What a mess

Well, this is rather horrifying. (For anyone non-fannish who has somehow managed to miss the drama, there's good information here and some more links here.)

I'm not sure what the fallout of this will be, but I know I'm pissed off and frightened, and I'd bet my life that a bunch of cornered, angry, networked fangirls can do a lot of damage once we have a direction to aim in. I'm not worried about my own journal, so I can afford to be patient until a clear course of action reveals itself to me.

In the meantime, I've had a quote stuck in my head for the past week or so. All the noise around FanLib, the recent articles on fan fiction, this latest mess, and the state of my poor, crippled country's government have me worried about censorship. I performed this monologue in my eighth grade English class, and it's stuck with me ever since.

(from Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters)


Seth Compton

When I died, the circulating library
Which I built up for Spoon River,
And managed for the good of inquiring minds,
Was sold at auction on the public square,
As if to destroy the last vestige
Of my memory and influence.
For those of you who could not see the virtue
Of knowing Volney’s “Ruins” as well as Butler’s “Analogy”
And “Faust” as well as “Evangeline,”
Were really the power in the village,
And often you asked me,
“What is the use of knowing the evil in the world?”
I am out of your way now, Spoon River,
Choose your own good and call it good.
For I could never make you see
That no one knows what is good
Who knows not what is evil;
And no one knows what is true
Who knows not what is false.