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221loislane · 1 year

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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.]

#otw #ao3 #organization for transformative works #archive of our own #abuse #harassment #racism #cw csem

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pearwaldorf · 1 year

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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.

#otw fuckery 2023 #racism in fandom #otw #organization for transformative works #ao3 #archive of our own

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fiercynn · 10 months

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i'm rereading squee from the margins: fandom and race by dr. rukmini pande and y'all. it's such a banger

#fandom racism #squee from the margins

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fanhackers · 11 months

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Fan Labor and the Promise of Representation

“While it might seem self-evident that online patterns are repeated in offline spaces, it is vital to note that these exclusions occur within spaces already marked by the language of representation and inclusion. That is, queer fans of color are often called upon to support such spaces and movements through such labor as supporting hashtags, creating fanwork, and contributing to campaigns to buy billboards as well as through their emotional investments by the promise of representation. However, when they find these spaces to be, once again, structured by the logics of white supremacy, their discomfort and disappointment are seen to be the problem within the fannish space. These logics are highlighted only in moments of conflict but must be seen as a constant context within which fans of color have to operate even as they seek modes of contingent and tenuous representation.” PANDE, RUKMINI, AND SWATI MOITRA. “WHOSE REPRESENTATION IS IT ANYWAY? CONTEMPORARY DEBATES IN FEMSLASH FANDOMS.” IN FANDOM, NOW IN COLOR, 151-163. IOWA CITY: UNIVERSITY OF IOWA PRESS, 2020.

#poster: shyams #fanhackers #fandom #fan studies #race and fandom #quotes

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alabaster-crashes-down · 3 months

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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

#hannibal #nbc hannibal

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miriam-heddy · 5 months

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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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thebtseffect · 2 years

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Comp Reading Lists

In an attempt to self-study several areas and expand my own knowledge, improve my ability to do research, and keep current with fields of interest, I'm building my own "comps list" here of relevant books. There are so many academic articles that I'm not sure if I'll include them here, but I'd like to at least track my reading of books. Comps lists are typically for Ph.D. students studying for exams, but I thought it might be a useful tool for me too. If you have suggestions, I welcome them.

BTS Studies

BTS, Art Revolution, Jiyoung Lee.

BTS and ARMY Culture, Jeeheng Lee.

BTS: The Review, Youngdae Kim.

Philosophizing about BTS, Cha Minju.

Bumping into BTS, Ji Kim, Mick Shin, and Jane Do.

Map of the Soul - Persona: Our Many Faces, Murray Stein.

Fan Studies

Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Henry Jenkins.

A Fan Studies Primer: Method, Research, Ethics, Paul Booth and Rebecca Williams.

Understanding Fandom: An Introduction to the Study of Media Fan Culture, Mark Duffett.

A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies, Paul Booth and Rebecca Williams.

Exploiting Fandom: How the Media Industry Seeks to Manipulate Fans, Mel Stanfill.

Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, Jonathan Gray, Cornell Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington.

Fan Cultures, Matt Hills.

Fame and Fandom: Functioning On and Offline, Celia Lam and Jackie Raphael.

The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, Lisa Lewis.

The Fan Fiction Studies Reader, Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse.

Loving Fanfiction: Exploring the Role of Emotion in Online Fandoms, Brit Kelley.

Fandom as Classroom Practice: A Teaching Guide, Katherine Anderson Howell.

Straight Korean Female Fans and Their Gay Fantasies, Jungmin Kwon.

Emo: How Fans Defined a Subculture, Judith Fathallah.

Squee from the Margins: Fandom and Race, Rukmini Pande.

Game Studies

Gaming Masculinity: Trolls, Fake Geeks, and the Gendered Battle for Online Culture, Megan Condis.

Learning in Video Game Affinity Spaces, Sean Duncan.

Ready Player Two: Women Gamers and Designed Identity, Shira Chess.

Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming, T.L. Taylor.

Metagaming: Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Video Games, Stephanie Boluk and Patrick Lemieux.

The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games: Why Gaming Culture is the Worst, Christopher Paul.

My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft, Bonnie Nardi.

Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds, Celia Pearce.

Ethics, Psychology, & Philosophy

Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care, Joan Tronto.

Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction, Murray Stein.

The Ethics of Care, Virginia Held.

Research Ethics in the Real World, Helen Kara.

The Portable Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Kaufmann.

General Reading & Methods

Where Research Begins: Choosing a Research Project that Matters to You, Thomas Mullaney and Christopher Rea.

The Practice of Qualitative Research: Engaging Students in the Research Process, Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber.

Destination Dissertation: A Traveler's Guide to a Done Dissertation, Sonja Foss and William Waters.

Getting It Published: A Guide for Scholars and Anyone Else Serious about Series Books, William Germano.

Learning to Make a Difference: Value Creation in Social Learning Spaces, Etienne Wenger-Trayner and Beverly Wenger-Trayner.

Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method, Tom Boellstorff and Bonnie Nardi, et. al.

An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method, James Paul Gee.

#fan studies #comp list #fan studies readings #fandom #media studies #bts research

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dracothelizard · 1 year

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Hi, could you please clarify what you meant by non-Anglophone fans regarding your critiques of EndOTWRacism not caring about those fans because non-Anglophone means non-English & that excludes a plethora of fans from the Global South that were colonized by the English (like my country South Africa) and that makes me a bit uncomfortable.

Also, antiblackness is a global phenomenon & even happens in majority Black countries (once again, I highly recommend doing some research on South Africa & Afrophobia in that specific country). Being Asian alone doesn't mean someone will wholly support the very specific commitments OTW made in 2020 (where they also cited Dr Rukmini Pande [an Indian, and therefore Asian, fan scholar from India where English is spoken & even a mode of instruction in many of its schools & tertiary institutions - must she & fans like her also be excluded because they are Anglophone fans?] & Stitch without asking these two fan scholars for their consent to be cited by OTW leading to a barrage of harassment towards both individuals).

If you want EndOTWRacism to broaden their scope, you should definitely suggest that to them. But they are following the specific commitments the OTW made. Also, I have seen conversations about OTW not making enough commitments in 2020 to do something about racism on their platform by some of the mods of EndOTWRacism in a personal capacity but the main reason they are sticking to the specific commitments OTW made is because they are avoiding being accused of trying to make OTW do things they never said they would do. By sticking to the specific commitments OTW made, EndOTWRacism can hold OTW accountable for something they publicly made commitments to.

Also, OTW made these commitments in response to anti-blackness. So, centering antiblackness makes sense (and also just on a historical level - when antiblackness is engaged with in antiracist policies - the benefits of that move upwards to other racial groups - see the The Voting Rights Act of 1965 that included pro-immigration legislation that made it easier for immigrants of colour to move into the US (this was made possible because of Black Americans). Or my own country of South Africa that got rid of Apartheid in 1994 (I would be born just 3 years after that when my mom was 30) and Black, Coloured (this is a specific racial category in SA), Indian & Chinese South Africans could vote, move freely & live wherever they wanted in SA. This was made possible by Black South African freedom leaders in community with other South Africans of colour that worked in solidarity.

Anti-asian racism is a huge problem in fandom that has been discussed by fans of colour for a long time (see conversations in the early/mid 2010s in fandom about Lucy Liu's mistreatment by BBC Sherlock fans or Glen's mistreatment from the Walking Dead fandom). And with the increase of East Asian media in fandom since at least 2014, conversations about anti-asian racism are even more imperative. But that should not mean ignoring or hand waving away convos about antiblackness - especially when that was the origin of OTW commitments in 2020. If you personally have a problem with that, by all means ask OTW why they didn't specifically talk about other forms of racism or make any other statement with commitments when the StopAsianHate movement was in full swing. Why was OTW's statement so clearly influenced by BlackLivesMatter and the commitments various individuals, businesses & non-profit organizations were making to this specific movement. OTW will have more board meetings, so if you are a paying member, you can absolutely ask them these questions. I know those questions are things I have thought about.

All the best, H.

"because non-Anglophone means non-English & that excludes a plethora of fans from the Global South that were colonized by the English (like my country South Africa) and that makes me a bit uncomfortable."

I am also non-Anglophone and yes, End OTW Racism explicitly excluding non-Anglophone fans also makes me uncomfortable, because as you say, racism is a global problem.

I am not sure why you are bringing up anti-blackness and anti-asianness as if it is an either/or matter. Caring about anti-blackness doesn't mean not caring about anti-asianness. Caring about anti-asianness doesn't mean not caring about anti-blackness. Some fans are mixed race and are both. Some fans have to deal with other forms of racism (like the anti-Aboriginal slur which still gets used often to talk about Omegaverse)

The OTW's goals did not explicitly mention centering anti-blackness. End OTW Racism's goals did not explicitly mention centering anti-blackness.

If that is what the OTW and End OTW Racism want to center, they can, but they should say that explicitly. But in the case of End OTW Racism, excluding non-Anglophone fans makes no sense, because as you say, anti-blackness is a global problem.

#This EOTWR stuff I guess #Also doubt.jpg at EOTWR taking suggestions from non-Anglos onboard #I've seen how they respond to criticism

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listening-to-thunder · 2 years

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Oh dear. Seeing an old old fandom while scrolling by and no mention (of course) of the racism. Like, yes, I feel fondness but also I feel it's worth mentioning Jim Ellison was a US military officer who crashed in "The Jungle" and learned about Sentinels from a "Peruvian Tribe". Ahahaha. Haha. Yeeeeeah. 😬 (Also so much copaganda, ofc, because what wasn't in the 1990s.)

Dr Rukmini Pande wrote a great piece about it last year:

Framing fandom history: The effects of whiteness on memorialization

#fandom problems #fandom racism #the sentinel

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spacebeyonce · 1 year

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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:

#fandom racism #white fandom

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pierrotwrites-hc · 2 years

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Posting Update and the Omegaverse

Thank you for the well-wishes/lit candles/invocations to eldritch gods! I credit good vibes and my chiropractor for the fact I can once again sit at (and even on!) a desk. The next chapter of TGB will be posted within the next few days. I’m sorry for not being able to give a more specific post date, but the semester has started and I’ve already despaired of answering student emails in anything like a timely fashion.

On a completely different note, this video by the always-excellent Rowan Ellis is very good and I recommend it.

youtube

This was timely viewing for me given that one of my favorite series on Ao3, “This Time Next Year,” just wrapped up. I was surprised to find myself enjoying TTNY as much as I did given that I do not generally read RPS and find hockey alarming.

I was about to write that I don’t generally read a/b/o either, but this isn’t actually true. I don’t seek out a/b/o dynamics and wouldn’t consider myself a fan of the genre in and of itself, but hurt/comfort and power discrepancy are such integral components of so much omegaverse fic that I...end up reading a lot of omegaverse fic.

What I loved most about TTNY -- the worldbuilding -- is exactly what Ellis cites as key of the genre’s appeal. Omegaverse recontextualizes gender, power, and sex, thereby allowing us to, as Ellis puts it, "examine our own ideas of sex and gender with a level of distance while still engaging with questions of power, exploitation, and interpersonal relationships.”

Ellis quotes one scholar who points out that writers and readers of omegaverse “are highly conscious of the consent issues involved, and actively use the generic conventions of the omegaverse to explore them...such in-depth exploration of issues of inequality and consent is not a feature usually found in either pornography or romance.”

This hit me where I live: inequality and consent are what I read for. In that light, it makes perfect sense that I’ve ended up reading so much omegaverse almost despite myself. Like its writers and readers, I’m interested in how trauma and disempowerment complicate relationships in general and love in particular. How can you love and be loved by someone who has no legal personhood? What does ‘yes’ mean when your partner cannot say ‘no’?

As Ellis points out, these are also questions raised by heterosexual relationships in times and places where women are subordinate to men and have no recourse to justice -- and I think that hurt/comfort and powerfic, like omegaverse, provides a way to approach those questions without reference to the real-world conditions of misogyny and compulsory heterosexuality that so many of us (*raises hand*) feel fatigued and defeated by.

I appreciate that Ellis notes the potentially (or perhaps inevitably?) racialized nature of what are essentially slavery dynamics in omegaverse fic. Obviously these dynamics are what brought me to the genre, and I winced when Ellis quoted Rukmini Pande’s critique that this corner of fandom has “overwhelmingly become a place for white fans to write white narratives about white characters -- a place to feign discussing race without ever actually discussing race.”

Ellis and Pande are right, of course, and I’ve long been aware of and unsettled by the potential of my own work to fall into this category. Slavery is not race-bound in TGB -- my reference point is an ancient world that precedes modern racial constructs -- but this is in its own way just as (or perhaps even more?) problematic, because erasing whiteness from stories about slavery elides the complicity of whiteness in slavery and its ongoing effects.

In the abstract of Pande’s essay (which is unfortunately behind a paywall), she calls out omegaverse stories set in "slavery alternate universes”: “Populating stories that explicitly draw on the horrors of transatlantic slavery with white bodies effectively decenters the lived experiences of Black people, trivializes historical and intergenerational trauma, and foregrounds white feelings and experiences within a specifically racialized narrative.”

...oof. heavy stuff.

As both a writer and reader, I comfort myself with the fact that if there is no ethical consumption under late capitalism, it follows that there is no ethical production under late capitalism -- including creative production. I don’t write in a vacuum: everything I produce is also a product of history. The alternative universes I imagine are bounded by the limitations of my imagination, which are also the conditions of the body I occupy and the time and place within which I exist.

This isn’t good or bad. It just is.

Perhaps my ethical obligation, then, is to write what I believe to be true about power and trauma and sex and love while also acknowledging that it is an imperfect and contradictory and disputable and yes, even problematic truth.

Which of course makes me think of another concept sprung from the fandom id: that of the problematic fave. The linked article provides a writeup of a ComicCon panel which I did not attend (but, ironically enough, featured some IRL friends). I really like Lara Elena Donnelly’s comparison between problematic faves and ice cream: “Ice cream is delicious and easy to love, but eating ice cream all the time will leave you malnourished. This doesn’t mean you can’t have ice cream, of course, you just have to be upfront about what it is and incorporate it into a diverse diet.”

So it is with omegaverse, and h/c and powerfic generally. I think these genres can be fantastic and necessary places to wrestle with some deeply evil social problems, but they can’t be the only places we do this work.

I don’t have any good or smart note on which to end what turned into a very long post, but I hope you’ll donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds (because reproductive justice is gender justice is racial justice) and, also, I wholeheartedly recommend Lara’s books, all of them.

#thoughts on fic #thoughts on writing #Thoughts on Reading #thoughts on whump #thoughts on just about everything really #omegaverse #but make it meta #rowan ellis

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