Thread by @scribblesscript, Gather round, friends, and let me serenade you with a story. It [...]

Gather round, friends, and let me serenade you with a story. It has action. It has comedy. It has tragedy. And most of all, it pushes questions that will haunt you for years to come.

Let me tell you the epic story of the Zygon penis.

For those not aware, there are numerous direct to video productions about Doctor Who properties using independent licenses. Mostly, these were made in the 90s, with films about Autons, ex-companions, Sontarans, even "Cyberons".

But some of them didn't stay in the 90s...

In February 2008, the clever people at BBV productions figured that, with the modern series in full swing, the one thing they really needed to do to sell their wares was make a softcore porn featuring Zygons.

This is an actual thing that exists.

(For those less familiar with #DoctorWho, Zygons are shapeshifting sucker monsters from space that lactate from the Loch Ness Monster. That's not important.)

So, on May 7, 2017, I made a choice. I chose to watch it.

Now, one of the many things you need to understand about this film, perhaps the most important, is that this film opens on full-frontal nudity. Yes, that's right, this shot pans ALL the way down.

So, naturally, I livepost this nonsense to one of my Doctor Who discords. I mean, this film is just pointlessly filthy. Utter trash. I needed to validate that I was actually watching this and not just hallucinating it.

So we're all laughing about this, and a friend in the discord has the most brilliant idea, something that would change the world:

The Mission Begins

(No, I don't know why they set my nickname to that)

Now, at this point, I'm still uncertain and having doubts. But friend, we were high on the adventure. The idea was out there, thus we couldn't possibly turn back.

And, AND, we worked out a very important fact: The wiki rules did not ban penises.

But we were all scared.

So I plucked up that Gryffindor spirit to take one for the team, got ready to post, and... failed

Fortunately, a brave friend was on hand. We were careful. We were taking this seriously. What could possibly go wrong?

*play Mission Impossible music*

The image was immediately removed. The person responsible for the removal was very succinct in their reasoning.

BUT WE'D READ THOSE RULES. WE KNEW IT WAS ALLOWED. AND WE WERE NOT
GOING DOWN
WITHOUT A FIGHT

So I did what anyone would.

I undid the edit.

We were basically power mad at this point

Why did we want to troll the wiki within their guidelines, you might ask at this point.

Well, there used to be a page listing every LGBT character in Doctor Who, and the wiki removed it, because the wiki's rules are to take an in-universe approach to defining everything...

According to the wiki, as homophobia is over by the end of the universe within the fictionality of Doctor Who, the page was unnecessary.

However, you know, a page defining penises within Doctor Who? Totally necessary.

We wanted to see how far they'd go for their rules.

Apparently, pretty far

Time passed. I went back to watching trashy sci fi softcore porno and chatting with friends. You'll never believe, at 48 minutes in, the title monsters actually showed up! Wild, huh?

But still, the penis stood.

BUT THEN... something horrible happened.

Fear not, friends. The story is only beginning.

As it turns out, there was a reason the dong was undone...

I REPEAT: THE ONLY REASON A PENIS WAS TAKEN OFF THE WIKI FOR A FAMILY SHOW WAS BECAUSE IT WAS A PNG RATHER THAN A JPG FILE

So we put it back as a jpg

Unfortunately, our old nemesis Mr. "Ah Jesus" didn't take kindly to that.

The battle began on the talk pages. Fortunately, we knew our shit, and linked this
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Tardis:What_the_Tardis_Data_Core_is_not#Not_safe_for_work

If you want to see the talk that followed, it is recorded here. I will also feature it in screenshots in combination with the discord to provide the fullest possible story of the chaos that followed.

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Talk:Penis

People were making, you know, sound arguments about how jesus no you don't put porn on a Doctor Who wiki, when an unlikely hero rose...

Czechout, one of the major moderators of TARDIS wiki, drew a hard line before the peen

"Doctor Who was never a children's program. It was, at the explicit will of Sydney Newman, made by the (adult) Drama Department. And later producers have often confirmed it is meant for families, not kids."

Cuz, you know, kids' shows can't have penises, but family ones sure can.

The talk page raged on with new strangers, and people got into DEEP DICK LORE

Proof "that penises aren't just limited to humanity, and that Zygons assume that among other things when engaging human form"

SEE? WE WERE DOING THEM A FAVOR!

And thus, a bunch of dudes congregated around the peen to spew about how grown-up and adult their beloved family TV show is.

This feels like a truly exceptional metaphor, really.

Time passed. We in the discord moved on to other bawdy jokes.

But the penis debate lurked in our hearts with warm feelings. And soon, it was to be resolved at last...

Things were heating up one last time

Or, as a friend said to me at the time, "I see the penis debate is still raging hard."

As the final battle dawned, we took stock and were thankful for how far we'd come

Like the greatest true stories, it didn't have a perfect, exciting ending. But I think it teaches us a lesson all the same.

After reaching out to the broader wikia guidelines, it was concluded, once and for all, that wikia does not allow full-frontal nudity on non-porn wikis.

But think, just for a moment. A bunch of fanboys would have been PERFECTLY HAPPY leaving a penis pic up on a wiki for a family tv show if their hand had not been forced by the larger platform they were using.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

In the end, Czechout and co didn't take it as an issue of, you know, guidelines. You know what the word they used was?

Censorship.

While noting "I spoke with my Fandom colleagues about this image and it was determined to be in violation of Fandom's ToU", this editor found it most important to close with "We don't censor, and this wiki is NOT AT ALL aimed at kids."

We set out to troll some entitled, flowchart-obsessed fanboys for treating queer issues as an irrelevance.

But in the end, they turned out to be so much scarier and so much more devoted than that, to the point where they wrote their own punchline.

So that's my closing note, I guess. Fandom cannot exist in isolation from real world values and social issues. We can't approach stories in a vacuum.

Otherwise, penises on kids' websites becomes a great-looking idea.

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