VALL's Implosion
*A Vindication of Sorts*
by the KCbitch

Old Folktale on Obsession

"Two monks, an old one and a young one, were traveling down a road to the river crossing. At the crossing, they discovered a woman waiting for someone to help her cross in the ferry. The young monk was put off, as women were forbidden at the monastery as unclean things, and he was even more disconcerted when his older companion invited the woman to cross with them.

Oh, the satisfaction of vindication. This is a not-so-brief update, a sort of creative nonfiction flow, rather than an a true essay (since I'm working on my grad studies / thesis / fanfics and that does tend to suck up time) on the current status of the Virgin Anti-Lemon League. In this I will explain my brief stint as Strapaid, VALL's recent abandonment by their founding members and a final look at their real intolerance of both dissention and yaoi/yuri, plus their mutual ego-stroking.

After my first two essays, there was some initial backlash from VALL members as no one likes being shown to be misogynistic, intolerant and homophobic. Only one response was intelligent, the rest were narcissistic and haphazard at best. I was told that I had misjudged the entire group based on the actions of one or two members, and that the anti-yaoi stance of Bucky was not the stance of the entire group (this to be dealth with further on). Although I'm a firm believer that you are known by your friends, I decided I'd take them at their word and examine them closer.

I took the name Strapaid (Gaelic for slut, it seemed fitting), whipped up a quick poetry site full of my bad high school work for camo and joined VALL. Of course, this was after I told everyone on an ML what I was doing, thus ensuring that at least one VALL-ean would hear of it and I wouldn't have to keep this up for too long. I am nothing if not impatient.

During the time I was a member, the founders knew who I was but did not tell the others in hopes that I might be converted to their side. After all, surely I would see their logic and turn from the dark side. At the very least, I would provide a counter to their logic and perhaps a stimulus for some debate. This totally misses the point, however, as I only wanted to see if I had been wrong and if VALL really was just a group of misunderstood people with good intentions.

Hardly the case. Instead I found a group devoted to telling each other how good and talented they are, along with even more vicious comments, this time directed at a political quote from a man who vehemently disagreed with Wal-Mart's decision not to display women's magazines with half-dressed models on the covers. I know, this has everything to do with fanfiction, ne? This thread has apparently since been deleted, as have been many threads. If there's one thing this group enjoys, it's revamping their forum.

Many of the threads, upon perusal, will show a group so enamored of itself that members glorify each other's fics. Now this isn't all that unusual for any group, as often there are talented and practiced writers that earn praise and burgeoning writers that should be encouraged along. However, VALL members often called other members the best writers on ff.net, and that they were gratified that the best writers were all in VALL. Now granted, this came from a couple of the older members who have since taken off, but the self-aggrandizement continues.

As for debate, this is one thing VALL does not do well. Any debate team (or in fact my own online debate buddies) can attest, argument should prompt research, intense googling and a questioning of your own stance. God knows lirpa's done this to me several times and I hope I've done it for her. Debate does not mean stating your opinion and having never questioned yourself. People in a real argument will become upset, angry, disillusioned, and still go out for coffee when it's done. They will not call each other vicious names, especially behind their backs, and will question only the stance, not the person. (All this null and void in the various levels of government.)

Secure in my previous assertions of what VALL is, I took my leave in a spectacular splash. I would have left as innocuously as I came, but Rae demanded I "out" myself, so I did. In a single thread, I told them what I found, viciousness, conformity, and vanity. Of course there was some heated reaction (and I do mean *heated*). I've always thought it amusing that so many people say that we should stand up for what we believe in, even when many people tell us it is wrong, but then those same people tell you you're crazed and that you should shut up because they don't like what you're saying.

Life carries on. I went on secure in my conclusions. (Though I did not discover until later, discussion continued about "the KCbitch" behind private threads about how I would never get a boyfriend, how I was ashamed of my actions or even that I or my cat had died. DoraMouse even mentioned that she'd known me long before VALL, though I can only assume she means the long-dead Under Manhattan forums in the Ninja Turtle fandom, where she once hosted an archive. Back then, all of about 3-4 years ago, I wasn't quite the outspoken KCbitch I am today. In fact, I don't recall being much of a bitch at all and presented my opinions much more politely and on pussyfeet than I do today, and I don't recall any politcal/lemon discussion there. If we're gonna get upset at mere opinion presentation, then all of us are KCbitches.

Ironically, when a newer member brought up my essays, instead of taking the chance to explain why I was oh so wrong and show off their remarkable debating skills, they instead fell back on cheap personal shots against me. I'm not saying I expect them to like me, but for a mature group, they don't enjoy showing off their vaunted maturity very often, do they?)

For the record, I am not ashamed, I am not even in the market for a boyfriend and I write fanfics and other essays, not to mention a shitload of grad work, so life does not revolve around VALL. My cat is not dead, I am not dead except in the Nightwish "to the world" meaning, and my name means Goblin Cat, as in the Japanese version of Alice in Wonderland's Cheshire Cat.

*looks up* Not brief? Believe me, I'm paraphrasing.

Fast forward several months. I received an email from a disenfranchised VALL member who wishes to remain anonymous, saying that she no longer agreed with the VALL clique and did I know about what had recently happened to VALL? During the Pledge of Allegiance controversy, Rae George created a thread asking members what they thought of the whole issue. Rather than intelligent debate, however, what resulted was a bunch of replies attacking the idea. When questioned about why they had answered in such a manner, some replied that they had not read the entire post in the first place.

In my anonymous' sources words, "I remember the thread, it was this thing where she posted some newspaper article about the pledge of allegiance and asked people to comment on it, but she didn't give her own opinion. Doramouse told her the thread was inappropriate, someone else told her to move to France, and another person, tenshi sasher I think, went on a tirade about her religion. I think those last two people later said they hadn't even read the article. It was really mean, actually. so then she posted a new thread saying she was leaving, and she hasn't posted since though I bet a million dollars she's been reading their responses. It's just weird to me because they all act like that all the time and she never got all mad before now. A lot of people have been leaving the forum, but none of them were so violent about it as she was."

Color Rae George pissed. Confronted by the ugly true face of the group, she washed her hands of it and left it a pale shadow of what it once was. Several rather humorous things occurred. The founding members realized what VALL really was, a group not devoted to open debate and literary improvement but rather feel-good back-slapping, snipping at opposing viewpoints and not even reading the opposing viewpoint in its entirety. (Makes me wonder if they even read my posts. A few must have, as I've been accused of using big words to make myself sound smart.)

Again, in my anonymous sources own words, "the mods have deleted the thread she made and everything related to it. She just said that she was sick of what the board had turned into and the people there, and "I wash my hands of you". Then people posted blaming themselves and offering to leave and deleria called her, like, an oppressive tyrant. Then all the threads just disappeared. I'm waiting for them to deny it happened and pretty soon deny she existed, like in 1984, right?"

Many older members left. Neither Rae George nor Bucky links to VALL on their sites or ff.net profiles. In fact, Rae George, as the founding member, went so far as to restructure the VALL webpage, leaving it an impersonal collection of links without any members list or even a link to the forum, essentially cutting off the entire group. Though many remaining members try to pass this off as her ideas changing or being a little upset, how many of you would leave a group you formed and respected in such a manner?

When your founder grows this disgusted with you...oy. She obviously did not lose faith in her initial idea, that of lemon inaccessibility below the legal age, but she obviously lost faith in the group itself.

After the debacle (which was quickly removed from their forum, and which I know only through my anonymous source ) , deleria was made the forum moderator but not given the password to the main site. Now VALL spends most of its time playing the kind of word games that other boards only play to pass the time between posts. Some recent attempts have been made to revitalize the board by bringing back older posts and faqs, but little activity has been noted.

VALL is indeed both homophobic and misogynistic. Don't' just take my word for it, another member, MillyFan, left VALL because she was no longer ashamed of writing harder R fics and yaoi, which in her worlds "this community seems to frown upon." Of course the group then brought up an anti-yaoi site the leaving member had started a long time ago and no longer wished to be associated with. What is highly amusing, captain, is that while they wondered if the KCbitch would have an aneurysm if I saw that site, the anti-yaoi site's tenets were not only more honorable than VALL's but also encouraged debate in yaoi forums. Any yaoi-forum goer knows that once we get you in our perverted claws, you'll be trapped in our loving logic. In any case, encouraging an open dialogue is never something to let your head explode over. Unless, of course, you're VALL, in which case you immediately associate debate with aneurisms.

Also funny is that while they called the other anti-yaoi site (http://www.myrrhlynn.us/antiyaoi/) militant, I found that they are not. The tenets? If you don't like yaoi, don't go to their sites. Debate yaoi-ers (Note it's not "flame yaoi-ers," this site is honorable.) They only thing they're really militant about is cannon. Aside from a knee-jerk reaction, there's nothing inherently bad about standing against fan-rape in any form, only the moral question of what constitutes fan-rape. In which case, see their above encouragement of debate.

Then we also have the VALL Anti-Yaoi Fangirls thread, which quickly devolves into an Anti-Yaoi thread. It starts with the above precept against fan-rape, but then statements such as the following crop up:

--I just don't think yaoi should exist in some areas of fanfiction. It ruins the creator's characters because, more often than not, the characters put into a yaoi fanfiction aren't, in the slightest bit, gay.

--anti-yaoi and anti-gay are two different pairs of shoes.

--Gay is a choice. Yaoi is PORN.

--Why else do you think that 30% of all sex offenders BLAME porn for putting the ideas into their heads to begin with?

--Until you get cases of a father, showing his 10-year old son a porn video to educate him about sex, and the kid turns around and rapes a 5 and a 6 year old. (anyone got a link to that incident? I'd like to shove it in Burned Vamp's face, since she seems to be convinced sex ed equates pornography.)

--Bondage in fiction turns into reality. Rape in fiction turns into reality. The more circulated it is, the more crime it causes.

--Sure, I personally am someone who won't even read shounen-ai because I feel practicing that lifestyle is inherently wrong (due to my religious beliefs).

--She's more apt to create more yaoi fans than anti-yaoi fans by her promotion of snuffing it all out.

--Amen Lee, Bucky

--Not all yaoi is bad. Most of it, yes, but not all of it.

--The entire point of yaoi is to bring together same gendered characters who are NOT originally homosexual and see what happens...

--...yaoi might have the same problems as the term 'lemon' does. Everyone has a different interpretation of it.

--Yaoi and Yuri also usually don`t follow the standards of whatever series the writer is basing his/her(usually her) story off of. These are usually just written for a mixture of reviews and whack-fodder.

Do these comments even merit an attempt at response? Who can argue with a mind closed to anything other than yaoi=porn? (This from the group that once said that they never meant to sound anti-yaoi before). That gay is a sinful choice and not a biological precept? That bondage is a crime? That porn creates rapists and molesters? These are opinions born of righteous prejudice and wanton ignorance.

You can't blame porn for a mental imbalance any more than we blame the gun for the murderer's actions. In court, we do not try the gun, we try the person. Porn isn't even a bullet. As in everything, VALL attempts to take away the concept of parental responsibility, as the webmistress becomes responsible for the minor who clicks on her links, rather than the parent who dumps their children in front of a computer babysitter. They use the example of the 5 year old with porn as the only cause for his actions, never considering the character of the parents or medical conditions of the child. Porn is the evil zapping mind control rays into your brain.

At the end of that thread, the conclusion is that they cannot define yaoi just as they can't define a lemon. Yes, that's right, because of their moral collectivity and the stance that sex is a corruptive influence, they can't even define what a lemon is. Is it hardcore sex, implied sex behind closed doors, innuendo? An entire VALL thread was devoted to this question, with little success. And that's somewhat to be expected in a group defined not by ideas but by morals, isn't it? My morals aren't your morals, and trying to build something based on something so abstract and elusive without allowing for some kind of flexibility is asking for trouble.

Just goes to show that the people who want to hide lemons are the ones most obsessed with them and think about them the most. Very few in the slash community have taken the time to write any essays about sex or slash, since the community is rather firm in its belief of reader responsibility, warning pages and in the plot potential of sex. Sex is not everything in most fandoms, and indeed is useful only for literary integrity or the occasional reader thrill. For all we write it, sex is hardly special. Anyone can do it. It takes engaging characters and tension to make it worth reading. From two characters that may hate each other or even not know about each other, there are uncomfortable glances and thoughts, questioning, thinking about implications and what place they're emotionally in, vulnerabilities and risks, escalating into clumsiness, awkward encounters and anxieties ultimately leading to something that transcends the physical, something spiritual that is so fragile it can be broken with a look, but is so important and deep and full of love that it's worth risking everything. That's what the ideal lemon is, be it het or yaoi/yuri, an exploration of vulnerability. Some fics will explore this better than others. Is it right to castigate all of them?

So after all this, what do we learn from VALL, children? For one, sex is purely biological, without any spiritual or romantic base. All of us women need men to validate our existences. If you make a severe mistake, simply revamp your board and hide it and pretend it never happened. And always insult the distinguished competition. Just because yaoi/het writers are humans doesn't make them worthy of any respect. Gay is a choice and porn is satan.

In truth, we've learned that people devoted to discouraging lemons are the ones most devoted to lemons.

I encourage everyone to finally leave VALL by the roadside and let them continue to carry their lemons. If you disagree with the proliferation of lemons, there are better groups with better means to join. You can try this anti-fanyaoi website, http://www.myrrhlynn.us/antiyaoi/, the place founded by the VALL member who recently left the group. It's a bit more aggressive than I prefer, but it also links to the infamous livejournal which also includes debate, not just name-calling. The only problem with it is the closed forum, but as they come forward and say that only wish to rant in private, it's really not a bad thing. No false claims of debate is honest at least.

You could also visit the http://www.geocities.com/antihentaisquad/, a group built on personal choice, honor and integrity. Though they hold different opinions from myself, they are respectful, mature, and quite lacking in the viciousness department. And if you desire active boards with plenty of games and backslapping, there are far more active boards with deeper discussion beyond that of a clique endlessly telling each other how wonderful they are.