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 Alex Xanthoudakis, who volunteers as a Fanhackers project staffer on the Communications Committee.

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

I’m a Fanhackers volunteer, so I help run all the Fanhackers accounts! Our mission is to help make fan studies scholarship more accessible to people, which feeds into the OTW’s larger mission of providing access to and preserving the history of fan culture in its myriad forms, and providing the broadest possible access to fannish activity for all fans. A lot of this stuff—-recorded histories, really cool analyses, various legitimizing works—-is found in books and articles that are very often behind a paywall or university firewall. My job as a Fanhackers volunteer requires me to read things, pull out what I think is important or interesting, and share the educational wealth, so to speak!

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

Reading, reading, reading! I read fan studies scholarship and then post about it, whether that be a quote, a quote and explanatory text, or just something I found interesting about an article. I work with two really amazing other volunteers; we’ve staggered our posting schedule throughout the week, so I’ll usually read over the weekend and draft my post in time to post for Monday afternoon/evening. Right now, I’m also in charge of monitoring the Fanhackers Tumblr, so any questions directed to that platform will probably be answered by me!

What made you decide to volunteer?

The OTW has been instrumental to my fan experience, primarily through AO3, but also through Fanhackers and a lot of the outreach they do. Because of this, I really wanted to help keep the Organization up and running in any small way I could.

What's the most fun thing to you about volunteering for the OTW?

Meeting new people! It’s been so fun to get to work with other like-minded fans—-and the fact I’m part of a group trying to make scholarship more accessible is also pretty rad!

What fannish things do you like to do?

I’m a huge fan of fic and am a fic writer; I started about 13 years ago and haven’t looked back since! I’ve also tried my hand at fanart (it was a disaster, but incredibly fun), and when the mood strikes, like making gifs. On the visual side of things, though, my favourite thing has to be organizing and designing zines. I’ve been lucky enough to work on two and seeing participants’ creativity, as well as being able to hold a physical copy of all that hard work, is extremely inspiring and satisfying!

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 Nele Noppe, who volunteers as a staffer in the Communications Committee and runs the OTW's Fanhackers blog.

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

I work to make fan studies more accessible for fans (and fan studies researchers) mainly by posting quotes from fan studies articles on the Fanhackers site (which has a Tumblr mirror). There’s a ton of fan studies research happening on every topic, and much of that research contains important, new, or just plain interesting ideas that should find their way back to fans. However, it’s not always easy for people to find their way to fan studies work. That’s where we try to make a small difference.

Take the many articles published every year in our academic journal Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC). TWC is an open access journal, meaning that the articles in it are open and free to read for everyone on the internet. However, it’s not because something is free to read that people will also find their way to it. They may not hear about the article at all, because it’s not linked to in the spaces where they hang out. They may not have time to read a full-size academic article, which is pretty damn long. The article may be a bit inaccessible in other ways, for example because it uses a lot of obscure terminology (although many fan studies researchers are very good at not overusing jargon, which probably has a lot to do with the fact that they’re often fans themselves).

Publishing bite-sized quotes from these articles in fannish spaces like Tumblr is a way to draw eyeballs to them, and make it more easy for fans to discover important ideas from fan studies research.

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

Pretty calm. I keep track of new fan studies research, and pick up interesting quotes from it to put on our Tumblr. The TWC editors also keep a list of useful quotes from new articles, and sometimes people send interesting things my way. We’re still experimenting with what sort of quotes get a lot of reaction on Tumblr. Quotes from fan studies articles about, say, the AO3 are almost guaranteed to get a ton of notes, but it’s important to keep an eye on variety and also post snippets from articles on less popular or well-known topics.

What brought you into the area of fan studies?

As a young Japanese Studies student, I asked a professor for permission to write a term paper on yaoi, my favorite kind of manga at the time. He needed the concept explained to him, and was so mortified that he said “yes” just to make me go away faster. Note that this was in the early 2000s, when there weren’t that many pop culture fans in Japanese Studies. Professors were much more easily shocked by fannish topics then.

I discovered that researching fan culture was as fun as taking part in it, and went on to do an MA thesis on yaoi/BL and a PhD on dojinshi (Japanese fanzines).

What's the most fun thing to you about volunteering for the OTW?

Feeling like I’m making a positive difference. I do only one small thing, but there are hundreds of people like me in the OTW, and together we somehow manage to do very big things.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I make art and fic, these days mostly for Dragon Age, and also lurk in Yuri!!! on Ice and Attack on Titan fandom on Tumblr and Twitter.

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.

Do you geek out over academic and wider media discussions about fandom? You might just be a fanhacker!

Fanhackers is one of the OTW’s most recent projects, launched last year on Tumblr and WordPress. Its goal is to connect useful research on fans, academic or otherwise, with people who want to hear about it. Right now they're focusing on bringing fan studies scholarship closer to fans themselves, through reblogging links and quotes of interest.

The OTW's commitment to the fascinating world of fan and media studies doesn't stop with publishing and fostering academia. The Fanhackers team also wants to promote closer dialogue between acafans (fans who are also scholars) and fandom at large, actively promoting academic work in fannish circles and also making sure acafans know about the great meta and resources that fans make about themselves. Fans often haven't had the chance to discover the brilliant academic work done on the communities and source materials they love, and Fanhackers is happy to connect them to excellent research that deserves more love!

Fanhackers' Tumblr presence focuses on snapshot-quotes from exciting new and classic fan and media studies. Tumblr's quote-friendly culture has turned out to be the perfect way to broadcast this research to a wider, broader audience; it's been wonderful to see hundreds of followers enjoy and share what has been published. Fanhackers also live-blogged quotes from our recent wonderful Future of Fanworks chats!

Looking at the road ahead, one major project that the Fanhackers staff is working hard on is compiling a comprehensive bibliography of fan studies research. It's still a work in progress, currently containing about 1,800 items—but they'll soon start requesting contributions from fans all over the world. The goal is for this to be as complete and invaluable a resource as possible for anyone delving into this field. Fanhackers' staff hopes to focus especially on gathering links and information on fan studies research across different languages and countries. Right now English-speaking and Japanese scholarship are the most represented, but they're on the lookout for more contributions! (Feel free to make a Zotero account and join in on the fun!)

This will be another major step towards making better use of existing fan research stuff, primarily by making it more accessible and findable. "We hope it'll become a great resource for people wanting to find info on fans to quote for use in places that require academic sources," says chair Nele Noppe. "Like Wikipedia! Or your term paper about doujinshi!"

We have big plans and hopes for this resource, and for Fanhackers at large! Please help us keep fan studies accessible and closer to fandom — donate today!