Why I Don't Care for OTW

[beckyh2112]

No matter how much male they feel, transformative works belong to what I like to call the female part of fandom.

You know, this whole post is astonishingly sexist and full of useless, ill-informed generalizations.

Apparently discussing the relationships in a show is more 'transformative' than discussing the special effects. Or, like most of the males I know in Transformers, discussing the relative merits of Character A vs. Character B.

But apparently, to be 'transformative', you have to be discussing sex and relationships in the fandom.

This is just one idiot, who apparently ran away from comments disagreeing with her.

Yet, I've noticed this continuing idea, from OTW and their supporters, that to be a fan of the sort they care about, you have to be female or part of the 'female' side of fandom. This sort of creativity is just as "transformative" as slashfic. I know equal numbers of Transformers fanartists from either gender. I read a fair amount of Transformers fanfic by males.

So, how am I participating in a 'female' side of fandom? How can people even define fandom as being 'male' or 'female'? Dividing it up like that sets an implication that one side is better than the other, especially with OTW's emphasis on examination of the female side of fandom.

I believe that approaching an analysis of fandom from an academic-feminist perspective is going to be inherently flawed when you come to such fandoms as Transformers. Just as I believe that analyzing fandom as a whole based on exposures to individual fandoms is inherently flawed. Different fandoms have different cultures.

I don't like OTW. I find their seeking for legality to be something to be extremely nervous about. I find the gobzillions of meta posts about why people joined OTW to be intensely off-putting. I dislike them using heidi8 as one of their Intellectual Property lawyers, as she's been a big defender and close friend of Cassandra Claire. I've never particularly liked the academic-feminist form of analysis that they seem to be using, at least not if it isn't in conjunction with another form of analysis.

I don't think what they are talking about providing is worth my time, especially when they seem structured in such a way as to shut out half the fandom that I love and participate in.

Comments

[invisiblemoose.livejournal.com]

That post makes me furious. What an ignorant bitch. I mean, the female part of fandom? Exactly how far up her own ass is her head?

Also, there appears to be a rather crude edit in the post that has removed some of the body text, and apparently all of the comments.

What's the relevance of Cassandra Claire? I'm looking for stuff myself but I was hoping you could help shed some light.

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

Cassandra Claire was a really popular Harry Potter fanwriter who did a semi-interesting trilogy centered around Draco Malfoy.

She had a tendency to lift witty quotes from various sources but she made it a 'game' for her readers to identify them.

However, the shit really hit the fan when it was discovered that she had lifted a big chunk of text from a published novel. Almost exactly identical, except for the changes to Harry Potter fan-names.

So her plagiarism has really left a bad taste in people's mouths, and there was a huge kerfluffle in the Harry Potter fandom. Heidi defended her a lot as her lawyer, so there are a lot of people who don't trust Heidi to properly defend intellectual property to save her life.

[invisiblemoose.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course, imagine people daring to accuse her of plagarism, she changed the names!

Plus, using the icon I meant to use in my first comment.

[khym-chanur.livejournal.com]

You can go here (http://www.journalfen.net/community/bad_penny/8985.html) for a full report on what happened.

[seiberwing.livejournal.com]

She's disabled comments, hasn't she? Figures. So this is why people are all kerfussed about this OTW business.

And while I do notice that there are certain 'trends' in fandom (for example, women are more likely to write slash. Duh.) she's taking the generalizations and being a general dickwad about the whole situation.

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

That post just infuriated me. I had to comment on it, and then it all kind of spilled into my own "why I dislike OTW" post.

But, grrrr. Calling that sort of sexism supportive of OTW is not helpful to their cause.

[negaduck9.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard about OTW before. Doesn't look like something I'll research too hard now. Ahh, the peacefulness of the ReBoot and He-Man fandoms.

I've noticed different trends along gender lines. You hardly ever see women drawing the huge muscleman/T&A pics in the MOTU fandom, for example. But those are trends, nothing more. This person is just getting weird about gender. Only men can be real hard-SF fans? Guess I've got a lot of books to sell on eBay.

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

That's one of the things that gets me about OTW. They want to be for all of fandom, but most of the people I know in smaller fandoms have never heard of them. I only hear about them because I read metafandom and Journalfen's wank comms.

They are not good at advertising for something meant to be so inclusive.

[(Anonymous)]

Ahh, the peacefulness of the ReBoot and He-Man fandoms.

*poke* *pokepokepoke* Where is this He-Man fandom you speak of? Is there fic?

[apathocles.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I have the OTW comm friended, but I'll admit that I don't usually read it, because I am lazy don't have time. (And I defriended Metafandom ages ago, because it always drives me nuts whenever there's a pile of posts on one topic, re-hashing all the old arguments for the 1240983514th time.)

Which is why I'm out of the loop enough to be surprised by your mentioning that Heidi is involved. What. WHAT.

Seriously, there is not enough WTF in the world. O.O

I'm... still undecided about OTW. I really need to start paying more attention, if I'm going to make an informed decision.

(Also? That Warpath is made from some serious freakin' win. *lusts*)

[charles-rb.livejournal.com]

Aside from using the term "transformative" without explaining what the flying fuck it actually MEANS, the linked post fails majorly as the LJer seems to believe all men have the same mind and views, as dictated by the Central Phallocracy, and generally being the soulless Vehicon Drones to female fandom's band of Heroic Maximals who will bring love, harmony and trees to FandomTron. Except, wait, the female fans based on that post are _all_ interested in the same things and have the same views (and SHOULD have the same views), so it's actually a conflict between _two_ armies of soulless Vehicon Drones under central genital command.

This is undermined by the _extremely easy to find_ male fans who discuss characterisation and pairings, female fans who focus on the science and Special FX (some women are interested in Science?! SHOCK!), female fans who fantasise about themselves being paired with male characters, and so on and so forth in quite a few fandoms. I might be more inclined to be more leniant in my point-and-laughing if I hadn't recently seen _hordes of male fans_ complaining about IDW's Beast Wars output on grounds of characterisation.

So I'm seeing rampant sexism against men, rampant sexism against _women_ by claiming all women are the same and must "logically" support OTW coz it's mostly female, and then sexism & general prejudice against transgenders to complete the Holy Trilogy. This is fail on an epic scale. This is a Wagner Cycle of fail.

Also she fails for supporting OTW, who I thought looked dodgy even _before_ you mentioned the Cassie Claire link. Now I think it's dodgier than Swindle, Doubledealer and Starscream setting up a sub-prime mortgage company together while claiming non-domicile tax status.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

The explanation I've seen is that "transformative" is a piece of legal jargon involving copyright law (i.e. works judged to be sufficiently "transformative" can fall under the increasingly narrow umbrella of fair use). By describing fanfiction as "transformative works," they're trying to make a case that fans shouldn't be prosecuted or sued for writing/sharing it.

You're not the first person to object to the use of SAT vocabulary words in the organization's name, though. A vocal set of fans think it's offputting and pretentious.

[dunmurderin.livejournal.com]

[R]ampant sexism against _women_ by claiming all women are the same and must "logically" support OTW coz it's mostly female

THERE! That right THERE is what bugs me about OTW and, more specifically, about the whole 'fandom is a female space' thing. Apparently, because I'm female I'm supposed to just run mindlessly to join in the cause because it's for women and I'm a woman and therefore I automatically support everything woman-centric!

Except that, y'know, I don't. I don't write fanfic because I want to be in touch with the 'female space', I write fanfic because I want to see stories about the characters I like and if I don't write 'em, nobody else is going to. I write fanfics for the fun of it, period.

But, if I have to be a souless Vehicon drone, I totally call myself as a Thrust-type Vehicon 'cause dude, claw hands!

[guestyperson.livejournal.com]

Has this been metaquoted yet? Because if it hasn't I humbly request permission to metaquote you on the first and third paragraphs.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

the LJer seems to believe all men have the same mind and views, as dictated by the Central Phallocracy

Wait, you mean we don't?

Dammit, I knew that subscription was a front for Reader's Digest!

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

*buckles down for the OTW trolls*

[shay-renoylds.livejournal.com]

But apparently, to be 'transformative', you have to be discussing sex and relationships in the fandom.

This concept is one that gets to be pretty commonly accepted. It's painful watching classes of people derail amazingly interesting discussions of fic and boil them down to "so, it's just about making people screw each other."

And this has happened time and time again to me. I try and fix the mis perception and it gets broken time and time again.

I agree that equating fic with being female is automatically problematic -- men who are fic writers are, of course, automatically ignored, and women who exist as fen outside of TW get ignored as well -- but I think the reason for this is that there is already a mediated view of how fen interact. Male fans have been, stereotypically, been accepted as media fans -- works like "Fan Boys" reinforcing this -- but this is in NO WAY what reality looks like.

It's a reinforcement of "appropriate" and "inappropriate" behaviours. Male fen are (in media understandings), in some ways, infantalized but they still can retain a certain amount of respect as Media Fans in which they "discuss" and "do useful things" with Star Trek or Star Wars or whatever New and Exciting (TM) fandom of media choice there is going around.

Boys are allowed to collect things because they're "supposed" to -- it's been documented for longer and therefore is, of course, "alright". This means, of course, that female fen who do these things are automatically marginalized or shown as behaving "oddly". That's a problem.

Female fans, of course, write fic. I mean, DUH *facepalm* Like other "female dominated" spaces of previous years (even if they aren't actually dominated by one gender or another, or are, conversely, dominated by people who refuse to gender identify) there is an attempt to completely subvert what is happening as "inappropriate" or "not art" or "wrong" or thousands of other degrading things because it is a "female space".

But... um... all rambling aside -- that post is PAIN. Because of course girls can't code. Dear gods -- female computer programers! What HAS the world come to?

[yubsie]

Genficcers don't exist, didn't you get the memo? :p

Also, you would not BELIEVE how many times I've considered writing a piece entitled "Why I DOn't Care Why You Joined OTW" when metafandom was nothing but that. :p

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

I would have liked such a post. Because so many posts about why people joined OTW... Well, as I said in a previous post, it's created an "agh, shutupshutupshutup!" instinct in me.

From Metafandom.

[crazyfetish.livejournal.com]

Yep.

I just have a problem with the language they're using, as it is incredibly specific to their experience. I had to blink and grin a bit when the site mentioned the archive being ready by summer. They tell more in little stuff like that.

They should either word it a little differently, or admit that it's not for whoever doesn't fit their wording. It seems that they wanted somewhere for friends to be, it got bigger than that, and now they're struggling to include everyone.

Re: From Metafandom.

[charles-rb.livejournal.com]

What I want to know is - what's different about this archive compared to normal fic-sites (except being bigger)? Because surely, if they have the domain name and some fics, they could start it _now_ and make it bigger as they go along - though I suppose that wouldn't look as impressive.

"It seems that they wanted somewhere for friends to be, it got bigger than that, and now they're struggling to include everyone."

Sounds accurate.

From metafandom as well...

[dharma-slut.livejournal.com]

Jassanja takes two examples and makes a universal statement out of them. You take her example and make a universal statement out of it.

I don't suppose that the word "Predominantly" in the OTW statement changes anything for you? Not "Exclusively" or "Solely" but "Mostly".

As in "My dress is predominantly blue." Some of the flowers on it are purple and red, but most of them are blue.

Re: From metafandom as well...

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

I took Jassanja's statement and ranted about it for a bit, then noted that I saw (and continue to see) a much, much milder version of this in OTW's sentiments. If it wasn't already there to be seen, I wouldn't have connected Jassanja's idiotic post with the whole of OTW.

I am not the only person seeing this, as some of the other commenters on this post have illustrated.

We value our identity as a predominantly female community with a rich history of creativity and commentary.

My fandom isn't predominately female. Most of the fandoms I've participated in aren't predominately female. Yet they are still producers of what OTW calls 'transformative works', and I fully believe that OTW's stance that the "practice of transformative work" is "historically rooted in a primarily female culture" is a flawed stance that will not give an accurate idea of fandom.

Of course, I also believe that attempting to accurately analyse and examine fandom as a whole based on individual fandoms is inherently flawed, as it is virtually impossible for there to be enough academics interested in all of the myriad, countless fandoms out there and able to devote the time and passion to studying them. Therefore, I believe that OTW's analysis of fandom as a whole will instead be an analysis of fandom as a least common denominator.

from <lj user="metafandom">

[ingridmatthews.livejournal.com]

I find the gobzillions of meta posts about why people joined OTW to be intensely off-putting.

Ya think? I'm almost tempted to swear to declare OTW my lord and savior if they'd just stop posting. There's a thick smell of desperation hanging all around these advertisements that is hardly inspiring.

I dislike them using [info]heidi8 as one of their Intellectual Property lawyers

This is a world of wrong that needs its own solar system (known plagiarist and defender of a very well-known plagiarist defending fanfic's right to only slightly infringe on copyright? Okaaay.) but I'm thinking she might be the only lawyer they could get pro bono.

Thanks for this post. It's a breath of fresh air.

Re: from <lj user="metafandom">

[charles-rb.livejournal.com]

"There's a thick smell of desperation hanging all around these advertisements that is hardly inspiring."

I'm waiting for the eventual "Join OTW and get FREE MONEY!!!!".