Accidentally Nailed It

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.

Here we are again.

Uhh... I genuinely don't know why we're talking about this but I have to say a few things because you all are acting frustratingly flippant and too ready to jump into conclusions...

I can obviously only speak for my culture in Finland but a lot of the posts were written about Swedish people and I recognized some of the stuff, so here's how I have been taught regarding this:

We absolutely do fucking feed guests who stay the night. Whoever said we don't was either a liar or was staying over with someone who absolutely hated him. So, yeah, let's get that out of the way first: Maybe take stuff you see online with a grain of salt.

There's a difference between formal dinner guests and someone who pops into the house somewhat uninvited. The former group is invited because of food, and that's what we will provide for them. The latter is not expected to stay for very long, and if you start preparing them meals, it's very much possible that they will be late from wherever they need to be next, or that someone else is preparing them food somewhere else and this is all a waste. Your guest might even think that you're holding them down unnecessarily, and this is seen as awkward. This general sense of not burdening people in anyway whatsoever is taken very seriously by both parties.

There's a strong shared understanding that you do not go empty someone else's fridge when you don't know how little food they might have left for the rest of the month to feed their own family. You will leave before they start eating, not because the family kicked you out, but because you don't want to humiliate them by forcing them to provide something for you and then not eating themselves. If they didn't formally invite you over in the first place, you will assume they don't have extra food.

Of course there are layers to this, but in general: if a Finnish family starts hustling because of your sudden visit and starts preparing a big meal you will eat together with everyone, it's because they don't know you very well yet. If they don't do much of anything and don't steer away from their own daily routines, it's because they trust you and are comfortable with you. They expect you to be casual and ask for food if you get hungry, or take some snacks freely from the table, or they trust that whoever is closest to you (e.g. when you're a spouse/best friend of one of the siblings) will provide food for you separately. In short: if nothing much happens when you enter the house, consider that a GOOD sign: they have lowered their guard around you and think you're one of them.

Related to the previous point: it's very likely that the family never sits down to eat meals together anyway. So if someone in the household eats when you come in, you're not necessarily asked to join, because you're expected to eat at your own time (together with the person in the family you're closest to). This kind of eating might not be the healthiest, but it is what it is, and regardless, it's a sign that you're more than just a random guest, not a sign of disrespect.

If this is about a kid visiting his/her friend's house, there's again the idea that family dinners are formal and awkward, and the parents don't necessarily want to bother you or make you feel like there's any levels of formality present. They will assume their own child will take care of your needs and ask if you're hungry, and in the meantime, they try to not interrupt whatever you and their child are doing together. There's a shared understanding in Finnish culture that adults should give children a lot of space and not constantly supervise their every activity or try to organize them family-get-togethers at every hour, because that lessens the time the children can be alone together and get creative with their plays. It also increases the risk that the children will end up leaving the house and going somewhere else to be in more privacy. It's better to have the kids in the house or somewhere nearby, doing whatever they want uninterrupted, than have them escape you entirely because you're inviting them to sit-down meals and asking them awkward questions while at it.

A collection of quotes by (mostly Rhys) and Taika — who first met at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2002 when Rhys was doing his first solo show and have been friends ever since — discussing their shared history and finding those dramatic beats in Our Flag Means Death.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about the Kraken story, the way it’s told in episode 6, and the way the episode plays when you already know that Ed is not telling a tall tale about a sea monster, but a true story about killing his abusive father.

When you know that this is all a metaphor, a lot of lines take on a double meaning. The night I saw the Kraken becomes the night I understood my own capacity for violence–and in Ed’s own words, that’s the scariest thing he’s ever seen. When he says, “I learned something that night. Fear is the most powerful emotion,” I think what he is really saying is I learned that fear is powerful enough to turn a teenage boy into a killer.

In plenty of other narratives, teenage Ed killing his shitty abusive dad would be framed as cathartic, even heroic. “Abused person finally hits back” is a moment we cheer for in a lot of stories. You could make a solid argument that Ed was acting in self-defense and/or defense of his mother, because there was no reason to believe his dad would stop being violent toward them, and who out there protects poor people from violence? Fuckin nobody. Even though Ed’s life wasn’t literally being threatened in that moment, it’s not crazy to think that at some point with his dad it would have come down to kill or be killed. 

The narrative certainly doesn’t have any sympathy for Ed’s dad. But Ed killing him is still framed by Ed as something deeply traumatic, something monstrous, a part of him he’s afraid of and ashamed of. And I think this is one of the show’s core thesis statements: that violence fucks you up even if you come out on top.

can nice sneakers redeem such tragic fashion sense, discuss 🤔

"You are beautiful when you do beautiful things."

"The present tense of regret is indecision."

"We understand so much, but the sky behind those lights-- mostly void, partially stars-- that sky reminds us we don't understand even more."

"Be proud of your place in the Cosmos. It is small and yet it is."

"Believe in yourself. You are an ancient, absent god, discussed only rarely by literary scholars. So if you don't believe, no one will."

"Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you."

“Whisper a dangerous secret to someone you care about. Now they have the power to destroy you, but they won’t. That’s what love is.”

"Are we living a life that is safe from harm? Of course not. We never are. But that’s not the right question. The question is are we living a life that is worth the harm?"

"When we talk about teenagers, we adults often talk with an air of scorn, of expectation for disappointment. And this can make people who are presently teenagers feel very defensive. But what everyone should understand is that none of us are talking to the teenagers that exist now, but talking back to the teenager we ourselves once were – all stupid mistakes and lack of fear, and bodies that hadn’t yet begun to slump into a lasting nothing. Any teenager who exists now is incidental to the potent mix of nostalgia and shame with which we speak to our younger selves."

"We are not history yet. We are happening now. How miraculous is that?"

"Wednesday has been cancelled due to a scheduling error."

"We have nothing to fear except ourselves. We are unholy, awful people."

"A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A basilisk."

"There's nothing under your bed. There's nothing in your closet. Nothing waits in every darkness. Nothing is the most terrifying thing of all."

"The night sky is ten miles wide, eight miles deep, and floats three miles up. Its favourite food is grape jelly. It wants to be a drummer."

"Look to the sky. You will not find answers there, but you will certainly see what everyone is screaming about."

"Ignorance might not actually be bliss, but it is certainly less work."

"And now, a special report. Crocodiles: Can they eat your children? *YES.*"

"Lie down and look up at the ceiling and breathe with those curiously fragile lungs of yours and remind yourself: Don’t worry. Don’t worry. All is as it was meant to be. It was meant to be lonely and terrifying and unfair and fleeting. Don’t worry."

"As long as I’m reminding myself things, I’m a good person, worthy of love – both from myself and others."

"Guns don't kill people! It's impossible to be killed by a gun. We are all invincible to bullets and it's a miracle!"

"Everything is exciting! Particularly existence. Existence is the most thrilling fact of all."

"There is a monster under your bed. A monster at your window. A monster any place you imagine one. You project your monsters on the world."

"You miss 100% of the bank robberies you don't commit."

"I like my coffee like I like my nights. Dark, endless, and impossible to sleep through. "

"A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep. Welcome to Night Vale."

"And now, the weather."

I discovered this podcast at the beginning of high school, and let me tell you, it rewired my synapses.

Not only was it my first experience with positive LGBT representation, it was the show I clung to when everything else went to shit. Whatever was going on in my life, I knew I had this show in my corner, making me laugh, making me cry, making me feel okay about my place in the universe.

Which is a hard sell with Stede still playing house and straight man a million lightyears and then one (1) rowboat trip away, but I swear the reason that Ed has this subplot instead of disappearing for twenty minutes of B-plot about mutinying against Izzy only to swan in as The Kraken at the end is because Our Flag Means Death correctly believes with its whole big gay pirate heart that Ed doesn’t need Stede to be happy.

Body touching is a different thing. There’s so much of that, I can’t even track it. From the word go, Ed is happy to get in peoples’ personal space, slap them on the back, clasp their hand, squeeze their arm, hug them when a plan goes the right way. But the face? That’s a whole other thing for him.

I’ve been tracking it through the show (as well as in other people) and most touches to face are done in an act of violence or implicit control/threat in the pirates’ experience - Ed’s dad striking his mother, Jackie to Olu and Jim (and Stede, if you include the knife), Geraldo to Jim, Ed to the French captain, Izzy to Ed and Fang. I’m sure there are more I’m forgetting.

And because it got long again, I’ll pop it behind a read-more.

Stede Bonnet, and his crew when they’re around him, live in a Muppet movie. I didn’t come up with this analogy but it’s so accurate. Insane physical comedy and comedy-action where no one really gets hurt. Mild peril but you know everything is gonna work out. Terrible puns and sight gags, but room for sweet, genuine emotional moments too. The rules of time, space, probability and logic will bend for a good joke.

Izzy Hands is in a grimdark action/drama where if someone gets stabbed in the gut they will behave normally and fucking die. (Probably slowly and painfully, of sepsis.) Crucially I think Izzy also lives in a genre where you can only be subtextually queer, and violence (done for or with or to each other) is the only acceptable form of intimacy between men. This is why being forcibly dragged into Stede’s world, where everyone is busy having silly low-stakes misadventures and being gay and emotionally available all over the main text–and seeing his Subtextual Boyfriend go into this world and love it–sends him round the twist.

The British, Spanish and other imperialist militaries are in a Master and Commander-style naval adventure where they’re the heroes. This is why they all take it completely seriously when Stede (unintentionally) kills Badminton and takes hostages, even though we can see that he bumbled his way into it ass-backwards. This is also why Stede is so shocked to get actually for real stabbed aboard the Spanish ship. (“Did you mean to do that?”) He didn’t realize until that moment that he’d stepped into a different genre. The stabbing is one of the first Surprise Genre Switch moments we get and in retrospect it’s very important for setting up that in this world, the threat of getting hurt or killed is very real–which we need to understand to know that there are real stakes much later, when Stede almost gets executed by the British.