Archive of Our Own ^beta

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Dae, who volunteers as a member of the Fanlore Policy & Admin team and the Elections committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I have been… accumulating hats. In the Fanlore committee, I’m a Policy & Admin team member, so my work with Fanlore is mainly focused on handling user queries via our contact form and writing/updating Help pages and policy information as the wiki grows and evolves. I am currently also a team coordinator for Fanlore P&A, which means I’m responsible for monitoring incoming emails and other tasks, assigning them to team members, and following up to make sure things happen in a timely manner (for email responses), or maintain forward motion (for larger projects).

I am also on the Elections committee in a Candidate Liaison role, which means my focus in the “off-season” (Octoberish-Mayish) is on finding people who may be willing to run for the OTW Board in the next year, then helping them with answers to questions and resources to prepare for the election process. During the election season (Mayish-Septemberish), things get much busier; I interact directly with candidates to answer questions and support them as they jump through the hoops of being candidates, including platform posts and the public candidate chats on Discord.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

With Fanlore, I keep an eye on the email inbox, write and post meeting minutes if we’ve recently had a full committee meeting, and work on my longer-term projects like updating Help pages or page categories or drafting policy documents as I can. I also usually jump in when we do themed editing events (such as Stub September or Podtober) as a badge awarder for a day or two.

With Elections, it depends heavily on where we are in the year - in the “off season,” everything is on a pretty long timeline, so I’ll participate periodically in discussions about the next election and help update documentation where appropriate. In the election season, it’s very different; I monitor channels with candidates very closely and help coordinate posting candidate bios or Q&As and moderate the live chats, depending on where we are in the election schedule.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I’ve been an AO3 user since 2012, and I’m very invested in fandom culture as embodied by the OTW, so I had a general desire to help out if I could. Fanlore Policy & Admin very much played to my strengths and experience, so I was excited to apply when I saw that applications were open in early 2022.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

*pictures of various committees falling out of pockets* Not biting off more than I can proverbially chew, really. Fanlore was a very fitting entry point for me because as I said above, it was a match for my skillset and interests, and also was compatible with my general schedule when I applied. When the team coordinator position was created, I had just joined Elections (and the election season was about to start!), but the other Fanlore P&A people had too much else going on to pick it up. So I decided to volunteer after chewing on it a bit, and that has been going well. I am now also in training for the AO3 Policy & Abuse committee.

OTW work is the majority of my non-day-job time these days, and I’m very okay with that. I love working with my colleagues on various committees and sub-committees, but in order to be as effective a volunteer as I can be, I’m aware that I need to keep a lid on my tendency to just want to do more and more and more. I need to stick to my strengths so that I can put my all into those.

And, you know. Still have time to read/write fanfic and play video games.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I write fic and meta, I read fic (sometimes literally in the ~45 seconds walking from my apartment door to my car door), I beta read fic, I play a LOT of video games, I attend cons, I cosplay, and of course, I volunteer for the OTW. My main fandoms from the last several years are The Sandman (TV and comics), Hannibal (TV, though I’ve read the books), Baldur’s Gate (mostly 3 but I did play 1 and 2 back in the 90’s/00’s), and Pillars of Eternity.

I’m eternally in love with Tumblr’s general BS, so basically, Goncharov was the best thing on the internet that happened in 2022, as far as I’m concerned. I’m still active in that fandom, such as it is.

And I love, love, love, specifically the Yuletide annual fic exchange for small fandoms. I’ve gotten to write some very fun things for it, and gotten gift fics better than I’d ever have imagined.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

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Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Anh, who recently became a member of our Board of Directors.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

Disclaimer: since being elected to the OTW Board in the summer of 2023, what I do now in September 2023 is quite different from what I did as an OTW volunteer previously. I imagine it will be an ever-evolving process, even after October.

I am a Fanlore Social Media & Outreach volunteer. Fanlore is an OTW project – a wiki with a mission of fannish history preservation that anyone can easily contribute to, run by fans and for fans. Our Social Media & Outreach team works with our in-house Graphic Designers to promote Fanlore on social media, particularly Tumblr and X/Twitter. I am also an Open Doors Import Assistant, whose tasks revolve around helping Open Doors volunteers with archive imports, such as searching AO3 for duplicate fanworks or manually posting fanworks from an archive backup to AO3.

As I've mentioned before, I'm also one of the newly elected OTW Board members; training for the Board is still ongoing so I'm learning the ropes. From what I've seen so far, Board members take turns handling email duty – making sure that incoming emails are properly categorised and labelled depending on content and urgency – and sometimes we need to vote on certain requests. We also have meetings with committee chairs. The Board typically holds public meetings on Discord four times per year, with one specifically being after the election for Board turnover. At the moment of writing this, we are in the process of setting a date for our October meeting. I'm looking forward to attending, this time as one of the sitting Board members *wink*!

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

For Open Doors, depending on the period, we may receive both urgent and non-urgent tasks. On Sundays, my schedule is usually free enough for me to join one of our work parties – Open Doors folks agree to be online at the same time and chat while doing our tasks. During these parties, folks may ask for help with one thing or another; sometimes it's just all chatting. At other times, I may help with searching for duplicate fanworks on AO3 when I'm available, typically on Monday evenings.

For Fanlore, we have several different rosters and deadlines for dividing tasks amongst volunteers. I often collect all the tasks I need to finish in a week and tackle them all in one or two evenings. In contrast to Open Doors tasks – which I can do sporadically in my free time – I find myself tackling Fanlore tasks more productively if I have a clear objective and deadline.

My typical week as a volunteer since September looks kinda like this, in no particular order:

• Follow policy discussions on the internal chat tool
• "Chat" with my friends about the OTW 🐧
• If my schedule permits, attend the Fanlore meeting – complete some Fanlore tasks; attend one of the Open Doors work parties – complete some Open Doors tasks
• Continue Board training
• Socialise with my OTW friends, and help with tag translation on VoldeChat

What made you decide to volunteer?

I actually mentioned this in one of my candidate posts for the OTW 2023 election. I had wanted to volunteer for the Organisation since 2020, but the positions that interested me often caught me when I was in the middle of something. For example, I skipped at least 4 Tag Wrangling calls for volunteers because I was in the process of: being laid off, moving to the other side of the country, applying for new job(s), or more recently, running for Board!

Then, in 2022, Fanlore's call for volunteers went out, and I really wanted to add OTW volunteering to my resumé. Welp, it all started because I wanted to show off some internet hobbies and volunteering (for a nonprofit founded in 2007 that has always been remote-work-based) on my job application. I also had a vague idea about trying to join the OTW Board of Directors in the future, preferably after one to two years of volunteering, so that I could give back to the Organisation. A letter of reference written with the official OTW letterhead™ signed by committee chairs had sounded cool af for my down-to-earth job application package, because fandom is such a big part of my life. Adding the OTW Board of Directors would have made it certified BAMF.

But life seldom works the way we imagine. Never would I have predicted that my plans would come to fruition so soon, with my original timeline out of the window since May. If my life was a 'time travel ruin-it' fic, I'd go back in time and smack my-2022-naive-self for even thinking that running for the OTW Board of Directors election was 'cool'. Spoiler alert: it’s not, it’s not cool at all.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

Nightmare. And I don't mean it metaphorically, or rhetorically, or poetically or theoretically or any other fancy way. I had a nightmare about/during the OTW election, no joke. People would tell you that this is just volunteering work: you can commit what you can, how you can, and you can leave whenever if it's too much, et cetera. But my lack of sleep is real, my exhaustion is real, my stressful weeks of watching something I've grown to love go up in flames – as long-standing problems within the Organisation reached a boiling point over the summer – is absolutely real. I've seen fellow volunteers, some of them my friends, share the same suffering. It baffles me that as a registered nonprofit for more than a decade, the OTW still lacks several necessary systems to protect our volunteers.

Again, I'm still learning the ropes around Board work, but I can sense the path to rebuild trust within the Organisation – between volunteers and people in leadership positions, as well as trust from outside user bases and members toward the OTW – is going to take time, effort, and be long and challenging. I also want to echo my previous discussion about Board work and how much a singular Board member can accomplish regarding structural changes within the OTW.

Fortunately, I'm not working alone; there are fellow volunteers and newly elected Board members who are trying to achieve change. I hope that, by being on the Board, I can help inspire and facilitate positive changes, plus maintain discussions and movements surrounding worthy causes, such as the racism issues within the OTW and improvements regarding transparency in both internal and external communication.

What fannish things do you like to do?

My friends often joke about me being a person who enjoys suffering creatively, several times over. I started drawing fanart in primary school, and I posted my first fanfic on a Manga-Anime forum when I was a teenager. I also dipped my toes in fan translation when I was in high school and started learning how to make fanvids/fansubs when I was a freshman in university.

Sadly, procrastination is my best-frenemy, so the only thing I can brag about nowadays is my privated-since-2015ish WordPress blog with nearly 1 million views, where I posted all my fan translations of C-novels and fanfic. I still translate fanworks on occasion, but I'm a byelingual – when you speak (more than) two languages but slowly lose vocabulary in all of them – so I either orphan-ed or anon-ed my translated fanworks on AO3.

I love crossover and crack/rarepairs, so I mostly create fanworks for these out-of-nowhere ships that nobody ships but me and two other people on [insert the social media platforms I use but stay between me and Cthulhu].

I love Fanlore though, especially the part about building and expanding Fanlore articles about my favourite characters and ships, or on very rare occasions – favourite fandoms. One thing I have to confess: I've 'spite-edited' certain article(s) on Fanlore 120+ times because it's about something I love and I want to prop it to the sky and back. Now, I just realised that apparently my flickering self-restraint and my spiteful energy are the two major forces behind my motivation, and sometimes obsession, with certain things, welp.

Also, in case I haven't made myself clear, I obviously love love LOVE reading fanfic. Please shower me with your crackiest crossover/rarepair fic recs, thank you. I and my Cthulhu bookmark keeper will be apocalyptically grateful.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Alicia, who volunteers as a Social Media & Outreach volunteer on our Fanlore Committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I’m a member of Fanlore’s Social Media and Outreach team! Our team drafts posts and makes graphics for our social media pages to promote Fanlore, the OTW’s fan-run and fan-authored wiki.

Being on the social outreach team fits into the OTW’s mission of “preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms,” which is something I’m super proud of! Since all of Fanlore’s pages are written and maintained by fans, we’re always looking for ways to welcome newcomers and invite a variety of perspectives. I like to think of us as the wiki’s megaphone, especially for newer fandoms whose fans might not know we exist, or that they can contribute their own experiences.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

I try to write at least one post a week, sometimes more if we’re doing a themed month (like this year’s Femslash February). I also attend one of our bi-weekly meetings, either with the rest of the outreach team or with the larger Fanlore committee. I tend to be a lurker in the meetings, but it’s always interesting to see how the discussions unfold.

I also help out with some of the organizational tasks, like delivering feedback to our graphic designers and moving things around on our virtual corkboard. I’m a big fan of checking boxes and making things nice and tidy, so I enjoy the behind-the-scenes work as much as I do writing posts!

What made you decide to volunteer?

I think how I got started at the OTW is similar to how a lot of other volunteers did—I’d been an AO3 user for a while before I somehow found my way to the OTW’s main page. There, I learned about the archive’s purpose, as well as why it and OTW existed—not just to share fic, but to preserve and protect fandom at large.

After some digging into why the OTW was established, I realized how fragile online fandom spaces really were. It blew my mind that if I’d gotten into online fandom pre-OTW, there was a good chance all the work I’d done—like posting my fics or building relationships with other fans in comments sections—might’ve gotten swept away by time, corporate buyouts, purges, etc. The OTW strives to give fans the resources and infrastructure to preserve their work/communities/histories, and I wanted to be a part of their mission.

Finally, and for a much simpler reason—I wanted to give back to the organization that has been such a bright spot in my life all these years! Fandom has pulled me through some rough times, especially more recently with the pandemic, and I’m so grateful for it. And much like writing fic or any other fannish activity, volunteering is also a fun way to meet new people and do work I feel good about doing.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

My biggest challenge has probably been understanding that the organization is always learning and growing. There are almost a thousand volunteers now (woot!), and millions of fans worldwide who contribute to the OTW’s many projects. This means that there are a lot of different perspectives to take into consideration when it comes to policy making, and that it’s not always easy to find solutions.

But regardless of the difficulties, I’ve found that others are usually willing to sit down and talk things out. It helps me to remember that the OTW and fandom at large are just groups of people coming together over things we love—and that at the end of the day, we’re all here to help each other out.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I’ve dabbled in drawing fanart and writing meta, but ultimately fic is the name of the game for me! I read, write, and bookbind fic. I’m an avid commenter—since I know how happy I feel when someone comments on one of my own fics, I try to do it for others as often as possible. I also tend to leave long, rambling comments about what parts of the story I liked, what I was doing while I was reading, which lines made me laugh/cry, and so on. The AO3 comments section is one of my favorite places to connect with other fans, and I’ve met some of my best fandom friends there.

I also bookmark nearly everything I read! I’ve found some of my favorite fics in other users’ bookmarks and consider an extensive bookmark collection to be one of the greatest gifts one can bestow upon a reader (especially a reader who, say, just got into a new pairing and spent several consecutive nights exhausting all the available rec lists they could find and still needs more. Not that I would, ahem, know anything about that).

Finally, I’m also a member of Renegade Publishing, a collective of fannish bookbinders! Since most of my primary fandoms are animanga fandoms, I tend to read and bind a lot of animanga fics. Folks in Renegade bind for a variety of reasons, but for me personally it’s about building community, preserving fannish works and history, and making authors feel as loved as possible. (As well as hoarding pretty paper like a dragon.)

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Fanlore, the Organization for Transformative Works' collaborative wiki about all things fandom, is celebrating a huge milestone: one million edits!

Fanlore is a multi-fandom, free and open wiki that was designed to be a living, evolving record of fandom’s past and present. Like AO3, it was created by fans in 2008 and, since then, fans have built an ever-expanding record of our shared history.

To celebrate this momentous event, we're inviting you to take part in a scavenger hunt across Fanlore for the chance to win a Citrus Scale sticker set, as well as commemorative badges that you can add to your Fanlore User page – or anywhere you want!

Want to know more about fannish history or learn about commonly-used terms? Fanlore has pages on everything from the origins of A/B/O to Destiel becoming canon; from the Citrus Scale and Vulcan genitalia to the infamous badfic My Immortal. You never know what you might discover!

Want to add some of your own knowledge or experiences? Fanlore can be edited by anyone and everyone – all you need to do is create an account. You don’t need to be an expert, or have been in fandom for a long time, to contribute. Any edits, big or small, are welcome! If you aren’t sure where to start, our New Visitor Portal has a bunch of handy tips and links, while our newly-updated FAQ can answer any questions you might have.

We hope you'll come and join our scavenger hunt! A big thank you to all those who have contributed to Fanlore thus far; every single edit helps Fanlore to preserve the amazing creativity and passion of fandoms old and new. So here’s to our awesome community – this is all thanks to you!

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with memorizingthedigitsofpi, who volunteers for Fanlore.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I'm a volunteer with Fanlore, which is a wiki all about fandom and fandom history. It's a place where the people who are involved in fandom can chronicle our stories about ourselves and our works. As a wiki, it's open for editing and there's a Plural Point of View policy that encourages documentation of all sides of any particular issue. Fandom is a diverse place full of diverse people and opinions, and it's important that we have a record that allows all of those points of view to have space.

I'm one of the graphics designers on the team, and in that role I create banners for social media posts and badges for events like Stub September. I'm also involved in conversations around how we can reach out to our fellow fans to encourage them to contribute to the wiki, as well as conversations about the wiki itself.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

How busy I am varies week to week, because I'll have more on my plate in the run up to an event. Typically, we have a bi-weekly meeting on Saturdays where we discuss what work needs to be done and who will do it. I'll draft however many graphics I've taken on and share them out with the group of other designers and the social media team, and they'll give me feedback. I'll make any edits and we'll go back and forth a bit sometimes. Then I'll wait for the post to go live and get a big grin on my face when I see my work posted for everyone to see.

Throughout the week, I'll read the conversations happening back and forth amongst the other Fanlore volunteers and if I have questions or suggestions I'll join in. Otherwise, I'm just keeping up to date on what's going on.

I'm also new to wiki editing, so when I can I practice formatting by working on my Fanlore user page or editing parts of the larger wiki.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I've been in and out of fandom spaces for the last 20 years or so. Sometimes I just lurk and read all the fic and look at all the art, etc. Sometimes I find a canon that I just can't get out of my head and I end up creating fics and art of my own.

I was slowly leaving my most recent active fandom creator role because I was falling out of love with canon. But I was still in love with the fandom I was in because the people were so wonderful. In trying to find ways to stay in fandom without being a creator, I started up a tumblr blog called ao3commentoftheday. That's what got me interested in being more involved in fandom as a whole instead of just for one particular show or book at a time.

I realized that I loved the people in fandom and the things we do, and I wanted to be involved in helping fandom happen. In my opinion, OTW is the best place for that.

Is there anything in particular you've worked on that you found challenging or memorable?

This year, I was involved in the process of creating Fanlore's new logo! My design wasn't the one that was picked, but I'm so happy with the one that was chosen. It was an amazing experience getting to try my hand at designing one and seeing all of the other ideas from the rest of the team. I've also never gotten feedback from a group that big before or on a number of designs that large, so the logistics of figuring it out were also a learning experience.

I got to be a part of fandom history, and I can't think of anything more memorable than that!

What fannish things do you like to do?

I write fic -- mostly smut and comedy but with other things thrown in there too. I'm not posting very much lately, but I'm still writing almost every day. These days, I'm writing more RP style -- co-creating fic-like roleplaying threads with my fandom bestie. We aren't posting them anywhere, but we're having a lot of fun.

I also create fanart. In my most recent fandom, I learned how to do photo manipulations, but I also do text-based graphics, edits, and banners. I like to create them for both myself and for other people in my fandom. I've recorded a few podfic and made a few fanvids, and I'd like to do more of both someday. At one point, I co-ran a fic rec blog on tumblr, too.

These days, most of my fannish time outside of the OTW is spent running the ao3commentoftheday blog on tumblr. I do my best to answer questions about writing, fandom, AO3 and the OTW in an unofficial capacity. I first fell in love with Fanlore because it was (and is!) a major reference I use when people ask questions about fandom tropes and terms. It's definitely a passion project for me, and one I'm so glad I stumbled into. I've learned more about my fellow fans and other fandoms in the last few years than I ever would have otherwise.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with memorizingthedigitsofpi, who volunteers for Fanlore.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I'm a volunteer with Fanlore, which is a wiki all about fandom and fandom history. It's a place where the people who are involved in fandom can chronicle our stories about ourselves and our works. As a wiki, it's open for editing and there's a Plural Point of View policy that encourages documentation of all sides of any particular issue. Fandom is a diverse place full of diverse people and opinions, and it's important that we have a record that allows all of those points of view to have space.

I'm one of the graphics designers on the team, and in that role I create banners for social media posts and badges for events like Stub September. I'm also involved in conversations around how we can reach out to our fellow fans to encourage them to contribute to the wiki, as well as conversations about the wiki itself.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

How busy I am varies week to week, because I'll have more on my plate in the run up to an event. Typically, we have a bi-weekly meeting on Saturdays where we discuss what work needs to be done and who will do it. I'll draft however many graphics I've taken on and share them out with the group of other designers and the social media team, and they'll give me feedback. I'll make any edits and we'll go back and forth a bit sometimes. Then I'll wait for the post to go live and get a big grin on my face when I see my work posted for everyone to see.

Throughout the week, I'll read the conversations happening back and forth amongst the other Fanlore volunteers and if I have questions or suggestions I'll join in. Otherwise, I'm just keeping up to date on what's going on.

I'm also new to wiki editing, so when I can I practice formatting by working on my Fanlore user page or editing parts of the larger wiki.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I've been in and out of fandom spaces for the last 20 years or so. Sometimes I just lurk and read all the fic and look at all the art, etc. Sometimes I find a canon that I just can't get out of my head and I end up creating fics and art of my own.

I was slowly leaving my most recent active fandom creator role because I was falling out of love with canon. But I was still in love with the fandom I was in because the people were so wonderful. In trying to find ways to stay in fandom without being a creator, I started up a tumblr blog called ao3commentoftheday. That's what got me interested in being more involved in fandom as a whole instead of just for one particular show or book at a time.

I realized that I loved the people in fandom and the things we do, and I wanted to be involved in helping fandom happen. In my opinion, OTW is the best place for that.

Is there anything in particular you've worked on that you found challenging or memorable?

This year, I was involved in the process of creating Fanlore's new logo! My design wasn't the one that was picked, but I'm so happy with the one that was chosen. It was an amazing experience getting to try my hand at designing one and seeing all of the other ideas from the rest of the team. I've also never gotten feedback from a group that big before or on a number of designs that large, so the logistics of figuring it out were also a learning experience.

I got to be a part of fandom history, and I can't think of anything more memorable than that!

What fannish things do you like to do?

I write fic -- mostly smut and comedy but with other things thrown in there too. I'm not posting very much lately, but I'm still writing almost every day. These days, I'm writing more RP style -- co-creating fic-like roleplaying threads with my fandom bestie. We aren't posting them anywhere, but we're having a lot of fun.

I also create fanart. In my most recent fandom, I learned how to do photo manipulations, but I also do text-based graphics, edits, and banners. I like to create them for both myself and for other people in my fandom. I've recorded a few podfic and made a few fanvids, and I'd like to do more of both someday. At one point, I co-ran a fic rec blog on tumblr, too.

These days, most of my fannish time outside of the OTW is spent running the ao3commentoftheday blog on tumblr. I do my best to answer questions about writing, fandom, AO3 and the OTW in an unofficial capacity. I first fell in love with Fanlore because it was (and is!) a major reference I use when people ask questions about fandom tropes and terms. It's definitely a passion project for me, and one I'm so glad I stumbled into. I've learned more about my fellow fans and other fandoms in the last few years than I ever would have otherwise.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

The sixth annual International Fanworks Day will take place on February 15, 2020 and the OTW has many activities planned to mark the occasion, including some exciting new events as well as a few old favorites. Whoever you are and wherever you’re logging in from, the OTW cordially invites you to celebrate IFD with us!

Check out the post below to find out what we have on the menu for the days leading up to February 15.

1. IFDrabble: A few weeks ago, we put out a call for drabbles, drawbles and other short fanworks based on the prompt: “characters react to discovering fanworks they are in.” What if Aang and the gaang picked up some fanworks and started comparing who has more fans? Or what if Bucky Barnes got onto AO3 and learned of Steve Rogers’s plan to go back in time without bringing him along?

There is still time to create and post your response to the challenge, using the AO3 tag ‘International Fanworks Day 2020’ so that we can find your works. Vidders, artists, writers, podficcers, and all other creators are invited to contribute. On social media, use the #IFDrabble tag and who knows? We might signal boost your work. We will be reblogging, retweeting and reccing a selection of IFDrabbles from now until IFD.

2. Favorite Fanworks Tropes: This event is for fanworks creators and consumers and your response can be as long or short as you prefer. Here’s what to do: go onto social media or leave a comment below and tell us about your favorite fanworks tropes. Do you love fix-it fics? Soulmarks? Omegaverse or ABO? Maybe you can’t stop reading time-travel plots. Whatever the trope, tell us what it is and why you love it!

If you’re on social media, remember to tag your post with #IFD2020 and OTW social media moderators could signal boost your post on the official accounts.

But that’s not all. Maybe you have a particular fanwork that took this trope and made you fall in love with it. If so, bookmark it now and take a look at the next event below.

3. Feedback Fest: This one’s for the fanworks consumers! Feedback Fest is a chance to show your favorite fanworks some love, and to get some great recommendations from others. We will publish a Feedback Fest post on February 13th, explaining how you can participate and share your recs with others. In the meantime, keep an eye out for your favorite fanworks by bookmarking and saving URLs.

4. Fanlore Challenge: Fanlore is participating in IFD, too! Every day from February 10-16, Fanlore will post different challenges on their Tumblr, their Twitter, their Dreamwidth, and on Fanlore itself for all editors to participate in. How well do you know your fandom? It’s time to show off your knowledge and contribute to the Fanlore wiki!

5. Games and Fan Chat: On the big day itself, February 15th, the OTW will be hosting a chat in a Public Discussion chat room. Join us between 23:00 UTC February 14th (What time is that where I live?) and 04:00 UTC February 16th (What time is that where I live?) for word games, creation challenges, trivia, and the ever-present stream of chat with other fans! Places in the chat room are limited and last year, demand was high, but if you don’t get in the first time then please try again later! The chat room will be moderated in English by OTW volunteers. We will post a detailed games and activities schedule before the day itself.

Fanlore, the collaborative fandom wiki from the Organization for Transformative Works that anyone can edit, is celebrating a huge milestone: 50,000 pages! Would you like to come celebrate with us?

If you haven’t heard of Fanlore, it’s a multi-fandom, free and open wiki that was designed to be a living, evolving record of fandom’s past and present: created by fans, and maintained by fans. Like AO3, Fanlore was launched in 2008, and since then, fans have made more than 900,000 edits across more than 50,000 pages to record tropes, communities, meta, memes, fanworks, fannish perspectives and much more.

Fanlore is open for anyone to edit – all you need to do is create an account. Any edits, big or small, are welcome! You don’t need to be an expert, or have been in fandom for a long time, to contribute. The wiki wouldn’t have gotten to where it is without the dedication, perseverance and experiences of thousands of fans over the years who have added to and edited Fanlore.

Recently, Fanlore editors have been working to document hundreds of fannish Yahoo! Groups before they’re deleted in December, and last year fans took to Fanlore to document the history of fandom on Tumblr in the midst of the Tumblr NSFW Content Purge. But it isn’t just about big historical events or fandom migrations – every corner of fandom, from the Hanahaki Disease trope to A/B/O, massive fan archives to tiny niche ships, has a place on Fanlore. Try searching for your favorite character or ship! You could add something of your own to those pages.

If you’d like to edit Fanlore but aren’t sure where to start, our New Visitor Portal has a bunch of tips and links to get you started. We also have a how-to on editing pages, and a tutorial for creating new pages if you’d like to help us start down the road to 100,000 pages! Every single edit helps Fanlore preserve more of fandom’s history and experiences, and helps ensure that the amazing creativity and passion of fandoms old and new is recorded and remembered.

The Fanlore team have set our sights on one million edits next – we hope you’ll join us!

To learn more about what Fanlore’s volunteers do behind the scenes, check out our previous spotlight posts:

• Five Things Kate Flanagan Said
• Five Things SoyAlex Said
• Gardener Spotlight: MPH