Tonight, Livejournal posted a response to tremendous fan outrage regarding the banning of users Ponderosa121 and Elaboration. To recap, these two artists were terminated when they posted smutty artwork of Harry Potter characters who may or may not have been underage. Livejournal's post on the subject is here but essentially they've made it clear (by actions as much as words) that they will not allow pornographic art depicting minors.

And on the surface this is an admirable goal. I have no problems with banning artists who actually do produce kiddy porn. Look: I think kiddy porn is utterly disgusting and the people who produce it are evil. And 'evil' is not a world I throw around lightly. I make absolutely no defense of folks who create dirty art of kiddies, be it drawn, CGI, or photographic. I don't care if the little children are real or not -- it's wrong. And I also hope that I'm correct in believing that most of fandom feels the same way I do.

(And I'm going to say right here, before people start hitting the comment button to respond without reading the rest of this editorial: I am not accusing Ponderosa and Elaboration of drawing kiddy porn. I'll touch on that more in a second.)

The problem with artwork based on speculative fiction is that appearances are not always what they seem and Livejournal is sometimes going to have one royal hell of a time figuring out what artwork represents a minor and what doesn't. They allow smut of adults, but not of "underage" characters. In trying to figure out which is which they are going to screw up and the wank is going to continue unless they institute some fairer policies on how they handle instances of questionable art. Banning artists for life for the first offense when a question exists as to the artist's intent is not a fair policy.

The first issue with determining age in artwork is figuring out by looking at it when a piece of art actually depicts a minor. A specific, common, example is of artwork based on anime and manga characters. Bishi style male characters often look significantly younger than they are, and many female anime characters look like little girls to Western eyes even if they're supposed to represent adults.

If somebody draws a nudie of, say, the anime character Himura Kenshin from Rurouni Kenshin, the artwork could easily be taken to be a representation of a minor by abuse staffers who are not familiar with the series. However, much of the series centers around Kenshin in his late twenties and it's only the art style that makes him appear younger.

For illustrative purposes, here's a link to a page of various (mostly clean) fan art drawings of Kenshin on Deviantart.com. Kenshin is the redhead, and the fan art images of him with his hair pulled back into a low ponytail are of him as an adult. The ones with a high ponytail are of him as a teenager.

Even more realistic styles of art can have ambiguous ages and opinions of viewers can vary. For example, my personal reaction to Ponderosa's artwork was to say that Potter looked (slightly) underage. And yes, I squicked a bit -- porn just isn't my thing. However, there have been quite a few other people who claim he looks at least eighteen. Who's right? As Ponderosa herself pointed out in the comments on Melissa's article, here, it's not like you can ask Potter what age he was when his portrait was drawn. Ponderosa's style does leave his age open to interpretation.

Going by the "canon" age of characters also isn't possible -- for one, it's quite possible for an artist to draw younger characters all grown up, and for two, we're dealing with science fiction and fantasy. "Age of adulthood" in a speculative fiction universe can be a rather open question.

If somebody draws Buffybot and Spike, set a week after Buffybot was created, she's by definition minor -- she's not eighteen. (For that matter, Buffy was only sixteen when she had sex with centuries-old Angel on primetime TV.) I also seem to remember a large number of various alien races on Star Trek who became adults in extraordinarily short periods of time. I'm sure our readers can come up with some other examples. Feel free to start listing them. My point here is that we can't use "character's actual age" to determine if the character is a minor anymore than we can go by appearance.

There's also a third possible permutation and that is a character who looks like a child but isn't. An artist could draw vampire who looks fourteen but is actually fourteen hundred. The artist may have a story to back the age up, perhaps even something professionally published. If someone draws an image of the hypothetical 1400 year old teenage-looking vampire doing something naughty, is it kiddy porn or not? There is some interesting morality there, and I don't know what my answer is to that one. I'd honestly have to think about it. I'd be very curious to hear what my readers think about this.

The bottom line, however, is that Livejournal has decided that they're going to determine when a piece of artwork represents underage porn and ban users who post it. I can also guarantee that fans will disagree with some of their decisions. The wank, therefore, will continue. I don't envy Livejournal the job they've set out for themselves in determining what constitutes "underage" in relation to fan art, and I truly hope they've got a better idea about how to do it than I do.

Edit: to add that I'm not all that personally fond of porn depicting adults, either, but I respect and defend fanartists who want to draw it and fans who want to look at it. Livejournal has historically allowed porn and apparently still does -- at least as far as I can tell based on their very unclear communications.