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End OTW Racism: A Call To Action

A fan protest against the lack of action from the OTW on addressing issues of harassment and racism on AO3 and within the organization

This is a Call To Action for Fans of Color and Allies

AO3 has acknowledged that they have a harassment & racism problem that its parent organization, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), needs to address. Currently, people can use AO3 to harass others through fanworks, comments, and tags. Just a few examples include: racist Untamed “spitefic” that used anti-Indigenous slurs and was written specifically to lash out at fans of color; a Transformer fic that used its Black-coded character to reenact George Floyd’s murder in July 2020; someone naming a fandom scholar who criticized their Nazi omegaverse fic in the tags of the fic specifically to incite harassment to the scholar; writers using racial slurs against commenters who pointed out racism in their hockey fic; and so much more.

In June 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, the OTW committed to addressing these issues. It has been nearly three years and they have not yet implemented any of the changes they promised, other than a blocking/muting tool that was already in development before 2020. We need to hold the OTW accountable to their own promises. (See the section further down on “Why Are We Doing This” for even more detail.)

As fans, together, we are powerful. We are organizing to protest the lack of action on promises made by the Organization for Transformative works to deal with issues of racism and harassment on their platform, Archive of Our Own.

We call on fans to do any or all of the following actions any time between May 17 to 31, 2023 to send a message to AO3 and OTW that we will hold them to their promises.

On AO3

Change the title of ten (or more!) of your most recent or most popular fanworks to include ‘End Racism in the OTW’ in the beginning, and provide a link to this post in your summary or first/top creator’s note

Post a new fanwork any time between May 17th to 31st with “End Racism in the OTW” either as the title or at the beginning of the title. The fanwork does not have to be long - it can be a 100-word fic, a quick sketch, a podfic of a ficlet, a 20-second vid/edit, a short piece of meta, etc. In the summary or first/top creator’s note, provide a link to this post

If updating any WIPs with a new chapter, add ‘End Racism in the OTW’ to the title and provide a link back to this post in your summary or first/top author’s note

Update your AO3 icon using the profile pic graphic in our Social Media Toolkit

Plan to maintain these changes until May 31, 2023, or longer if you wish

Send a message to the OTW asking for an update on their 2020 commitments!

For Readers: leave encouraging comments on fanworks with the "End Racism in the OTW" title to show your support of this initiative.

On tumblr

Reblog this Call to Action with the tag #End OTW Racism

Update your profile pics and banners using the graphics in our Social Media Toolkit

Follow this account for updates and signal boost our posts

On Twitter

Follow @/EndOTWRacism (remove the backslash) and signal boost our pinned tweet

Update your profile pics and banners using our graphics, and change your display name to include #EndOTWRacism

Use sample tweets and graphics from our Social Media Toolkit to tweet about your fanworks, and use the hashtag #EndOTWRacism

Help us make this a long-term campaign - sign up to help with other anti-racism projects and future actions!

What Do We Want?

Since their June 2020 statement, OTW has been working on updating their Terms of Service (TOS) to address racist and bigoted harassment, but with little transparency and only the vaguest of updates. It has been three years since their commitment to this update - we want to see the results of their work implemented in the next 6-12 months. Their TOS updates and complementary policies should include:

Harassment policies that can be regularly updated to address both on-site harassment and off-site coordinated harassment of AO3 users, with updated protocols for the Policy & Abuse Team to ensure consistent and informed resolutions of abuse claims

A content policy on abusive (extremely racist and extremely bigoted) content; by abusive, we are talking about fanworks that are intentionally used to spread hate and harassment, not those that accidentally invoke racist or other bigoted stereotypes

These points are not particularly new and are not our own innovation; please refer to Stitch's article written over two years ago, asking for several of these very things.

OTW has also already committed to various process-based actions for longer-term works towards centering antiracism, including hiring a Diversity Consultant. The last update that OTW published said that the consultant would be hired within the next five years (after already having had three years to work on it since their original commitment). That is not soon enough. We want to see the following process-based actions implemented:

Hiring a Diversity Consultant within the next 3-6 months

Committing to a policy of transparency on this topic, with quarterly updates on the progress of these projects including challenges and their plan for overcoming those challenges. These quarterly updates should be published on OTW News page and newsletters, not solely discussed in Board meetings

Why Are We Doing This?

16 years ago, Astolat famously published her manifesto calling for a fandom Archive of One’s Own. In that time, AO3 has grown to be a central pillar of fandom, likely far outstripping its founders’ original vision. It is more than just an archive now; it is a central hub of the modern fannish experience. AO3 and the OTW must continue to grow and evolve with fandom over time to remain a healthy and functioning pillar of fandom. To that end, there are several areas in which the organization, as it admits itself, is lacking.

In June 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd protests and the uprising of the Black Lives Matter Movement, The OTW published a “This Week in Fandom” referencing the works of Dr. Rukmini Pande and Stitch, among others in which they discussed ‘making change for a better society’ through ‘conversations about race and racism’. In response, Dr. Pande and Stitch submitted a letter to the OTW calling for a more formal public statement than an offhand reference in a News Roundup that only served to call for thoughts and discussion without any indication the organization intended to do anything, policy wise, to address the issues being raised.

Eventually, the organization did remove the references to the works of Dr. Pande and Stitch and then made an official statement on the issue of racism within the organization and AO3. In it, they identified several things they would be prioritizing to combat harassment and benefit users. Some of those have been implemented (notably those that were already under development). However as of this writing, little else has been done especially in regards to:

Improving admin tools for the Policy & Abuse team

Reassessing the current mandatory archive warnings with the possibility of implementing others

And, most importantly, reviewing the Terms of Service (TOS) to allow the Policy & Abuse team to address harassment that is currently not covered by the existing TOS

By their own admission, the current tools and policies of the OTW are not sufficient to deal with issues of harassment and racism.

Several people who were involved in the founding of the OTW, including previous OTW Board members and staff on the original OTW Content Policy Committee, acknowledge that the founding of the OTW in 2008 and early board iterations failed us as a fandom by not doing enough, and by not even considering the way racism is perpetuated in fannish spaces, despite a long history of racism in fandom.

It has been nearly three years since the original commitment by the organization with little visible, measurable progress on these three crucial issues and a complete lack of transparency on where they are in regards to even beginning to deal with these issues. In fact, in Q&As, it was heavily implied by a member of the board that those calling for OTW to deal with issues of racism (which OTW had already acknowledged as a problem!) were not really fans but outside agitators.

This has cast significant doubt on the organization's sincerity and commitment to their stated goals, and on their position as leaders of a central fan tent-pole. Fans of color are not outsiders. They are right here, members of our community, and they are being harassed and targeted and driven out while space and platforms are being given to racists.

We, as fans of color and our allies, find the current state of fandom and current actions (and lack thereof) unacceptable. Fandom is our space, all of ours. We, as a fandom, have a right to a racism-free space and have a duty to our fellow fans to create that space. Unlike so much of the world, this is a space we can control and make better. It is a space we must make better. To read even more about this movement, visit our FAQs.

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@ the readfems making the “a cis boy who is medium at sports could just transition and become a star on the women’s team and get accolades and scholarships” argument:

Okay. Then you do it. Men have all those societal advantages. All the power. The system is built for men. You talk about this all the time. So why don’t you just become one? You want to get those promotions, that respect at the car dealership, you want to walk home at night and look over your shoulder less often. All it’ll take is, you know, a few years on testosterone. Changing your name. Reminding your friends and family to use the new name and pronouns because this won’t work if everyone knows you’re just pretending.

Or does the idea of doing all of that for the hope of a leg up in one or two specific areas seem, you know, fucking ridiculous?

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*blatant misinformation* but youre not ready for that conversation

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The whole “we both know we’re on borrowed time but we fall for each other anyways” trope is one the most romantic things ever and here’s why:

That trope is basically saying “I know this will break my heart and I know I will never fully recover from this, what’s more I know if I walk away now this will only be an occasional twinge in my heart and nothing more. But for YOU I’m willing to suffer that passion and the heartache it brings, for our short time together I’m willing to spend the rest of my eternity slowly growing my agonizing way around it. Because you surpass my self-preservation and everything I could ever want and I will forgo anything if it means I can have THIS LOVE WITH YOU in my life.”

And it all boils down to: “I will willingly endure the darkness that comes after if it means I can have the most dazzling firework for one fleeting second in my entire life. And that firework, is being in love with you.”

This trope burns me from the core of my heart and I relish in that flame every. single. time.

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“first flower of my house” ur literally from pluto how do you know what a flower is

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hello innkeeper! I was wondering if you had any thoughts or takes on the plus size fashion industry as it stands? I suppose mainly in terms of accessibility, as I recently learned even celebrities like Lizzo and Melissa McCarthy have trouble finding designers who will dress them for events based solely on their size, and then the long-standing debate surrounding plus sized fast fashion as it's often the only thing plus size people can reasonably afford that isn't JCPenny peplum tops, Torrid Disney branded cold shoulder tops, and straight leg jeans.

My thoughts and takes as someone who unironically and with complete confidence states that I'm going to be the next fucking McQueen is that

1. You can design good fashion if you have skill or training. Great fashion requires you to be a radical subculture enthusiast who revels in passing people off, forcing them to confront their ideas of beauty and normalcy, and being queer and probably poor/working class.

2. Skinny people need to get fucking good and stop designing things skinny. This explicitly includes just copypasting a skinny design onto a fat body with no real effort and expecting it to be super luxe and good. Doing that is the equivalent of a white hairdresser believing they have the training to be a cosmetologist for natural hair without explicitly learning to do so. All you're going to do is cause damage.

3. You aren't going to revolutionize fashion with your designs if the most revolutionary you get is up to size 9, and I'm going to use your rib bones as corset architecture.

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Drawtober 2022, prompt: date. Originally posted on Dreamwidth and AO3.

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I think progressive groups have a bad habit of looking at inaccessible areas of academia and art and saying "this thing is for rich people, it sucks, get rid of it" (does not give poor people more opportunities) instead of "this thing should be 1000x cheaper" (does give poor people more opportunities). to goal should always be to improve the lives of the oppressed.

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I am abt to lose my fuckin mind because I happened upon this gender reveal party. and like it’s soo over the top expensive

And like I’m like. Oh great, a horse themed gender reveal party.

complete with like … just truly excessive foods and of course, themed cocktails

and this sign which like… the fragility of like *not* italicizing the word ‘colt’. Like imagine being this weird abt gender

with like, a bucket that eventually ‘revealed’ the gender

But like… the picture that really just completely undid me, for this party which surely was more money than many weddings -

it’s not a horse themed gender reveal party. It’s a gender reveal party FOR A HORSE. I can’t even like imagine the life that would lead to hosting a gender reveal party for a not-yet-born horse. Think abt getting an invitation to this. the cis are at it again.

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(me, my parents, my sister, and the baby are sitting at the kitchen table eating lunch)

baby, pointing at the light fixture over the table and signing "on": o.*

my sister: we actually can't turn that light on right now, because the lightbulb inside is burnt out! it needs a new one.

baby: ighbu.

sister: yes, lightbulb! granddaddy said after we eat he's going to climb up there on a ladder and change it, and then the light will come on!

baby: gadada! adda, uuu! ighbu o!

sister: exactly!

baby, signing "on" and pointing at the light and then my dad, with increasing urgency: GADADA ADDA UUUU. O.

my sister: we're going to finish eating first though, ok?

baby: nonono. O. gadada adda uuu.

[a split second goes by]

baby, pointing to himself: ba. adda uuu. ighbu.

me: you're going to climb the ladder and change the lightbulb yourself?

baby: dzyeah. *pointing to the buckle where he is buckled into the high chair* ububu.

me: unbuckle you? so you can change the lightbulb?

baby, highly businesslike: dzyeah.

*pronounced like "on" without the n

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So my problem with most ‘get to know your character’ questioneers is that they’re full of questions that just aren’t that important (what color eyes do they have) too hard to answer right away (what is their greatest fear) or are just impossible to answer (what is their favorite movie.)  Like no one has one single favorite movie. And even if they do the answer changes.

If I’m doing this exercise, I want 7-10 questions to get the character feeling real in my head. So I thought I’d share the ones that get me (and my students) good results: 

What is the character’s go-to drink order? (this one gets into how do they like to be publicly perceived, because there is always some level of theatricality to ordering drinks at a bar/resturant)

What is their grooming routine? (how do they treat themselves in private)

What was their most expensive purchase/where does their disposable income go? (Gets you thinking about socio-economic class, values, and how they spend their leisure time)

Do they have any scars or tattoos? (good way to get into literal backstory) 

What was the last time they cried, and under what circumstances? (Good way to get some *emotional* backstory in.) 

Are they an oldest, middle, youngest or only child? (This one might be a me thing, because I LOVE writing/reading about family dynamics, but knowing what kinds of things were ‘normal’ for them growing up is important.)

Describe the shoes they’re wearing. (This is a big catch all, gets into money, taste, practicality, level of wear, level of repair, literally what kind of shoes they require to live their life.)

Describe the place where they sleep. (ie what does their safe space look like. How much (or how little) care / decoration / personal touch goes into it.)

What is their favorite holiday? (How do they relate to their culture/outside world. Also fun is least favorite holiday.) 

What objects do they always carry around with them? (What do they need for their normal, day-to-day routine? What does ‘normal’ even look like for them.) 

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btw I think that Hobbits are the lost Entwives. Let me explain.

- In the movie, Treebeard does not remember the Entwives, and coincidentally he doesn’t think he’s ever heard of the Hobbits before. Meanwhile, Merry and Pippin are shocked at the idea of a ‘talking’ tree, but the idea of trees that are in some manner ‘awake’ is not foreign to them; the Old Forest that resides near the Shire is inhabited by Huorns to the Hobbits’ common knowledge, and Merry’s ancestors themselves are responsible for having built the High Hay, a great hedge twenty miles long designed to protect the hobbits from the wild trees of the Old Forest, as said trees - without a shepherd - posed a serious threat to them.

- In the book, Treebeard described the Entwives as having “hair parched by the sun to the hue of ripe corn and their cheeks like red apples. Yet their eyes were still the eyes of our own people.” This second line suggests that their eyes are likely one of the only features they had in common with the Ents. Meanwhile, most of the Hobbits are portrayed as rosy-cheeked and fair-haired, but their eyes are one of the only features they have in common with the Ents.

- Trees are asexual, capable of producing both male and female flowers, and they reproduce through pollination. Some release pollen into the wind to let it scatter where it may, while others rely on insects, birds, or animals to cultivate the pollination for them. It makes sense to believe that Ents, being conscious life-forms that are separate from trees but similar to them, might have a counterpart that cultivates them, without whom they can’t reproduce. Meanwhile, Hobbits are famous for being gardeners - cultivators - and in fact place such a great importance on trees in particular that the jewel of the Shire is the Party Tree, and when it gets cut down in the book, the sight is so devastating that Sam bursts into tears, and later replaces the felled tree by planting a silver nut gifted to him by Galadriel, growing the only Mallorn to exist outside of Lothlorien. “For all Hobbits share a love for things that grow.”

- The estrangement and separation of the Ents from the Entwives came about because the Ents prefered wildlands and great forests, while the Entwives preferred lush gardens and flowers and fruit trees and vegetables. The initial location of the Entwives gardens was destroyed by Sauron during the second age, at which point the Entwives disappeared, becoming little more than legend in the songs of elves and men. (Many people in Middle Earth also have no idea what the fuck a Hobbit is until they meet one.) If they had escaped the destruction of what would come to be known as the Brown Lands and fled North to Mirkwood, they could have slowly migrated from there until they eventually reached the Shire and settled, following the same path that Bilbo took to reach Mirkwood in The Hobbit.

- Merry and Pippin’s presence was the catalyst that inspired the Ents to involve themselves in the war. The Ents and Entwives were originally created by Yavanna with the purpose of protecting nature; it was Merry and Pippin who showed the Ents that such a task sometimes includes fighting a war. Meanwhile we have Frodo and Sam: “We set out to save the Shire, and it has been saved.” The motivation of protecting and preserving the beauty of nature was prevalent in both the Ents and in Hobbits, and it took the two groups meeting face to face to inspire the uprising against Isengard and the destruction of the industrial factories burning through the woods therein.

- Merry and Pippin grew in height after drinking the Ent-Draughts, becoming the tallest Hobbits in the Shire.

like idk what else to say you guys. I firmly believe that the Hobbits are the Entwives.

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I mean... Yes, some fun stuff happened, but I think we can agree over/under that Wu Sanxing is just a shitty person who manipulates and uses everyone around him. I watched “Reunion” second, but the more I watch the series the more I realize Wu Er Bai’s coldness towards his younger brother was 100% the right attitude.

Wu Sanxing:: Kidnap or lead on Wu Xie into somewhere dangerous, abandon him, then swoop in after the fact to take from him what he wanted all along.

Wu Er Bai:: Follow Wu Xie, knock him out, hogtie him, put his feet in a slab of wet cement, pay someone to gently feed and take care of him, try to solve the tomb FOR him, plan on cutting him in after the fact but Wu Xie’s Idiot Squad always show up with a jackhammer and get him out (which usually is for the best because Wu Er Bai’s Damsel In Distress Cadre are being held hostage by this point).

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When I was younger and more abled, I was so fucking on board with the fantasy genre’s subversion of traditional femininity. We weren’t just fainting maidens locked up in towers; we could do anything men could do, be as strong or as physical or as violent. I got into western martial arts and learned to fight with a rapier, fell in love with the longsword.

But since I’ve gotten too disabled to fight anymore, I… find myself coming back to that maiden in a tower. It’s that funny thing, where subverting femininity is powerful for the people who have always been forced into it… but for the people who have always been excluded, the powerful thing can be embracing it.

As I’m disabled, as I say to groups of friends, “I can’t walk that far,” as I’m in too much pain to keep partying, I find myself worrying: I’m boring, too quiet, too stationary, irrelevant. The message sent to the disabled is: You’re out of the narrative, you’re secondary, you’re a burden.

The remarkable thing about the maiden in her tower is not her immobility; it’s common for disabled people to be abandoned, set adrift, waiting at bus stops or watching out the windows, forgotten in institutions or stranded in our houses. The remarkable thing is that she’s like a beacon, turning her tower into a lighthouse; people want to come to her, she’s important, she inspires through her appearance and words and craftwork.  In medieval romances she gives gifts, write letters, sends messengers, and summons lovers; she plays chess, commissions ballads, composes music, commands knights. She is her household’s moral centre in a castle under siege. She is a castle unto herself, and the integrity of her body matters.

That can be so revolutionary to those of us stuck in our towers who fall prey to thinking: Nobody would want to visit; nobody would want to listen; nobody would want to stay.

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Lady Sybil Ramkin

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Comfy Skull

Alexander McQueen Skull Knit Jumper