Being an active participant in fandom requires a certain level of self-regulating in order to be a healthy activity. It requires the ability to say “Not for me,” or “Not today,” and walk away.
We can have conversations about patterns we see in fanworks. We can discuss how we portray characters and relationships, how to effectively convey what we want to in writing, how to sensitively approach representations of marginalized characters. But having those conversations productively requires that we approach each other in good faith, and it requires the ability to self-regulate–including recognizing that often there is no hard line, no black and white answer, and we won’t always come to the same conclusions.
It requires an understanding up front that eliminating all fanworks we don’t care for is not the end goal of these conversations.
I’ll give a personal example. There is a ship that deeply, viscerally upsets me in like 95% of its iterations. I can explain why I don’t like it if asked. I’ve written about why I don’t think it’s handled well in canon.
And if I wanted to–if I wanted to–I could make a very convincing-sounding argument for why that ship is objectively bad and wrong and no one should ship it. Not because that’s objectively right, mind you, but because I’m good at arguing. I could slap that together in like… ten minutes, probably.
I don’t do that. If I vent about it on my own blog, it’s as infrequently as I can manage, because I do my best to avoid the content that upsets me. I don’t seek it out to get riled up about it. I don’t seek out content that upsets me, read it in its entirety, and then leave angry comments and send my friends to harass the author. I don’t choose a high-profile writer for the content I don’t like and engage in a targeted campaign of harassment against them all while claiming to be addressing a general problem.
If you are deliberately seeking out content that you know will upset you and reading it anyway and then feeling that you need to take those bad feelings out on the creator, you are not taking care of yourself. You are not engaging in healthy behavior or productive coping mechanisms. You are not keeping yourself safe, and you are not helping to make fandom safer for others. You are not engaging in good faith.
If you find that you do this and you can’t seem to stop, you may need to take some kind of further steps up to and including taking a break from fandom. I’m serious. I’ve taken breaks myself for that exact reason. There’s no shame in it.
Please monitor your own ability to self-regulate. Please actively evaluate whether or not you are engaging in healthy and productive behavior, for yourself and for others.
If you are deliberately seeking out content that you know will upset you and reading it anyway and then feeling that you need to take those bad feelings out on the creator, you are not taking care of yourself.
So apparently round umpty-zillion of “people are killing fandom by not commenting” is going around, and I’ve seen a few posts trashing people for lurking/viewing/reading instead of actively participating.
My journal and my fic has always been a lurker-friendly zone. I think lurkers are great and people can fight me on this. Here’s why:
We all started out as lurkers. Or at least most of us did. Come on. I’m sure some people out there must’ve jumped into fandom with both feet and started writing and commenting right away, and good for you if you did! But I sure didn’t. I lurked for YEARS. And even now, though I’ve been in fandom since before Y2K, whenever I get into a new fandom or a new social media platform, I still lurk. I hang out around the fringes for awhile to get a feeling for the place before starting to participate. Back in the mailing list/bulletin board days, it was usually recommended that people do that on purpose, watch and listen and learn the local lingo and social rules before diving in. So you know what? You are not doing anything wrong and you are not doing anything that most of the people you see out there commenting and creating and reccing things haven’t done themselves.
We all have lurker days, weeks, months …. Nobody is 100% “on” all the time. Participating in fandom (commenting, reccing, creating content, and so forth) is WORK. It may be fun work, but it still takes effort! Even if you’re sometimes very active in fandom, then you’ll have life fall on your head or the brain weasels flare up, and you won’t have the time and energy to give. Don’t feel guilty about not being able to give fandom your extra spoons. No one in fandom has a right to demand a single spoon from you that you don’t want to give.
Some of today’s lurkers may be your friends tomorrow. How do I know this? Because I’ve made friends with some of them myself! I’ve had people delurk in my comments to say hi after YEARS of reading my fanfic without saying a word. Which I am totally okay with, by the way. And some of these people are good friends today.
So, in conclusion:
It is okay to feel too shy to come out of lurkerhood in fandom until you feel more comfortable there. It is fine, in fact, if you never do.
It is okay to be too busy and have too few spoons to comment or create stuff. You still have a perfect right to be in fandom and read and reblog whatever you want.
It is okay if you meant to comment on that fic or go back and press the kudos button but never got around to it.
It is okay if you have too many accounts already and don’t want to create a new one just to comment/participate on a social media platform.
It is okay if your personal situation (a stalker ex, controlling parents) makes it unsafe for you to create an account or comment on things.
It is okay if you can’t or don’t want to comment or do any of the other things that constitute non-lurkerhood, and you don’t owe anyone an explanation for why.
IT IS OKAY TO BE A LURKER.
This post is a good way to balance a lot of the “COMMENT ON FIC COMMENT COMMENT COMMENT” stuff that I post here. Content creators will always be happy to receive comments, and comments do in fact breed more content but… sometimes you can’t, and you aren’t obligated to. It’s fine to passively enjoy content for whatever reason.
I spent the entirety of my hp fandom days lurking while in a major depression. Lurk away, friendos. You owe nothing here. 💟
I got involved in fandom in the mid-90s when I was around 14 years old. My cousin @lyndanaclerio sent me VHS recordings of the Sailor Moon dub, and I fell in love… I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before.
Since then, I’ve been in a lot of different fandoms: from manga to YA, Tolkien to Xena, Harry Potter to Teen Wolf, Star Wars to Marvel, and countless mini-fandoms along the way. And I’ve met a lot of cool people online over the years — older and younger alike, including my best friend of 15 years — on all sorts of platforms. I’ve built myself fandom homes on shitty GeoCities fansites and moderately less shitty sites I made from scratch; on Yahoo! Groups and LiveJournal; on AO3 and Tumblr… and that’s nothing compared to others!
But, last week, I turned 36, and according to some, I’ve already overstayed my welcome in fandom by at least a decade. I guess I’m supposed to put all my comics and collectibles on eBay, swap out my fanfiction with whatever the fuck a beach read is, and spend the rest of my life cloistered in my house where I won’t offend society. (I mean, I’m kind of a hermit, but that’s not why.)
And let me be clear here: by some, I mean some. While there is indeed a frightening trend here on Tumblr, in which some young people have embraced bizarrely conservative views about women and sexuality, with the Trumpian rhetoric to match, I think the problem is bigger than that. I recently talked about the pressure I felt to abandon fandom when I was 25 when Tumblr was still brand new, and nothing like it is today. It’s clear there were (and are) more societal forces at work than just a toxic sub-culture on a struggling platform.
So, this post isn’t about the vast majority of young people in fandom, nor am I here to yell “get off my fandom, you pesky kids!” when no one ever said that to 14-year-old me. In fact, this post is as much for fangirls as it is for fanwomen because you deserve to know that getting older doesn’t mean giving up the things you love. But you don’t deserve to tell others to conform just because you’re uncomfortable that they exist. There are already enough toxic fanboys trying to keep women out of geek culture, so don’t help them hold the gates closed from the outside.
And if you are older, and already let that shit drive you out of taking a more active part in fandom, I’ve been there, and I get it. But you can still come back; not just on your private Tumblr, or your secret AO3 account, but for real and any time. One of the most freeing choices I’ve made is to stop pretending I think all of this is stupid. The world needs more quirky, eccentric women, anyways.
Sorry this one is so long, but apparently I have FEELINGS this month — especially after the Bog of Eternal Stench I had to trot through while researching this one — and there are a lot of people who’ve articulated them better than I did here (see the following meta recs). I promise we’ll move on next week! As always, let the authors know you appreciated their work by engaging however you can. And if you ever feel alienated on this site, please feel welcome to talk to me! 💛
Fandom – Ageism
Adults in Fandom by @littlesystems, […] There are a lot of different factors at play with the current fandom purity thing. It’s primarily being driven by minors, which is why I’ve used that as a stand-in, but there are older people who are obsessed with this and younger people who aren’t. Nuance! Exciting stuff. I think the two biggest drivers here are a genuine but misguided desire to make fandom a better place, paired with plain ol’ run-of-the-mill sexism. I’m not the first person to say this and I know others have said it better, but here are my two cents.
Age Appropriate Activities by @telesilla,So this post, another in a long series of “find a bridge club you embarrassing old ladies” posts, came around. And I adulted hard all day and it just really pissed me off and caught me at a bad time.
Ageism in Fandom by @badtech-reblogs, Seeing yet another post about ageism in fandom and I’m trying to do some root cause analysis. That ageism in fandom is tied up with misogyny is a given. There is almost no age too young to start ridiculing a woman for her hobbies and interests, and even young girls are expected to have a maturity and patience beyond their years. The misogyny is coming in from the larger world outside of fandom like how misogyny, ableism, anti-blackness etc. seeps into all subcultures.
Ageism in Fandom: Too Old to Fangirl? by @ravenmorganleigh,@vulgarweed, et al. Most Fandoms are comprised mostly of women, young and old. It’s interesting to me when Young Women– who are the most likely to champion women’s rights can turn around and show their youth-bias when it comes to Older Women in Fandom.
Fandom culture wouldn’t be where it is now if it wasn’t for Old Fandom by @thepalmtoptiger, I almost forgot that ageism in fandom is a thing. Apparently once you hit 25/30 years old you’re supposed to stop having interests in things. People need to freshen up on their fandom history and realize that fandom now wouldn’t be what it is if it wasn’t for older fans.
Getting older doesn’t actually feel like anything by @catchmewhispering, The hilarious thing about growing up, that all the ageist people here are gonna very harshly realise, is getting older doesn’t actually feel like anything. You don’t “turn into” an adult, it’s just another year that passes and, sure, it might become easier to make decisions or figure out how to fix a sticky situation but overall, you don’t suddenly Enter Adult World and never have a goofy thought or a messy moment ever again.
The idea that you will someday be ‘too old’ for the stuff you find fun by @freedom-of-fanfic, […] The idea that you will someday be ‘too old’ for the stuff you find fun now is a long-standing cultural message that I’m sure many anti-shippers – many adolescents of all stripes – have absorbed. that message caused adolescent me to think I would outgrow fandom, and I don’t think that message has particularly changed.
If other people in fandom are older than you, by definition, they have been your age by@codenamecesare,[…] If other people in fandom are older than you, by definition, they have been your age. When fans write about younger characters, we’re not peering through a keyhole at young people now and creeping on them. We are drawing on our own experiences, thoughts, feelings and memories of what it was like when we were that age.
I’m old as balls by @warlordenfilade, […] Just realize that with 30+ year old franchises there will be 30+ year old people who grew up with the franchise and still love it. Tumblr may be a relatively recent platform but fandom as an institution is waaaay older than I am and the Transformers fandom in particular has fans in their 40s and 50s whom I am personally acquainted with, fans who have adapted from photocopy fanzines and snail mail mailing lists to bulletin boards, newsgroups, forums, and, yeah, tumblr, in their many years of fandom.
I wish we’d stop telling each other – and ourselves – that there’s a point at which we’re too old for fandom by @vantasticmess, I spent every year from 14 to 25 telling myself that eventually I’d grow out of fandom: I would get too old to cosplay and I would write my own original stories instead of ‘just’ fanfiction. After all, adults don’t write fanfic and adults don’t make costumes for themselves. Adults get married and have kids and make costumes for their kids and write real stories and get published.
“like, i’m not saying that adults don’t have a place in fandom.” by @porcupine-girl, @melifair, et al. […] Fandom is vast and encompasses a multitude of interests and age groups. We all fandom responsibly, and those who abuse that at the expense of someone vulnerable or impressionable are not tolerated. This does not mean that anyone specific group of fandom should be limited. Nor does it mean that the only entertainment media created ever should be accessible to all viewing audiences. Young fandom will grow to understand this, not only in fandom but in life.
“Lmao 30-year-old women don’t belong in fandoms. Go knit or have kids or something.” by @rainbowloliofjustice, @the-salt, et al. […] It’s the fact I don’t get what these people think happens when you turn 18 it’s not like the second you turn 18 you just immediately lose interest in everything you were interested in at 17 and from then on only like strictly ‘adult™’ things. A lot of people who were in fandoms as teenagers stay in fandoms as adulthood. Fandoms aren’t minor-only spaces and never have been and there’s literally nothing wrong with adults in fandom environments.
Older fans are crucial to the survival of fandoms by @muchymozzarella, […] Not ONLY because they’re literally the ones keeping fandom afloat (AO3 wasn’t created or maintained by kids, let’s just say), but because older fans generally don’t attack or bully or fuck up a fandom by being aggressive or volatile or overzealous, destroying any enjoyment of a medium.
PSA by @bugsieplusone, I’ve been sitting on this post for a while because it probably reveals more about me on a platform that I’d rather not reveal but here goes. I’d like to talk about fandom and ageism. If you are older, you are: Allowed to like things, Allowed to create fan works, Allowed to discuss things with other like minded fans, Allowed to participate.
Reblog if Older Fans Are Welcome In Fandom by @cameoamalthea, For many fandom is a life long passion that starts young, but being a geek isn’t something you have to grow out of and put away. I didn’t start cosplaying until my 20s (I couldn’t have, and probably won’t be financially secure enough to do all the things I want until my 30s).
you are never too old for fandom by @hils79, […] You are never too old for fandom and if you think that’s true I pity you when you reach whatever arbitrary age you think is the cutoff point.
You are reinforcing a stereotype by @asocialjusticeleague, @olderthannetfic, et al; […] Whenever you question a woman’s right to this space because of her age or parental status, you are reinforcing a stereotype that has effects that reach beyond that one situation. The expectation, for example, that 40 year old men be catered to when writing comics, but that characters of interest to 40 year old women are obsolete or unprofitable.
The sky isn’t falling, Tumblr isn’t deleting all the dirty fan art on purpose, and fandom isn’t going to leave Tumblr tomorrow.
However…
Once a site starts using bots to delete content willy-nilly, it has a serious problem and is not a safe home for fandom. In this case, the aim was to get rid of child pornography. (Actual child pornography.) The problem was already so out of control that they hit a bunch of innocent blogs by accident.
If this happened once, it’s going to happen again. It’s going to keep happening until Tumblr’s limited staff is so overstretched that they stop even a vague pretense of caring about false positives and accidental deletions of other content.
I’ve already seen several posts going around telling people to “calm down” and assuring us that Tumblr isn’t out to get us. Tumblr is not out to get us, but they’re not out to help fandom either, and you should definitely not calm down.
Make your other accounts now.
Have somewhere to go when Tumblr finishes imploding.
Two bits of advice:
-back up your stuff. make copies of your important text posts. save your media elsewhere. tumblr has a built in backup tool. use that.
-let your friends know where else to find you. fannish exodus works best when we end up the same places. (may I suggest dreamwidth?)
Last I heard dreamwidth was not a great option because it’s servers are in Russia. Many of us think of the internet as something that lives “in the cloud, up there somewhere” but much of it’s infrastructure is hosted in rooms full of servers around the world. The server’s physical locations are subject to the laws of those areas/countries.
That’s Livejournal, dude, notDreamwidth.
Dreamwidth is a similar-looking site that started off as a code fork of LJ. It is run by a tiny team in the US and is explicitly fandom-friendly. They’ve already been attacked by having people tattle to paypal and get their paypal suspended. They had to find a (more expensive for them) credit card processor that wouldn’t hold them hostage, demanding they change their content policies.
From the ‘open expression’ part of their about us page:
“We believe in sustainability, not profiteering. We want to grow our business slowly and steadily, in a way that can support the community instead of exploiting it. We don’t own you or your content – we hope that you’ll empower us to be your hands and trust us to build a community that can last.
We will remain third-party-advertising-free. We believe it’s possible to run a sustainable hosted service without resorting to third-party advertising or third-party sponsorship – and we’re committed to showing you what we’re taking in, what we’re spending, and where the money’s going.”
The problem with Dreamwidth is that it looks old-fashioned and doesn’t have all of the features fandom likes: The image hosting is minimal, and there’s no reblogging.
What it’s great for is text discussion with threaded comments (for which we use reblogs here, but for which reblogs frankly suck).
The people and policies behind the site are all great.
As someone who’s moved with fandom from BBBoards and Yahoo groups to Livejournal to Dreamwidth and AO3 and Tumblr and most recently to Pillowfort – it seems to be par of the course for sites that are NOT fandom-made to sooner or later become unfriendly or less usable to fandom.
Dreamwidth may be quiet, but it’s made by fen, and I will keep supporting it with my money and looking in now and then to see old friends. I will keep supporting AO3 that was born out of that same needs for the fandom to own the servers. I would suggest people not forget fanlore.org – it’s your fandom lore wiki, and you can create an user page for yourself to direct anyone how to find you in case one of your main non-fandom-maintained fannish-community sites goes boom (a lot of us did when LJ purges and Delicious blowout and other stuff like that happened, here’s mine with my fannish contact info – https://fanlore.org/wiki/User:Calime ).
We will no doubt be ousted from many a wide world web pasture in the future like we were in the past, but fandom network is resilient and stays around. Also, please, don’t forget your history and keep supporting the sites and organisations that fandom has made for the fandom, like AO3 and OTW, or the ones that like-minded people have created to be fandom-friendly, like Dreamwidth.
DW was started around the same time for similar reasons, but it has always been a distinct entity. Many of the fans who were worried about LJ, wanted us to own our own servers, etc. were advocating moving to AO3 and DW at the same time. The two things got talked about together frequently. They’re mixed up together culturally and historically in many fans’ minds, but they’re run by different people.
DW is a for-profit business, unlike OTW. However, it’s a rare social media site with a workable business plan that doesn’t turn its users into a product. (The paid accounts are enough to pay for the site, including all the free accounts, without ads or hidden monetization bullshit.) Most other sites, including Tumblr, have terrible Underpants Gnomes business plans where they intend to monetize but have no clue how and end up doing so in an inorganic way that pisses off site users.
DW is run by Synecdochic, a long-time fan. It has a good track record, so we talk about it in similar ways to how we talk about OTW. Hence the persistent confusion.
@udunie has been removed from Tumblr by the tumblr purge. The issue was spotted within an hour, but no news has been given to us yet. It was there one minute and then gone the next. I personally am foaming at the mouth over this. Udunie has worked so hard for the awesome following she has, writing amazing fictions and commissions alike, that’s how we met.The fact that this could happen out of nowhere like this makes me want to scream.
Please, If any of you followed Udunie or know people who like her stuff, share this post, spread it around like a thick jam. Udunie did nothing to deserve this, and to lose the following she has is taking a hard hit to her happiness.
Well, yeah. This happened. I’ve been waiting for 5 days now for support to get back to me, and so far nothing. I’m still holding out hope that I will get the old blog back, but I can’t just sit around waiting anymore.
So! If you’ve been following me, or we’ve been mutuals, please hit me up! I’m trying to remember who I’ve been following, but it’s hard with all my data gone.
Anyway, lets hope this will work now!
(but in any case, I’ve included some other contacts on the new blog so we can stay in touch even if tumblr pulls this shit again)
Hey just a heads-up, at least three of the four fics posted by Steter722772 that just came through this blog are plagiarized works.
Stiles Bond love is from Neil4God’s Stiles Isn’t Allowed To Be Awesome
Mated Dragons is from astudyinfic’s Dragon’s Heart
Neighbor is from Triangulum’s Love Thy Neighbor…He’s Hot
All three are basically copy/paste versions of the originals, with only a title change and some of the names in the fics swapped out to try and make them Steter. I’ve deleted the automated posts from this feed, and I believe they’ve already been reported over on ao3, but if they post any more fics and you see them here, odds are good they’re also plagiarized so please don’t reblog them if I don’t see and delete them right away.
So I’ve been watching this conversation play out for a few days, a few months now really, and struggling with how to throw my two cents in. I’m not going to get flowery with metaphors or long winded with anecdotes, y’all. I’m just gonna come right out and say that when you comment with unsolicited constructive criticism on a piece of any creative writing, that criticism is no longer constructive and is inherently wrong. And as an editor, I can tell you explicitly why.
An author is an author. An editor is an editor. There is a hierarchy in that. An editor for an authored work of creative writing performs a different function than an editor for say, a piece of journalistic writing or…I dunno, academic, whatever other kind of professional writing you can think of. If a journalist handed me a piece of work and I was to edit it, I would be beholden to a certain stylebook and would also probably have jurisdiction to make true edits, ie cuts or changes to the text.
But an editor cannot author a piece of creative writing that they are editing. The author, at the end of the day, is the one in charge. The author, at the end of the day, is the one to in fact direct the editing. The author directs the editor, “Please proofread for spelling and grammar,” the term “proof” here denoting a finished manuscript that will not change structurally but may still be in need of fresh eyes to catch errors in grammar, punctuation, or spelling. Or the author requests, “Please read for characterization and/or continuity.” Or even, “Please read for continuity, but I would not like any notes on characterization.” The author can even appear to be giving free rein to an editor and say, “Please send me any revision notes to be discussed.” But over the course of that discussion, it is still the author saying, “With this note, you describe a reaction to a scene that I did not want. How do I make that scene illicit this other reaction that I want from the reader?” And then the editor works to achieve the author’s intended purpose with that creative work, full stop, even if the editor liked the original reaction to the scene in question and thinks it weakens the piece or the character or the statement to change it to something else. It is the author’s work, the author’s purpose, and even in this era of death of the author, at the stage where criticism is helpful, the author has the final say.
As an editor, I can go to an author and say, “I believe the piece would be stronger if we changed x, y, and z, in such-and-such a way,” and the author, as my employer and the one actually authoring the work, can disregard every word I have to say. Realistically speaking, an author can even decide to ignore proofreading line edits and seek a publisher that will ignore its own stylebook to publish something experimental and counter to traditional grammatical correctness. The author is in charge.
Readers and commenters, authors of fan fiction are not your ghost writers. They are in charge of their creative works. And if they have not directed your edits, if they have not come to you and said, “This is what I would like you to look out for while you read this piece for me,” your criticisms can. Not. be. Constructive. Since you. Are not. Constructing. The piece. The author. Is working towards.
Do not give concrit unless something explicitly states, “Concrit welcome.” That is an author asking for help constructing the piece they are working towards, or maybe developing their style, or maybe scoping out their audience so they can think of what to work on next. They can paw through and use or discard criticism at will. But if it is unasked for, it is more than likely unwelcome and by definition unhelpful and unconstructive. That is all.
A note on critics: a critic fulfills a further function and that is to observe a finalized piece of whatever medium and then speak on it in technical terms, they analyze the techniques utilized by the maker and whether they were executed correctly in theory, since you can’t exactly judge “art.” Y’know that episode of whatever cooking show where the man who spoke English as a second language made a savory meat instead of whatever dessert they had assigned for the challenge because he misheard them, but the judges critiqued him on the dish he made so they could grade him on his technical performance? That’s a critic. Critics don’t step in until something is done. A critic cannot author a piece they are critiquing, nor can they edit it, because their job is to analyze it once it is complete, and furthermore a critic not educated and well-versed in the technical wisdom of the medium they are critiquing is worth about as much as an umbrella under water.
As for the audience, guys, I know we’re trying to build a community. I know it’s fandom, I know it’s free, I know it’s supposed to be fun. But even in the case of making things more accessible, don’t hit the author up in public. Shit, if a beta is listed? Hit the beta up! That’s their job anyway, if something’s misspelled or there’s a typo, that’s their job performance lacking, not the author’s. Or if the author has listed another method of contact, do it in private. Do it the way that fosters community, not the way that discourages people from creating. And if there’s no private method of contact, as much as it may suck to hear this, just don’t read that author anymore. There’s a bunch of us working hard towards accessibility. Find us. Prompt us. Or, write what you’d like to see yourself and bring it to us so we can help you make it exactly how you want it to be. After all, we’re editors. And that’s our job: to help you make things Exactly How You Want Them To Be.
if [fanfiction authors] have not come to you and said, “This is what I would like you to look out for while you read this piece for me,”
your criticisms can. Not. be. Constructive. Since you. Are not. Constructing. The piece.
Louder for the people in the back
Also a super good point:
don’t hit the author up in public. Shit, if a beta is listed? Hit the beta up! That’s their job anyway, if something’s misspelled or there’s a typo, that’s their job performance lacking, not the author’s. Or if the author has listed another method of contact, do it in private. Do it the way that fosters community
like, u know there is a degree of moderation there, right? someone has to order the books to stock in the library. a library that lets any old creep stash their hastily scribbled shota pwp in between the shelves is a library that’s going to be shut down p quick. by the police. for providing ppl with child porn. (and yes if a picture of a tree or a description of a tree can make someone experience a tree, then the same can be said about a picture or description of a child in a sexual situation ffs)
I mean there’s like a million other logistical differences, and idk who checks erotica out of a library, but hey ppl can be wild abt these things
Hooboy. Well, as a librarian who has worked in many varieties of libraries, let me… try to… respond to this from a library and librarian perspective.
1) It is true that libraries have a process to go through for accepting materials, and that there is a degree of selectivity involved–this is because libraries have limited budgets, limited physical space, and limited staff to process and manage materials.
So, yes, any random junk written and left in the library would be thrown out. Not because the library would be concerned about its liability if anyone should see it; because we like to keep the library clean and organized, and leaving stuff on the shelf is not how we add things to the collection (how would they get CATALOGUED and LABELED???) And, of course, any adult attempting to show pornography (or, say, themselves) to actual children would be Removed From The Library because this would involve actual children being harmed by an actual adult in direct contact with them. Police do not shut down the libraries where this happens. They arrest the people harming the children.
Meanwhile, libraries spend VAST SUMS OF MONEY and ENDLESS STAFF HOURS to keep copies of Fifty Shades of Gray on the shelves where children actually can find them quite readily (and have them checked out on their library cards if mom’s has too many fines). Same with Last Tango in Paris and Flowers in the Attic and Year’s Best Erotica collections. (And Bibles, which get stolen at a ridiculous pace. I don’t know why, we were just forever having to order more of them.)
In an online space, which has effectively unlimited space, where adding new material costs nothing, and where the process of organizing that material and making it available is fully automated and what labor is involved is taken on by the contributing author, literally none of those constraints apply, so more content is more content! It’s catalogued and labeled as soon as it’s posted! It cannot be misshelved. Perfect!
2) This is not to say that no physical library has handwritten erotica in its collection somewhere. Many, many libraries collect rare local works such as self-published zines, and unique items like the personal papers of notable people (San Jose State University, for instance, holds the papers of the Kensington Ladies’ Erotica Society; The University of Iowa Zine Collection includes fanfic zines with erotic content; UCLA has the personal papers of Anais Nin), and doubtless some of these zines and personal papers include erotica. Because this handwritten material would be unique and its value would be presumed to lie mainly in the fact of its authorship, it would be properly collected, not in a library, but in an archive or special collection, where some archivist would dutifully folder it and make a note of what it was so future visitors to the collection could readily access it.
The main goal there would be to protect the material, not the person who might potentially view the material.
I worked in a public library which had an extensive collection of Playboy on microfilm, for instance. We kept it behind a desk where it had to be requested and checked out with a library card before it could be viewed. This was partly to prevent children viewing material inappropriate for their age–just as, say, the AO3 clearly marks adult material as such–but mainly to prevent vandalism of the material by people who disapproved of it. Several of the images on the film had been damaged by people trying to scratch them out; for the safety of the microfilm, we restricted access to it. This is also why the AO3 doesn’t allow people who dislike a fic to force it to be taken down.
This is also why most libraries celebrate Banned Books Week by eagerly higlighting works which people have ATTEMPTED to force to be removed from libraries–including work like Lolita, which is read by many as a titillating pedophile love affair. Librarians are not celebrating Lolita. They are celebrating the principle that they will not be stopped from collecting materials of interest and making them available to readers.
3) From your description of a library where children can freely access anything on the shelves, you seem to have only one conception of a library–a public library with open stacks, or perhaps a school library. There are, in fact, many kinds of libraries, with academic libraries being the most obvious foil to your description.
In an academic or university library, all authorized users of the library are adults who take adult responsibility for what they find in the library, much like when adult internet users indicate on a website that they are choosing to view adult content.
When I worked in a university library, I asked one of the librarians what do when a guy was sitting at a computer very obviously watching porn while a young woman, sitting next to him doing something text-based, seemed like she might be uncomfortable. I was told in no uncertain terms that the library’s policy was to relocate the person who was uncomfortable. The library was a repository of information and a place to access information: any kind of information, including the erotic. Under no circumstances would we curtail a library user’s access to that information.
(Unless he got his own actual dick out where people could see it, then we could call the campus police. Because, again: actual humans directly involved.)
Duke University Library Erotica Collection, 1940s-1960s (”An archive of original illustrations, sketchbooks, and erotic stories, depicting transgressive sex acts including (but not limited to) lesbian and heterosexual sex, incest, pedophilia, sadomassochistic behavior, and copulation with objects as varied as sex toys, produce, and household appliances. The stories and illustrations appear to be the work of a single individual, with nearly all narrative told from a female’s point of view. Also includes some amateur pornographic photography and magazine clippings.”)
Queer Fiction Writer 
