Cascade Library

[turps]

I've just been reading the new policy that's been announced at Cascade Library, The Sentinel's gen archive. It's here, "http://www.skeeter63.org/~tslibrary/bondingpolicy.htm if you want to read.

What it says is CL is not going to archive any more stories with scenes of intense bonding. So I guess that covers all the stories like Susan Fosters GDP series and all it's spin offs.

I'm not sure how I feel about this just now. One one hand I know that some of these stories are clearly edging close to slash. In fact I think that most heavy smarm should be labelled slash and be done with it. CL *is* a gen archive, so some people may be uncomfortable reading that level of contact between Jim and Blair.

But, I also think CL goes too far sometimes in what it classes as unsuitable. A friend's story was rejected as a supporting character was gay. One story was rejected for containing rape, while another with the same subject matter gets in. I know that the archivists do a *fantastic* job, it just seems at times the line moves a little in terms of what is allowable.

I know some people have pulled their stories. Do I want to do the same? I don't know.I've never had a problem announcing a story there, but what about in the future. I hate the thought that I could have a gay supporting character and that would be enough to get my story banned. Or that I wrote a darkfic, or a sexscene. Not that I'd ever do het sex! It's just...I don't know, like the archive is becoming more and more restrictive.

I'll be honest. Comparing slash to gen and slash wins every time. I do write gen TS because SA was the group that eased me into writing. They're always friendly, will LoC mostly but outside of that list gen TS does *nothing* for me. So what I'm trying to say it would be no big deal to pull out of CL. I'll never be a loss to the gen TS fandom.

I'm going to think about this a bit more.

Comments

[heuradys.livejournal.com]

I think you should write a gen story of very intense bonding... male bonding. One in which Jim and Blair sit around in their underwear, drink loads of beer, belch, watch football, brag about their sexual conquests, talk about tits, and try to set their farts on fire. Sounds like it would fit the guidelines...

[littledrop.livejournal.com]

If it were me, I'd pull my work. Sounds like that archive is pandering to homophobia, and I could never support that.

Just my non-TS fan take on it, of course. YMMV. :-)

[maubast.livejournal.com]

If you want to vent off LJ, email me. *hugs*

[(Anonymous)]

Besterette from SA

The word now is that CL has always been a gen only archive, and some of the bonding fic has been edging over the line into slash from heavy smarm, and the policy was meant to define the gray area. no sexually-explicit bonding stories are permitted there.

It's not homophobic, but if you're posting m/m sex stories to a gen archive, you're just in the wrong place, and the archivist has too much to do in RL to check every sumbitted story for line by line content.

And hey, Gen TSers would so miss you!

bonding policy

[patk.livejournal.com]

What strikes me a littl funny is, that obviously the rule is inserted to draw a line at that what could be considered homosexual if a reader wants to see it this way, and the authors of such gen-intense-bonding-scenes claim that's not (in capital letters) meant to be homosexual and that it shouldn't be seen this way.

It's kind of contradicting, it's obviously "too slashy" for the archivists (or more some gen-readers who may have complained about this kind of scenes) and "not slashy enough" for the slashers.

I acknowledge the hard job of the archivists but where does this leave this authors?

In the grey area between snow-white gen and night-black slash? *g*

Maybe it's time to create a "heave smarm/intense bonding"-archive? *g*

Pat

:-)