Entry tags:

fandom: harry potter

You can't censor my bondage slavery fic! Part One.
I haven't posted here in years. Well, until I finally found something definitely worth preserving over here. This wank is reported in two parts, primarily because the wank itself is spread over two sizeable threads on the same forum.

Today's new flavour of wank comes to us courtesy of the SpaceBattles forum. The site originated as hosting for several fanmade 3D movies. From there, the site added a forum, becoming a place for science fiction fans to come talk about their favorite shows. Today, the site enjoys a userbase of almost 75,000 members, with subforums dedicated to roleplaying, fanart, and arguing over whether Superman could beat Goku, or the Enterprise-D could fight a Star Destroyer.

None of those, however, are what concerns us, today.

Spacebattles also possesses a creative writing subforum. In practice, this is mostly filled with fanfiction of varying levels of quality, plus another subforum dedicated to recommendation and handing out plot bunnies. For the most part, the content there consists of various flavours of gun porn, power-gaming, and a phenomenon known as "Humanity Fuck Yeah", in which plucky humanity triumphs over a variety of alien invaders out to enslave/destroy us. (Popular candidates for this role include the Minbari of Babylon 5 and the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, after two very popular an influential fanfics first posted on that board.)

All this is background to the events recorded in this post.

Forums user Lord Charon makes a post in a plot bunny thread for Harry Potter fanfics describing an idea he just can't let go off:

When Hagrid goes to get Harry, he introduces him to a girl on a leash, whom Hagrid calls 'Ermione, and says is going to be Harry's guide and servant due to having been raised in the muggle world, but also having lived a few years in the wizarding world. When Harry sees (or perhaps touches) the crest on her collar, he gets a feeling similar to the one he gets when he first holds his wand, and when he asks about the collar and leash, Hagrid explains that the leash is just to show who's responsible for her, while the collar keeps her under control, and connects her to her Master (Harry). Hagrid looks on her fondly, like one of his 'interesting creatures' (well, she's probably less dangerous than a dragon, at least), but reluctantly admits that she killed three people, even if it wasn't her fault.

Responses range from stunned incomprehension to, "This is just wrong." Some time later, a mod arrives to berate Lord Charon and ban him for the contents of his post. Lord Charon's post, however, is left intact.

Shit immediately begins to fly:

"The ruling was shit. Sure it was dark. Very dark in fact. But not worthy of an insta ban. I could somewhat understand a temp band but this.... This is just a mod going on a power trip to lord his own values over others using the vague rules of the site."

"I'm not even sure it's worth a temp-ban. It could have gone very inappropriate places, but merely discussing potential 'slavery' in a setting that actually has it (House Elves) even if it is vaguely sanatized."

Among the voices loud in their disapproval of the mod action is arthurh3535, who is equally loud in denouncingt he perceived arbitrariness of the mod action:

So, basically, it maybe/sorta alludes to something so isn't worth deleting, but bring down the ban-hammer so that everyone know that you ban even thinking of writing something uncomfortable because 'girl slavery' automatically equates squicky sex-slavery.

There's at least two sets of double-standards in that...

Despite (or perhaps because of) a mod stepping in to clarify the administration's position, other posters continue to echo arthurh3535's paranoia of mod oppression:

"What I dislike about this recent slavery issue is that it de facto cuts off a huge avenue to establish why a person / race / polity / religion / custom / nation deserves to get it's shit stomped in unless I take an alrready well established example which exihibits the feature I need in my antagonist(...)Now let us take an reader who has never heard of Draka and is now wondering: "Who are these Draka guys and why is everyone else in thread cheering that they're about to be invaded by walking sharktopus ?". So when he asks the thread, what answer should he get, according to how I interpret this recent application of moderator interpretation of the relevant rules ?

I think it would run along the lines of "Oh we can't tell you, we would get banned for it". "

(Note: The Draka mentioned above are a villainous race of Mary Sues from a pulp book series by S.M. Stirling. The series describes the slow conquest and enslavement of humanity by this race of genetic supermen, with the exception of a small remnant that flees for outer space. Understandably, they make somewhat popular villains for crossover fanfiction on Spacebattles.)

Surprisingly, despite comments from various posters explaining exactly what the problem is, arthurh3535 recalcitrantly fails to understand the reasoning behind the original mod action. In desperation, forums user Harry Leferts posts snippets from a particularly dark fic he wrote, pointing out that he never sustained any mod action from these posts, only for arthrh3535 to sneer:

"If the Mod had decided that it was too much for that moment, you'd be banned because he felt it was 'too much' even if it was not a deep or disturbing imagery per se.(...)Tomorrow he might decide that your story is too far and ban you, because you should be an amazing mind reader with precognitive powers to know that he can just decide something like that so arbitrarily.

Finally, not one but two mods step in to declare an end to the discussion:

"...if you are writing up a story(or even a story idea) which has an underage child being a "slave", and you don't think to yourself "wow this could go horribly in the wrong direction, maybe I should make it absolutely clear of what this is, and more importantly, what this isn't", because finishing it off with "'Servant' might or might not mean 'slave', it's up to the writer." tells me the poster didn't care. And that is not going to fly.

Now seriously, drop this derailment. You now have a second mod confirming what the first did(which shouldn't even be needed in the first place!). This goes double for all the people needlessly bitching about Kensai; we have a Complaint Procedure, check the news forum and follow it, before I start handing out temp-bans.

"The key issue is that we have found we can't trust this sub forums judgement at all.

You want to complain about us cracking down on stuff, but we're trying to contain this thing by stopping people from driving the Creeper Monkey to the Little Girl International Airport. If you have a problem with that, blame the people who buddy fucked you, assuming you're not the person doing all the buddy fucking."

This effectively ends the argument in this thread. Discussion moves on to more pleasant topics. The wank however, has not died. Elsewhere in the forum, it is brewing. That discussion, the fallout from the whole affair, will be discussed in my next post.