Fringe, OTW

[rivkat]

OK, I know the gazillion things wrong with that episode. And I still have to say: that’s Olivia Dunham, now equalling Aeryn Sun as a badass about to give birth. I guess I’m not more upset because the episode basically literalized TV treatment of pregnancy: early pregnancy, then, whoops, baby! The Sarah Connor Chronicles is the only partial exception I can think of.

It’s the OTW’s March Fundraising Drive!  The theme is “transform the OTW” and I wanted to highlight a couple of interesting posts, because I have nothing to say other than “the organization is doing good things and it would be great if you donated!”--check out lim's story of doing specific work for the OTW, including the logo:

I appreciate its commitment to diversity in these practical ways: I don't have to subscribe to every goal of OTW to participate in and benefit from some of its goals; I don't have to be on a committee and go to meetings to do valuable, interesting work that moves us forward. It's an organisation that can feel frustrating and bureaucratic, but that ultimately has welcomed me, in all most of my erratic weirdnesses.

Arguing, learning, teaching, and sometimes filibustering (htmlibustering?) on accessibility at AO3 has given me, through finding ways through procedural barriers, a theory of accessibility that I apply in all my design work. … [B]ecause of the active efforts of people like Zooey Glass (my chair), Francesca Coppa and Astolat, who set up quiet and single-focus areas for me to work in, set aside time to develop and code one-to-one, and continually, forcefully valued my ideas, I have made things! I have built things! Some of them are quite good! This is the complete opposite of every interaction I have had with any other organisation or institution, so I know how extraordinary it is. It is walking the walk of accessibility. It is the quotidian work of inclusion.

And elz, the co-chair of the OTW Accessibility, Design and Technology Committee, which is the committee responsible for design, coding and testing for the Archive of Our Own, writes:

Thank you to our beta users for being so patient with us. Thank you to the OTW donors who fund the hosting costs. Thank you to everyone who's created an account and posted a work. Thank you to everyone who leaves comments and kudos and makes authors' days a little brighter. Thank you to everyone who's started a collection or run a challenge. Thank you, THANK YOU to everyone who sends in support requests alerting us to problems and suggesting new features.

In short, thank you to everyone who keeps making work for us, and thank you to fandom for continuing to inspire us to keep making things better. We've got a really amazing team of volunteers this year, and there will be some great features and improvements rolling over the next few months - some within the next week! We'd love to hear from you about what else you'd like to see, and our doors are always open to new volunteers, whether you're an artist, a designer, a coder, a good organizer or communicator, or just someone with a lot of enthusiasm. AO3 is a community project, build, funded, maintained and used by fandom, and we all make it happen together.

I’ll just add: thank you to the volunteers who design, code, fix, support, and otherwise make the AO3 work. I can’t code, but I benefit from all their hard work every day. And I love hearing stories like the one about the fan who traveled to Iowa to read the Kirk/Spock zines and find the history of her fandom. I was proud to work on the successful proposal for a noncommercial remix exemption to the DMCA’s anticircumvention provisions, and I plan to be back in 2012 asking for it again, with the support of the OTW. You can donate, and maybe pick up a mug, here.

Comments

[kass]

Yes -- on the one hand I was annoyed at the pregnancy storyline, and OTOH I was kind of relieved that the magic of other-universe science allowed them to accelerate it and get it out of the way.

Also, did you watch LOST? (Because seriously -- in S1 of LOST, a pregnant character is abducted and there are giant needles and it just leaves me thinking, what is UP with this man and his apparent issues around pregnancy?!)

[rivkat]

I gave up on Lost early on, but TV writers of all stripes seem not to be interested in any point between morning sickness and (very quick) labor. I cut my teeth on the XF, so pregnancy and giant needles are just par for the course, though we could speculate about male fears of female reproductive powers.

[sorrel]

Yeah, I rolled my eyes too with the magic pregnancy thing, but then again I wasn't thrilled with the pregnancy storyline in the first place, because to me it strikes me as this kinda skeevy element of Walternate using Olivia's child (and thus her body) as some kind of trap for his son and the doomsday machine. This episode kinda confirmed that for me, especially with how Walter basically forced her to give birth without letting her decide for herself, so: creepy! I'm glad Lincoln and Charlie are asking the right questions.

I love Lincoln, though, and I'm a total sucker for characters who pine after their best friends, so the actual giving birth scene was pretty awesome, and I loved how everyone started clapping at the end. And Charlie was <3. With Fringe, even in episodes that I don't like as much, there are still things I love. Can't say that about a lot of shows.

[devildoll]

*cough* It's not spring everywhere. :)

[rivkat]

Fair enough!