rodo's journal

This is the hardest thing I’ve written in ages, if you can believe it. It took multiple drafts and a long, long time. It’s also the first post I’ve written about the OTW in over a decade. For the record, I was a volunteer, but quit due to them not making any progress on the issues I had joined for. I promised to re-join once progress had been made – which you can tell never happened, because I never did rejoin. I also used to be a mod on an archive (ff.de), way back when (and got fired in a very spectacular fashion for being friends with the wrong person, a locked tweet and a mildly critical post I had posted before becoming a mod, that was fun). I never had to deal with anything even close to what azarias had to deal with, but I feel for them – especially the dysfunction around their firing.

( Rest of the post under the cut. )

Now I hope that the OTW archive will be a lot like Animexx (which is for fanart and dōjinshi as well, and which is the website of an association), but with less focus on anime fandoms and better rules. I have also been told by someone in the OTW that they want to make it more international than ff.net, which is what I volunteered for. My Thoughts on Yaoi/the OTW by rodo, 13th January 2008

First off, this is not an election post. It is an evaluation of sorts, and an explanation as to why I do not think I can justify working for the OTW for longer if there aren’t some drastic changes. This is not me being dramatic, in fact, I feel rather sober about it all. I did cry over my keyboard, but that’s not why I write it. I did have volunteer burnout, but that was years ago. I just came to realise that within the organisation, I am powerless to express my dissatisfaction on a wider scale, and that my hopes for the OTW will likely never be realised. I can not change that, which is partly due to the communication culture within the organisation, a culture that I am not equipped to deal with.

( 1. Forced Positivity – the OTW’s equivalent of Newspeak )

( 2. What I Came To Achieve and What I Didn’t )

After about four years, here I am, trying to figure out the chances of the OTW becoming what I dreamed of. And I think they are slim. I fought windmills for years and failed. So unless somebody can convince me that there absolutely will be radical changes soon, I don’t think I can justify my continued involvement. Because after four years of development, how can my priority not be an afterthought?

☞ I just had the worst day in about half a year. Which says something, considering that my good days are everybody else's worst days. It started totally promising, of course, with eumelkeks liking the Good Omens fic I wrote (it's in English, btw), Star Trek being delivered and hardly having any problems at all with shopping for groceries. I hadn't felt that good in weeks. And then I spent the rest of the day sobbing, hyperventilating and wishing I would die already. I hate my life (I realise it's the second time I said this today). *sigh* If you have any ideas how to cheer me up (since it's unlikely that I drop dead spontaneously), I'd be grateful. Cute animals don't work at all, though.

☞ In other (happier) news: The Archive of Our Own is going into open beta soon, and since I already have an account, I might get invites to share. Anybody interested or does my entire flist have an account already?

☞ Writing month project isn't going so well, obviously. I didn't write anything at all today.

☞ For those of you who have my phone number: don't call me unless you told me so via e-mail before. The phone is turned off for the time being. I try to avoid any incidences like the one that led to my breakdown today.

☞ Unrelated just plain weird phone stuff: I got an SMS by a couple who wanted to have hard SM sex with me. They apparently got the phone number off a toilet door at some rest stop at an autobahn. Either they mistyped the number or I really don't want to know who had my number before me. It isn't as funny as the woman who wanted to schedule a manicure with me and wouldn't let me tell her that I wasn't who she thought I was, though.

Okay, the obvious answer to this question would be: “Because not everybody in the world knows English and the AO3 is meant to be for everyone”, and that’s a good answer. It’s not the only answer, though. I know people who never learned English in school. I also know people who have difficulties learning languages and thus never really understood English. But generally speaking, I’m from a country where many, many people learned English in school (it’s compulsory for everyone in my state, for example), where many advertisements are in English, just like shop names, product names and many, many more. In theory, all these people should be able to navigate the archive.

( However, being surrounded by English all the time evidently doesn't mean people understand it. )

The topic of this post is one that has been on my mind for years, and this certainly isn’t the first attempt to write it all down. This post is about my very subjective experience in fandom, which, I believe, is not quite normal. I suppose all of you who are multifannish know at least to some degree what I am talking about, because essentially, I am talking about being in two fandoms at once. But while most people experience two fandoms as two different things they’re interested in, for me, it is the same thing, in two languages.

So I suppose this is where I should introduce myself: I am a German and German is my first language. I didn’t really start learning English until I was ten (so I am not really bilingual). I started writing fanfiction when I was seven. I discovered fandom when I started reading the AnimaniA when I was fourteen. I doubt more than a few of you ever touched that magazine, but I loved it. Buying the new issue was more fun than Christmas. I discovered online fandom when I was nineteen, googling Harry Potter and finding Animexx. A few months later, somebody posted the translation of this really great Harry Potter fanfic (or so I thought at the time – it was the Draco Trilogy), and I started reading it in English.

( That was five years ago, and since then, I spent time in English and in German fandom. )

Firstly, I have to admit that yes, I did volunteer for the OTW. My reason for doing so was neither my belief that what they do is the best thing that ever happened to fandom, but rather my realisation that it was time to stop whining and do something. I have been in online fandom for almost five years now. But really, I drew fanart long before that. It all started when I googled for news on the fifth Harry Potter book and I ended up reading a fic about Harry and Draco having sex. I was appalled at first. But still, I could not wait for the next book, and so I looked for other, less slashy stories. I was hooked, and I stayed. During these five years, I witnessed a few skirmishes with TPTB, and neither of them ended in favour of the fannish side. The fans whined about it and migrated elsewhere. This flexibility is one of the things I admire fandom for, but my admiration never stopped me from wishing there would be no more migration, that we would all live happily ever after in our own perfect place. And that, in essence, is what the OTW offers. That does not mean that I agree with all their ideas, but I realised that I did not improve things by quietly whining in my own little corner of fandom, but that I have to work with them to make sure they take the direction I want them to. I have seen a lot of people criticising them, but only a few of them made an effort to talk to them.

( Cut for tl;dr )

I know that I did not touch upon a lot of the criticism I read, but these are the most common points, I think. I apologise for the sheer length of my ramblings and the mistakes I likely made.

doro_chan