#rukmini pande
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disclaimer: blah blah blah, this post is just one person’s opinion, blah blah blah, I’m basing said opinion on my own observations but there are no doubt pieces of the story that I’m missing and my opinions should not be treated as fact, something something, DO NOT harass the volunteers at AO3 support or anyone else over any of this, if you harass anyone over this then you are the asshole, period. not a debate, just a fact.
SO, LIKE. I honestly don’t have anything of actual significance to add to the current round of AO3 Discourse because all of my complicated feelings on it have already been said better by other people
(e.g., axing “all media types” tags was a bad idea; some fans may not like them but they are too broadly helpful to be done away with entirely; this is a complex issue, there is likely no way to make literally everyone happy; there should’ve been more transparency and AO3 upset people more by rolling the change out with little to no warning; lumping former “all media types” works into a specific fandom silo was all but guaranteed to piss people off; the Archive userbase being hair-trigger makes a lot of sense after some of AO3’s very high-profile fuck ups in the past few years; however, the three (3) volunteers handling the support tickets are not the people who made the decision and it’s garbage that they’re the ones who are left dealing with so much of the vitriol from upset fans; etc. etc. etc.)
My big question in all of this is: if the people on the tag-wrangling committee who made this decision actually thought that getting rid of the “All Media Types” tag was going to be a broadly popular decision with a lot of support from users, then why didn’t AO3 do more to announce this change to users before it started being implemented?
If we are supposed to believe the version of the story that has come out from AO3’s people, the one where they really did believe that it was in the best interests of the majority of AO3 users to get rid of “All Media Types” tags, then why doesn’t their behavior about the decision reflect that? Why didn’t they post more to let Archive users know that this was coming? Why didn’t they talk up what a great change this was going to be and how many people and fandoms would allegedly benefit from it?
Why is it that most users (readers and authors alike) seem to have found out about this from popular posts on reddit, tumblr, or twitter, all made by aggrieved fans whose fandoms have been negatively impacted by the decision? Because as far as I can tell, there was a single solitary post on the official AO3 tumblr about this, which went up AFTER the change had started rolling out and got its reblogs turned off because of all the backlash?
Not to treat “say that shit with your chest” as uniformly useful advice, but……… Come on, AO3. If you really stood behind the decision to get rid of “All Media Types” tags as much you’re claiming—if you really, truly believed that it was in the best interests of the Archive as a whole and that the majority of Archive users would support you in it—then why didn’t you say that shit with your chest?
Because to me, failing to announce the change ahead of time—and then only doing the bare minimum to let users know—looks like moves to try and hide what’s happening, which does not make me, personally, inclined to believe the “We really thought that this would be a popular decision with broad user support” story
I do not have any explanations for what could’ve happened instead of the official story. Moreover, I’m don’t actually want to speculate on that beyond saying “The way this was publicly handled makes me personally feel disinclined to believe the official story” because conspiratorial bullshit thinking like that doesn’t help anybody (it’s way more likely to cause unnecessary harm, especially by spreading ideas that may sound true enough but are probably not gonna be based in reality, when you get down to brass tacks about it)
But the way that this whole change was handled publicly makes me personally feel disinclined to believe the story as put forth by the official post from AO3, and as a longtime Archive user with millions of words of fic posted on the site, who donates to AO3 and the OTW when I can? I really don’t enjoy feeling like I have even more reason than before to distrust Archive staff :/
#mine: text#kassie hush#mine: opinions#opinions for ts#fandom shenanigans#wank for ts#archive of our own#ao3#for transparency’s sake: the big reasons i have previously had to distrust the people running ao3 mostly revolve around them fucking up very#badly about handling racism & racist harassment on the archive. actual bipoc fans critics & scholars have written about this before but i do#think there are cases where you can tell very easily that any given fic is not ‘depicting racism but not condoning it’ & is in fact intended#to be racist harassment of bipoc in fandom spaces (the nazi omegaverse fic that called out dr. rukmini pande by name in the tags comes to#mind as does the ‘colonizer!lan wangji’ au from the mdzs/untamed fandom :///#i need to be getting ready for my vaccine appointment later but lol i am not being a responsible adult whoops#also there is a massive fucking fly in my room and i need it to gtfo
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Remember that hobbyists regard themselves as outsiders, and for outsiders their every act is subversive and resistive. [White] hobbyists have been reluctant to embrace radically subversive and racially progressive narratives simply because they view the stories they are already telling as transformative.
Aaron Trammell, The Privilege of Play: A History of Hobby Games, Race, and Geek Culture, 9.
#everyone pls go read my prof's new book ITS SO GOOD#but this quote stood out to me for being true about fandom as hobbyist culture too#trammell is actually citing in this same paragraph rukmini pande's 'squee from the margins: fandom and race' which is also v good
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forgot to do this on here but rukmini pande, author of fire ass fan studies examination squee from the margins: fandom and race, has posted a new article!
the abstract:
I've got a pdf and made it available to read in my drive if anyone wants to read it! it's 24 pages if you count the sources and it's VERY good. I've been waiting for it my whole life. every bit of fan/fandom studies from people of color are as good as gold. better than!
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On needing a comprehensive harassment policy
We've been getting some confusion about the part of our demands that talks about OTW needing to consider "off-site coordinated harassment of AO3 users" - which is fair, because I realize that could sound like "OTW needs to monitor/regulate what happens on other platforms" - but that's NOT what we meant by it.
What we meant is: if AO3 users are getting harassed on AO3, and they provide proof in their abuse claim of off-site harassment, that off-site harassment should also be considered as context for making a decision in the abuse claim.
An example of this - which we have permission to share - is what happened to an abuse claim filed by Dr. Rukmini Pande. We won't be linking directly to what happened because we are not trying to target individual users here, but all of what happened is still in public record.
Dr. Pande, a scholar of fan studies who wrote the seminal text on race and fandom, talked on her twitter account a few years ago about a Nazi fic on AO3 that was not only incredibly harmful, offensive, and antisemitic, but where the author had been sending their friends to harass people who criticized the fic. The author proceeded to add a tag to the fic that said "Rukmini Pande Lied About This Fic".
Because Dr. Pande tweeted her criticism from the account with her full name, people said this wasn't doxxing - which is true. But the author of the fic also was tweeting publicly to entertain the idea of reporting Dr. Pande to her employer, and they were also once again sending friends to harass her on Twitter.
When AO3 considered this abuse claim, Dr. Pande provided proof of what was happening on Twitter to show that the author of the fic added the tag of her full name with the intention of inciting harassment to her. But the AO3 Abuse team said that this did not constitute harassment under their TOS.
Cases like that are what we mean by OTW considering "off-site coordinated harassment of AO3 users". Obviously OTW cannot control what is happening on Twitter, or Tumblr, or any other platform. But their Abuse team should be able to consider off-site harassment, when they are given proof of it, in determining whether a case on AO3 is harassment or not.
(Also if you aren't familiar with Dr. Pande's work, her book Squee From The Margins: Fandom and Race is not only fantastic but was the first to comprehensively look at fandom racism, and she also edited a great anthology of articles on race and fandom called Fandom, Now In Color: A Collection of Voices. If you can't afford to buy them, you can request that your local library stock them!)
#seriously check out her books#squee from the margins changed this poster's life#end otw racism#racism in fandom#otw#ao3#endotwracism#archive of our own#organization for transformative works#fandom racism#image descriptions in alt text
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An Account of the Current OTW/AO3 Allegations
You may have seen talk flying around about drama going down with OTW (the Organization for Transformative Works) and AO3. There isn't a clear write-up of the situation on Tumblr, and since the allegations in this case are serious and OTW Board elections are coming up, I thought there should be a resource for people to get some basic understanding about the events.
This account is a burner, because the topics here are deeply charged, and I don't want to become a character in what's happening. I am not a member of or volunteer for OTW; I am not affiliated with End OTW Racism; I am not affiliated with Dreamwidth; I do not personally know any of the people involved in these events, or have personal knowledge of the events themselves. I am only compiling the publicly available events, allegations, and discussion into a convenient format for Tumblr. I will be heavily referencing the the similar compilation put together by Dreamwidth user Synonymous, but I am not Synonymous, nor do I know who they are. I am not, however, completely without bias; for one thing, I am writing this with the clear understanding that I believe OTW's treatment of its volunteers and policies on content moderation are both deeply troubling. If I did not believe that, I wouldn't have bothered writing this post.
This write-up includes events relating both to allegations about volunteer abuse and improper handling of CSEM moderation by the OTW, and to arguments made about the OTW's handling of racist conduct and about End OTW Racism's ties to the writer known as Stitch. I am including both of these threads because they are deeply related both causally and in the arguments of many of the people involved, and because volunteer abuse, CSEM, and racist harassment are all deeply serious problems.
This situation has not resolved, and therefore you can likely expect more to occur, probably relating to all of those topics. I have not yet decided whether I will continue updating this timeline, but it should at least give you a grounding in what's happening.
Heavy Content Warning for discussions of child sexual abuse material; abuse, harassment, and stalking; and interpersonal and systemic racism. All language in this write-up is non-graphic and high-level, but some links include more detailed descriptions.
The Events
June 24, 2020: In the wake of George Floyd's murder and in response to pressure from people including Black writer Stitch (of the blog Stitch Media Mix and Teen Vogue) and fan studies academic Dr. Rukmini Pande, the OTW makes a statement promising to review their policies and procedures and take steps to protect users from racist harassment. The specific promises they make are:
Giving creators more control over the comments on their works.
Improving collection searching and filtering.
Improving admin tools for responding to Policy & Abuse reports.
Reviewing the Terms of Service to potentially allow Policy & Abuse to respond to more kinds of reports.
Reassess the required Archive Warnings and consider adding more.
Continue working on user muting and blocking.
They also say that they are considering "reaching out to an external contractor or partnering with an advocacy group," i.e., a diversity consultant, to help with reforms.
August 8, 2021: As part of their July newsletter, the OTW announces that it is creating a new officer role in the organization to research options for diversity consultants.
May 7, 2022: The OTW makes a public statement on their website that an unknown attacker has sent CSAM (child sexual abuse material) to some of their volunteers' email addresses, that they are working with authorities to find the attacker, and that response times may be slower than usual, as they have "shut down a number of internal tools" in order to protect their volunteers and the investigation.
May 8, 2022: Dreamwidth cofounder and former head of LiveJournal Trust & Safety Denise (rahaeli on Twitter, synecdochic on Dreamwidth) posts a Twitter thread urging any current or former OTW/AO3 volunteer who has provided the organization with their real-life name ("wallet name") to contact their local police department and let them know that they are at an elevated risk of swatting. She also provides advice on disabling image auto-loading in emails and dealing with trauma and anxiety from being exposed to CSAM, and mentions that she has contacted AO3 to offer help.
June 16, 2022: As part of their April newsletter (delayed several months due to the CSAM attack), the OTW announces that a Diversity Consultant Research Officer has been appointed.
May 10, 2023: The Tumblr account end-otw-racism publishes its first post, End OTW Racism: A Call to Action. In it, the anonymous authors call on the OTW to implement the changes that they promised in 2020, especially:
Hiring a diversity consultant within the next 3-6 months.
Updating their harassment policies and protocols to address on-site and off-site coordinated harassment.
Creating a content policy for content that is abusive in a racist manner.
As part of their background establishing the problem of racist abuse and harassment in fandom, they link to several articles written by Stitch on their commentary blog, as well as a couple of posts from other fans. In their FAQs and other posts, the organizers of EOR clarify that they are not calling for the removal of any racist fic, but fic that is written specifically with the intention of perpetrating racist harassment or abuse. They also urge supporters not to berate or harass anyone for disagreeing with or failing to support their campaign.
May 17, 2023: An anonymous user asks about the End OTW Racism protest on the anon-meme Dreamwidth community Fail Fandom_Anon (FFA). As part of a tangent in that discussion, an anonymous former volunteer member of the OTW's Policy & Abuse Committee (PAC) mentions that they handled CSEM (child sexual exploitation material) tickets as part of their work, and that the OTW did not provide sufficient resources or expertise in dealing with them either emotionally or logistically. They describe themselves as being traumatized, burned out, and overworked during their time in PAC. They also mention that there was an earlier CSAM attack, targeted only at PAC volunteers, prior to the one that the OTW announced; that they were the volunteer who handled reporting to law enforcement; that the PAC chairs urged Legal and the Board to prepare for more attacks, but that nothing was done; and that the OTW did not provide any mental health resources for volunteers after the CSAM attack. (Here is a link to the user's top-level comment; read down the thread for more.)
May 20, 2023: Dreamwidth user chestnut_pod posts an entry called Be More Democratic, Be More Autocratic, OTW. The thesis of their post is that the OTW fails to adequately respond to racism on AO3 because of structural problems within the organization that amplify biases and make change difficult to achieve, and that in order to address racism and other problems more effectively, the organization should create a clear and straightforward command structure. They also advocate for creating some paid roles within the organization. The comments of the post become a kind of referendum on OTW's organizational policies, and some former volunteers show up to say that chestnut_pod's description of the problems with the org's structure tally with their experience.
May 23, 2023:
An anonymous user links to chestnut_pod's post on FFA. In response, the same former OTW volunteer describes various details of how the Policy & Abuse Committee (PAC) made decisions during her time there. (The description covers a lot of comments, so with one exception I'm linking to Synonymous's overview rather than the individual comments, but you can find all of them either through Synonymous's links or by reading down the FFA thread.) The upshot is that PAC often found it difficult to address racism, abuse, and harassment due to roadblocks and micromanagement from OTW's Legal Committee. In particular, the user mentions that they wanted to remove photo manipulations of real-life minors engaging in sex, as well as ambiguously-sourced explicit gifs from underage fics, and were told that they could not by Legal. (I have described the user's objections at as a high a level as possible, but the language used at the link is much more detailed and explicit.) A subsequent, current OTW volunteer says that since the first user left, the policy has changed to allow PAC to remove similar gifs.
Denise leaves a series of comments on chestnut_pod's post saying that the PAC policies described there run counter to industry best practices for Trust & Safety. In response to a commenter asking whether she could advise OTW, Denise says that she has offered several times, and only heard back from the organization once: after she posted her Twitter thread in response to the CSAM attacks, "at which point it immediately became extremely clear the person in question was more interested in protecting the external reputation of the organization than in listening to any advice I had to give and the only reason they'd contacted me was to pressure me to remove my Twitter thread."
In response to Denise's story, Dreamwidth user azarias reveals herself to be the anonymous former PAC volunteer on FFA. In a series of comments on chestnut_pod's post and FFA (bulk of the information in this comment, but see Synonymous's compilation or read up and down the thread for more), she relays the following story: On May 6, 2022, shortly after the CSAM attack, azarias was kicked out of the OTW volunteer Slack with no notice and no communication. When she realized several days later that this was not an organization-wide shut down, she emailed the OTW Board, Legal, and the PAC chairs asking about the situation, and whether she was a suspect in the attack. The chair of Legal, Betsy Rosenblatt, responded, apologizing for the lack of communication and saying that the shut-out was at Legal's request because they thought azarias' account may have been compromised, but she was not a suspect. On July 22, 2022, having heard nothing further from the OTW, azarias emailed again asking about reinstatement, and Betsy responded that they had just that day started that process. (EDIT: Azarias clarifies that her original stated date of July 22 was an error; she checked on her status July 4, and Betsy responded July 6.) All of azarias's accounts had been deleted, so she returned to the OTW with new accounts, and was informed by her PAC chairs that they were not consulted or informed about her suspension until it happened, were not told why she had been suspended, and were ordered not to speak to or about her during the suspension. Due to awkwardness, trauma, and burn-out, azarias quit volunteering soon after.
May 30, 2023:
On FFA, an anonymous OTW volunteer (not azarias) comments that the OTW Board has posted an update to Slack addressing azarias's story (though she is never named in the update). The update confirms that Legal made the decision to suspend azarias, and says that the Board was not consulted on or informed about the decision to either suspend or reinstate her. A statement from Legal is also attached. The statement does not in any way dispute azarias's timeline of events, and outwardly apologizes to her for the distressed caused, but it also contains several strong insinuations that the letter-writer believes that azarias was responsible for the CSAM attack.
In response to this letter, Denise posts a statement on Dreamwidth and Twitter recommending that any person currently volunteering for the OTW should resign for their own personal safety.
June 3, 2023: Azarias (now posting under her real account, which FFA allows people who are players in the events being discussed to do) comments on FFA that she has consulted a lawyer regarding Legal's insinuation, and has been advised that she doesn't have anything to worry about, legally. She explains some more of the details behind the situation, and discusses some of her guesses about the current situation at the OTW. (For clarification, the Heidi she's referring to is Heidi Tandy, a longtime member of OTW Legal. During the heights of Harry Potter fandom, Fandom Wank coined the term "Heidipology" to describe what they believed to be Heidi's pattern of making insincere, backhanded apologies.) In the comments, anonymous users discuss the fact that OTW's Legal team is made up entirely of IP lawyers, and not lawyers who have expertise in criminal law, nonprofit governance, or Trust & Safety. (Link goes to Synonymous's compilation.)
June 12, 2023: The OTW publishes a statement addressing the End OTW Racism protest. They thank the organizers for holding them accountable, list the steps they've already taken in addressing racism (mostly muting/blocking abilities and similar), and reiterate that they are working on hiring a diversity consultant and reviewing PAC policies. They also say they will improve transparency and communication.
In the comments, azarias (and several others) push the OTW for a retraction of Legal's letter. Azarias also pushes the OTW to make real progress on racist abuse, rather than paying it "lip service." Azarias reveals that she was the Board's original pick for the Diversity Consultant Research Officer, but dropped out. (Further comments later and earlier at FFA clarify that she dropped out due to the OTW's one name policy, which requires that all work that a volunteer does for the OTW be done under a single name; officers are required to serve under their wallet names, and azarias wanted to do her PAC work under her fandom name and not link that to her wallet name, and when OTW didn't let her, she resigned. Link to Synonymous's more thorough compilation of this story here.)
Also in the comments, several users respond to the OTW's statement by posting racist abuse and racial slurs. The OTW leaves the comments up for several days before finally screening them.
June 15, 2023: Denise posts a thread on Twitter, shortly after compiled on her Dreamwidth, laying out what she consider's the OTW's "absolute failure" at Trust & Safety. Among other things, she claims that:
Photomanips of minors in sexual situations, "however terrible or obvious the Photoshop job is, qualifies under the third definition of 'child pornography' as given in 18 USC §2256(8)(C)."
She believes that the OTW may not be in compliance with legal obligations to preserve information about reported CSEM, due to its policy of deleting author information about orphaned works.
In this post, Denise also elaborates on the story she told in the comments of chestnut_pod's post. She says that in May 2022, before the OTW made its statement about the CSAM attack, several volunteers reached out to her for advice, and she learned that the attack emails included threats to expose identifying volunteer information to, among other places, Kiwi Farms, a site whose users have previously swatted many people. In response to this, after the OTW's statement, she published her Twitter thread advising volunteers to alert their local law enforcement, and also reached out to the OTW to offer resources, contacts, and advice. In response, OTW Legal member Rebecca Tushnet called her and spent half an hour pressuring her to remove her Twitter thread.
At the end of the post, Denise briefly touches on the End OTW Racism action that began this conversation, saying that she appreciates their work, but believes that their proposed solutions will not be effective, both because the OTW's organizational dysfunction makes it impossible for them to moderate racist content, and because PAC must moderate "conduct, not content." She says that she "firmly disagree[s] with the foundational work their campaign was built on."
June 16, 2023:
In response to several people asking for clarification on her statements about End OTW Racism, Denise posts a follow-up Twitter thread (which has not at this time been crossposted to Dreamwidth). She says that a diversity consultant will not effectively address abuse because the current OTW culture is resistant to change, and that reviewing TOS policies will not be effective, because the current TOS already allows for moderation of abusive conduct, but PAC has not been empowered to enforce it. Instead, she claims that progress on moderation of racist abuse can only truly be made once the organization's systemic issues have been addressed. She also believes that End OTW Racism's messaging is counterproductive, "because of its repeated failure to differentiate between content and conduct." In particular, she argues that, "by citing so heavily to the foundational background work by people who *have* repeatedly called for bans on work that 'reflects racist and bigoted stereotypes', and by failing to differentiate the two except in passing, the campaign has positioned itself in such a way that it will be, and I'm certain has already been, dismissed by the OTW." She does not mention Stitch by name, but it is clear by context that it is the citations of Stitch's work that she is referring to.
After someone DMs her to request she take down her clarifying statements about End OTW Racism, and various people supportive of EOR on Twitter denounce the statements, Denise posts a follow-up statement to Dreamwidth and to Twitter. She says that she has been contacted several times over the past few weeks by Black fans who have been harassed and abused by Stitch in racist and racialized ways, and who showed her screenshots of these interactions, which Stitch has since deleted. She says that because these fans are afraid to speak up for fear of further harassment, she offered to relay their concerns about a campaign based heavily on Stitch's writing. She does not provide the screenshots, in order to prevent the fans from being identified. She reiterates that she agrees with Stitch and with EOR that the OTW is failing to respond to racist abuse and harassment, but that she disagrees with their approach and proposals. (For what it's worth, as I said up front, I am not personally acquainted with either Stitch or Denise, and have no personal knowledge of events, but Denise is not the first person to accuse Stitch of racist harassment. There has been a great deal of discussion on FFA, both well-sourced and not so much, detailing Stitch's past behavior. I am linking to this round-up so that people can find it, but with the exception of those that directly link to the evidence, and one or two that reference Stitch's public writing, I do not know the accuracy of any of the claims, and I do not know the source of some of them. The allegations listed also vary wildly in their degree of seriousness, ranging from "actually harassed someone" to "said something distasteful," to "is friends with a known serial stalker and harasser.")
The OTW posts a newspost addressing Denise's original (June 15) thread and allegations. The say that they are in legal compliance with CSEM reporting procedures, that they provided resources to volunteers following the CSAM attacks, and that "the Legal Committee has always worked closely and cooperatively with the Policy & Abuse Committee, and continues to do so." They do not reference azalias's accusations or Denise's claim to have been pressured by Rebecca Tushnet. In the comments, azarias, Denise, and many other users, both anonymous and signed, express outrage at the OTW, and push for answers, apologies, retractions, and in some cases the resignation of Legal and/or the Board.
End OTW Racism posts a statement acknowledging the OTW's acknowledgment, and calling for supporters to donate to the OTW so that they can vote in the upcoming Board elections.
June 16-18, 2023: A group of people on Twitter, Tumblr, and Dreamwidth post individually and in conversation about Denise's comments on Stitch and End OTW Racism, defending Stitch and arguing that Denise's claims about them and disagreement with their and EOR's work are racist, unfounded or overblown, and a derailment from EOR's mission. Some of these are the same people who are in the comments of the OTW's response to Denise, pushing for the OTW to respond to azarias's allegations. (These are not inherently contradictory positions; I just want to note that both the personal and ideological stances here do not necessarily line up neatly into, say, pro-OTW and anti-OTW.) See, for instance, naye's Dreamwidth post, fiercynn's Dreamwidth post, or pearwaldorf's Tumblr post.
June 18, 2023: Denise posts a Twitter thread going into much greater detail about the number of fans of color who reported to her that Stitch had harassed them ("a number greater than five and less than fifteen"), and the severity of their claims ("Several of them said the harassment they experienced was so severe and pervasive that it caused them to change screen names, leave fandom, or otherwise restrict their conduct online.") She also gives a detailed, step-by-step outline of how she went about verifying their claims to her own satisfaction. She continues not to give out identifying details to prevent further harassment.
[Updated June 19, 2023 to correct language around the attack on OTW, which was a CSAM attack, not a CSEM attack.]
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dr. pande's formulation of fans of color talking about racism in fandom as "fandom killjoys" (which builds off of sara ahmed's idea of the feminist killjoy) is so spot-on:
My analysis is primarily structured around the question of what it means to be a fandom killjoy—that is, for one’s pleasure to threaten the invocation of a broadly inclusive, woman-centric, and queer-coded community. To be a fandom killjoy as a nonwhite fan is a deeply alienating experience, as it involves either the internalized acceptance that certain pleasures and explorations are simply unavailable, or the identification of being someone who consistently brings unwanted drama to fan spaces. This is a fraught process, and one that animates my entire project. (13)
and
The position of the fandom killjoy is a complex one to occupy because it brings into focus the tension between media fandom’s simultaneous embrace and disavowal of the politics of pleasure. By using the term “politics of pleasure,” I gesture toward the anachronistic argument that argues for two simultaneously oppositional positions. The first: fan work produced around popular cultural texts is significant because it is evidence of the transformational, transgressive pleasure taken in such texts by women-identified (and often queer) fans whose activities are broadly reviled by mainstream society. The second: the same fan work cannot be held accountable for its depiction or erasure of other intersecting marginalized identities (particularly around the axes of race) because its leveraging of pleasure can only work within the biases of the texts themselves. These contradictory positions cannot be left uninterrogated. This valorization of fan work as the basis of certain aspects of individual fan identity must extend to a sustained critique. To continually defer a consideration of the ways in which whiteness structures modes of fan pleasure is—at this stage of our knowledge about fan communities—to actively participate in furthering the operations of white privilege. (195)
from squee from the margins: fandom and race by dr. rukmini pande, a book that honestly changed my life and the way i think about fandom when i first read it in 2019
i'm rereading squee from the margins: fandom and race by dr. rukmini pande and y'all. it's such a banger
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Platforms and Fan Experiences
This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about platforms and the way in which they influence fan experiences. As a consistent lurker, I have been on Tumblr for more than a decade, and more recently on Twitter for the past few months, and have been reflecting on my experiences of fandom on both platforms.
In a roundtable discussion published in a tumblr book: platform and cultures, speakers Flourish Klink, Rukmini Pande, Zina Hutton, Lori Morimoto and Allison McCracken discuss the ways in which Tumblr is a very visual platform:
Klink: Tumblr fandoms tend to be much more visual than other fandoms. I often find that this is the most difficult part of Tumblr for people who are not familiar with it. The visual languages in play on Tumblr are as meaningful and complex as any slang or textual interactions on Twitter… Klink, Flourish, Rukmini Pande, Zina Hutton, Lori Morimoto, and Allison McCracken. “A Roundtable Discussion about the Cultures of Fandom on Tumblr.” In A Tumblr Book: Platform and Cultures, edited by Allison McCracken, Alexander Cho, Louisa Stein, and Indira Neill Hoch, 167–80. University of Michigan Press, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.11537055.23.
I find this particularly interesting—and also ironic, in some ways—given that to me, as both a lurker, and a Fandom Old, the draw of Tumblr is that, while it may be a visual platform, it is not necessarily a visible platform, particularly in comparison to Twitter. There’s little chance of the celebrity you’re writing RPF about coming across your racy post or interacting with you directly.
In the same discussion, they go on to talk about the ways in which Tumblr’s visual culture has often led to progressive politics and practices, like race/genderbending.
Hutton: …One of my favorite things about being on Tumblr is seeing the way that members of the fandoms I’ve been in— primarily the DC and Marvel fandoms—reimagine their favorite characters as characters of color and give them queer and gender identities that match theirs. You can see photosets reimagining the Batman family group as more visibly diverse, and fancasts ( fans re-casting roles with actors of their choosing) of Marvel superheroes where they’re portrayed as women of color. And these fancasts generally push back against the idea of whiteness as a perpetual default. Klink, Flourish, Rukmini Pande, Zina Hutton, Lori Morimoto, and Allison McCracken. “A Roundtable Discussion about the Cultures of Fandom on Tumblr.” In A Tumblr Book: Platform and Cultures, edited by Allison McCracken, Alexander Cho, Louisa Stein, and Indira Neill Hoch, 167–80. University of Michigan Press, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.11537055.23.
While Hutton also points out the ways in which a lot of it can turn into clickbait activism, later on in the discussion, without truly engaging with what it means to racebend a character beyond simply making a visual edit, it’s Pande’s comment about interacting with white fans that echoes my own experience:
Pande: When I first came on Tumblr for instance, I mainly followed people I knew from LiveJournal and “Big Name Fans” whose writing I had followed in previous fandoms. This resulted in my Dashboard being filled with almost exclusively white-dude content. In retrospect this is not surprising, but the visual-ness of Tumblr made it particularly apparent, especially post-Racefail at a moment in fandom in 2009–10, when POC fans had started becoming more vocal about this whiteness. Klink, Flourish, Rukmini Pande, Zina Hutton, Lori Morimoto, and Allison McCracken. “A Roundtable Discussion about the Cultures of Fandom on Tumblr.” In A Tumblr Book: Platform and Cultures, edited by Allison McCracken, Alexander Cho, Louisa Stein, and Indira Neill Hoch, 167–80. University of Michigan Press, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.11537055.23.
As a PoC fan myself from the Global South, particularly one that does more lurking than posting, I often find that Tumblr does not always have the kind of linguistic inclusivity or even fandom inclusivity I am looking for. Perhaps it’s that I am a lurker, or perhaps I am not looking in the right spaces. Whatever the reason, I find Twitter has more of that inclusivity; whether I am looking for a fellow Hindi-soap opera fan, or a Supernatural fan, I can find both. And depending on which platform I choose, the content I make/consume differs—not just in form, but also in language and meaning.
What do you think? How has your platform shaped your fandom experience?
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we need to talk about Rahaeli
This is slightly tangential to the dumpster fire that is OTW, but it is something I think is important to also take into consideration.
If you're following the comments on the OTW announcement posts, you may have seen reference to Rahaeli (Twitter) aka synedochic (DW) aka Denise. She is a co-founder of Dreamwidth, where FFA is hosted.
Denise is a Fandom Elder, in both the descriptive and derogatory senses of the term. She's been around forever, since the pre-Livejournal days. She has no hesitations about throwing around that Fandom Elder status, in the same way somebody like Franzeska or astolat or anybody else in the clique that founded OTW would.
Perspective from older fans is absolutely valuable, I want to emphasize. You want people who were there to explain why we are concerned about restrictions on explicit/queer/legal but "morally objectionable" fanwork, or how younger fans embrace purity rhetoric. But it's different the way Fandom Elders wield it, the implicit assumption that because they are older and have Seen Some Shit, they automatically have some sort of wisdom to transmit to the young'uns.
Denise knows a great deal about social media moderation, anti-harassment measures, and the legal obligations surrounding the discovery of CSEM/CSAM* on sites you're responsible for administrating. That expertise is extremely valuable when explaining to people why/how everything with OTW is very very concerning.
She also knows fandom very well, and exactly how to calibrate her words to push buttons. I remember her meltdown about Cohost, another social media site that looked like a viable competitor to Dreamwidth at the time. Here is a summary of it I wrote at the time.
I'd like to get into criticism of the part of that Twitter thread where she throws a random non-sequitur into an already extremely long thread. (I know this is already a long post, please bear with me.)
At this point, she's gone on about OTW, their gross neglect of volunteers, Rebecca Tushnet, and a bunch of other stuff for like three or four screens. They are all things we should rightly be appalled by, so we're on her side for saying things that need to be said. We are probably also getting a little tired and not reading things as closely as we should. I think this is absolutely deliberate.
She then pivots the thread to EndOTWRacism (hereafter EOR) with what seems like an offhand comment about how she doesn't agree with their goals. She wrongly characterizes the end goal of EOR's campaign as a desire to moderate fic on AO3. This is patently false and is explicitly stated on their call for action under What Do We Want. They want AO3 to come up with anti-harassment policies and content policies for abusive and racist fics (what some people would characterize as troll fics), which are clearly written to degrade and harm fans of color**. We are not talking about fics with bigoted stereotypes or racist characterization.
EOR links heavily to work by Stitchmediamix, a well-known and outspoken Black anti-racist advocate in fandom. They write a column about race and fandom for Teen Vogue, and have been the target of incredible amounts of harassment. Denise thinks it's biased and kinda weird EOR does this.
The reason EOR relies so heavily on Stitch's work (and that of Dr. Rukmini Pande) is because very few people actually write about this stuff. It's horrible, thankless work that doesn't get you good attention but needs to be discussed anyways. (Acafandom, such as that which gets published in OTW's journal Transformative Works and Cultures, is racist as fuck, but that's a whole other topic.)
Here we see yet another impossible standard white fans are never held to, the one where non-white (but especially Black) fans must be ideologically pure with no lapses in temper or frustration. Whomst among us would be able to respond with perfect grace every single time they were set upon by racist mobs?
We depart from the Twitter thread here because Denise has made a statement on Dreamwidth about why she included all the stuff about Stitch when she was making a critique of EOR. The summary of the post is basically "A bunch of people told me stuff, I saw screenshots, but I won't even share redacted ones, so just trust me OK?"
I don't know Stitch (we have corresponded exactly once) or follow their work***, but I feel like if there were actual evidence they send harassment towards other fans surely it would have come up on FFA by now. The nonnies don't like them over there, and I suspect anything that proves they have actually done anything of the sort would be like throwing chum to piranhas.
Probably the most galling bit of Denise's post is this:
Under no circumstances should anyone use my writing, my own arguments, or my repetition of the concerns of the fans of color who have reached out to me, as an excuse to engage in racist harassment of Stitch or of anyone involved in the EndOTWRacism protest.
She knows exactly what she's doing. It's like dangling a steak in front of a hungry dog and telling it "Please don't lunge towards it because I'm telling you not to."
The second most galling bit is the way she, a white woman with a great deal of institutional power, justfies pointing even more racist harassment towards a Black fan known for continued anti-racist activism even though it makes their life hell and calls it solidarity.
Fuck that noise. As Dr. Pande says, there are many ways to discuss incidents like this without identifying individuals. Denise could have posted a person's account, in their own words, of their harassment experience. Even in an attempt to demonstrate faux solidarity she denies POC fans a voice.
I am glad Denise can contribute her technical and legal expertise to explaining precisely how the OTW has been negligent in their responsibilities to their volunteers and how they are noncompliant with important laws regarding extremely harmful material. I regret she has undermined this important work with unnecessary detours into racism and incitement of harassment.
I am extremely angry about having to make this post. It's another pile of shit on top of an already giant dumpster fire. But apparently upholding racism and white supremacy is still something people in fandom are going to do, even as an important organization within it burns down around our ears.
--
*There is a difference (cw: duh) between the terms! I did not know this until yesterday.
**I'm not getting into definitions or hair-splitting about this because it's not the point of this post.
***If you are interested in actually reading Stitch's work, here is a great place to start.
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NAME? : tessa.
PRONOUNS? : she / her.
MOST ACTIVE MUSES? : at the moment, it's khione, but i tend to blog hop between any of my girls (flori, eleusine, lia, udyati). eleusine is my first ever muse on this site, though, and despite everything she's still going strong. but for sure the most active muse right now? kie.
EXPERIENCE/HOW MANY YEARS? : i started tumblr rp in 2012 due to stumbling upon a d.rew t.anaka ask blog from p.ercy j.ackson.
FLUFF, ANGST, OR SMUT? : i definitely lean towards fluff. i've written smut before and i do like writing it but if i'm writing it, i'd rather write it on discord than on the dash. (though i have also written it on the dash before, too.) i'm not opposed to talking about it, though. angst takes spot #3 because, well, fluff over angst in this house. most of the time, i bring the fluff and my writing partners bring the angst and i'm a-okay with that! ;)
LONG OR SHORT REPLIES? : depends on the thread, i can do either.
PET PEEVES? : actually no, i lied. i will be answering this question: rp-wise it's tiny icons in which you can only see a mouth, a chin or an eye. to each their own, but i want to see the face of the titular face claim. generally, it's how characters of color are often sidelined in favor of white ships in fandom: fandom & culture - squee from the margins by rukmini pande talks about that, actually, among other things, like the intersection between fandom and identity.
ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE? : if you know where to look, you'll find pieces of me in all of my characters but it's never a 100% similarity.
TIME TO WRITE? : in the evening / at night.
TAGGED BY : @lovedunexpectedly TAGGING : you.
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help me decide on my Hannibal essay keywords
I'm writing my last undergrad English essay for a Gothic Lit seminar and would like to make it about my beloved nbc Hannibal. There's no way this 3,000-word essay could hold all my thoughts on this show, so I came up with a list of half-formed ideas and would like you to pick one for me/ write your suggestions in the tags! I'll probably end up using multiple since a lot of these are interconnected
much appreciated! *kisses*
I'd also thought about colonial aestheticization of cannibalism but turns out there's already a brilliant chapter by Samira Nadkarni and Rukmini Pande: Hannibal and the Cannibal Tracking Colonial Imaginaries
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Been there done that. And yet again.
#metafandom#racism in fandom#your writerly choices are not value-neutral#jewish characters#jewish actors#scott caan#danny williams#hawaii five 0#mcdanno
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Aburime makes a very large rhetorical leap here in order to make a very dangerous claim that has led to increased harassment in fandom. They don’t distinguish between the different forms of anti fandom – I’ve covered this in-depth before – and they essentially generalize thousands of people who only have “disliking something” in common. And it’s not always even the same thing to the same degree?
Beyond that, Aburime also makes the choice to connect “antis” in fandom with anti-queer people fighting to censor books/media by queer people to build a strawman that they can then urge fandom to set afire. The claim Aburime makes isn’t actually based in fact. Many of the people Aburime lumps together here are queer themselves and they have specific issues in mind when they speak on fandom. Are they always correct? No. Does their “think of the queer children” approach need serious rethinking? Sure.
But purposefully connecting other queer people with GOP book banners is foul. Especially because, hypocrisy is rife in these spaces. Imagine if a fan of color compared the existing and repeated “proshipper” attempts to deplatform (i.e., get fired) myself or Dr. Rukmini Pande to anti-CRT bans and backlash. Even though it’s a more direct and accurate comparison, they would be accused of “weaponizing” “culture wars” for fandom fights.
And that is what Aburime is doing here. They are trying, without proof beyond a handful of social media posts and biased discourse accounts, to make people angry at the idea of antis because antis are now “just like” the GOP.
Sloppy scholarship.
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the ao3 stats post I made breached containment a while ago and now it’s a 50/50 split of ‘no one’s surprised’ and ‘these are the worst survey results ever and these results are bullshit’ which. okay. criticizing research results is always fair. but then I saw these tags:
and now I have a thought or two! because the whole reason I made that post is because primarily white women loooooove to act like most of the bullshit that goes down in fandom is because of white men. every time something racist pops up it’s always ‘ohhhh it’s just shitty dudebros, it’s just the fandom menace, it’s just white men, never us, never us.’ and I’ve been in these spaces long enough to know that’s a bunch of shit lmao.
I’ve been in fandom for a long time and I’m so sorry but it has not been white men that have sometimes made this space fucking miserable for me lmao. and it’s not to say that it doesn’t happen! of course white men are the problem in mainstream fandom spaces. but when it comes to niche corners on tumblr, or twitter, or ao3 - it’s mainly been y’all! and it’s not misogyny to talk about that!
it hasn’t been primarily white men that have had the audacity to say that racism needs to stay on ao3, it hasn’t been primarily white men that have harassed fandom/media scholars of color like stitch and rukmini pande for YEARS, it hasn’t been primarily white men who have been absolute pieces of shit to characters of color, especially when it comes to fucking shipping.
so yes, white women I will continue fucking shitting on y’all for being just as racist - and sometimes MORE racist!- as your male counterparts. I will continue to talk about what I’ve seen white female fans do over the years to make fandom as unwelcoming a space to people of color as they can. I will continue to call it out in the coming years, and it is NOT misogyny to do so.
so the tl;dr of it all:
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tumblr is on jstor
CHAPTER 16 A Roundtable Discussion about the Cultures of Fandom on Tumblr
Flourish Klink, Rukmini Pande, Zina Hutton, Lori Morimoto, Allison McCrackena tumblr book: platform and cultures, 2020, pp. 167-180 (14 pages)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.11537055.23
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Y'all listed a bunch of shit that's already TOS violations on AO3. Did you actually REPORT any of them, or did you just bookmark them so you could be pissy?
Because especially incitement to harass IS a TOS violation already. It's one of the most heavily enforced.
But then, I suppose you are citing the 4 year old Rukmini Pande situation wherein a published author was listed by published pen-name in some tags and went ballistic about how that was the same as being doxxed. Dr Pande can claim that being spoken of in public by the same name used in publishing is harassment, but that doesn't make it true.
Of course, there was actual harassment of Dr Pande. Just not on AO3.
There's also the "spitefic" that uses properly tagged and warned examples of real colonial genocide as world building, which is getting lambasted for having the word "spite" in the tags alongside all the normal shit. It sure did use racist terms in the title and description, while openly acknowledging those terms are unacceptable for unlabelled use.
Meaning the only actual goal here is to stop people from writing in ways you dislike. Since any realistic goal of "content warnings and opt-in systems" already exists.
Just like the goal of demanding that any anonymous user reveal their complete racial heritage for your perusal, as with the transformers fic. Or are we just to assume that only white people use anon, and Noble Purehearted POC Like Us would never stoop so low?
Except, oops, the fic you linked to DOESN'T FUCKING EXIST. It just leads to some 100 word cutesy fluff about skiing.
So, y'know, lets assume that was a typo not a lie, and that you're just incopetent, not malicious, shall we?
This entire thing reeks of performative garbage to make yourselves feel better about being assholes.
I mean, they're your fics, deface them if you want. But don't act like """""""real fans of colour and their allies""""""" have to join your dipshit crusade.
I, and the other fans of colour you purport to be defending, am not particularly interested in listening to people whose response to an imaginary harassment campaign against a nonwhite scholar is "lets for realsies harass volunteer staff instead." Who cannot be bothered to actually cite any of the insane laims they are making. And whose big, exciting attack against structural racism is to ask the volunteer fanfic website to DO THE THINGS THEY ARE ALREADY DOING.
You're a bunch of asshats using anti-racist vocabulary as a shield.
Please shut the fuck up.
End OTW Racism: A Call To Action
A fan protest against the lack of action from the OTW on addressing issues of harassment and racism on AO3 and within the organization
This is a Call To Action for Fans of Color and Allies
AO3 has acknowledged that they have a harassment & racism problem that its parent organization, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), needs to address. Currently, people can use AO3 to harass others through fanworks, comments, and tags. Just a few examples include: racist Untamed “spitefic” that used anti-Indigenous slurs and was written specifically to lash out at fans of color; a Transformer fic that used its Black-coded character to reenact George Floyd’s murder in July 2020; someone naming a fandom scholar who criticized their Nazi omegaverse fic in the tags of the fic specifically to incite harassment to the scholar; writers using racial slurs against commenters who pointed out racism in their hockey fic; and so much more.
In June 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, the OTW committed to addressing these issues. It has been nearly three years and they have not yet implemented any of the changes they promised, other than a blocking/muting tool that was already in development before 2020. We need to hold the OTW accountable to their own promises. (See the section further down on “Why Are We Doing This” for even more detail.)
As fans, together, we are powerful. We are organizing to protest the lack of action on promises made by the Organization for Transformative works to deal with issues of racism and harassment on their platform, Archive of Our Own.
We call on fans to do any or all of the following actions any time between May 17 to 31, 2023 to send a message to AO3 and OTW that we will hold them to their promises.
On AO3
Change the title of ten (or more!) of your most recent or most popular fanworks to include ‘End Racism in the OTW’ in the beginning, and provide a link to this post in your summary or first/top creator’s note
Post a new fanwork any time between May 17th to 31st with “End Racism in the OTW” either as the title or at the beginning of the title. The fanwork does not have to be long - it can be a 100-word fic, a quick sketch, a podfic of a ficlet, a 20-second vid/edit, a short piece of meta, etc. In the summary or first/top creator’s note, provide a link to this post
If updating any WIPs with a new chapter, add ‘End Racism in the OTW’ to the title and provide a link back to this post in your summary or first/top author’s note
Update your AO3 icon using the profile pic graphic in our Social Media Toolkit
Plan to maintain these changes until May 31, 2023, or longer if you wish
Send a message to the OTW asking for an update on their 2020 commitments!
For Readers: leave encouraging comments on fanworks with the "End Racism in the OTW" title to show your support of this initiative.
On tumblr
Reblog this Call to Action with the tag #End OTW Racism
Update your profile pics and banners using the graphics in our Social Media Toolkit
Follow this account for updates and signal boost our posts
On Twitter
Follow @/EndOTWRacism (remove the backslash) and signal boost our pinned tweet
Update your profile pics and banners using our graphics, and change your display name to include #EndOTWRacism
Use sample tweets and graphics from our Social Media Toolkit to tweet about your fanworks, and use the hashtag #EndOTWRacism
Help us make this a long-term campaign - sign up to help with other anti-racism projects and future actions!
What Do We Want?
Since their June 2020 statement, OTW has been working on updating their Terms of Service (TOS) to address racist and bigoted harassment, but with little transparency and only the vaguest of updates. It has been three years since their commitment to this update - we want to see the results of their work implemented in the next 6-12 months. Their TOS updates and complementary policies should include:
Harassment policies that can be regularly updated to address both on-site harassment and off-site coordinated harassment of AO3 users, with updated protocols for the Policy & Abuse Team to ensure consistent and informed resolutions of abuse claims
A content policy on abusive (extremely racist and extremely bigoted) content; by abusive, we are talking about fanworks that are intentionally used to spread hate and harassment, not those that accidentally invoke racist or other bigoted stereotypes
These points are not particularly new and are not our own innovation; please refer to Stitch's article written over two years ago, asking for several of these very things.
OTW has also already committed to various process-based actions for longer-term works towards centering antiracism, including hiring a Diversity Consultant. The last update that OTW published said that the consultant would be hired within the next five years (after already having had three years to work on it since their original commitment). That is not soon enough. We want to see the following process-based actions implemented:
Hiring a Diversity Consultant within the next 3-6 months
Committing to a policy of transparency on this topic, with quarterly updates on the progress of these projects including challenges and their plan for overcoming those challenges. These quarterly updates should be published on OTW News page and newsletters, not solely discussed in Board meetings
Why Are We Doing This?
16 years ago, Astolat famously published her manifesto calling for a fandom Archive of One’s Own. In that time, AO3 has grown to be a central pillar of fandom, likely far outstripping its founders’ original vision. It is more than just an archive now; it is a central hub of the modern fannish experience. AO3 and the OTW must continue to grow and evolve with fandom over time to remain a healthy and functioning pillar of fandom. To that end, there are several areas in which the organization, as it admits itself, is lacking.
In June 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd protests and the uprising of the Black Lives Matter Movement, The OTW published a “This Week in Fandom” referencing the works of Dr. Rukmini Pande and Stitch, among others in which they discussed ‘making change for a better society’ through ‘conversations about race and racism’. In response, Dr. Pande and Stitch submitted a letter to the OTW calling for a more formal public statement than an offhand reference in a News Roundup that only served to call for thoughts and discussion without any indication the organization intended to do anything, policy wise, to address the issues being raised.
Eventually, the organization did remove the references to the works of Dr. Pande and Stitch and then made an official statement on the issue of racism within the organization and AO3. In it, they identified several things they would be prioritizing to combat harassment and benefit users. Some of those have been implemented (notably those that were already under development). However as of this writing, little else has been done especially in regards to:
Improving admin tools for the Policy & Abuse team
Reassessing the current mandatory archive warnings with the possibility of implementing others
And, most importantly, reviewing the Terms of Service (TOS) to allow the Policy & Abuse team to address harassment that is currently not covered by the existing TOS
By their own admission, the current tools and policies of the OTW are not sufficient to deal with issues of harassment and racism.
Several people who were involved in the founding of the OTW, including previous OTW Board members and staff on the original OTW Content Policy Committee, acknowledge that the founding of the OTW in 2008 and early board iterations failed us as a fandom by not doing enough, and by not even considering the way racism is perpetuated in fannish spaces, despite a long history of racism in fandom.
It has been nearly three years since the original commitment by the organization with little visible, measurable progress on these three crucial issues and a complete lack of transparency on where they are in regards to even beginning to deal with these issues. In fact, in Q&As, it was heavily implied by a member of the board that those calling for OTW to deal with issues of racism (which OTW had already acknowledged as a problem!) were not really fans but outside agitators.
This has cast significant doubt on the organization's sincerity and commitment to their stated goals, and on their position as leaders of a central fan tent-pole. Fans of color are not outsiders. They are right here, members of our community, and they are being harassed and targeted and driven out while space and platforms are being given to racists.
We, as fans of color and our allies, find the current state of fandom and current actions (and lack thereof) unacceptable. Fandom is our space, all of ours. We, as a fandom, have a right to a racism-free space and have a duty to our fellow fans to create that space. Unlike so much of the world, this is a space we can control and make better. It is a space we must make better. To read even more about this movement, visit our FAQs.
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people you'd like to get to know better!
thank u to @greighish for the tag!!
LAST SONG: "sever the blight" by hemlocke springs - i'm obsessed
FAVORITE COLOR: like somewhere halfway between teal and blue? i'm not great with color names lol. aquamarine but darker??
CURRENTLY WATCHING: catching up on abbott elementary since i had been watching it with my roommate and then she moved away a year ago and i never started the second season lol; two episodes into the thai gl show me love which so far is mediocre but still watchable; about to do an over the garden wall seasonal rewatch; and almost certainly going to try the fall of the house of usher when it drops because i apparently can't stay away from mike flanagan shows. oh also the wnba finals and the end of the nwsl season!
LAST MOVIE: this is a great question and i have absolutely no recollection, i think i've only been watching tv and sports and short films recently? does the filmed version of the 2019 public theatre production of much ado about nothing in central park starring danielle brooks count as a movie?? if not then i guess i haven't watched a movie in months!
CURRENTLY READING: i'm rereading squee from the margins: race and fandom by dr. rukmini pande, which is absolutely essential reading if you are interested in racism in fandom!
LAST THING I GOOGLED: "fist bump emoji" lmao
SWEET/SPICY/SAVORY: i would probably be booted out of my family if i didn't say spicy. to sum up our take on spicy food in a single anecdote: when the vending machine at my dad's workplace runs out of flaming hot cheetos, he buys regular cheetos and squeezes out a stripe of sri racha onto each one as he's eating
CURRENT OBSESSION: fandom-wise, bad buddy, womp womp. otherwise: i've been working on this project around understanding anti-blackness in asian communities that i'll be sharing publicly soon, and that i have been pretty consumed by (in a good way!)
CURRENTLY WORKING ON: apart from aforementioned project, i've got a patpran fic and an inkpa fic in the works (both canon-divergent AUs, because i am me), and several bad buddy podfics as well!
tagging @sharingfandoms @hyeoni-comb @pocketsizedquasar @dimplesandfierceeyes and honestly anyone else who wants to do it hahaha i just tagged the first people that came to mind!
blank template under the cut!
LAST SONG:
FAVORITE COLOR:
CURRENTLY WATCHING:
LAST MOVIE:
CURRENTLY READING:
LAST THING I GOOGLED:
SWEET/SPICY/SAVORY:
CURRENT OBSESSION:
CURRENTLY WORKING ON:
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