You're viewing ![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small} shadowscast's Reading PageCreate a Dreamwidth Account Learn More | Reload page in: light style |
the_shoshannathe_shoshannashadowscast![[staff profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
denise posting in ![[site community profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_newsdenise likes to make stupid jokes in the weekly update introduction....) Coming soon to a theatre near you:![[syndicated profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
otw_news_feedIt may have seemed a bit quiet in Archive terms for a while, but that is because our designers, coders and testers have been beavering away behind the scenes on some big projects. We're happy to report that the HUGE amount of new code produced over the past few months has now been deployed to the Archive - we're very excited about the new features being introduced, and we think that you will be too!
There are lots and lots of new things in this deploy: check out the Release Notes for release 0.7.3 to see a full list. Here are a few highlights:
One reason we have not deployed new code for a while is that we've been undergoing a site-wide review of our front end code. Our fantastic front-end coder lim has reviewed everything for validity and accessibility, while the lovely Ira remodelled our 'post new' form. You'll notice lots of small changes everywhere, highlights include:
We welcome your feedback on the new design, but we ask that for the first week, you focus on telling us if you have found any bugs! This will make it easier for our wonderful Support team to work through your feedback and pass it to coders. We'll collate more general feedback separately and use it to tweak the design (remember that we are also planning skins to customise the look of the Archive, so there will be more options in the future).
For those of you who have been frustrated that our tag interface didn't give quite the control you might like over RPF fandoms and fandoms with a shared universe / in different media, etc, we have good news! A massive amount of work on the part of our AMAZING coder Elz has gone into changing the way tags work behind the scenes to include metatags, which will help us deal with these problems. For more information, check out Metatags: a user perspective. The changes in tags won't be immediate - our wranglers will need time to finish overhauling their policies and make the changes - but our mighty team regularly moves mountains, so you should see improvements pretty quickly.
This release sees the next set of code for challenges. It's now possible to have people sign up for your gift exchange challenge and give their prompts on the Archive itself. More amazing feats of coding from Naomi, who has been working with the mods of the multifandom challenge Remix Redux to develop the new functionality, and there are even more features still to come.
Please note: We have not yet written the code which will match up challenge participants and send out their assignments, so if you want to run a challenge on the new code, bear in mind you will have to wait a few weeks for us to roll out the other half of the functionality!
After many, many support requests forlornly informing us of usernames that wound up being not quite as you wanted them, we have implemented a rename option. Please note that changing your username will break links which included your old username! For more information check out our tutorial on editing your username.
User icons YAY! Another treat from the lovely Elz. Check out our tutorial on user icons for all the details on how to upload! We're especially excited about this because icons are our first chance to see how hosting fanart might work on the Archive (watch this space for more on this very soon).
This one hopefully should be invisible, but awesome new coder Ronan has completely rewritten our back-end HTML formatter so that it is about twice as fast! If you notice stories not displaying as they used to, please let us know.
This is just a small selection of all the amazing work that appears in this deploy - don't forget to check out the Release Notes for release 0.7.3 for the full list.
Thirteen different coders contributed to this code, including new members amc, Ronan and Ira. \0/ It also represents the hard work of many, many other people: our support team passed on your feedback to our designers, our designers worked hard to improve things based on your feedback, our coders implemented the design, and our testers moved mountains in order to get everything checked out so that we could be sure that everything was in working order. Now the new code is in place, the whole process starts again, with our tag wranglers and support team handling things on the front line and everyone else working to build the next release. We're incredibly grateful for and proud of the energy and dedication that goes into this project.
If you'd like to be part of all this activity, there are lots of ways you can be involved!
Remember, if you like something, hate something, or love what we have but want even more shiny things, we want to know! The Archive of Our Own is for all fans and we want to cater for fandom in all its delicious diversity.
Mirrored from an original post on the Archive of Our Own.
otw_news_feedA big deploy is imminent!
We'll be deploying a whole bunch of new code to the Archive of Our Own this afternoon (North American time). There are lots of shiny new features in this release:
Full release notes coming after the deploy.
We'll post to the AO3_Status Twitter before we begin the deploy, and again once it's complete. The site will be down for a (hopefully) brief period while we deploy, and will return with many shiny new things!
otw_news_feedIn this last spotlight post of our March Membership Drive we want to talk about the importance of international diversity, and how central that diversity is to the organizational vitality and inclusive mission of the OTW. Chances are, if you're reading this, you're in a fandom that uses English as its lingua franca. With many EFL (English as a foreign language) fans "passing" as native speakers, there's often the default assumption that everyone is US-American. But as anyone who was surprised to discover that their favourite author is actually from Israel, or Argentina, or Malaysia knows: that assumption is only true on the surface.
The OTW was conceived in this same international, English-speaking space. And because the organization is incorporated in the USA and is shaped by US laws, the misleading assumption doubly applies. But like the fandoms we call home, we have always been global. We are OTW members, supporters, coders, translators, volunteers. We are Australian, Dutch, Polish, Brazilian. We are not tokens. We are not ornamental. We are, and have always been, at the heart of the OTW: right here in this international, virtual space.
We'll let volunteers' individual voices speak for themselves below:
Celebrating Fandom – Infrastructure & Preservation – International Collaboration
International diversity, like any other form of diversity, enriches us. Variable points of view make every step we take stronger, because that variation ensures that we have looked at the potential impacts of our actions. Diversity of all sorts isn't a buzzword for us -- it's real and powerful. It has a valuable effect on our projects that we see in real-time, as we gain feedback throughout every process. It's something we think is worth actively pursuing in our membership, in the users of OTW projects including the AO3 and Fanlore, and in our volunteers. The effects are better feedback, improved accessibility, better overall products, and a stronger mission. Without that, we are less. Without that, we weaken our chance at succeeding. We are international -- and we're determined to become even more so.
We're not going to pretend that the organization is not US-dominated. It is! But not as much than you may think, as we hope we can show with this post. You're not any less welcome, or your perspective and experiences any less important. We're listening. Join us, and add your voice to the OTW.
With members hailing from 37 countries, the OTW is amazingly international. Even with a membership so diverse, there's still one thing we can all agree on: fandom – in its myriad realizations – is deeply important to our lives, and being part of the OTW is one way to express this.
L'année dernière, en l'espace de quelques mois, je me suis créé un compte Dreamwidth, j'ai délurké, j'ai commencé à poster des fanarts et à m'inscrire à toutes sortes de challenges. Je me suis faite des amies extraordinaires en ligne et dans la vraie vie. J'étais prête à crier mon amour du fandom sur tous les toits!
Me joindre à l'équipe de l'OTW était inévitable. Quelle autre organisation représente aussi merveilleusement la créativité, l'entraide et le potentiel innovateur immense des communautés de fans? Xen, CanadaLast year, in the space of a few months, I created a dreamwidth account, I delurked, I started posting fanarts and signed up for all manners of challenges. I made amazing friends both online and in real life. I wanted to scream my love for fandom on every rooftop!
Joining the OTW was inevitable. What other organization can represent the amazing creativity, support and innovation potential of fan communities?
OTW: Why So Awesome -- Xenakis, with instant translation by Yue
Tranformatiivisten teosten järjestö (OTW). Faneilta faneille. Meidän oma järjestömme, joka ajaa meidän asiaamme. Eikö siinä ole jo tarpeeksi syytä olla kiinnostunut OTW:sta? Minulle OTW on ennen kaikkea yhteisö, joka vaalii meidän kultturiamme ja joka edistää faniuden ymmärtämistä niin akateemisella kuin laillisella tahollakin. OTW tekee töitä niiden asioiden eteen, joihin minä haluan muutosta. Haluan, että lainsäätäjät ottavat huomioon fanien tarpeet, kun he säätävät lakeja. Haluan, että faniutta ymmärrettään syvemmällä tasolla. Haluan, että fandom omistaa serverit. Haluan olla osa tätä yhteisöä. Siksi olen OTW:n vapaaehtoinen. Helka, Finland
Organization for Transformative Works. By fans for fans. Our own organization that works with our concerns. Isn't that reason enough to be interested in OTW? For me, OTW is above all a community that preserves and celebrates our culture and that furthers knowledge about fans in both academic and legal contexts. OTW works for those issues in which I want to see change. I want the legislators to take into account fans' needs when they draft laws. I want fannishness to be understood on a deeper level. I want fandom to own the servers. I want to be part of this community. That's why I'm an OTW volunteer.
¿Un proyecto soñado, ideado y llevado adelante completamente por mujeres?, ¿orientado a proteger nuestro derecho a ser creativas y disfrutar de la creatividad de otras mujeres sin por ellos ser consideradas delincuentes? La pregunta realmente, debería ser, ¿cómo no interesarme?
La OTW representa todo aquello que amo del fandom: la solidaridad, la creatividad, el esfuerzo en común y el idealismo.
Cuando surgió la oportunidad de ayudar, de involucrarme a través del equipo de traducción, no lo dudé ni por un instante. Porque quiero ser parte de la esto. Me enorgullece ser parte de esto.
Mujeres de todo el mundo, creando juntas un espacio nuevo. ¿Orgullosa?
¡Pueden apostarlo! birggitt, ArgentinaA project dreamed, conceived and carried out entirely by women?, designed to protect our right to be creative and enjoy other women's creativity without being criminalized? The question really should be, how could I not to be interested?
The OTW represents everything I love in fandom: solidarity, creativity, common effort and idealism.
When the opportunity arose to help, to get involved through the translation team, I did not hesitate, not for a moment.
Because I want to be part of this. I am proud to be part of it. Women around the world, creating a new space together.
Proud? You bet it!
Even though the Archive of Our Own and Open Doors projects are currently only available in English, it is one of our clear goals to make this valuable infrastructure available to local, monolingual communities as well as to our bilingual users. And bilingual users we have: while US users reigned supreme in February 2010, more Russian than Australian readers accessed the AO3, followed by Canada, the UK, Germany, Finland, New Zealand and Poland – overall, our stats show access from more than 60 countries.
Das deutsche Fandom steckt noch in den Kinderschuhen; viele Fans sind noch relativ jung und außer zwei, drei großen Archiven gibt es keine nennenswerte Infrastruktur. Das liegt sicherlich auch daran, dass viele Fans, sobald sie älter sind, ins englische Fandom abwandern; vielleicht, weil ihre Lieblingsshows nur in Amerika oder Großbritannien laufen oder weil sie dort ein größeres Publikum haben. Ich denke, die OTW hat durch ihr Archiv die einmalige Möglichkeit, jüngere und ältere deutsche Fans wieder zusammenzubringen und gerade die jüngeren für Fragen zu interessieren, die über das Posten und Kommentieren von Fanfictions hinausgehen. Sevil, Germany
German fandom is still relatively young; the average age of fans is 14-17 years (my own estimation) and there is no infrastructure beyond two or three big archives. It might have to do with German fans leaving for English fandom once they are comfortable enough with the language – maybe because their favourite shows are only shown in America or Britain or maybe because they find a larger audience for their works. I believe that through their archive, the OTW has the power to reunite younger and older German fans, awaking an interest in fannish things beyond posting and commenting in younger fans and renew the older fans' interest in "the German part of things".
L'OTW est une organisation composées de fans, à propos des fans et leurs réalisations. Elle nous offre une voix.
En tant que lurkeuse, lectrice, auteur, fanartiste, et bien d'autres encore en tant que fan je supporte le droit de chacun de pouvoir créer et recréer des oeuvres. L'audace, la créativité et la diversité des voix des fans méritent d'être entendues et préservées. Yue, CanadaThe OTW is an organization of fans, about fans and their creations. It gives us a voice.
As a lurker, reader, author, graphic artist, fanartist, and more – as a fan – I support everyone's right to create and recreate and transform works. The audacity, creativity and diversity of fan voices are worth being heard and preserved.
OTW Gives Us A Voice -- Yue, with instant translation by Xenakis
The volunteer force behind the OTW's projects is a world in microcosm. One of the first things new AO3 Tag Wranglers get in their training materials, for example, is a recommendation for a time zone converter -- so that they can have an idea of when other Wranglers may be around -- and that brings home the importance of accessibility, international and otherwise, in a very practical and personal sense. That's true throughout the OTW: we're an organization that stretches past the horizon in all directions.
One of the most interesting things I've been part of as an OTW volunteer is the tag wrangler discussions of and resource building for consistent transcription for fandoms with sources in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Russian etc. OTW volunteers have some amazing language skills, come from so many places and are quite awesome. Vera, Australia
Durch meine Entdeckung des internationalen Fandoms tat sich mir die Welt auf. Trotz sprachlicher Probleme und irrwitzig abweichender Zeitzonen fand ich Freunde in Kanada, in Neuseeland, in Singapur. Ich durfte erfahren, wie viel ich mit all diesen Menschen gemeinsam hatte, obwohl sie so weit von mir entfernt lebten. Ich lernte – oft ganz nebenbei – Dinge über ihre Heimatländer und Kulturen, die ich sonst nie gehört hätte.
Fandom profitiert von der Vielfältigkeit seiner Mitglieder. Deswegen engagiere ich mich bei der OTW: Ich will helfen, kulturelle und sprachliche Schwellen überwindbar und unsere Projekte für jeden Fan zugänglich zu machen. Sabeth, AustriaMy discovery of international fandom opened up the world for me. Despite linguistic difficulties and crazily divergent time zones I made friends in Canada, in New Zealand, in Singapore. I learned how much I had in common with all these people despite their living so far away. I was told – often in passing – things about their native countries and cultures that I would never have learned otherwise.
Fandom benefits from the diversity of its members. That's why I got involved with the OTW: I want to help make cultural and linguistic hurdles conquerable. I want our projects to be accessible to every fan.
I'm from the UK, and I love working with the mix of timezones in the org – it means there's always someone awake and in chat, whether the rest of my country are awake or not. I like the mix of talk about AO3 work and talk about fannish stuff – a detailed debate on code easily turns into a squee-fest about a common fandom, and back again. It means that getting stuff done is also fun. Cesy, UK
Australia – Austria – Bangladesh – Belgium – Brazil – Canada – Chile – Czech Republic – Denmark – Estonia – Finland – France – Germany – Greece – Hong Kong – Ireland – Israel – Italy – Japan – Lithuania – Malta – Mexico – Netherlands – New Zealand – Philippines – Poland – Romania – Russian Federation – Serbia – South Africa – Sweden – Switzerland – Timor-Leste – Turkey – United Kingdom – United States – Uruguay
up
Support the diverse voices of the OTW -- donate, join us, and help keep us strong.
otw_news_feedThe OTW would like to congratulate Transformative Works and Cultures on the publication of their fourth issue -- their first to focus on a single fandom: Supernatural. Get more information about this exciting issue at the Issue 4 announcement post, or read the interview with guest editor Catherine Tosenberger.
TWC is something really special -- it's the only peer-reviewed journal to focus exclusively on fan studies; it's open access; its contents are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License; and it's created and distributed using open source journal software.
But that's not all! Consider this: our amazing editors are doing the equivalent of producing two books of fan studies a year, full of content written by and for fans.
To sum up: like all of OTW's projects, TWC is collaboratively made, it's high-quality, and it's free.
Support the OTW, and support Transformative Works and Cultures!
otw_news_feedTransformative Works and Cultures, the academic journal project of the OTW, has just released its fourth issue, a special issue on Supernatural guest edited by Catherine Tosenberger. The special issue contains academic articles, shorter academic- and fan-written Symposium pieces, interviews with Supernatural fans, and book reviews all on the topic of Supernatural. We're incredibly excited to release this special issue because there is so much interest in this topic—and in this fandom.
Guest editor Catherine Tosenberger is an acafan who works as an assistant professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada. Her PhD is in English from the University of Florida. She specializes in folklore and children's lit, and she is active in the Harry Potter, Glee, and Supernatural fandoms. She's interested in slash, incest, seriality, and the issues surrounding young people on the Internet.
Catherine published an article about Supernatural in TWC No. 1 in 2008 entitled "'The epic love story of Sam and Dean': Supernatural, Queer Readings, and the Romance of Incestuous Fan Fiction." It is the TWC article with the largest number of hits: 22,786 as I write this. She has also published several articles on Harry Potter fan fic, which is the topic of her dissertation.
We asked Catherine five questions—read her answers, just below the cut!
The obvious answer is: I'm a huge fan of the show and a participant in the fandom, and I wanted to get a bunch of people together to talk about the show and the fandom, to satisfy my own fannish and academic urges. (For me, they're often one and the same; the fannish part just squeals a little louder. :D)
Speaking more broadly, Supernatural is one of the most active and dynamic fandoms going these days. There are a lot of academics and fans who are excited about the show, and I thought it would be great to showcase some of those discussions in a space that can reach those dual audiences.
Plus, Supernatural, the show, is just so rich and layered, and there's so much to talk about. (Including the various ways in which the show fails on issues of gender, race, etc.) The show started out with a tiny audience that has gradually become considerably larger, and that's interesting in and of itself.
Actually, I did originally pitch it as a book! I e-mailed Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson [the editors of TWC], as well as several other scholars who were fans of the show and who had either written about SPN or could maybe be cajoled into writing about SPN, to see whether they'd be interested in doing an essay collection. It was Kristina who suggested the special issue, and I thought it was a great idea. There are tons of advantages to going in this direction.
First, there is less time between writing and publication—with published collections, essays can get held up for years and years, long past the moment when people are interested.
Second, the academic presses that often publish fandom/pop culture studies might not be especially receptive. SPN isn't as visible a pop culture presence as, say, Buffy or Battlestar Galactica. With TWC, the editors needed no convincing that this was an awesome idea!
Last—and for me, this is the big one—TWC, as an open-source journal on the Internet, is accessible to anyone. Interested fans, whom I considered a sizable chunk of the potential audience, would be more likely to find and read the work than if it were published in a small print run by an academic press. Also, it's free!
Like I said, my fannishness has always been entwined with my aca-ness. I went into academia out of what was essentially a fannish impulse—I get obsessed with texts, and want to know more about them and talk about them with like-minded people. So I guess it's fitting that I discovered participatory fandom during my first year of grad school. It was 1999, and I was in the English program at Ohio State, specializing in folklore, looking for something to distract me from worrying about school. I picked up the first Harry Potter book and loved it immediately. I went on the Internet to find someone to squeal with, and found fan fiction.
At the time, I was concentrating my folklore research on the European fairy tale canon. Because fairy tales have been absorbed into children's literature, my adviser suggested that I look at doctoral programs in that field. I wound up at the University of Florida, where I could do both children's literature and folklore. I had initially planned to write my dissertation on fairy tales retold for young adults. In the meantime, I was inhaling vast amounts of Potter fan fic, and writing it as well. I mentioned my hobby to my dissertation director, the great Kenneth Kidd. He thought it was awesome, and he suggested that I write my dissertation on Potter fan fic, which I did.
(Incidentally, this is why I always roll my eyes at the periodic cries of "SPN! is the wankiest! fandom! ever!" I have over ten years in the Potter trenches, dude. My standards are shaped by a fandom in which "fan gets sued by creator, Epic Courtroom Drama ensues" is merely the cherry on top, rather than the whole freaking wank sundae. SPN has its moments, but overall, I question their dedication to the cause. Also, damn kids need to get off my lawn.)
In 2007, I was feeling at loose ends, fannishly and academically. I was almost done with my dissertation, and, like all dissertation writers, I was thoroughly sick of it by that point. Potter fandom was in the home stretch; I was bracing myself for the end and looking around for something else to lavish my affections on, to soften the blow when the seventh book came out. My LiveJournal friends list had been taken over by SPN, and people whose work I'd enjoyed in the Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings fandoms were squeeing over this show. I was vaguely interested—unlike other fandoms that Potter fans were drifting into, this one had no spaceships, which was a plus.
Then friends started actively recruiting me: "You NEED to see this show. It's about folklore! and incest!" (My friends know how to prepare the ground, obviously.) So I rented the first season and fell madly in love. And the fan fic was amazing. I loved analyzing it as much as I loved reading it, and that's where my first SPN article, on Wincest, came from—honestly, that article could just be retitled "SAM/DEAN OTP 4EVAH <3!!1!"
SPN also got me going creatively, as well—I signed up for Big Bang this year, which is my first time writing something long. In this issue, I'm returning to my folklore roots: my article is about fairy tales in SPN and its fan fic.
This was something we discussed when I initially pitched the idea. My initial instinct, when I was still thinking about a book, was to wait until the series finished—at that point, SPN had just been renewed for the fourth season, which very well might have been the last. Given the long lead time with books, it was likely that the series would have been over before the book actually appeared. With SPN, cancellation is always a possibility, and the common experience of SPN fans is waiting with our fingers crossed for the announcement of the network's fall lineup. Waiting until then would have given writers access to the entire canon, and the benefits of that are obvious.
On the other hand, that very uncertainty is a good reason to strike while the iron is hot. The huge benefit of publishing before the series ends is that both potential writers and potential readers are still involved and still emotionally invested. If we kept pushing things back until the series finished—"Oh, wait! We got renewed. Tack another year onto your deadline!"—then writers would have had to plan quite far ahead.
Too many exciting things were happening on the show, and in the fandom, that risked getting lost in the shuffle if we had to wait. SPN fans are enormously productive right now, while the series is still going, and by calling for papers now, we could tap into that momentum. If we had waited, by the time the issue came out, many fans may have moved on already, and they would not be as interested in reading. When I'm mourning the end of a series I love, I need quite a bit of time before I can go back to it. (This is why I'm taking so long on my Harry Potter book. :D)
On a more theoretical note, seriality and open texts are great things to study in and of themselves. And this is fandom, where the text goes ever on and on! If you're talking about, say, fan fiction, just because a particular fan story gets jossed (kripke'd!) by the show doesn't mean that it ceases to exist, to have fans, or to influence future stories. In Harry Potter, which had that three-year summer, some of the big influential fan stories, the ones you have to include if you want to talk about Potter fan fic at all, were completely negated by the release of the fifth book—but they were still a force in the Potter fan fictional landscape. And there's nothing wrong with hitting them at their moment of greatest influence.
Some of the articles in this issue are incredibly timely: we have a couple great essays that discuss the show's swipes at fandom in seasons 4 and 5. The emotional responses to this in fandom are still fresh—raw, even—and I think a lot of fans will be interested in reading about that. I'm still annoyed about 5.09 "The Real Ghostbusters," and am pouring those feelings into my editorial.
Well, the production of fan fiction is a worthy end in and of itself! But the reason I think it's so popular, and why it works so well, is because I really do think a Wincestuous approach is a useful, productive way to read the show.
There are always multiple ways to read a text; what makes any given interpretation of a text a good one is that it is both supportable and illuminating. Wincest throws some of the central issues of the series into sharp relief—issues that also happen to feature in many incest narratives in our culture. SPN is about brothers who are cut off from normal society, who understand themselves as freaks. They are isolated and alienated; they were subject to the whims of their unreliable father. This caused them to turn inward, to focus all their energy and love on each other, because they were never able to make any real, lasting connections to others. There's a genuine claustrophobia to their relationship. Sam, desperate for normality, abandons his beloved big brother for a shot at bourgeois heterosexual monogamy—which is shown, in the first episode no less, to be futile.
V. C. Andrews's Flowers in the Attic—the best-known incest narrative in contemporary pop culture—hits almost identical emotional notes. And SPN does Flowers in the Attic one better. Where Andrews physically confines Cathy and Chris in an attic, SPN is more subtle, and more cruel. Sam and Dean are just as confined, but they can move about in the world where normality is always present, but always out of reach. Wincest takes Sam and Dean's preexisting relationship and just intensifies it. It raises the emotional stakes. As a storytelling impulse, it's not much different than Kripke going from "looking for Dad" to "oh, shit, it's the apocalypse!" Both turn the dial up to 11.
A great deal of Wincest fic—especially during the first three seasons—really brings out what for me is the controlling mood of the series: in the midst of all their isolation, misery, and general fucked-up-ness, they have each other. As fucked-up as their relationship might be, it is theirs, and they're going to carve out some happiness for themselves. There's a really fantastic article in the special issue that discusses this hopeful Wincest—which was dominant especially during seasons 1 to 3—in relation to darker Wincest narratives, which became more common in seasons 4 and 5, as the Sam/Dean relationship on the show was no longer a source of comfort to the brothers.
As tone-deaf and annoying as SPN's depictions of fandom are, I can't entirely hate them. It's kind of endearing that Kripke and Co. see how much fun we're having in the peanut gallery and are trying to get in on the action—even if they wind up looking like that awkward teenage guy at a cool party, the one who drinks half a beer and sticks a lampshade on his head to show how wild! and crazy drunk! he is. Embarrassing, but kind of funny.
Basically, it boils down to this: Wincest is intellectually and emotionally engaging, and reading and writing it makes me happy. It makes lots of other people happy too, and an awesome time can be had by all.
otw_news_feedThe academic journal Transformative Works and Cultures, a project of OTW, released its latest issue on March 15, 2010: an issue on Supernatural guest-edited by acafan Catherine Tosenberger. Rush over here to read and comment on the essays! This is the first issue of TWC to focus on a single text.
In addition to academic essays, the issue contains shorter Symposium articles. There are close readings of specific SPN eps and the show as a whole as well as essays that discuss fan-created artworks and fandom itself. We also interviewed SPN profic writer Keith R. A. DeCandido, members of the Super-wiki team, and Wincon organizer Ethrosdemon.
The full press release appears below the cut. Feel free to disseminate widely!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 15, 2010
CONTACT
Editor, Transformative Works and Cultures
editor@transformativeworks.org
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/
Transformative Works and Cultures releases Supernatural special issue
NEW YORK, NY, March 15, 2010 – "Saving People, Hunting Things," a special issue of the peer-reviewed academic journal Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) dedicated to the WB television program Supernatural guest edited by Catherine Tosenberger, was released on March 15, 2010.
"I am incredibly excited about the show," says Tosenberger, an assistant professor of English at the University of Winnipeg in Canada. "It has a large, vibrant fandom, and the fan fic and fan vids in particular are very, very strong. I thought it was about time that all the serious analysis going on behind the scenes was showcased."
"A lot has gone on with the program during the year it's taken to put the issue together," TWC coeditor Karen Hellekson noted. "Supernatural is still counting down to the last few episodes of season 5, which promise a huge showdown, and then it was unexpectedly renewed for season 6." Kristina Busse, TWC's other coeditor, agreed: "I'm glad nobody wanted to wait until the show finished airing. It's actually more interesting this way: everyone is still interested and invested. There is tremendous excitement about the program, and I think this issue captures that excitement."
The issue contains articles written by both academics and fans. The seven research essays in the Praxis section discuss such topics as melodrama (Melissa N. Bruce, Lisa Schmidt), male pregnancy in Supernatural fan fiction (Berit Åström), religion (Line Nybro Petersen), and genres such as fairy tales (Tosenberger) and romance (Monica Flegel and Jenny Roth). The Symposium section contains several analyses of fan vids (Louisa Ellen Stein, Katharina Freund), and several essays discuss the fan experience as expressed by Supernatural in its canon (Deepa Sivarajan, Melissa Gray). Many essays touch on similar themes: Wincest, the depiction of fans, the ties of brotherhood, the emotional resonance of the fan-created artworks.
Three interviews appear in this issue of TWC: Tosenberger interviewed writer Keith R. A. DeCandido about his Supernatural tie-in novels; Deborah Kaplan interviewed the members of the Super-wiki (http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/) admin team; and the editorial team interviewed Ethrosdemon, who has put together a series of fan conventions that focus on Supernatural.
TWC is online only and open access. "That was a big reason I pitched this issue to TWC," Tosenberger said. "I want fans of the show—and there are a lot of them—to be able to read without any restrictions on access. Lots of fans come from the LiveJournal community, and they're used to talking with each other and commenting. TWC's software lets readers attach comments to the articles. That means that the writers and the readers can be in dialogue with each other."
The fifth issue of TWC, due to be released on September 15, 2010, is a general, unthemed issue.
About TWC: Transformative Works and Cultures (http://journal.transformativeworks.org/), an online-only peer-reviewed journal, represents the academic arm of the nonprofit fan advocacy group Organization for Transformative Works (http://transformativeworks.org/).
otw_news_feedOur fannish wiki project, Fanlore, is both fun and useful! Allow us to demonstrate:
Ever gafiated because your fanpair couldn't understand that trickyfish would never pass the broccoli test? Ever have a BNF brit-pick your Pros curtainfic only to declare that you'd been totally fanon-Jossed by the hivemind? Ever suspected a profic of being a fusion from your gateway fandom with the serial numbers filed off by a flounced BOFQ? Ever had your AMTDI badfic kripked so that you had to fridge your Mary Sue, then during machete beta realized you're circling the id vortex? Ever had your C6D PWP hit someone's embarrassment squick, and regretfully offered them brain bleach? Ever been flamed for saying someone's BSO has too much manpain to be a GQMF based on fannish osmosis? Ever made Paul Gross arms because FIAWOL? Ever followed your BFF's fannish drift into WNGWJLEO tinhat territory, only to find yourself in a kerfluffle in which lurkers support you in email after Snacky's law goes into effect, then declared FIJAGH? Ever realized the little black dress in your vampire AU GSF is suffering from a bad case of zombie hand?
Well, luckily Fanlore is at the ready, and we can all avoid disaster!
Support the OTW, and enrich fandom's vocabulary of experiences.
otw_news_feedFans have always known that they can do amazing things, working together. An individual fan may have creativity and talent, but we have so much more power as a group. But traditional fan strategies like letter-writing campaigns, taking out ads, and sending creative messages to The Powers That Be don't always work nowadays. We still need to band together, but sometimes we also need some specialized help.
This past year, the OTW's Legal Advocacy project worked to defend our rights to fair use in various ways, big and small. A lot of this work is out of the spotlight -- helping individual fans who might otherwise be intimidated into silence, or stopped from doing the things fans love to do. But most of OTW's advocacy work is visible, and is about amplifying our voice -- about helping us be seen and heard when people in power are making or considering decisions that affect us and our work as fans.
In 2009, the OTW helped Glockgal formulate and direct a counternotice against Viacom following an unfair takedown of her Zazzle store ; we explained the creative work of vidders and other remix artists at DMCA Anticircumvention hearings before the US Library of Congress; we participated in filing an amicus brief to support the position that a really restrictive court decision defining transformativeness as parody and nothing else should be reversed on appeal.
Support for the OTW is support for fans' right to be fans. To think and discuss critically. To transform, reflect, react, create, and reshape the world around us. To participate and take part in the culture around us. We can't lose that. We have to stand our ground. It's ours.
otw_news_feedIt's that time! Time for a new drive premium!
|
|
|
|
|
The OTW, as you may know, is committed to keeping our donors hydrated. Well, maybe not committed, as such, but not standing in anyone's way. And definitely interested in offering donors at levels of US$100 and above a swanky bottle to fill with their beverage of choice. This time, it's a 24 oz. capacity stainless steel water bottle, in a lovely white finish, bedecked with the OTW logo in an ever-stylish and striking red. It's kind of ridiculously sexy, too, with an easy to grip shape and well-fitted screw-on cap. If you find that sort of thing sexy, that is. We won't judge you!
We're still offering a packet of OTW stickers and iron-ons, both useful for transforming your non-OTW related possessions, at a donation level of US$50, and you can opt to get everything -- stickers, iron-ons, and water bottle -- for any donation at or above US$120. We ship donation premiums all over the world. In fact, our premiums-shipping volunteer has been known to particularly enjoy sending packages internationally. We don't judge her, either.
In other news of useful things that you may want to make grabby hands at, we would like to direct your attention to the search bar plugin that resourceful Archive of Our Own user Punk has created! You can now search the AO3 on the whimsy of the moment, going directly to your search results. If you are using Firefox or Internet Explorer 8, you can download the plugin from this page on mozdev.org -- just click the link that says "Archive of Our Own" and answer yes when prompted by the dialogue box. Punk has also pointed out that there's a Fanlore version created by Loren Leah that can be downloaded from mozdev.org as well!
|
|
|
|
|
|
the_shoshanna
the_shoshanna - Sunscreen is like luberahirah - Flat nowthe_shoshanna - Best. Coffee. Ever.shadowscast - Back in fandom, sort of kind of a little bit.denise in dw_news - Weekly Update: 16 March 2010otw_news_feed - Exciting new features in Release 0.7.3 of the Archive of Our Ownotw_news_feed - New code imminent on the Archive of Our Own!otw_news_feed - March Drive - Spotlight on International Membership and Community!otw_news_feed - March Drive - Spotlight On Transformative Works and Cultures!bc_updates_at_lj_feed - bloodclaim update for Friday March 12 to Sunday March 14, 2010otw_news_feed - An interview with Catherine Tosenbergerotw_news_feed - TWC releases No. 4, special issue on Supernaturalthe_shoshanna - wow, I sure hope I did that rightotw_news_feed - March Drive - Spotlight On Fanlore!lady_krysis in ![[community profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
ncc_1701 - Fic: This Time (Kirk/McCoy, NC-17)otw_news_feed - March Drive - Spotlight On Legal Advocacy!rahirah - Don't Keep Those Cards And Letters Comingbc_updates_at_lj_feed - bloodclaim update for Tuesday, March 9 - Thursday, March 11, 2010otw_news_feed - March Drive - New Premium!the_shoshanna - It's time once again for the OTW's annual membership drive!
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}