The cover of the "fanisode" 'zine features a photograph of The L Word's cast posed around a bed frame on a deserted beach, draped in satiny, revealing garments, and staring vacantly out at their assumed audience. We could take this image as a metaphorical portrait of the network's vision of fan community: a neatly assembled, perfectly groomed, politically isolated demographic frozen in their consumer rictus. In its online promotions, The L Word constantly reasserts its own simulacral portrayals as the coordinates of fan labor, demonstrating the limits of its gestures toward participatory engagement. Perhaps because of this insistent homology between purportedly lesbian diegetic, production, and audience worlds, The L Word fandom has a very different orientation from the two femslash fandoms discussed in previous chapters. While the program's viewers have been vocal in their celebrations, commentaries, and critiques, this productive expression seems to reverberate primarily within the closed circuit of Chaiken's authority, addressed hierarchically upward to its corporate pantheon. But as my other case studies have explored, media fandom manifests alternative aspirations to queer female community that more concertedly oppose schemes like the "official social network," which aim to corral desiring subjects in a virtual factory as immaterial workers. FanLib's gambit to harness creators' labor in a commercial archive foregrounded certain underlying constraints of online fandom, namely its reliance on websites and infrastructure controlled by corporations and on the tacit sanction of media conglomerates. As a response, a watershed post by Astolat called for "An Archive of One's Own" that could materialize fandom's values of autonomy, openness, collectivity and gifting in a platform owned and run by fans {http://astolat.livejournal.com/150556.html}. Her manifesto catalyzed a grassroots campaign to lay the groundwork for this project, headquartered in the LiveJournal community "fanarchive" (later renamed "otw_news"). This insurgency coalesced because it had become essential for the community to react not only to FanLib, but to more widespread pressures on fandom's labor relations prompted by the industrial innovations of convergence. Companies' escalating interest in exploiting productive subjectivities has met with resistance, that is, not necessarily to capitalism as a totality, but certainly to its unilateral imposition of new working conditions.
The consensus among fans active in the archive venture was that protecting their community's traditions of self-valorization would require a cultural and legal scaffold as well as a technological one. Barely a month after Astolat's provocation, a board of directors convened to plan the launch of a non-profit, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) {http://transformativeworks.org}, to advocate for the interests of fan producers. The OTW adopted a multi-pronged approach, wherein several distinct projects run by volunteer committees synergistically intervene in fandom's shift toward the mainstream, supporting established practices and representing them to outsiders. In addition to the archive itself, these projects comprise a wiki to chronicle subcultural lore {http://fanlore.org}, other efforts in historical preservation that include a partnership with Special Collections at the University of Iowa, a legal support network, and an academic journal, Transformative Works and Cultures (I served on the editorial team for its inaugural year). The organizing and unifying figure for these various stratagems is "legitimacy," as the opening of the OTW's mission statement pronounces: "We envision a future in which all fannish works are recognized as legal and transformative and are accepted as a legitimate creative activity" {http://transformativeworks.org/about/believe}. Legitimacy is an overdetermined ambition that permeates the undertaking on all levels, from the OTW's tactical emphasis on the legally defensible notion of transformation to its own bureaucratic structure, which furnishes the anarchic vastness of fandom with a reassuringly centralized facade. Alexis Lothian further observes that legitimacy motivates the OTW's resolute affirmation of the anticommercial model of fandom, noting that the organization "tries to protect fan communities by insisting that these are subcultural groupings constituted in support of capital... [and for] all its demonization of the for-profit fan archive sites, OTW is keen to point out how the fanworks they archive will continue to aid in others' profit" (Lothian). She is referring to passages from the Frequently Asked Questions, which states (under "Legal > Does the OTW support the commercialization of fanfic?") that the OTW aims "first and foremost to protect the fan creators who work purely for love and share their works for free within the fannish gift economy.... These fans create vibrant and active communities around the work they are celebrating, tend to spend heaps of money on the original work and associated merchandise, and encourage others to buy also. They are not competing with the original creator's work and if anything help to promote it" {http://transformativeworks.org/faq}. These assurances are strategically savvy on the part of a small-scale operation opposing corporate giants, but they demonstrate that the OTW's sphere of action is limited by its given economic conditions, and while it may confront many important injustices, capitalism is not among them.
As the OTW was taking shape amidst a ferment of agitated fans, its commitment to legitimation was not uncontroversial, and its stance on media fandom's gender politics was likewise contentious. The FAQ ambivalently pledges that "OTW values all fans, and the contributions made by fans of all genders. As the Organization grew out of a practice of transformative fanwork historically rooted in a primarily female culture, we also specifically value that history of women's involvement, and the practices of fandom shaped by women's work" (under "Organization for Transformative Works > Why do the values and mission statements focus on female fans?"). This unique female-centric alignment was discordant with promises of "maximum inclusiveness" {http://archiveofourown.org/tos}, and predictably, it generated "wank," which Lothian defines as "online drama, arguments, and deeply silly conflicts that get out of control." She maintains that the slang term's more familiar connotation remains in play, though, because fandom's truculent wanking is enmeshed with its "sexualized exchange of explicit fiction among women that... not only resembles but often constitutes a kind of ephemeral sexual contact." The most notable aspect of the OTW's legitimation project is that, while it may willingly apply standards given by the law and the market to fan production, it refuses to concede to sexual normativity, insisting on the contrary that its archive and other endeavors provide a reliable and permissive venue for the full range of perversions exhibited in fan fiction. The Archive of Our Own (AO3) itself (which launched in October 2008 and reached open beta in November 2009) offers optional warnings that include "rape/non-con" and "underage" plus a myriad of user-driven tags such as "BDSM... crossdressing... incest... sex pollen... [and] tentacles" {http://archiveofourown.org/tos_faq#content_faq}. In response to incidents like omnibus site http://fanfiction.net's decision to stop hosting explicit stories in 2002 and LiveJournal's 2007 deletion of numerous journals and communities in Harry Potter fandom in a kiddie porn purge {http://fanlore.org/wiki/Strikethrough}, the AO3 vows to safeguard all fic without "illegal or inappropriate content" and never to remove it for "offensiveness" {http://archiveofourown.org/tos#content}. Thus, as Lothian implies, the archive's most vulnerable content (sexually graphic works) and its context (a collective of women) harmonize to constitute a queer female labor formation.
The Archive of Our Own realizes a very different "our" from the homogeneous community represented by OurChart, but both configurations intersect with a feminist attention to professionalization. The archive's open source software platform was coded from scratch by a predominantly female volunteer team, many of whom had no prior programming experience. The undertaking was therefore an opportunity for women to be mentored in skills with high value in the digital economy, much as the "You Write It!" contest positioned the unpaid labor of fan fiction as training for a writing career. Between its infrastructure and its content, the AO3 exhibits the abundance of productive work that sustains fan communities. But in contrast to FanLib and Showtime's outlook, which is formulated to monetize fan labor within a corporate framework, the AO3 acknowledges its implication in late capitalism while nonetheless insisting on the value of amateurism and autonomy. A "chart" of its network structure would reveal intimate ties between women articulated through creative and often erotic production. I contend that this system is queer, but in an admittedly amorphous sense that resists capture in a reified demographic like OurChart's commodity lesbianism. The AO3's refusal of certain capitalist dictates may seem like a nominal gesture, but it is precisely this divergence between some of the interests of fans and some of the interests of industry that generates antagonism. In this case, it is an antagonism on behalf of queer desires, and this vantage constitutes a demand that workers determine their own working conditions for the labor of subjectivity and sexuality. Even while arguing that the gift economy is integral to the capitalist economy, Terranova asserts that "free labour... is not necessarily exploited labour" (91); in its stand against exploitation, the Organization for Transformative works embodies a vital struggle within media convergence.
The consensus among fans active in the archive venture was that protecting their community's traditions of self-valorization would require a cultural and legal scaffold as well as a technological one. Barely a month after Astolat's provocation, a board of directors convened to plan the launch of a non-profit, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) {http://transformativeworks.org}, to advocate for the interests of fan producers. The OTW adopted a multi-pronged approach, wherein several distinct projects run by volunteer committees synergistically intervene in fandom's shift toward the mainstream, supporting established practices and representing them to outsiders. In addition to the archive itself, these projects comprise a wiki to chronicle subcultural lore {http://fanlore.org}, other efforts in historical preservation that include a partnership with Special Collections at the University of Iowa, a legal support network, and an academic journal, Transformative Works and Cultures (I served on the editorial team for its inaugural year). The organizing and unifying figure for these various stratagems is "legitimacy," as the opening of the OTW's mission statement pronounces: "We envision a future in which all fannish works are recognized as legal and transformative and are accepted as a legitimate creative activity" {http://transformativeworks.org/about/believe}. Legitimacy is an overdetermined ambition that permeates the undertaking on all levels, from the OTW's tactical emphasis on the legally defensible notion of transformation to its own bureaucratic structure, which furnishes the anarchic vastness of fandom with a reassuringly centralized facade. Alexis Lothian further observes that legitimacy motivates the OTW's resolute affirmation of the anticommercial model of fandom, noting that the organization "tries to protect fan communities by insisting that these are subcultural groupings constituted in support of capital... [and for] all its demonization of the for-profit fan archive sites, OTW is keen to point out how the fanworks they archive will continue to aid in others' profit" (Lothian). She is referring to passages from the Frequently Asked Questions, which states (under "Legal > Does the OTW support the commercialization of fanfic?") that the OTW aims "first and foremost to protect the fan creators who work purely for love and share their works for free within the fannish gift economy.... These fans create vibrant and active communities around the work they are celebrating, tend to spend heaps of money on the original work and associated merchandise, and encourage others to buy also. They are not competing with the original creator's work and if anything help to promote it" {http://transformativeworks.org/faq}. These assurances are strategically savvy on the part of a small-scale operation opposing corporate giants, but they demonstrate that the OTW's sphere of action is limited by its given economic conditions, and while it may confront many important injustices, capitalism is not among them.
As the OTW was taking shape amidst a ferment of agitated fans, its commitment to legitimation was not uncontroversial, and its stance on media fandom's gender politics was likewise contentious. The FAQ ambivalently pledges that "OTW values all fans, and the contributions made by fans of all genders. As the Organization grew out of a practice of transformative fanwork historically rooted in a primarily female culture, we also specifically value that history of women's involvement, and the practices of fandom shaped by women's work" (under "Organization for Transformative Works > Why do the values and mission statements focus on female fans?"). This unique female-centric alignment was discordant with promises of "maximum inclusiveness" {http://archiveofourown.org/tos}, and predictably, it generated "wank," which Lothian defines as "online drama, arguments, and deeply silly conflicts that get out of control." She maintains that the slang term's more familiar connotation remains in play, though, because fandom's truculent wanking is enmeshed with its "sexualized exchange of explicit fiction among women that... not only resembles but often constitutes a kind of ephemeral sexual contact." The most notable aspect of the OTW's legitimation project is that, while it may willingly apply standards given by the law and the market to fan production, it refuses to concede to sexual normativity, insisting on the contrary that its archive and other endeavors provide a reliable and permissive venue for the full range of perversions exhibited in fan fiction. The Archive of Our Own (AO3) itself (which launched in October 2008 and reached open beta in November 2009) offers optional warnings that include "rape/non-con" and "underage" plus a myriad of user-driven tags such as "BDSM... crossdressing... incest... sex pollen... [and] tentacles" {http://archiveofourown.org/tos_faq#content_faq}. In response to incidents like omnibus site http://fanfiction.net's decision to stop hosting explicit stories in 2002 and LiveJournal's 2007 deletion of numerous journals and communities in Harry Potter fandom in a kiddie porn purge {http://fanlore.org/wiki/Strikethrough}, the AO3 vows to safeguard all fic without "illegal or inappropriate content" and never to remove it for "offensiveness" {http://archiveofourown.org/tos#content}. Thus, as Lothian implies, the archive's most vulnerable content (sexually graphic works) and its context (a collective of women) harmonize to constitute a queer female labor formation.
The Archive of Our Own realizes a very different "our" from the homogeneous community represented by OurChart, but both configurations intersect with a feminist attention to professionalization. The archive's open source software platform was coded from scratch by a predominantly female volunteer team, many of whom had no prior programming experience. The undertaking was therefore an opportunity for women to be mentored in skills with high value in the digital economy, much as the "You Write It!" contest positioned the unpaid labor of fan fiction as training for a writing career. Between its infrastructure and its content, the AO3 exhibits the abundance of productive work that sustains fan communities. But in contrast to FanLib and Showtime's outlook, which is formulated to monetize fan labor within a corporate framework, the AO3 acknowledges its implication in late capitalism while nonetheless insisting on the value of amateurism and autonomy. A "chart" of its network structure would reveal intimate ties between women articulated through creative and often erotic production. I contend that this system is queer, but in an admittedly amorphous sense that resists capture in a reified demographic like OurChart's commodity lesbianism. The AO3's refusal of certain capitalist dictates may seem like a nominal gesture, but it is precisely this divergence between some of the interests of fans and some of the interests of industry that generates antagonism. In this case, it is an antagonism on behalf of queer desires, and this vantage constitutes a demand that workers determine their own working conditions for the labor of subjectivity and sexuality. Even while arguing that the gift economy is integral to the capitalist economy, Terranova asserts that "free labour... is not necessarily exploited labour" (91); in its stand against exploitation, the Organization for Transformative works embodies a vital struggle within media convergence.
