In a different era of Russian fandom, Zhenya volunteered as a Ficbook moderator. She emphasized how different things used to be before the crackdowns in her own country. βWhen I was a Ficbook mod, I was a teen,β she said. βThere weren't any threats of censorship in sight; media and people were so much more free to do whatever they wanted: nobody translated gay couples into cousins, Verka Serduchka (an amazing drag queen) was very much one of the most popular artists among both kids and adults, the process to transition was so much easier than in most places around the world, and at some point I actually thought we were moving towards allowing gay marriage.β These days, she worries that even posting to sites hosted externally might be criminalizedβthat, for example, βpeople who pay Ficbook to promote their fics are putting themselves at risk.β
In our latest, @bookshop reports on growing creative censorshipβand criminalizationβaround the world, from Australia to China to the U.S.
In Russia, a writer was recently sentenced to 18 months of forced labor for writing Stray Kids fanfiction. In this piece, Aja talks to Russian fans about the current climate of fear for many fans there.
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Governments around the world are censoringβand criminalizingβthe currents in which fanworks flow.
