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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[seiberwing.livejournal.com]

Someone was ranting about it on fanficrants, but that was about as much as I knew besides what you'd posted. Any idea what the comments said?

Never mind that there are different bits of fandom. One bit's discussing the costumes, one bit's who should be bonking who, one bit is going into the mythological background and subtext of the themes of the story...

[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.

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

No idea about the comments on this post.

I've been following metafandom, which has had tons of posts about OTW in the last month or so. Been driving me crazy.

[seiberwing.livejournal.com]

*reads through a few entries* *gets headache* I think I see why.

[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.

[negaduck9.livejournal.com]

If it wants to be inclusive, it can start by dropping the blurbs about how it is primarily female!

[(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?

[negaduck9.livejournal.com]

The center of the He-Fandom is He-Man.org (http://www.he-man.org). My little corner of it (which has art and fic) is Castle Numbskull (http://www.c4vct.com/kym/numbskul).

[dameparis.livejournal.com]

You don't know me from adam, but that post is not from someone in or affiliated from the OTW and represents nothing the OTW is about. She's just a troll and an idiot who likes to rile people up. Look at her other posts and you can see that.

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

I'll take your word for it that the person I linked is a troll. She's either that or a high-quality sexist moron.

However, as extreme as the views she's spouting are, you can see similar sexist views (much more mild, definitely) in the OTW website itself.

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

Upon actual examination of her journal, my impression is that if she's a troll, she's an inconsistent one. Looks more like the usual bitter idiot who thinks that being polite is for pussies.

Out of curiosity, how did you find this entry?

[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.

[charles-rb.livejournal.com]

I check their What We Believe section and bloody 'ell, the second bit of Our Values is "We value our identity as a predominantly female community". This just under the bit saying "all fannish works" and "all fans", and before the fifth Value mentioning they value fans of all genders. Clash, surely.

Though they do believe _Real Person Fiction_ should be completely legal, so this is the least of their problems.

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

*buckles down for the OTW trolls*

here via metafandom

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, RPF is legal. Stalkerish, but legal. I mean, look at all the published novels about 20th century historical figures out there.

At any rate, if an RPF writer were to be taken to court, it would be a civil suit dealing with libel charges, not a (legal) matter of copyright infringement or trademark dilution.

My knowledge of OTW is limited to what's shown up on metafandom, but as far as I can tell, most of the people involved seemed to hail from slash fandom, which is largely female, and has been since its early days as a tiny subset of Star Trek fandom.

That said, this janssanja person sounds like someone I'd be scrambling to distance myself from, if I were them. There's a difference between stating that a majority of fanfiction writers are women, and announcing that only women can ever contribute to fandom and everyone else needs to shut up and leave.

[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.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

It's on metafandom's delicious list.

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

It actually wasn't there when dameparis responded to my entry. Wasn't there this afternoon, either.

But thank you for your own answer. *grins, collects information*

Re: here via metafandom

[screwthedaisies.livejournal.com]

At any rate, if an RPF writer were to be taken to court, it would be a civil suit dealing with libel charges

Actually, while libel may or may not be listed in the suit, the focus is most likely be on publicity rights. When the Winter brothers sued DC Comics et al for the "Autumn Brothers" characters in the Jonah Hex comics, the libel charges were dismissed earlier on, but the publicity rights/misappropriation charges went all the way to the Supreme Court. Same deal when hockey player sued Todd McFarlane over the Tony Twist character in the Spawn comics--the suit was all about publicity rights (and went to the Missouri Supreme Court). (DC won their case, btw; McFarlane lost his.)