Fannish Taboos: Let me Show You One
Jun. 18th, 2013 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morgandawnI recently came across a discussion from the mid 1990s on a mailing list I co-moderated. The topic was fans photocopying fanzines for one another and other forms of sharing fanworks (a topic which began long before the 1990s) and the general outcry was how horrible it was and how everyone in fandom universally condemned the practice and everyone knew THAT IT WAS JUST NOT DONE.
The comment that sticks with me today is this one: "The taboo is not the copying, the taboo is admitting that it is being done." And, although this was not actually spelled out at the time, the second taboo was admitting that most of us had, at one point copied a zine for ourselves or a friend or had shared something we were not supposed to share,
So in the spirit of talking about things we do not talk about, I made a post about fandom and visibility. A post that I won't be actually talking about, but that you might find illuminating.
The comment that sticks with me today is this one: "The taboo is not the copying, the taboo is admitting that it is being done." And, although this was not actually spelled out at the time, the second taboo was admitting that most of us had, at one point copied a zine for ourselves or a friend or had shared something we were not supposed to share,
So in the spirit of talking about things we do not talk about, I made a post about fandom and visibility. A post that I won't be actually talking about, but that you might find illuminating.