Freedom To Read

Dear Readers,

On the "Legacy?" post, the last two comments are a much longer story, those of you who were on my Yahoo Groups watched it all unfold in real time a few years ago. The poster mentioned my post on the actual Rachel's Haven. 

The poster implied that the reason why nothing I've done has gained traction with other captioners is due to an idealistic disagreement I had with the bulk of the TG fiction community. The people I read and knew of in my early days. The legends of the community. People I once looked up to but they had fallen from grace.

Being a TG captioner isn't glamorous. As an artist you want to hear feedback about your works, and for a very long time that was rare for TG capped pics to get that. It sucked, but it's the way it was.

I understood that though. Not all of my audience spoke or wrote English. Just like on here now. Not all of my audience was comfortable with leaving a text trail because reading this stuff, being who they are, it's a secret. I respect that. 

I still made capped pics despite not getting a lot of feedback. I tried things to boost comments of course, and I did polls too. 

Then someone wrote that they'd like to comment more on my stuff but they were getting exhausted from trying to keep up with commenting on stuff at Rachel's Haven where it's necessary to comment in order to gain access to even read capped pics.

That blew my mind. Extorting comments for access to read capped pics? I didn't want to believe it.

So I joined Rachel's Haven.

I saw for myself that you had to reach certain levels of participation and maintain it in order to gain access to "The Gallery", a treasure trove of TG Captions history and new ones made by newer members as well.

So I did what any freedom loving, liberty minded, artist of the people would do. I stood up to them. And yes, I called them NAZIS.

Because NAZIS take art away from the people. They limit its access. They keep it out of public reach. They impose fascist rules and doctrines.

Heck, the Haven even had rules for what kinda content you could have in your capped pics! No gypsies, no stereotypical racial speech or accents, and so on. In other words, censorship of your works in the name of political correctness.

Now, shortly after I pointed all this out I was granted "Laureate" status and given total access to the site, all the capped pics and everything.

Yet others still had to go through that system in order to gain access.

Now I did try to be reasonable. Rachel wanted to archive my capped pics onto the Haven. I said it'd be ok as long as everyone would have access to them. She said no.

I was sticking up for the readers. I stuck by my principles.

You know what hurts the most? Not very many if any supported my side of the conflict in support of the readers.

That's why I don't do anything with the Haven.

So, the old guard could be mad because of it. Fine. 

Their captions are all locked away from the public that would have to jump through hoops to try and gain access to read them and here I am still capping for the people.

You don't rule your audience. The audience isn't your royal subjects to boss around and threaten them with losing access if they're not a good participant.

I believe in equality for all. If that's wrong then I don't want to be right.

So, maybe I am a TG community social pariah after that.

Maybe that's why nobody adapts stuff I do. 

Maybe that's why I'm not a legend in the genre. 

Honestly, before that comment I had sorta forgotten about all this.

I didn't think it'd be something that petty. 

I fought for reader rights. I stood up for lurkers that would not or could not speak for themselves. 

I didn't just fall in line. I didn't get greedy for comments that institutionalized fascism became okay. I did not and will not sell out.

Sometimes doing what's right isn't easy and it has consequences.

Looking back I wouldn't have done anything differently though.

Because I still believe that the TG community should be open to everyone equally. 

I believe in equality for the world. 

So, if that's really why nobody wants to use stuff I've created, if I'm really just blacklisted in the TG Fiction Community then so be it.

When I made that post on the Haven I hoped others would stand up, prove me wrong about being NAZIS, and get things changed.

Instead they stuck with their status quo and kept the fascism in place.

So it's not really my fault that nobody else stepped up when they were called out on it. So obviously, they must have agreed they really were NAZIS for what they were doing and complicit with.

I thought they were all better than that. I was wrong. 

Sincerely,
Gensabi