Posts by therealmorticia
The 2025 OTW Annual Report is Now Available
We are pleased to publish the OTW’s 2025 Annual Report, available on the OTW website: 2025 OTW Annual Report. The report provides a letter from our Board of Directors, a summary of our activities during the past year, and our financial statements for 2025. Some highlights from 2025 include Tag Wrangling canonizing almost 400 new “No Fandom” tags, Transformative Works and Cultures being added to the U.S. Library of Congress, and the creation of the Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup—the first formal workgroup since the Content Policy workgroup was converted to a Legal subcommittee in 2017. You can access the 2025 report, and all earlier years,… Read more
September 2026 Newsletter, Volume 215
I. OTW’S 19TH ANNIVERSARY On September 5, we celebrated the OTW’s 19th anniversary! \o/ Our announcement spotlighted where you can find us, such as the OTW’s social media accounts and additional news outlets. We also challenged fans to participate in an anniversary drabble challenge. On Fanlore, fans collected special teddy bear-themed badges while completing the site’s annual Stub September challenge, including special OTW-themed editions for the OTW’s anniversary. For October, Fanlore is celebrating conventions with Contober! They’ll be highlighting terminology, activities, and events related to conventions, and would love fans’ help expanding convention pages on Fanlore. Check out Fanlore’s conventions category or follow along on… Read more
AO3 Releases 1.0.0 – 1.4.0: Change Log
Back in April, we announced that AO3 was exiting the open beta phase, a step mostly marked by the removal of the little beta note in the site header. In July, we followed this up with an official switch from 0.9.xxx release numbers to the big 1.0! The addition of filters to user Collections pages was a highlight of our July releases, which also included a variety of bug fixes, security updates, and other enhancements. Among those changes were small updates to various site policies to make cross-referencing easier, a Rails update, and a fix for an issue that caused blank word counts when posting… Read more
The Big Bang, Baby Challenge is Moving to AO3
The Big Bang, Baby Challenge, a Harry Potter fanfiction and fanart archive, is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3). In this post: A bit of background explanation What this means for creators who have work(s) on The Big Bang, Baby Challenge And what to do if you still have questions Background explanation The Big Bang, Baby Challenge was created in 2005 to incentivize the creation of more canon-based novel-length Harry/Draco fics in the wake of The Order of the Phoenix, and was twice repeated following the publishing of The Half-Blood Prince, and The Deathly Hallows. Over the Big Bang, Baby Challenge’s run,… Read more
OTW Signal, September 2026
Every month in OTW Signal, we take a look at stories that connect to the OTW’s mission and projects, including issues related to legal matters, technology, academia, fannish history and preservation issues of fandom, fan culture, and transformative works. In the News The Organization for Transformative Works has become a Chamber of Progress partner, joining their network as a nonprofit deeply interested in internet freedom and user privacy. As long-time collaborators, they have jointly opposed internet censorship and age-verification bills and lawsuits in the U.S., such as KOSA and NetChoice v. Brown. In March 2026, they joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition… Read more