Walking the Line (Transformers fanfic)

Walking the Line by Anonymous is a Transformers fanfic that was briefly posted on AO3 in July 2020. It is known for being an example of racist fanfic. The fic was written in response to the 2020 George Floyd protests that began in Minneapolis in the United States.
According to a now-deleted AO3 bookmark linking to screencap evidence on Imgur, this fic was written by a troll who had "an extensive and upsetting history of writing racist fanfics that depict Black people as thugs and crooks and monsters.", blogpost by stitch, 8 September 2021.
==Publication History==
The fic was posted to an anonymous collection on July 14, 2020, and was gone by July 16., fail_fandomanon, 2020-07-16. In screencaps shared on Twitter and Tumblr, the fic had 0 hits, so it was unclear if anyone read the story itself, which was 763 words long and marked incomplete. A screenshot stored on Imgur, which was not circulated as widely, shows the fic itself, with 22 comments, 10 kudos, and 184 hits.bookmark on Hitting the Slopes by Anonymous (Wayback Machine copy, 20 March 2021)Imgur screencap, accessed 17 June 2023.
Walking the Line was tagged with the slash ship Jazz/Prowl and the archive warnings Graphic Depictions Of Violence and Major Character Death.
The summary, visible in the screencaps, was as follows:
 
However, according to a post on Imgur with 83 views, Walking the Line was not actually deleted, but rewritten and retitled as a different and completely innocuous Jazz/Prowl fic, Hitting the Slopes. Hitting the Slopes has the same publication date, but unfortunately the first Wayback Machine capture was on July 16, after Walking the Line disappeared.16 July 2020 Wayback Machine capture of Hitting the Slopes The Imgur post provides evidence that the URL was the same, that the username attached to the fic after it changed was the same user who had written other racist fics., 16 July 2020. Accessed 17 June 2023. (Unfortunately, AO3 did not display user IDs until March 2021, so a user could change their name and no one would know it was the same account unless their work URL had been saved in the Wayback Machine with the previous username.) The screencaps from Imgur were linked in a now-deleted bookmark.
==Fan Reactions==
The bookmark exposing the fic writer as a troll was posted on July 16 after the story's contents were switched out. The evidence for trolling does not appear to have been shared or discussed as often as the story's racist content.
Comments on the fic itself were almost universally negative, with the exception of one person who expressed pro-police and anti-BLM views. Others described it as "tone deaf", "disgusting", or "racist and sick". One person called out the author as a troll: "well youre obviously trying to bait people into raging by posting a vapid cess-pit of a fic in the most insensitive way."
The day after the fic was posted, screencaps of it were circulating on Twitter and Tumblr as part of ongoing fan discussions about racism and the AO3 in the wake of the George Floyd protests. It's unclear who found it first; stitch tweeted that they had seen the story mentioned on tumblr, and stitch's tweets were then screencapped and shared on another tumblr post by nerdlingwrites that had 10.5K notes as of June 2023., Jul 16, 2020.
nerdlingwrites's post was noticed by the anonymous forum fail_fandomanon, where one anon commented, "The summary sounds awful but at one chapter and less than 800 words the outrage nerdling is throwing at it seems oversized.", 2020-07-17. fail_fandomanon had previously discussed nerdlingwrites as a Dragon Age wanker to block., fail_fandomanon, 2020-02-10., fail_fandomanon, 2020-05-17. One of nerdlingwrites' other comments suggests that they were sympathetic to anti-shipper views."What I'm saying, what black people and other people of color and trans people and PEOPLE WHO HATE CHILD PORN, are all saying is that AO3 needs to put on their big person pants and start asking themselves hard questions." , 21 July 2020. 
Meanwhile, AO3 user Rambert mentioned the fic in a comment on the June 2020 newsletter post on AO3 News. The newsletter provided an update on plans for the AO3 blocking and muting functionality, and someone in the comments asked for an update on the feature to allow users to disable comments on their works. Rambert replied to the commenter with "You realize that if comments get disabled on anonymous works then there's absolutely no accountability on the writer side? I can't see you or your works so I'm not accusing you of anything BUT having just seen a disgustingly racist piece posted Anonymously I can't help but be curious why y'all are so eager to censor part of this 'uncensorable' archive", 15 Jul 2020. and started a separate thread with, "Hi, has there been any discussion on possibly removing the capacity to post Anonymous works? Having just seen a new racist piece posted Anon yesterday [Title: Walking the Line, fandom: Transformers], it seems like this is protecting racism and other icky stuff rather than creative users.", 15 Jul 2020. Rambert then got into heated arguments with several other users in the comments section., 15 Jul 2020., 15 Jul 2020. An anonymous commenter accused Rambert of harassing the fic writer, apparently having looked at the fic itself and found Rambert's comment calling the fic writer a coward and a creep., 15 July 2020. Fail_fandomanon noticed Rambert's comments on AO3 News and was unimpressed., 2020-07-16.
===Later Comments===
stitch mentioned the fic in a July 22, 2020, blog post (What Fandom Racism Looks Like: The Cult(ure) of Nice) and in another post on September 8, 2021 (Over A Year After the OTW/AO3’s Statement of Solidarity: Where Are We With That Anti Racism?). 
During the April 2021 OTW membership drive, tumblr user clonehub posted a critique of fans who misuse the murder of George Floyd in their fanfic "as fodder for their stupid fantasies" and included screencaps of Walking the Line. 
clonehub's post had over 22K notes as of June 2023.
However, many fans were unaware of the incident until the May 2023 End OTW Racism campaign:
End OTW Racism's tumblr call to action listed the fic as an example of how "people can use AO3 to harass others through fanworks, comments, and tags.", tumblr post by end-otw-racism, 10 May 2023.
==See Also==
*Reddit post: Don't write George Floyd fanfiction (June 24, 2020)
*OTW and AO3 Racism Discussion (2020)
*Real World Events in Fanworks
==References==
Category:Transformers
Category:Slash Fanfiction
Category:2020 Fanfiction