Oh, sorry. Um... the text of the particular act seems to be here and some discussion here. That lj seems to be particularly focused on how that act (and others) affect chan, but there are a lot of people who write, say, 16- or 17-year-old characters who've gotten nervous. A lot of HP writers have taken their stuff off the Web completely (including a ridiculously multiparted work in progress that I was reading).

ETA: so yeah, largely HP writers for obvious reasons, but not exclusively.

EATA: Also, skyehawke.com apparently operates under Australian law, so there's some concern there. Comments at [link]

Huh. Bugger.

I suppose I'd better take Invisible to See down from Skyehawke, then. My characters are seventeen, but from the looks of things they need to be 18+. Which - annoying. Although I actually rather sympathise with (what little I gather from a cursory scan of the info of) the Act, because chan totally does my head in.

Meanwhile, a friend has just fallen belatedly into X Files fandom...except that she can't find any fandom to fall into. I've pointed her towards fic, but what she actually wants is meta, and discussions, and suchlike. Anyone got any suggestions? Most X Files writers I can think of have moved on to pastures new - is that the case for everyone? Or is there anywhere she could go, maybe even just to read up on OLD meta?

I've missed most of the Australian discussion but caught some of the Skyehawke discussion, Fay. Penknife had a post about it in her LJ that's probably worth looking at.

Chan doesn't exactly flip my lid, either, but there isn't evidence that it contributes to actual, um... actions. My verbal skills seem to be gone, sorry.

Cheers, Dana!

Chan doesn't exactly flip my lid, either, but there isn't evidence that it contributes to actual, um... actions. My verbal skills seem to be gone, sorry.

My understanding (v. limited) is that abusers generally pass through a number of stages before actually acting upon their desires. A key thing in this progress is normalising the desire, often through finding like-minded people. From engaging in quite a lengthy discussion wrt Parent-child incest in fic (and the related topics of chan and cross-generational relationships) I have come to wrap my head around why some people write Adult/child. Kind of. In terms of romanticising the sugar daddy figure (as in 'The Seventh Veil') and the reader/writer casting themself as the younger person.

However, there are a hell of a lot of adults out there who see children (and I'm not talking sexually mature teenagers of the Britney Spears variety, I'm talking children) as objects of erotic desire. There are a LOT of those people out there, whether we're actively engaging with them in fandom or not. It bothers the hell out of me that some of them could (and surely MUST, because it is not hard to find things online) be reading fanfic. Maybe even showing it to children, in the way that abusers DO sometimes show porn to the children they're grooming. I don't think that's a wild and crazy possibility, I think it's a likelihood, and it bothers the hell out of me.

Er. So - yeah. Still. Arse. Feck.

Eh...mm. I think you can take as read my objections to that -- that I find it disturbing as well, but I don't think it provides grounds for outlawing it. Don't particularly want to end up the chan-defender here.

Chan

This is a term I'm unfamiliar with, probably because I read pretty mainstream stuff. What is it?

Eh...mm. I think you can take as read my objections to that -- that I find it disturbing as well, but I don't think it provides grounds for outlawing it.

Oh, lord, sorry - didn't mean to push you into the Chan Defender corner, and I was, rather, with my soap box - you just took me back to that whole argument thing, which just got to be HUGE. (And I got so ridiculed for saying that I could see a plausible link between chan and acts of abuse. Totally. But, damn it, I can. Not a straightforward All Abuse Is Caused By Chan, or All Chan Results In Abuse kind of link, but a plausible link, nevertheless.)

Aaaanyway, moving right along.

This is a term I'm unfamiliar with, probably because I read pretty mainstream stuff. What is it?

I only know this because of my vague involvement in HP fandom, but it means adult/child. Which is a concept that a startling number of people out there seem to think is no more morally questionable than slash.

I didn't feel pushed, just... not really up to the task of defending my convictions. Which is weak and cowardly, but there you have it.

And anyway, there's this whole other issue where characters who, if they were real people, could legally have sex in Australia, may not be depicted as having sex. If my information about age of consent is correct. Which it may, of course, not be.

Serial post to add the mememe part of the story:

I think the huge WIP may not even have involved an under-18 character, but I can't remember, and of course can't now check. On the other hand, we've received no confirmation that it has anything to do with the Australian kerfuffle, and may just be a giant coincidence. Like the time our landlord started to work on the extremely low-volume faucet in the bathroom and all the other faucets started producing only trickles, only it ended up that there'd been a water main break. Strange but true.