, you are anti-survivor by @itsbuckybitch .
“If you accept that censorship is wrong, then censorship has to be wrong no matter who it’s happening to. If you accept that bullying is wrong, then bullying has to be wrong even when you really, really don’t like the victim. If you accept that people are allowed to write whatever goddamn fanfic they want, you can’t tack on a clause that says “unless they’re writing this one thing that I, personally, believe should not be written in which case the angry mobs have my blessing to go to town”. What kind of position is that? How are you going to ask the entire rest of fandom to accept your specific personal boundaries as an objective moral yardstick?
So to the people reblogging this all “I agree with this except for when it’s something genuinely bad being written”, please reconsider. If you agree with me that purity campaigners are hurting vulnerable people and creating a toxic fandom environment, but you still support their tactics under X or Y condition, then you are as much a part of the problem as they are.”
(If you’d like to have any Discourse with me on the subject of when it’s OK to leave someone abusive comments on their fic or nasty messages in their anon (Hint: never) that post is Required Reading before I will even discuss the subject. As is this post and this post, oh, and the Ao3 Terms of Service while you’re at it.)
Other than this post, I’m done with responding to the Three Laws. I’ve said everything I need to say. Yes, I’m a white, het, ablebodied, non-American cisfemale, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a point, and throwing slurs at me to try and discredit me is an ad hominem argument. I refuse to lie about any of those things in order to try and somehow increase my ‘cred’. Yes, I see things in fandom I find disgusting all the time, and yes, I talk about those things and why I find them problematic and unpleasant, but I don’t shove my arguments in creators’ faces, or encourage other people to go bully them.
Fandom is an opt-in environment. We choose to be here. We choose what we consume. There are always going to be things in fandom, as in real life, that we find distasteful.
But here’s the thing. That trope you love so much in fanfic? That’s someone else’s squick. Your OTP? Their NOTP.
If every single fandom consumer gets to point to something and say “I don’t like that, it’s not allowed to exist!” the entirety of fandom would disappear in a puff of smoke.
This is why doing your best to follow the Three Laws is important. They are designed to protect EVERYONE’s favourite creators. Including yours.
I’m going to close with two statements that too many people seem to forget when they decide that they’re going to attack creators for ‘endorsing’ things they disapprove of.
Fantasy does not equal Reality
Depiction does not equal Endorsement
Think very hard about that before you accuse someone of being racist, misogynist, transmisogynist, biphobic, lesbophobic, homophobic, Nazi, ableist, paedophilic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, rape-excusing or any other insult you can dream up.
After all, Agatha Christie fictionally murdered over 90 people, but I’ve never heard anyone claiming that she was a mass-murdering sociopath.
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