Every month in OTW Signal, we take a look at stories that connect to the OTW’s mission and projects, including issues related to legal matters, technology, academia, fannish history and preservation issues of fandom, fan culture, and transformative works.
In the News
Chinese censors have arrested dozens of writers in the national crackdown on Taiwan-based online erotic fiction website Haitang (海棠) Literature. A translated article from Radio Free Asia (RFA) discusses the way Chinese internet censors ban explicit adult writing to “anything below the neck” and even vaguely euphemistic phrases such as love and nature, which may mean sex when combined in a certain way. Similarly, Chinese online fiction platform Jinjiang Literature City (晋江文学城) was also summoned by consumer protection officials, but refused to turn up, accusing authorities of “fishing”, according to the Lianhe Zaobao (联合早报).
While details of the charges haven’t been made public in every case, many of the writers were contributors to Haitang Literature, and were widely assumed to be targeted for “disseminating obscene electronic messages,” which carries harsher penalties, the more a person is judged to have earned from their online activities. Celebrity lawyers have been warning their followers via livestream that “profiting from the distribution of obscene material” is a crime that can extend even to writers who share their work for no fee.
The low barrier to entry into online literature makes it popular among creators. However, several difficulties lie in the fact that the censorship keeps shifting—something that was allowed before may stop being permissible at any given time, Si Yueshu, a fanfiction writer, told RFA. Another writer, Li Hua, explained that very successful authors usually upload three chapters a day, or more than 10,000 words, and the most they can make is around 20,000 yuan (USD 2,740) a month. Many authors don’t actually make much at all—some authors make 0.10 yuan (USD 0.13) a day. For readers, there is also a low barrier to entry, especially for ordinary people who just want to relax.
Some of the steps authors have been taking to protect themselves is to delete or hide their work in other online fiction platforms, and Jinjiang Literature has been reduced to censoring anything even remotely sensitive with AI-generated blank boxes to replace the Chinese characters with sometimes hilarious results—for example, a sentence containing the words “down” or “lower” and “body” will generate these blanks even if the meaning is far from erotic.
But how do people get past censorship? A paper from doctoral student Wang Ran discusses how Chinese fanfiction communities navigate increased government censorship in early 2020.
I find that censorship transformed cultural production by (1) reorganizing and fragmenting networks, (2) reshaping the meaning of visibility, and (3) opening up new opportunities in a disintegrated community. As this study argues, we need to go beyond asking whether censorship is effectively destructive or not. While creative communities are vulnerable to outside disruption, especially in online space, the pressure of censorship leads to new conventions, networks, and fields for artistic creation as censorship does not simply strangle creativity.
In February 2020, OTW project Archive of Our Own (AO3) was mass-reported to and banned by the Chinese government after “sensitive” fanfiction of actor and musician Xiao Zhan gained popularity in China. Following the incident, fanfiction apps were removed from the country’s Apple and Android app stores, and Chinese fanfiction sites heightened their censorship policies. Stories considered “sensitive” were hidden or deleted by these sites, an example of which is Lofter. The immediate result of this affected the communities of readers and writers by removing likes and comments, forcing writers to either self-censor or move to other platforms, which posed new challenges.
However, this would not stop creativity. Of all the writers interviewed by Wang, only one decided to stop writing fanfiction after the crackdown. The response of writers to censorship has transformed their work in three aspects according to Wang: (1) censorship reorganizes and fragments creative networks by sharing their works to select groups and communities or a group of close friends, making them less afraid of causing offense and letting them take more risks with their art; (2) censorship transforms the meaning of visibility via extended networks such that popularity is no longer sought as it increases risk of being reported by a person that dislikes the work, which poses a threat to community networks by means of using censorship as a weapon to perform policing; (3) in consequence of the first two transformations, censorship disintegrates the original community while opening up other creative opportunities such as fanzines or other printed medium as a desire for self-expression and resistance against the system in other ways such as original works, painting, digital art, text games, photography, and so on.
OTW Tips
What steps does the OTW take in protecting self-expression and freedom of thought? Some of the Legal committee’s work includes news posts on legal advocacy keeping track of possible laws and policies that may affect fanworks and fandom, partnering with advocacy organizations and coalitions around the world, and assisting individual fans with legal representation regarding their fanworks.
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