Oh dear

[serai]

It looks like mucun has closed her slash site:

http://havens.sakura.ne.jp/ban/

Wonder what happened? Anybody here read Japanese? It looks like she left a note.



ETA: OK, I've been over to Rei's journal and read the latest on the brouhaha.

And I can say that I am now officially disgusted with this fandom. I suppose it's a branch of my disgust with this prudish, finger-pointing, dirty-minded culture in general, that can see some kind of twisted sex in a rather sweet image of affection between friends. God, people can be filthy sometimes.

Feh.

Comments

[twothreefour.livejournal.com]

When has anyone in fandom ever minded their own business? *laugh*

Ah, who can say. I have a whole set of bookmarks of LOTR fanart websites that are defunct and 404'd for whatever reason-- mostly because they've changed fandoms or whatever. I can tell you that to get to any online pages that show explicit sexual acts by some artists takes a password and knowing where the secret page is.

Japanese sexual mores are a little different than ours-- for the people who screeched at Rei over a drawing of a kiss, in Rei's country it is highly unusual to see anyone express affection in public and even kissing your husband on the street would cause people to point and stare.

I think people in the West that have live in Christian- dominated societies have been trained in the particular belief that our bodies are dirty, evil and will betray our mind at any moment because we HAVE to fulfill the futile demand by religion for us to be pure, clean, and sexless just like the imaginary Sky God. Our best hope is to keep our sexual urges as beaten down and boxed up as much as possible- which tends to make people fucked up and express themselves in twisted ways.

I also think that our US government has spent lots of time and money on the "war on child pornography" just like the "war on drugs" and the "war on TERRAH", and you can see how effective those things have been over time. By declaring war on those things, it is then OK to demonize people for whatever reason- drug addicts are thrown in jail for decades thanks to mandatory minimums, and murderers get out on parole, people of color get harassed on planes and in public because they look like 'terrorists', and people who aren't in the norm of accepted sexuality are called pedophiles, like that Mark Foley character. He didn't just solicit sex with his teenaged male employees- which just makes him gay and a 'chicken hawk', he's a CHILD RAPIST OMG. Add to that our belief that everything revolves around us, and our feelings, our damage, our issues, our drama. Psh.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Yo to all of that. It's fucking 1984. What weirds me out is that it's so...Un-American. Censorship and curtailing the freedom of expression, art and media. There's just too much of the police state "we know best" mentality about it. The artist doesn't know what she's doing, WE DO! And we must fight to protect purity! And that heads into lands that are most definitely unhealthy for a culture to enter.

*shudder* There is no way that kind of thing will ever fly with me, no matter what the reason.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Well, not every artist wants to rate their stuff. I certainly hate doing so, and fought it for a while when I first started writing fic. And once again, this is an example of requiring that others do things to conform to one's own standards. They don't use our movie rating system on fandom sites in Japan, so why would they do so on their LJ's? Not everybody goes by those customs, nor should they be expected to change their ways for the comfort of a few who feel the possibility of seeing something icky (and this was not even slightly icky) will be more than they can handle.

mucun said clearly that the picture was of a kiss. She also cut the pic. Anyone who's been around LJ for a while, let alone the hobbit fandom, would know those for indicators that they might see something they don't want to see if they clicked on the link. So unfortunately, the high ground on this argument was lost the moment that link was clicked. Anyone who would object could have avoided doing so. They didn't - their problem. Not anyone else's, and certainly not Rei's.

She's a generous lady with enormous talent, and she has a perfect right to display her pics as she sees fit. She has the courtesy to use cuts when something might make others uncomfortable. That is all anyone has a right to ask. There are plenty of other artists that rate their stuff.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but I'm not one of those that subscribe to the art-feeds-deviancy school of psychiatry. There's still enormous debate about how art influences behavior, and/or vice versa, so that will not sway me as far as The Danger To Our Morals. Freedom of expression is one of the things that make a vibrant society, and should be encouraged, yes. Nobody is talking about hanging porno on the courthouse wall, but neither is it okay to tell an artist she shouldn't be doing whatever she's doing in her art, especially when she's not forcing anyone to look at it.

And no, I do not happen to have a problem with fictional porn. Know why? Because it's fiction.. It is not about reality. Fantasy is fantasy, a healthy mind knows the difference, you can't expect an artist to go around policing who sees her work to keep the perverts out, and my fucking GOD, I can't believe I'm having to say all this for the 3865th time in this fandom.

Bottom line: Some people intent on minding others' business for them bitched at a wonderful artist, who then closed her site because of the attack. Nothing was gained by anybody here, other than a few nasty ego points for some pissy meddlers. If you're expecting me to have any sympathy in this situation, you're wasting your breath.