Horizon Fan Club's 1999 Discussion Regarding Adult Fanworks

In 1999, ten years after The Blake's 7 Wars, some fans continued their war on, among other things, the prevalence of adult fanworks in the Blake's 7 fandom.
Horizon Fan Club was one of the largest Blake's 7 fan clubs and was an important hub of the fandom. Diane Gies, the club's president, sent a message to the staff of the club proposing that the advertisers in their fan publications, Horizon Newsletter and Horizon Letterzine, had to sign a statement vowing that they did not produce, or agent for others, any B7 fan fiction containing 'adult' artwork. The editors themselves would decide what was explicit: 
 
The fan club and newsletter would also refuse to advertise any convention with actor guests unless they too they confirmed in writing that there would be a ban on dealers selling adult B7 fiction with explicit art content. Fanzines with no art could not be openly displayed on the sales table and had to be hidden away. Nothing on the table could be marked "adult" because this would "create a knowledge that such things exist in the person passing by."
The proposal also sought to remove any links on the fan club's web page to sites with adult content (even sites with adult content warnings) or who themselves linked to sites with adult content. 
This proposed change was likely related to the fandom's particular history, aka The Blake's 7 Wars (an extensive fandom dispute over a number of issues including slash fanworks, RPF and profiting from fandom), as well as the powers that be's close association with the club and the desire for "respectability." It was also very much propelled by Gies' personal and long-running dislike of slash fanworks.
 
One site Gies specifically discussed was Judith Proctor's hermit.org site. 
This email was leaked to the main Blake's 7 mailing list, Lysator, where it caused much discussion. Although most of the mailing list discussions were vigorous,index from 1999. Gies' proposal was not adopted.
The incident became known as "Lightergate" due to the pseudonym used by the individual who leaked it to the Lysator mailing list, "Danni Lighter".
For other discussions and events related to adult material in fandom, see Alt.startrek.creative Slash Wars (1997), AO3 is open source (2016-18), and Tumblr NSFW Content Purge (2018).
==Leaked to Lysator==
The proposal was initially circulated privately, but was then sent to the Blake's 7 mailing list Lysator under the pseudonym "Danni Lighter." 
(See Regarding The Leak for more detail and fan responses to the leak)
 
One can read the message titles here. To read actual messages, you can access them via FTP by visiting ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/blake7 and registering as "Guest."
==The Proposal==
:Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 12:23:25 GMT From: "Danni Lighter" <danlite@hotmail.com> To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: [B7L] Message-ID: <19991008122326.26420.qmail@hotmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
:Thought you should all see this.
::Original Message-----
::From: Diane Gies (Horizon) Sent: Thursday, October 07, 1999 3:58 PM To: kathy@songbird.nascr.net Cc: tuckers@easynet.co.uk; gillian@mpuddle.freeserve.co.uk; jager@clara.net; paula.robinson@rcn.org.uk; rae@clara.net; sue.cowley@bbc.co.uk; JudithSmith@csl-deloitte.co.uk Subject: Horizon policy decision
==Some Responses==
===Regarding The Leak===
Some fans thought that this email may have been sent to Lysator in error as it has an informal, almost confidential tone (suggesting that they keep the policy discussion away from a committee chair member (over 70 years old in age) who did not 'need to know' of the existence of adult and slash material). It was mainly suspected that someone - using the pseudonym "Danni Lighter" - forwarded a private email to Lysator. 
 
 
===Old Grudges===
===Regarding Who Gets to Decide Club Rules===
===Regarding the Proposal Itself===
 
==References==
Category:2019 Featured Articles
Category:Blake's 7 Fan Clubs
Category:1999 Events
Category:Blake's 7 Wars