Fan creators are allowed to have boundaries.

 (Originally posted to my Tumblr.)

The discussion about Choose Not To Warn has me thinking about a lot of aspects of CNtW. 

I want to talk about....a lot of those aspects, but right now, this instant, I want to talk about boundaries. 

In the context of fandom, we understand that fanwork creators are permitted to have boundaries. Some creators do not want to be exposed to criticism of their work (and so readers who want to engage in that criticism will have crit-friendly spaces, or will refrain from tagging the author in discussions). Some do not want their work to be remixed -- at all, or without explicit permission -- so people who want to do that should ask; others issue blanket permissions. Creators draw boundaries about putting their work on Goodreads; they place it on certain websites or do not; they lock it to Archive readers or leave it public; they orphan the work; they take it down from places they no longer want it.

We understand all these boundaries and generally acknowledge that creators are allowed to have them and that disrespecting them is a jerk move.

And yet, when a creator draws the very particular boundary of “Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings”, this is suddenly “rude” and “vaguewarning” and “asshole behavior”? 

No. 

This is not different from any other boundary a creator places on their work.

Fan creators are human beings who are allowed to have boundaries on their work. You might think their boundaries are dumb, but you aren’t allowed to violate them. There’s a fan creator I ran into back in the 1990s who had, I thought, incredibly annoying and dumb boundaries. You had to email her with proof of age to get a password to her stories on her own personal website. You were not allowed to link to her work, or pass on the links, or share the password, or anything. It’s been 20+ years and I still think this was a stupid as fuck boundary. I still respected it: I never read her work from her website, only when she posted it to mailing lists. I never asked anyone to link me to it or share the password with me. She was allowed to have these boundaries, even though I thought they were dumb and made my eyes roll right out of my head. I had no right to violate her boundaries, and I had no right to access to her work.

When I put work on the Archive, I need to be comfortable doing so. Anything other than “Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings” is uncomfortable and upsetting for me, and I won’t do it. I never liked archiving anywhere that required warnings, although I did it because I believed that the existence of comprehensive archives was more important than my personal comfort. I shouldn’t’ve had to do it then, and I’m relieved I no longer have to do it. It made sharing my work with others more difficult and less joyful. 

Readers are allowed to have a boundary of not reading work without warnings. What they do not get to do is alter my boundaries because they don’t like that they can’t read my work with my boundaries in place. 

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edit: a followup post: Compromise is not always workable.
edit: another followup: Sometimes people make art for an audience that isn't you.