Fullmetal Alchemist Big Bang (original) (raw)
April 22nd, 2016
How’s everyone doing? By now, you should have a really good handle on your story, some of you may be already be wrapping things up or even editing some things. If not, you’ve still got plenty of time, don’t worry.
This week, we wanted to address an issue that we recently uncovered with a participant. While interacting with one of our authors, we discovered that the age they put on their sign up was not their actual age. They said they were older in order to be able to write adult content and potentially receive adult artwork for their fic. The mods came together and decided that it was best for the entire fest if we ejected this person, and we wanted to explain to all of you why we made the decision.
We all know that people who are considered minors have read, written, and drawn some very adult things. The fandom world is riddled with smut by underage teenagers, and their fan art is all over DA, RedCurtain, and tumblr. When an individual makes the decision to do those things when they’re not old enough to do so legally, the punishment for the crime comes back to them alone. It’s unlikely that the offender would even be reported in the first place, but if they were, their local authorities would respond in whatever way aligns with their laws.
In our case, we put out the call for authors and artists and put in a stipulation about age. If anyone’s parents were to discover their child had participated in an event where adult situations might be revealed, the moderators could be held responsible. This isn’t some mean rule we made up to weed out kids, this is a rule we put in to protect ourselves and our adult participants. Minors CANNOT submit works that are sexually explicit. To do so puts our staff and our adult participants at risk for being labeled sex offenders according to international law.
This fest is about sharing our love for FMA and making new friends as we participate together. Participants lying about their age threaten the integrity of the entire event and put a lot of us in legal danger. We ask that you be sure that your correct age is listed in the sign-ups for your safety as well as ours. If you need to contact the mods to check your age, don’t hesitate to message us. We would rather someone admit their error than for us to find out they lied about their age. IF IT IS FOUND THAT YOU INTENTIONALLY LIED ABOUT YOUR AGE, YOU WILL BE BANNED FROM THIS COMMUNITY. That being said, we don’t like banning people. We want to be friends with everyone. Please be honest and this won’t have to happen.
If you’re just starting your fic today, you have 34 days to make it to 15k, which breaks down to about 442 words per day. At this point, if you haven’t started on your fic, you might not be able to finish. It can still be done, but only if you dedicate yourself! Good luck and we’ll check in again next week!