verushka70

Yeah, iirc the text was hidden because the idea of bad!Ben and bad!Ben fanfic was so controversial in mainstream due South fandom that people hid it... kind of like when people wrote RPF back then: they were really afraid. NOW RPF is all over the AO3 archive, but back before AO3 existed, people were really afraid of both other fans' reactions, of stuff being taken down from actual fanfic archives by the mods, and of possible legal ramifications.

Of course, the latter doesn't apply to bad!Ben fic, but many other fen didn't necessarily approve of it, and many openly disapproved of it as non-canonical. There's much more tolerance in fandom now. Back then people didn't want fandom itself being viewed as super freakish AND there were actual life/work consequences to being outed as a slash writer... so there was a lot more policing of fanfic content, by the fandom itself. Slash and explicit m/f fanfic were forbidden in the mainstream due South fanfic email distribution list. They had their own LISTSERV and that's where they stayed. But see, back then, it was okay for the main fandom to discriminate against slash authors. We were "weird" - ESPECIALLY the Fraser/Kowalski slash authors. Mainstream (majority, at the time) dS fen thought Fraser couldn't possibly be gay for Ray - especially not The New Ray. Hence the splitting off of not only slash, but F/K slash.

Now that I think of it, that was a weird time to join dS fandom. I think attitudes depend on the fandom itself. I don't recall there being anything like that in Forever Knight fandom - of course, yes, the slashfic was segregated, but not from other explicit fic - but the slash was SO OVERT in that show, pretty much nobody could deny it! 🙂

But then Forever Knight was shown at 11:30pm at night in its mainstream TV broadcast run... whereas due South was broadcast at a much more "family values" wholesome prime time 7pm "when children might be watching." (And in cable reruns, during the after school hours of 3-5.) Seriously, people said that: children might be watching it/reading the mainstream dS email discussion list.

I can't remember if Hexwood allowed RPF or not. I don't think it did, for fear that the entire archive would be legally forced to be taken down. Hence the sharing of RPF privately, one fan to another, only with the approval of the author. (I was able to get a copy of an early controversial RPF fic, though I don't think I have it anywhere, anymore... it was long ago, and that was probably 10 computers ago, at least.) I think it allowed bad!Ben fic, though... but I can't recall for sure. It was so long ago! iz old