Anonymous Incarnation · 9d

Hello! I was interested in participating in the gotcha, but I saw there's a rule against dead dove content (including underage) in the fandom without justification. Considering this is a charity event, and SPOD is a very popular ship, is there a valid reason to ostracize a big part of the fandom like this? It doesn't seem appropriate to appeal to fandom discourse in a charity event, that's all.

Hi, thank you for your question, and thank you so much for your interest in our fundraiser for Palestine! We understand your concerns and would like to apologize, as it was never our intention to make anyone feel ostracized.

For transparency, there are some aspects of the ORV Gotcha that mods are still working hard to finalize. In the interest check, we had initially decided to follow the same rules as the original TGCF Gotcha for Gaza (which included no Dead Dove). Behind the scenes, the mods have been extensively discussing various details of the event and wanted to wait to see the final results of our interest check to come to a final decision regarding NSFW and Dead Dove.

In the end, after a lot of careful discussions, we have now decided to not allow Dead Dove as well as general NSFW. This is for several reasons, which are not centered on fandom discourse or trying to cater to the discourse. It’s simply to keep the event safe and accessible to fans of all ages.

The reasons are explained below in more detail:

  1. Discord's strict policy against any kind of sexual or suggestive content of minors means that if we allowed any kind of underage content, our creators' Discord server, which will be used for main communications with creators, would be reported and permanently banned, with users involved also permanently banned. As we cannot have the server shut down and members banned and yet still continue the fundraiser, we are carefully abiding by Discord's terms of use. In addition to this, there is a similar policy on Tumblr and Twitter prohibiting underage content. Furthermore, as we have seen in the passing months, there is already a high chance of being censored for speaking about Palestine. By strictly keeping to platforms’ rules, we’re trying to make that possibility less likely.

  2. We have multiple interested creators who are minors unable to donate due to their age and hence want to help raise funds for Gaza as creators. We welcome such participants as support for Palestine should not only be for adults - people of any age should take any action they can. As such, since we are expecting minor participants, we have a responsibility to ensure their safety and comfort, this is why we have been debating whether or not to even include any NSFW content even if properly tagged.

  3. The interest check has now closed and the final poll result is that just over 70% of our interested creators regardless of age are only interested in SFW content, with only about 24% of responders being interested in any NSFW content at all, let alone Dead Dove. Due to this, we aren’t expecting there to be enough creators to fulfill all the NSFW prompts, let alone enough creators for Dead Dove prompts. As such, we are trying to avoid a scenario where there are only a handful of creators available to fill specific types of prompts, which based on prior Gotcha experience often results in creators feeling overwhelmed and burning out.

  4. The original TGCF Gotcha For Gaza and the vast majority of other Gotchas also did not include Dead Dove so we are following the original Gotcha rules to keep the event as accessible to as many as possible of all ages. The few Gotchas that allowed Dead Dove were specifically for fandoms where 90%+ of fans were adults. However, as the ORV fandom has quite a number of minors, the context is different and hence we have to make different decisions that suit the situation. The mods cannot and will not be facilitating an environment where minors may be exposed to Dead Dove content, regardless of any donor interest in such prompts.

  5. SPOD tends to be a polarizing topic, and a fundraiser for victims of genocide is very much not the time or place to resolve this. As you pointed out, it is not appropriate to have fandom discourse at a charity event, which is why we will not include it, nor will any discourse about any ships, characters, fandoms, etc. be accepted in the server during the course of the Gotcha.

We apologize to anyone who was looking forward to submitting/creating SPOD prompts. We hope that this doesn't discourage you from donating or participating. Platonic SPOD and any other content of platonic interactions between minors and adults is very welcome! It is only any underage romantic/sexual content that will not be included within the scope of the event. Our intention is not at all to single out or target SPOD shippers specifically - underage NSFW of Lee Jihye or Lee Gilyoung for example would also not be allowed, simply because we have participants of all ages and for the duration of the event, we have a responsibility to ensure their safety and comfort. If anyone submits a Dead Dove prompt by accident, we will simply be reaching out to them to ask them to submit another prompt instead.

We understand that some adult ORV fans may be interested in specifically Dead Dove 18+ content. Perhaps fans could set up a 18+ Dead Dove fundraiser among adult ORV fans if interest is high. For example, Bungou Stray Dogs has a 18+ Dead Dove-specific fundraiser, as well as a SFW non-Dead Dove fundraiser - as ideally, Dead Dove content should be kept separate from SFW content in fandoms with minors, so that individuals can make their own informed, age-appropriate decisions to participate based on their own comfort level and age. There have also been fandoms that created multiple ship-specific or character-specific Gotchas too. The more fundraisers, the better, as it means more donations for Palestine. Our current mod team of ORV Gotcha is simply too busy to run another event, but anyone interested in Dead Dove content is welcome to organize their own fundraisers so that more funds can be raised for Palestine! We hope that this inspires all people everywhere to take action, to donate and raise funds for Palestine, and to continue the movement beyond that. Thank you!

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