News Content

In this last spotlight post of our March Membership Drive we want to talk about the importance of international diversity, and how central that diversity is to the organizational vitality and inclusive mission of the OTW. Chances are, if you're reading this, you're in a fandom that uses English as its lingua franca. With many EFL (English as a foreign language) fans "passing" as native speakers, there's often the default assumption that everyone is US-American. But as anyone who was surprised to discover that their favourite author is actually from Israel, or Argentina, or Malaysia knows: that assumption is only true on the surface.

The OTW would like to congratulate Transformative Works and Cultures on the publication of their fourth issue -- their first to focus on a single fandom: Supernatural. Get more information about this exciting issue at the Issue 4 announcement post, or read the interview with guest editor Catherine Tosenberger.

TWC is something really special -- it's the only peer-reviewed journal to focus exclusively on fan studies; it's open access; its contents are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License; and it's created and distributed using open source journal software.

But that's not all! Consider this: our amazing editors are doing the equivalent of producing two books of fan studies a year, full of content written by and for fans.

To sum up: like all of OTW's projects, TWC is collaboratively made, it's high-quality, and it's free.

Support the OTW, and support Transformative Works and Cultures!

Transformative Works and Cultures, the academic journal project of the OTW, has just released its fourth issue, a special issue on Supernatural guest edited by Catherine Tosenberger. The special issue contains academic articles, shorter academic- and fan-written Symposium pieces, interviews with Supernatural fans, and book reviews all on the topic of Supernatural. We're incredibly excited to release this special issue because there is so much interest in this topic—and in this fandom.

Guest editor Catherine Tosenberger is an acafan who works as an assistant professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada. Her PhD is in English from the University of Florida. She specializes in folklore and children's lit, and she is active in the Harry Potter, Glee, and Supernatural fandoms. She's interested in slash, incest, seriality, and the issues surrounding young people on the Internet.

Catherine published an article about Supernatural in TWC No. 1 in 2008 entitled "'The epic love story of Sam and Dean': Supernatural, Queer Readings, and the Romance of Incestuous Fan Fiction." It is the TWC article with the largest number of hits: 22,786 as I write this. She has also published several articles on Harry Potter fan fic, which is the topic of her dissertation.

We asked Catherine five questions—read her answers, just below the cut!

The academic journal Transformative Works and Cultures, a project of OTW, released its latest issue on March 15, 2010: an issue on Supernatural guest-edited by acafan Catherine Tosenberger. Rush over here to read and comment on the essays! This is the first issue of TWC to focus on a single text.

In addition to academic essays, the issue contains shorter Symposium articles. There are close readings of specific SPN eps and the show as a whole as well as essays that discuss fan-created artworks and fandom itself. We also interviewed SPN profic writer Keith R. A. DeCandido, members of the Super-wiki team, and Wincon organizer Ethrosdemon.

The full press release appears below the cut. Feel free to disseminate widely!

Our fannish wiki project, Fanlore, is both fun and useful! Allow us to demonstrate:

Ever gafiated because your fanpair couldn't understand that trickyfish would never pass the broccoli test? Ever have a BNF brit-pick your Pros curtainfic only to declare that you'd been totally fanon-Jossed by the hivemind? Ever suspected a profic of being a fusion from your gateway fandom with the serial numbers filed off by a flounced BOFQ? Ever had your AMTDI badfic kripked so that you had to fridge your Mary Sue, then during machete beta realized you're circling the id vortex? Ever had your C6D PWP hit someone's embarrassment squick, and regretfully offered them brain bleach? Ever been flamed for saying someone's BSO has too much manpain to be a GQMF based on fannish osmosis? Ever made Paul Gross arms because FIAWOL? Ever followed your BFF's fannish drift into WNGWJLEO tinhat territory, only to find yourself in a kerfluffle in which lurkers support you in email after Snacky's law goes into effect, then declared FIJAGH? Ever realized the little black dress in your vampire AU GSF is suffering from a bad case of zombie hand?

Well, luckily Fanlore is at the ready, and we can all avoid disaster!

Support the OTW, and enrich fandom's vocabulary of experiences.

Fans have always known that they can do amazing things, working together. An individual fan may have creativity and talent, but we have so much more power as a group. But traditional fan strategies like letter-writing campaigns, taking out ads, and sending creative messages to The Powers That Be don't always work nowadays. We still need to band together, but sometimes we also need some specialized help.

This past year, the OTW's Legal Advocacy project worked to defend our rights to fair use in various ways, big and small. A lot of this work is out of the spotlight -- helping individual fans who might otherwise be intimidated into silence, or stopped from doing the things fans love to do. But most of OTW's advocacy work is visible, and is about amplifying our voice -- about helping us be seen and heard when people in power are making or considering decisions that affect us and our work as fans.

In 2009, the OTW helped Glockgal formulate and direct a counternotice against Viacom following an unfair takedown of her Zazzle store ; we explained the creative work of vidders and other remix artists at DMCA Anticircumvention hearings before the US Library of Congress; we participated in filing an amicus brief to support the position that a really restrictive court decision defining transformativeness as parody and nothing else should be reversed on appeal.

Support for the OTW is support for fans' right to be fans. To think and discuss critically. To transform, reflect, react, create, and reshape the world around us. To participate and take part in the culture around us. We can't lose that. We have to stand our ground. It's ours.

It's that time! Time for a new drive premium!

The OTW, as you may know, is committed to keeping our donors hydrated. Well, maybe not committed, as such, but not standing in anyone's way. And definitely interested in offering donors at levels of US$100 and above a swanky bottle to fill with their beverage of choice. This time, it's a 24 oz. capacity stainless steel water bottle, in a lovely white finish, bedecked with the OTW logo in an ever-stylish and striking red. It's kind of ridiculously sexy, too, with an easy to grip shape and well-fitted screw-on cap. If you find that sort of thing sexy, that is. We won't judge you!

We're still offering a packet of OTW stickers and iron-ons, both useful for transforming your non-OTW related possessions, at a donation level of US$50, and you can opt to get everything -- stickers, iron-ons, and water bottle -- for any donation at or above US$120. We ship donation premiums all over the world. In fact, our premiums-shipping volunteer has been known to particularly enjoy sending packages internationally. We don't judge her, either.

In other news of useful things that you may want to make grabby hands at, we would like to direct your attention to the search bar plugin that resourceful Archive of Our Own user Punk has created! You can now search the AO3 on the whimsy of the moment, going directly to your search results. If you are using Firefox or Internet Explorer 8, you can download the plugin from this page on mozdev.org -- just click the link that says "Archive of Our Own" and answer yes when prompted by the dialogue box. Punk has also pointed out that there's a Fanlore version created by Loren Leah that can be downloaded from mozdev.org as well!

This is the post where we explain everything that is amazing, inspiring, and necessary about the Archive of Our Own.

...

No, there is too much. Let me sum up: An open source project, designed by fans, for fans! Noncommercial and nonprofit, supported by an organization -- the OTW, you may have heard of them -- ready to advocate for the fanfiction and other fanworks housed there! An archive designed from the start to accommodate the needs of fandom, designed for accessibility, for diversity, and for growth and flexibility! Collections, challenges, user-determined privacy settings, comments, bookmarks, tags! Icons coming literally any moment now! Open beta! Yuletide!

This is an inspiring, galvanizing project. It's a dream we're making real, making it ourselves, together. Teaching each other skills, learning together, boosting one another up to the next level as we go. The AO3 project runs on the sheer determination and boundless energy of volunteers: coding, testing, tag wrangling! Another shoulder at the wheel is always welcome -- you don't need any qualifications other than a desire to learn and to help! Drop a line to the Volunteers Committee to join us.

The AO3 doesn't just run on fannish energy. It also runs on servers. Which we now own! \o/ And which we pay to maintain, to power, to house. We also need to plan for expansion and growth: more users, more fanworks, more kinds of fanworks. Donate and keep the AO3 humming along, while we keep making it better, faster, stronger.