Just Off the Key of Reason

Dear Festividder Letter

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 21:19:15 GMT

Festivids season is upon us and lo, there was rejoicing! I had to default last year, so I'm looking forward to making up for that this year.

Hello lovely Festivider! Thank you so much for making a vid for me!

I love vids of all kinds, and I'm sure anything you make me will thrill me! The only thing I ask you to avoid is using audio from the original source, especially if the music also includes lyrics, as I find parsing the multiple streams of audio distracting and difficult. Small amount of source audio at the beginning or end of a vid are fine, but I'd prefer nothing more than that.

I've put my fandom-specific comments behind a cut: ( Better Than Chocolate (1999) [SAFETY], How To Steal a Million (1966) [SAFETY], It Happened One Night (1934) [SAFETY], Olympic Figure Skating Team Event (2026), Canadian Heritage Minutes [SAFETY], RENT: Filmed Live on Broadway (2008) [SAFETY], Come From Away (Movie) (2021) (SAFETY], MASH (TV), Fleetwood Mac (Band) RPF, Slings & Arrows )

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As Canadian As Possible Under the Circumstances

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 19:07:46 GMT

Part of trying to use Dreamwidth more is realizing all the things I haven't shared here. Such as: As of December, after 16 years in Canada, I am now a Canadian Citizen!

I had a celebratory citizenship/birthday party last night, surrounded by the family and community I've joined/built here in Canada and it was so lovely and affirming and energizing in exactly the way I needed right now.

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I know. I never write, I never post...

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 18:55:25 GMT

I'm going to be in France, The UK, Belgium, and Germany in May and June!

I'm quite sure I know many people in at least some of these places and I'd love to see as many of you as I can make happen!

As I noted to Ian just now, seeing things is great and awesome and absolutely something I want to do, but the highlight of travel for me is seeing people, especially ones I've known for ages but never met in person.

Tentative schedule currently is:

- arrive in Paris the morning of May 26th
- May 26-June 5 - various locations in France including but not necessarily limited to Paris and Limoges.
- plane from somewhere in France to Birmingham the morning of the 5th of June.
- June 5-7 VidUKon in Birmingham
- June 7-??? - various locations in the UK including London and Portsmouth, other options depending on people and travel options.
- ??? - Train from London to Brussels
- 2 days later - sleeper from Brussels to Berlin
- ??? (tbd quite soon) - fly home from Berlin.

I'll be buying my flight home in the next couple days, at which point all the dates between Birmingham and Berlin will firm up at least a bit.

This is going to be my first time in Europe since I lived in Berlin for three months in 2000. I've never been to France. I've never been to Belgium. The last time I was in England was a high school trip in 1997. It's all both incredibly exciting and kind of terrifying.

Also, while I've done some solo travelling in the US and Canada, both my previous trips to Europe I was always travelling with at least one other person. So that adds an extra layer of nerves.

So, where should I go??? Who should I see??? How much can I vibrate out of my skin with nerves and excitement between now and the end of May???

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Stuck in Paradise for the Foreseeable

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 03:16:15 GMT

So, as I mentioned in my Festivids letter, I am currently in Hawaii. Hilo to be specific. I have been here since October 10th and I genuinely have no idea when I'll get to go home.

My mother was diagnosed with congestive heart failure five years ago, but this fall she got significantly worse and also developed pneumonia. She was in the hospital for two and a half weeks and is now in a short-term rehab working on getting back her ability to do exciting things like walking across a room without getting shaky-legged and out of breath and using the bathroom unaided.

I'm in an itty bitty postage stamp sized airbnb room in Hilo, since my mom's place is a nearly two-hour drive away. I can't go home until we figure out what happens next for my mom. I don't think she can go back to the place she's been sharing with my sister. My sister is also disabled and not really able to help my mom with stuff, their tiny house is cramped and crowded, has built-in steps and is a constant tripping hazard, and honestly my mom and sister are driving each other completely mad.

Hawaii is beautiful and all, there are certainly worse places I could be stuck indefinitely, but I really want my own bed and my own spouses and my own pets and my own time zone.

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Festivids letter finally!

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 22:41:42 GMT

Sorry for the great delay on this! I had to fly from Ontario to Hawaii for a family medical emergency and Festivids dropped in my priorities a bit.

(Things are improving greatly. My mother, who has congestive heart failure had a heart incident and developed pneumonia. But she's out of hospital and in a rehab now, so I have time/brain space for writing this letter.)

With that out of the way, hello lovely Festivider! Thank you so much for making a vid for me!

I love vids of all kinds, and I'm sure anything you make me will thrill me! The only thing I ask you to avoid is vids that use audio from the original source, especially if the music also includes lyrics, as I find parsing the multiple streams of audio distracting and difficult. Small amount of source audio at the beginning or end of the vid are fine, but nothing more than that.

I've put my fandom-specific comments behind a cut. ( Amber Glenn RPF, The Apartment (1960) [SAFETY], The Band Wagon (1953) [SAFETY], Better Than Chocolate (1999) [SAFETY], It Happened One Night (1934) [SAFETY], Jesus Christ Superstar - Webber/Rice [UMBRELLA], Katarina Witt RPF, Love in the Afternoon (1957) [SAFETY], New Mutants (Claremont/Sienkiewicz), Twelfth Night (1996) [SAFETY] )

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The end of an era

Fri, 29 Nov 2024 01:33:30 GMT

We had to say goodbye to Dreadful last week.

I got a good 18 years with him, but it was never going to be enough time.

Someone on bsky called it the end of an era, and it does feel like that. I was 26 years old when I brought home that kitten, living alone in a tiny studio apartment in Madison, WI, trying to put my life back together. Now I'm 44, married, and living in another country altogether. Living another life altogether.

Those were an eventful 18 years, and Dreadful was the one constant in them.

I feel a bit unmoored. It's going to take some time to find stability again, I think.

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Dear Festividder Letter!

Wed, 25 Sep 2024 00:14:15 GMT

Hello lovely Festividder! First of all, thank you! I am thrilled beyond measure that you are making a vid just for me, and I'm quite sure I will love it to pieces.

I love vids of all kinds, and I'm sure anything you make me will thrill me! The only thing I ask you to avoid is vids that use audio from the original source, especially if the music also includes lyrics, as I find parsing the multiple streams of audio distracting and difficult.

I've put my fandom-specific comments behind the cut! ( blairbraverman & quincemountain (twitter) (sled dogs), Loena Hendrickx RPF, Better Than Chocolate (1999) [SAFETY], The Apartment (1960) [SAFETY], Roman Holiday (1953) [SAFETY], Love in the Afternoon (1957) [SAFETY], Audrey Hepburn Films [UMBRELLA], Gaslight (1944) [SAFETY], It Happened One Night (1934) [SAFETY], Elementary (TV) )

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Extremely Belated Festivids Announcement

Thu, 30 May 2024 22:45:30 GMT

I just realized I never posted my TWO Festivids here!

My festivids assignment was Philadelphia Story, which is one of my favourite movies of all time, so that was both exciting and daunting. But ultimately I made a full-length vid and a short vidlet both for the movie and I'm really happy with how they both turned out.

Oh No Not Now [Fanvid] by FairestCat
Fandom: Philadelphia Story (1940)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Macaulay Connor/C.K. Dexter Haven/Tracy Lord, Macaulay Connor/C.K. Dexter Haven, Macaulay Connor/Tracy Lord, Macaulay Connor/Elizabeth Imbrie, C.K. Dexter Haven/Tracy Lord, C.K. Dexter Haven/Elizabeth Imbrie, Macaulay Connor/C.K. Dexter Haven/Elizabeth Imbrie/Tracy Lord
Summary:

What do I do with this?

Right off the bat I knew I wanted to make a straightforward shippy vid for this movie, because the OT3/4 is amazing, and I also knew fairly early that I wanted to use a really common vidding song, as a bit of an easy entry point for potential watchers who didn't know the fandom. And so, I was delighted to realize I could join the legion of vidders before me who've made vids to Stray Italian Greyhound. And I'll be straightforward here, it was a lot of fun vidding this song, and the fact that I've seen and loved so many other vids to it was part of the joy of the experience.

A couple people commented to me about having not previously seen a vid to this song with a plural pov, and I actually initially thought it would be single pov, or alternating pov at worst. I tried doing it from Tracy's pov and then I tried segregating verses and doing one from Tracy's pov and one from Mike's and it just fought me hard both times. It wasn't until I accepted that the song pov fit all four characters equally--that they're all reluctant and resistant and falling in love despite their best intentions--that the vid started coming together instead of fighting me.

I also came down with Covid while making this vid, which meant a lot of it got made in very short bursts of energy followed by breaks, and it turns out that's actually a pretty good way for me to vid.

Sister Kate [Fanvid] (15 words) by FairestCat
Fandom: Philadelphia Story (1940)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Dinah Lord & Tracy Lord
Characters: Dinah Lord
Additional Tags: kid sisters ftw
Summary:

Dinah Lord FTW

I always secretly hoped I'd be able to make a treat, but then covid messed up my schedule and I didn't think I'd have time. But then I was stuck at home feeling better but still testing positive, and so I decided to just see if I could manage it. I clipped most of the Dinah Lord footage when I was clipping for the main vid, because she's such a scene-stealing character that I couldn't collecting them. As befitting a vid that's only 46 seconds long, this one took almost no time to make, and didn't fight me at all the way my main assignment did.

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OFMD Vid - Transient Whales

Mon, 30 Oct 2023 02:10:13 GMT

OMG I made another vid!

Transient Whales [Fanvid] (3 words) by FairestCat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Our Flag Means Death (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Blackbeard | Edward Teach/Stede Bonnet, Black Pete/Lucius Spriggs
Characters: Blackbeard | Edward Teach, Stede Bonnet, Our Flag Means Death Ensemble
Additional Tags: Found Family, Crew as Family, Season/Series 01, Talking It Through As a Crew (Our Flag Means Death)
Summary:

All we have is each other and the songs we share

This is a love letter to season one of Our Flag Means Death, and also a bit of a love letter to my younger self.

The first band I ever fell in love with was Toad the Wet Sprocket. I was thirteen.

The latest show I've fallen in love with is Our Flag Means Death. I'm now forty-three.

It seems fitting somehow, thirty years on, to be vidding my current favourite show to my original favourite band.

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Festivids Placeholder!

Wed, 18 Oct 2023 19:08:03 GMT

Hello lovely Festividder! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I love vids of all kinds, and I'm sure anything you make me will thrill me! The only thing I ask you to avoid is vids that use audio from the original source, especially if the music also includes lyrics, as I find parsing the multiple streams of audio distracting.

I've put my fandom-specific comments behind the cut!

( Our Flag Means Death (TV) RPF, blairbraverman & quincemountain (twitter) (sled dogs), 2023/24 ISU Junior Grand Prix of Figure Skating RPF, Better Than Chocolate (1999) [SAFETY], Loena Hendrickx RPF, Marilyn Monroe Movies [UMBRELLA], Roman Holiday (1953) [SAFETY], Love in the Afternoon (1957) [SAFETY], Twelfth Night (1996) [SAFETY] )

If you're browsing letters for such purposes, I am absolutely open to receiving treats.

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Dear Yuletide Writer!

Wed, 18 Oct 2023 18:31:39 GMT

Dearest Yuletide Author,

I promise I will like anything you write for me, because it will be for me, in one of the small fandoms of my heart. And they are all fandoms of my heart.

I read het, slash, gen and poly fic pretty much indiscriminately, and I will be thrilled by anything you write whatever genre it fits into, as long as it respects my DNWs.

The theme of my requests this year turns out to be intimacy. Writing this letter, I found that in all the fandom-specific sections I kept coming back to the themes of intimacy and trust. Not necessarily—or only—sexual intimacy, but all the different levels and layers of intimacy between the characters. Although yes, in any of these fandoms, sexual intimacy is very much on the table in my requests.

For everyone's convenience, I've split my "Things I love" into two lists, one general, one porny. Feel free to read or ignore the second list as you prefer.

In all my fandoms I have selected "My gift must feature all of my chosen character tags."

On the AO3 I’m fairestcat.

I’m most active fannishly these days here and on twitter and bluesky, and I’m also fairestcat in both those places.

Things I Love: queerness, polyamory, found family, emotional intimacy, friends to lovers, friends with benefits to lovers, enemies to lovers, age differences, shifting power dynamics, emotional h/c, almost all AUs (exceptions noted in DNW), time travel, future-fic, characters who are bad at feelings, relationship negotiations, trope subversion, cultural differences, class differences, self-destructive tendencies, moral ambiguity, loyalty, first times, banter, snark, historical details, unreliable narrators, trust, political maneuvering, unusual mythology, competence, porn with plot.

I love unusual and experimental fic styles: epistolary fic, found documents, oral history, interactive fiction, poetry, unusual povs. If you want to play with something of this sort, I promise to be thrilled by anything you come up with.

Porny Thing I Love: D/s, bondage, rough sex, orgasm delay/denial, multiple orgasms, body worship, possessiveness, fisting, double-penetration, oral sex, fingering, dirty talk, praise kink, strength kink, sex toys, biting, bruising, angry sex, pain play, wall sex, consent play, partially-clothed sex, strength kink, spanking, overstimulation, impact play.

I love smut most when it tells me something about the characters involved and their relationship to each other. If a particular act/kink/setting feels right for the characters and it’s not on my DNW list I’m all for it.

Things I DNW: infidelity, jealousy presented as romantic, monogamous soulmates/soulbonds, body horror, non-sexual humiliation, embarrassment, character death, unhappy endings, food kink, medical kink, pregnancy/childbirth, pregnancy/breeding kink, public sex, animal harm, disparaging previous romantic/sexual partners, we're not gay we just love each other, bisexual erasure, non-con, scat/watersports, age play, mundane AUs for fantastical canons, modern AUs for historical fandoms.

Now on to the fandom-specific stuff!

( Witch King by Martha Wells - Kaiisteron, Bashasa Calis )

( Element of Fire by Martha Wells - Thomas Boniface, Kade Carrion )

( Nine Worlds Series by Victoria Goddard - Cliopher 'Kip' Mdang, Artorin Damara | Fitzroy Angursell )

( Fall of Ile-Rien by Martha Wells - Tremaine Valiarde, Florian )

( The Doomsday Books by K. J. Charles - Luke Doomsday )

( The Roads of Heaven by Melissa Scott - Silence Leigh, Denis Balthasar, Julian Chase Mago )

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Yuletide Season! and Travel!

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 13:51:37 GMT

It's Yuletide season again and I think I'm going to try to play again this year. Which means I'm going to try to do both Yuletide and Festivids like a madwoman.

I have nominated four different Martha Wells canons, because I reread most of her older stuff for the Beyond Murderbot panel at Wiscon, and then I fell deeply and hope~~less~~fully in love with Witch King and now I have a desperate, burning need for more.

Also, I am in the Washington DC area right now and for the next week, should anyone desire to meet up!

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On Fiduciary Duties and the OTW Board

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 17:42:39 GMT

I've promised various people over the last couple months that I'd make a post on fiduciary duties in a non-profit sense, and today might as well be that day.

In day-to-day life, people tend to think of "fiduciary duty" as a financial duty, because the way breaches of fiduciary duty most often manifest in personal or corporate relationships is money mismanagement, but fiduciary relationships are more that just financial.

I'm going to quote from the Wikipedia article a bit in this post, as it's a good overview of the concept.

Wikipedia defines a fiduciary as "a person who holds a legal or ethical relationship of trust with one or more other parties (person or group of persons)." At heart, fiduciary duty is about trust. It's both a legal and an ethical obligation. A financial manager has a fiduciary duty towards the people whose money they're managing. A lawyer has a fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of their client. And a Board of Directors has a fiduciary duty to at all times act in the best interests of the Organization for which they are responsible.

The OTW is incorporated in the US State of Delaware, as many US companies and organizations are. From Wikipedia again:

Under Delaware law, officers, directors and other control persons of corporations and other entities owe three primary fiduciary duties, the duty of care, the duty of loyalty and the duty of good faith.

This site (which is apparently trying to sell me some sort of non-profit board management software) has one of the best description of fiduciary duties in a non-profit context that I've seen online and it breaks them down into 6 key points: Duty of Care, Duty of Loyalty, Duty of Obedience, Duty of Confidentiality, Duty of Prudence, Duty to Disclose.

I want to focus on just one, the Board's Duty of Care.

Duty of Care

From Board Effect again: "Duty of care means that board directors must give the same care and concern to their board responsibilities as any prudent and ordinary person would manage their personal matters."

The US National Council of Nonprofits is even more succinct, describing a Board of Directors as having a duty to "take care of the nonprofit by ensuring prudent use of all assets, including facility, people, and good will."

I believe, based on recent conversations, that the current OTW Board has failed to ensure "prudent use of all assets," particularly through its treatment of the OTW's greatest asset, its volunteers, and through its public statements (or lack thereof) which have damaged the OTW's credibility and therefore the feelings of good will towards it within larger fandom.

The OTW Board has failed in their Duty of Care towards azarias and other members of the Policy & Abuse Committee, both in regards to the 2022 CSAM attacks and in regards to their general policies and approved procedures of PAC.

synecdochic breaks it down better than I could in her comments on chestnut_pod's excellent post on the OTW's failures.

The OTW Board has also failed in their Duty of Care by "fostering a culture of structural racism and discrimination that negatively impacts the well-being of its volunteers, and has driven many more away."

They have failed in their Duty of Care towards mainland Chinese volunteers both through explicit anti-Asian racism, and by failing to understand or take into consideration their specific circumstances.

They have failed in their Duty of Care by failing to consider abusive and racialized language from those in power as a violation of the Code of Conduct. And they have failed in their Duty of Care by prioritizing OTW confidentiality over all else.

From the accounts I have read and from personal experience I would argue that the OTW as a whole has failed towards all of its volunteers including past and current boards members in the way it has enforced the Code of Conduct such as to give maximum benefit of the doubt to bad actors within the OTW. Persistent racialized comments aren't considered a clear violation of the Code of Conduct. Creating a hostile workplace through repeated aggressive and confrontational behaviour is not a clear violation of the Code of Conduct. But making other volunteers uncomfortable by talking about racism within the OTW apparently is.

And I'd like to say again that the OTW Board and legal counsel have failed in their Duty of Care to the OTW every time they have failed to speak out on these issues, prioritizing confidentiality over transparency and internal discussions over public accountability.

They've failed their Duty of Care by failing to meaningfully address racist harassment on the AO3 or fulfill any of the other promises made in the three years since they issued that statement.

And, oh yes, they've absolutely failed their Duty of Care by not hiring an Executive Director to handle the day-to-day running of the OTW, or even any kind of HR professional to manage and protect the interests of the OTW's volunteers.

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Demand for Suspension of OTW Board Member

Wed, 26 Jul 2023 17:12:55 GMT

Everyone who cares about the current situation in the OTW should read this post from dhobikikutti: Demand for Suspension of OTW Board Member

As a former OTW Board President, and a voting member of the OTW, I call upon the membership, and the larger user base, to join me in demanding the immediate suspension of Board Member Alex Tischer, as well as a complete external audit of the current Board's failure in their fiduciary duty towards the well-being of the organisation.

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OTW Board Candidate Recommendation: Anh P.

Tue, 25 Jul 2023 19:51:07 GMT

Everyone's now talking about Audrey R, which is partially my fault, and while I agree that we need to talk about who we don't want elected, I think it's just as important to talk about some of the great candidates running for the OTW Board this year. I want to highlight a couple I'm particularly impressed by, starting with my favourite of this year's candidates: Anh P.

To the best of my knowledge, I don't know Anh fannishly or personally, but I've been incredibly impressed by their Q&A responses and the amount of research and consideration they've put into their candidacy.

Anh P.

Anh is, by their own admission, quite new to the OTW, having joined the Fanlore committee in 2022. However, they have very much done their research and it shows in their thoughtful and nuanced answers to the three Q&As so far published.

Anh is Vietnamese, an artist, and an English as an Additional Language (EAL) fan. All of these are, I think, points in their favour as a Board candidate.

Many of the largest fandoms on the Archive are for Asian media and celebrities, the percentage of Southeast Asian—especially Chinese—fans engaging with the AO3 and other OTW projects is expanding quickly, and I think it's important that this growing segment of the OTW/AO3 population be represented at the Board level.

Questions around AI seem to have inspired a lot of the Board candidates this year, and I think when it comes to AI and the Archive, artists should have a significant role in the conversation. Anh also has some great things to say on the specifics of AI policy and the difficulties in enforcing any kind of anti-AI policy on the AO3. I've reproduced the outside link as it is embedded in their original answer.

In your opinion, what would a sensible policy regarding ai-generated content on AO3 look like? How would you enforce this policy such that NO human fic writers are harmed in overzealous attempts to reign in ai-generated content, as seen on art platforms which attempted an ai ban? Do you think AI is something that PAC can accurately detect and regulate/restrict?

What I want is to help users curate their experience on AO3 better, which includes helping them avoid seeing AI-generated fanworks, such as canonising the freeform tag and publicising its use. I understand that several people would prefer to never see any AI-generated fanworks on AO3, but I don’t think it’s a sensible policy to prohibit AI-generated fanworks from the Archive.

I don’t trust the current “AI detectors” to be reliable or accurate, and I’m opposed to using unreliable software that is likely to mislabel fanworks, especially if it’s likely to lead to harassment. I believe that a policy to ban LLM-generated content without sufficient tools to detect and enforce it wouldn’t be a good policy. Furthermore, I’m worried about using AI detectors for text, as they are especially unreliable when the real human author is not a native English speaker.

On the subject of outreach to EAL fans, I'm going to quote Anh's platform directly.

One of the issues I consider most essential to the Organization’s success is making it more approachable to interested bystanders, especially to English as an Additional Language fans or potential volunteers. It’s been 15 years since the OTW was founded; the demographic of AO3 users in particular is very different to what it used to be. While AO3 is still predominantly used by Anglophone fans, the number of fanworks written in languages other than English is increasing every year. However, instead of treating this as a profound advantage to connect and unite fans from different cultures around the world, we are letting the language barriers, minimal outreach, and the lack of transparency–conscious or not–hinder our collective effort to build a true Archive of Our Own.

Because YES to all of that.

The thing that has impressed me the most about Anh's Q&A answers is the evidence of their willingness to reach out to other current and former volunteers, especially those in parts of the OTW they're not familiar with, in order to get context and advice on the many issues facing the OTW. Here's part of their answer to the first question in the Board Work I section of questions.

Where did you get most of the knowledge and preparation in order to know running for board is a good fit for you? Did you feel prepared enough by Board/elections? Do you personally believe that people with no concrete professional experience (such as college students) are apt to serve on the Board of Directors of a US non-profit?

I’m very lucky that my Fanlore chair is one of our former Board directors. I’m talking with her to better understand Board work, plus time commitments for candidates and elected directors. I’ve been receiving lots of help from other OTW volunteers, both within my committees and other committees that I don’t serve in. The invaluable knowledge gathered along the way helps me understand the OTW history, policies, and culture better. From these experiences, I’m more comfortable reaching out to volunteers from different committees – and already proactively doing this for both social and election reasons. Outside of the OTW, I’ve been talking with my fannish friends to get a clearer picture of how the userbase is perceiving the Organisation, and see different points of view from current and former OTW volunteers.

Nevertheless, after weeks of preparation and research, I don’t think I’ll ever be certain that I’m 100% ready for the election and the challenges of Board work. What I can do is equip myself with all the available resources: knowledge, history, proactive communication, even the reassurance from fellow volunteers about how I can bring positive changes to the Organisation.

Which is a nice statement, but what's great is that you can see it in practice in their further Q&A answers.

Anh discusses reaching out to Policy & Abuse committee volunteers for their thoughts on the subject of AI works on the Archive:

I talked with several Policy & Abuse committee volunteers, and I’m aware that they previously discussed the potential updated policy regarding AI-generated content for AO3. However, they have similar concerns about the unreliableness and biases of AI detectors, specifically toward EAL writers. Until technology allows us to 100% reliably identify LLM-assisted works, I don’t think PAC can accurately detect nor regulate AI-generated content.

And for questions related to the AO3 code they've talked not only to AD&T volunteers, but to the owners of two outside archives running the AO3 code:

How important do you think it is to focus on making sure the AO3 software continues to be developed and improved so other people can set up their own archives with their own content and conduct policies?

As I mentioned in my previous answers, and from several discussions with other AD&T volunteers, I understand that we want to hire software developers and site reliability engineers, to make sure that the AO3 software (otw-archive) continues to be developed and improved so other people can set up their own archives with their own content and conduct policies.

Since making the AO3 software more accessible for fans is one of my goals, I reached out to the owners of Squidgeworld and Ad Astra – the only two fanfic archives using the AO3 software that I’m aware of – to discuss the challenges of deploying otw-archive for their sites. We had a very productive conversation, and both Walter from Squidgeworld and SLWalker from Ad Astra were very patient as they explained the hours of work and the many unexpected challenges in deploying the software on their own servers.

And their answer on the question of commentbots is fully credited to the volunteers with the best knowledge of the issue:

Comment bots at AO3 are a growing problem. While some of the fixes for that are “better spamblockers,” would you be willing to promote something like OpenID to allow comments from people without AO3 accounts?

[...] At the moment, volunteers from the AD&T committee are not strictly opposed to ever supporting a protocol with similar features to OpenID to offer more accessibility functions for people who have no AO3 accounts, and I agree with this stance. However, AD&T is generally wary of including third-party functions that we later have to maintain. Right now, we do not have the necessary tools nor resources for that, but further research on different ways to require verification of people without asking for an AO3 account might be feasible.

I especially want to highlight this spot-on analysis of the problems with the now-defunct Internationalization and Outreach Committee as another clear indication that Anh has done their research on the history of the OTW.

Would you be in favor of creating a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee? Why or why not?

As an EAL volunteer, I’m in favour of a DEI committee in theory. The OTW has 900+ volunteers from different backgrounds with diverse geopolitical situations; normally it’d be a great starting point for a DEI committee. However, the OTW also values the privacy of our volunteers. We have no direct knowledge of the ethnicity of our volunteers, and limited information about diversity within the Organisation. People could come forward on an optional basis, but it’d be strictly opt-in; nobody would be required to share personal details.

The former Internationalisation & Outreach committee had similar functions – an in-house group of diversity consultants and activists. The committee predated my time within the Organisation by several years. From my discussions with fellow volunteers, including former-member Kathryn, and my research about its subsequent dissolution, I think the ideas behind the committee were great. However, their purview was vague – having lots of enthusiasm yet mostly focused on research without a solid end goal. Their passion for diversity in OTW was admirable, but without the necessary professional experience and training, the committee was eventually dissolved.

They've also had some great answers on the subject of the Board's HR role and the generally lack of solid Administrative structure within the OTW, starting with this very sympathetic, if simplistic analysis in their platform:

Over time, I’ve realised that the lack of communication and transparency is a direct symptom of the fact that the current structure of OTW human resource management is not yet equipped to handle a group of more than 900 volunteers coming from various backgrounds, such as different countries with their respective cultures and geopolitical situations.

The lack of OTW HR comes up again in a question about managing Board work:

It’s true that the Board is the nominal head of the OTW, however they are also fellow volunteers with responsibilities to their respective committees. At the moment, the OTW itself is lacking several necessary HR functions, including conflict management between volunteers, between volunteers and their supervisors, and between nominal heads of the OTW and OTW volunteers, to name a few.

In addition, the OTW’s leadership isn’t currently equipped to properly monitor their volunteers’ workload and help them manage it, nor detect or prevent issues such as burnout and boreout. Discussing this with former Board members has helped me better understand the nature of Board work and assigning Board work between Board members – it’s a phenomenon quite similar to group projects – and respectfully speaking, I am aware of the challenges in this type of scenario.

Here, Anh shows that they clearly understand what Board work entails and what they can and can't realistically accomplish in the position:

From my discussions with former Board members, Board is supposedly an administrative role with limited power over other OTW committees. The Organisation is decentralised with individual committee chairs having the ultimate say over the parts of the OTW that they manage, therefore a lot depends on what chairs are willing or able to do.

Furthermore, Board candidates don’t make “campaign promises”; we only choose some areas that we want to work on to improve or change, because the Board’s power doesn’t include widespread executive control. The potential challenge that I perceive is how little power I have as a single Board member to push for change within the Organisation.

I also really like the suggestion of a cultural audit of the OTW. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a cultural audit is essentially an attempt to quantify organizational culture-via things like surveys, focus groups and data analysis-to look at the overall culture of an organization. They're basically a way to make the intangible tangible, and thus easier to actively engage with. They're an imperfect tool, but they can be really useful, especially in a seriously dysfunctional organization such as the OTW.

As I mentioned in my previous answers, I want to support VolCom in any capacity to ensure we successfully lead the HR outsourcing project to completion. Moreover, I want to research the feasibility of performing a culture audit for the Organisation, to better understand the internal issues of the OTW that have piled up over the years. I want to support the Diversity Consultant Research Officer to the best of my ability, so we can contract a DEI consultant soon. I’ll make sure the Board facilitates their work and provides them with the tools they need to implement institutional changes within the OTW.

I'm really encouraged by Anh's thoughtfulness and the thoroughness of their research. They likely have my vote, but I encourage all OTW voters to research for themselves as well. Look at the Q&As and platforms, and get an idea of which candidates you think have the best shot at doing the job well.

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Reasons why I will not be voting for Audrey R. in the OTW Election and don't think you should either

Mon, 24 Jul 2023 17:27:01 GMT

I've spent the past few days catching up on the platforms and Q&A answers of the six candidates for the four open OTW Board seats, and while there are several candidates I am quite impressed by, I want to start by talking about one who I am absolutely appalled by: Audrey R.

This is an expansion of a thread I posted on twitter. I'd been meaning to write a post about Audrey R for several days, but was finally spurred into action by this post by mozaikmage

I assure you, being a registered Republican who ran for office in 2022 is reason enough not to be on the OTW Board, but it's way down on the list of reasons Audrey R shouldn't be on the OTW Board.

All quotes from here on out will be from her official platform/Q&A answers.

Let's start with the fandom elephant in the room, right from her Bio and Platform.

Audrey R.: is a policy lead at a nonprofit, continuing a decade-long career in government and policy work. In her spare time, you will find her shoe shopping or listening to the newest Qveen Herby EP. Her first fandom was Harry Potter, but she didn’t discover fanfiction until taking a college course on fandom. It took two years of reading before she took the plunge into writing her first story, and she now has over seventy works published on the archive. She currently writes in the Harry Potter fandom on AO3 and is a member of the Strategic Planning committee.

Being in Harry Potter fandom isn't in itself an immediate red flag. I absolutely know some people who are still in HP fandom for various reasons. But someone who in 2023 says they're in HP fandom, but does not follow up by disavowing and distancing themselves from Rowling's TERFdom? Red fucking flag.

Further down in the platform post she's asked to discuss one or two goals for the OTW that are important to her, and I'd like to highlight part of her answer:

The second thing has arisen recently, but we need a solid conflict resolution system. I believe there should be a paid employee (we need to make a financial investment in key positions throughout the org) whose only responsibility is conflict management & resolution. If someone has a concern or complaint and does not feel comfortable going to their supervisor, there should be an independent authority of some kind. Dispute resolution is key to an organization’s success and we should invest in it to ensure the wellbeing and satisfaction of volunteers.

This is on the surface a good answer, but it highlights a large gulf in Audrey's knowledge and experience that becomes even more clear in the Q&As. I am a big proponent of the OTW hiring some paid staff, however there is nothing recent about OTW's need for better conflict resolution. Talking to a single long-term volunteer would tell you that.

But as near as I can tell, Audrey R.—who by her own admission has only been an OTW volunteer for one year and "did not initially believe [she'd] put in enough time to merit the position"—doesn't feel any need to research aspects of the OTW that she is unfamiliar with and she certainly doesn't seem to have consulted many long-term volunteers.

The below three answers illustrate this perfectly.

Preserving fan culture is a OTW mission, but when preserving & recording history, how do you think say Fanlore can acknowledge, warn or prevent replicating of harassment & hate speech? In your volunteer experience, what resources are available for volunteers & users on what to do when encountering such cases?

I do not understand the premise of this question. It is my understanding that Fanlore editors do their best to remove any hateful or harassing comments on articles. Referencing replication, I initially thought this was a question about the Open Doors imports. I am confused by this question to the point that I don’t have an answer.

The question of preventing replication of harassment & hate speech when preserving fandom history is a very important one, and one that's been ongoing since well before the founding of the OTW. And yet, it's apparently so beyond Audrey's experiences that she doesn't even know what the question is.

I would like to think that if I ran across a platform question that I fundamentally did not understand, I would ask somebody, in an official or unofficial capacity.

But in what I'd argue is a perfect example of mediocre white woman privilege, Audrey apparently doesn't think she needs to.

By comparison, other Board candidates, when approaching topics they don't have experience with describe all the people and committees they've talked to in order to develop their stances.

Anh P, for example, repeatedly references discussions they've had with relevant committees.

Fandom cultures can vary significantly. How would you best reflect the specific fandom’s expectations in tag canonization and synning? May I please know if you support speeding up the conversion of large and small non-canonical tags into Canonical ones? Canonical tags make it easier to include or exclude works from search.

I don’t have enough knowledge to fully understand and answer this question. I’ll learn and increase my understanding of tag wrangling procedures.

This is a fairly technical question, but it's a big issue in some parts of fandom right now. Q&A questions are not rapid-fire, candidates have time to research and consider before giving their answers. This is a very good example of something Audrey should have researched before answering, rather than just brushing off the question and promising to research it later.

And then there's her answer to the PAC question.

What are your thoughts on PAC and how to improve things there in response to the current controversy?

I do not know what this is referring to, specifically. PAC volunteers need support, they need adequate training on handling CSAM, and they need to feel like their voices are heard at the high levels of the organization. They should also be consulted when decisions made at higher levels will impact their regular business. There have been many internal issues that have come to a head recently, so “current controversy” does not give me enough context to fully understand this question.

The idea that someone running for the OTW Board isn't aware of the current conversations about PAC and volunteer safety and accusations of targeted harassment of a specific PAC volunteer by the Legal Committee and the Board absolutely terrifies me.

But then her answer clearly indicates that she's aware of at least some of what's going on, which leads me to wonder if in this case, "'current controversy' doesn't give me enough context to fully understand this question," is code for, "I don't want to answer this question, so I'm going to play dumb."

I've made it all this way without even talking about the greatest example of Audrey not doing her research and also my particular special interest: fiduciary duty.

Explain in your own words what “fiduciary duty” means for a US non-profit. Are you comfortable with that level of legal commitment? Does being on the Board of Directors of a US nonprofit pose any risk to you or your family in your country? Have you discussed this risk with your loved ones?

Most of my family did not want me to run for this board; including one member who is an active user of the Archive. They have no context for the organization’s scandals, internal hiccups, etc. My family is US-based, so their concern is more about whether the OTW is something I want to publicly attach my name to; based on the attacks last year. I believe they view this as something that could hurt me both personally and professionally if something like that were to happen again. To be honest, I am still quite wary of that reality.

Reading this answer I'm led to conclude that Audrey R has no idea what fiduciary duty is, and even more apparently, felt no need to look it up.

This is a really fucking important question.

Fiduciary duties are the central tenant of working for a non-profit Board. And Audrey R. apparently couldn't even be bothered to google the term, so she just ignored it and only answered the other half of the question.

But believe it or not, I've been saving Audrey's worst Q&A answer for last.

And it's her answer to the question about #EndOTWRacism (which the question incorrectly calls #EndRacismInTheOTW)

Apologies, this one is long, but I think I need to quote the entire answer.

What specific actions would you have the Board take to 1) fulfill its commitments made in 2020 to reduce racism on AO3 and across the OTW and 2) continue to expand anti-racist efforts in the OTW? How will you support Black fans, Indigenous fans, and fans of color in feeling welcome on the Archive of Our Own and in avoiding harassment? How do you feel about #EndRacismInTheOTW?

Some of the actions addressing these issues within the strategic plan include individual committees reviewing and identifying ways to decrease bias in the recruitment process, forming volunteer coalitions, and implementing procedures to deal with interpersonal conflict. We should also review the comms style guide to ensure offensive language has been properly identified and contextualized. (This would be a conversation for the board to have with the communications committee.)

Regarding #EndRacismInTheOTW (henceforth #EOTWR), the impetus for the movement is valid; there are clear concerns that need to be addressed. That being said, no one from #EOTWR recruited existing volunteers to the movement, nor encouraged their followers to volunteer and eventually run for board. Instead of taking steps and involving existing volunteers and board members to genuinely make change, the only coordinated effort has been to disrupt a board meeting. It feels like the movement expects change to be done in their way on their terms.

I am offended by their demand that candidates go to their platform to make our voices heard, as if our own platforms and the work we have put in is not enough. We are addressing this formally, as a professional organization should, while acknowledging the limitations of being entirely chat-based and volunteer-run. The timelines for these changes move quite slowly because we are, again, run entirely by volunteers.

One of the most important things I learned on the campaign trail was this: it does not matter how loud your voice is if you don’t have a seat at the table. My advice to #EOTWR is recruit and/or run so they can get a seat, and find ways to involve the people currently in the positions to make change.

This answer is so bad.

SO BAD.

I'm having trouble breaking down how bad it is. I'm *kermit flail gif* here.

Audrey R. is disappointed that #EndOTWRacism didn't ask nicely

Showing once again her ignorance of fandom history in general and OTW history in specific, she's upset that fans of colour haven't tried to change the OTW from the inside.

[insert hollow laugh here]

And of course she assumes that none of the supporters of #EndOTWRacism are already volunteers within the OTW.

And it's all so goddamn patronizing.

"We are addressing this formally, as a professional organization should."

As opposed to that uncivilized rabble who's "only coordinated effort has been to disrupt a board meeting."

So, no, I will not be voting for Audrey R for OTW Board. And I don't think anyone else should either.

Her Bio, Platform and Q&A answers show a profound lack of respect for fandom in general and the OTW in specific and a complete lack of understanding of the responsibilities of the position she's put herself forward to take.

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An addendum

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 20:35:27 GMT

Thank you to everyone who's commented on my previous post on the OTW and Money, especially everyone who recognized how actually painful and difficult a post that was to write. Hearing multiple people say that was remarkably validating.

I'm pulling some stuff out of the comments of my previous post, because the conversation got heated enough that I had to turn off anonymous comments and freeze some threads.

Explicit ground-rules: No name calling, no ad hominum attacks, and if I feel like you're not interested in a good faith discussion I will start with freezing threads, but may execute my judgement with regards to banning specific commentators.

The Appointment

I elided the stuff that happened after Sanders was removed from her Board candidacy because a post that started out as an attempt to just talk about the attitude towards money in the OTW had grown to ~5700 words with all the context I needed to add. And also because I'm concerned about the future of the OTW, not relitigating old grudges

But that incident has been brought up repeatedly in the comments now, so here we go.

After the Election was concluded, there was one more open seat on the Board, due to the unexpected resignation of a Board member with two years still left on her term. The Board has the right to appoint members to fill vacated seats like this one without going through the elections process, and we chose to do so. We appointed Andrea H, one of the outgoing Board members to the two-year term. Andrea had run in the recent election, so we knew she was willing to stay on the Board.

Our reason goes right back to that "The OTW has no institutional memory" problem.

The OTW Board is set up to have rolling elections so that there are always experienced Board Members around to work with the incoming Board. However, at that point the Board had had so many resignations that this was fundamentally not working as intended, and the 2016 Board was set up to have nobody on it who had joined earlier than 2015.

I was leaving at the end of 2015 no matter what happened, but the Board members who were meant to be staying on for the 2016 term wanted someone around who had more experience then they did. And so we voted Andrea into that vacant seat.

Was this the right choice? I don't know. I've offered our good faith reasoning and you can believe it or not. I will say that in a functioning Organization it wouldn't have been a terribly controversial decision, but we were all aware that we weren't in a functioning Organization at that point, so we really probably shouldn't have been surprised by the reaction.

That said, the accusation that this would have led to her holding two Board seats at the same time, and thus having extra power to prevent the new Board from making decisions is frankly baffling to me, and the fact that anyone thought that could or would happen is a pretty good indicator that we'd already lost the trust of our membership and nothing we could have said in our defence would have mattered.

It's extra baffling because even if you think we had planned to have her serve two seats at the same time (which again, why??? I genuinely do not see a benefit to this), those two seats would have been on the existing 2015 Board, not on any future Board with newly-elected members, so this hypothetical double Board posting would have served none of the vague nefarious purposes we were being accused of having.

The Confidentiality Breach

One of the reasons we were accused of unethical behaviour was that it turned out Andrea had come in last in the 2015 Election, a fact we had no way of knowing before it was thrown in our faces.

The reasons we didn't know? Sharing that information was (and still is) explicitly against the OTW Elections Committee Confidentiality Policy.

Per the OTW Elections Confidentiality policy active at the time:

Results Data must be kept in Elections Locked Spaces until the Elections Chair has made a formal announcement of the results to the Board and the membership. If the software determining results returns any form of ranking successful candidates, at no time may those rankings be disclosed to anyone not directly working with the software, including uninvolved Elections Staff and the Board.

Emphasis mine.

There's no wiggle room there. What the Elections Chair did by disclosing that information both internally and externally was a direct violation of the Confidentiality Policy they had agreed to upon taking their position and in an even remotely functional organisation it would have cost them that job.

We already knew we couldn't trust the Elections Chair, particularly regarding confidential information, but the fact that she broke confidentiality that blatantly and with full support of the incoming Board members still shocks me.

The question of why we didn't clarify any of this at the time keeps coming up and I have two questions in return.

How do you know we didn't try to explain ourselves through the proper internal channels?
And what part of anything I have described above makes you think the majority of our volunteers and members would have believed any public statement we made?

After Sanders' firing and before Andrea's appointment, we did in fact offer to discuss our rationale and decision-making with the Chair of the Elections Committee. The relevant email thread included the OTW Legal Committee and outside Legal counsel because they had been involved in advising us on our decision.

This was a clear offer to give the Elections Chair more information than could be made public, because of their role in the OTW, in an effort to explain our actions and with the hope of working with them to clarify our public messaging. The Chair of the Legal committee informed the Chair of Elections that some parts of the conversation might be confidential because legal advice is confidential by default.

The Chair of Elections informed us that they were unwilling to have any conversations with Legal counsel present because they wanted to be able to post anything we told them directly on their personal social media.

At that point we replied with the same boilerplate language we'd given them before. It was clear there was no conversation to be had.

The Handoff

An anonymous commenter on my previous post said,

Here's what helps with institutional memory: documentation, clear processes, and handoff. Not this petty nonsense.

I was in fact trying really hard not to be petty, but if petty nonsense is what you want, I have some great petty nonsense for you.

At that time, at term turnover the OTW email archives and chat rooms were purged and all information deleted from OTW servers. Prior to 2014 Basecamp chat documents were also purged. I'm using past tense because I don't actually know if this is still policy.

I went into my email just now and found the relevant announcement that went out in late 2014.

At the end of each term, Volunteers & Recruiting organizes and completes the end of term purge of data from organization tools. The purge of mailing lists and Campfire transcripts will begin on December 28, 2014 at 0001 UTC to be completed by January 1, 2015. Please organize with your staff and archive any necessary information in your section of the wiki before 0001 UTC on December 28.

We will not be purging Basecamp in 2014. However, we encourage everyone to look over their area, archive completed items (including writeboards, to-do lists, templates and files) on the wiki and remove the items from Basecamp, and delete anything that's no longer necessary for day-to-day work.

I can't find the 2015 email. Either I've deleted it at some point or it didn't go out until after our resignation.

This data purge especially included the Board email lists and chat rooms. Board discussions are often confidential and they are specifically confidential to the people having those conversations, not to all Board members present and future. This means the people involved in the conversations are able to save records of them, but people who were not part of those conversations cannot independently access them.

Resigning before the official end of the term and having no Board carryover limited our time to do that documentation, but we did what we could and we contacted the incoming Board and offered to discuss handoff with them.

The incoming Board refused to respond to our emails. Any of our emails.

We had documentation of our decisions in the form of the minutes of each public Board meeting. And to the best of my knowledge, closed and confidential minutes are accessible in some form to future Boards. It's just the conversations before the decisions that are not.

We really would have liked to have done a proper handoff, where we showed the new Board where to find that information and answered any clarifying questions. That option was denied us.

Since the incoming Board had supported Elections in breaching their written Code of Conduct. There was no way in hell we weren't making sure the record of our confidential decision-making wasn't purged from OTW servers before we left. We contacted VolCom and made sure the Board mailing lists and Campfire chat were purged before our stated resignation date.

As an aside, at one point it was actually unclear if the outgoing Treasurer would be able to resign with the rest of the Board, because the incoming Treasurer had failed to respond to her emails asking for the information needed to transfer the Treasurer role to them. Resigning without doing that handoff and thus leaving the OTW without a Treasurer for some unknown length of time would have put the outgoing Treasurer in breach of the OTW bylaws.

Final Thoughts

I realised something when writing this post that I couldn't quite articulate when writing the previous one.

At a certain point some of us chose to prioritise our commitment to our confidentiality oaths and our Fiduciary Duty and Duty of Care to the OTW above our personal reputations within and without the OTW.

At the time I thought that was a worthy exchange. I was willing to sacrifice my reputation if the result was institutional change to the OTW. The most heartbreaking revelation of the current conversations has been the confirmation that we needn't have bothered. Absolutely none of that institutional change seems to have survived us.

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On The OTW and Money

Tue, 27 Jun 2023 02:38:46 GMT

ETA: Since anonymous comments are being abused, anonymous comments have been turned off. I welcome disagreements, but if you want to discuss this with me, I expect an actual discussion, not name-calling and mockery, and you will have to put a name to your opinions.

Okay, right. Today's the day. Let's talk about the OTW and money. Specifically, the spending of it.

The story I’m going to tell isn’t about race and racism in the OTW and AO3, and it isn't about the current egregious abuse of volunteers within the OTW, but I believe it’s extremely relevant to both of those discussions.

Because none of this dysfunction is new, and this isn't the first time people have tried to address it. But our efforts did not end well, and I think it's a story worth sharing, if only as a lesson in what not to do.

Some ground rules before we start:

I recognize that f_fa is a great resource for conversations like this, however interacting with it in any way actively makes me (more) insane and so I don't do it. I'm sure this post will get linked and discussed there, but please do not link me to that discussion or reference that discussion here in any way. As a corollary to this point: I have read some of the conversations at f_fa that have been compiled or screenshot elsewhere, but I have not read any of the recent conversations directly on meme, nor will I.
Yes, I was on the OTW Board that all resigned en masse at the end of 2015. However, I am extremely limited in what exactly I can say about the final events leading up to our resignation. If I say I can't talk about something it's because I can't talk about something.
I will be doing my best to moderate comments, but I probably won't be able to respond immediately at all times, so please be civil. Anonymous comments are screened by default.

( Approximately 5500 words on my experience in OTW leadership )

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Kick Drum Beating in My Chest Again

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 22:20:27 GMT

I made a vidshow for vidukon_cardiff this year of vids about music, and the way it changes and compells us. About the things we do for music and the things music does to us.

Kick Drum Beating in My Chest Again

Edge of Midnight by hollywoodgrrl
Fandom: Stevie Nicks
Music: Edge of Midnight by Miley Cyrus feat. Stevie Nicks
Summary: "To me, you're the only thing in the whole world that matters"
Streaming: On YouTube

OMG by lolachrome
Fandom: Kpop reaction videos, New Jeans (band), 그녀의 사생활 | Her Private Life
Music: OMG by New Jeans
Summary: a celebration of the joyous community and love that comes out of shared fandom
Streaming: On YouTube

Steal the Air by Rhea
Fandom: Pump Up the Volume (1990)
Music: Are You Out There by Dar Williams
Summary: I was out here listening all the time
Streaming: On YouTube

Headphones by Anoel
Fandom: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Music: Headphones by Matt Nathanson (feat. LOLO)
Summary: I feel invincible with my headphones on
Streaming: On YouTube

On My Radio by JinkyO
Fandom: Ska Music
Music: On My Radio by The Selecter
Summary: A love letter to first, second, and third wave ska with song, band, and label recs.
Streaming: On YouTube

Worry Warrior by Januarium
Fandom: We Are Lady Parts (TV)
Music: Worry Warrior by The Tuts
Summary: Worry warrior / What you worried for?
Streaming: On YouTube

Some Guts by frayadjacent
Fandom: アグレッシブ烈子 | Aggressive Retsuko | Aggretsuko (Anime)
Music: Fagetarian and Dyke by Team Dresch
Summary: Music a outlet, as freedom.
Streaming: On YouTube

Fake Your Death by gwenfrankenstien
Fandom: Velvet Goldmine
Music: Fake Your Death by My Chemical Romance
Summary: Even heroes get the blues
Streaming: On Vimeo

Ever Fallen In Love by faneunice
Fandom: Hard Core Logo
Music: Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've) by The Buzzcocks
Summary:You spurn my natural emotions / You make me feel like dirt and I’m hurt / And if I start a commotion / I run the risk of losing you and that’s worse.
Streaming: On YouTube

Vid: Wondaland by eruthros
Fandom: Janelle Monáe & Wondaland Arts Society RPF
Music: Wondaland by Janelle Monáe
Summary: There's a world inside / where dreamers meet each other
Streaming: On YouTube

Við spilum endalaust by seekingferret
Fandom: Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020)
Music: Við spilum endalaust by Sigur Rós
Summary: We play endlessly / we play endlessly together
Streaming: On YouTube

Royals by garrideb
Fandom: The Beatles (Band)
Music: Royals by Lorde
Summary: That kind of luxe just ain’t for us / We crave a different kind of buzz
Streaming: On YouTube

Long Live by helcinda
Fandom: One Direction
Music: Long Live by Taylor Swift
Summary: Long live all the mountains we moved / I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you
Streaming: On YouTube

Hail Satan by Tafadhali
Fandom: Stranger Things
Music: The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton by Laura Jane Grace
Summary: When you punish a person for dreaming their dream, don't expect them to thank or forgive you
Streaming: On YouTube

How Does It Feel by joyo
Fandom: Almost Famous
Music: How Does it Feel by Slade
Summary: Do you know, know, know what it’s like / To be searching and suddenly find / All your illusion, all your
confusion, all left behind?
Streaming: No streaming, Download available here.

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Fanvid: (We) Didn't Just Come Here to Dance! - Newsies Live on Broadway

Sat, 04 Feb 2023 20:26:49 GMT

I made a thing!

I still can't believe I a) finished a vid and b) people really liked it!

It's a dance vid about labor action with poly vibes. If I had a vidding brand, this would probably be it.

(We) Didn't Just Come Here to Dance [Fanvid] (41 words) by FairestCat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken, Newsies: The Broadway Musical! (2017)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Jack Kelly (Newsies), Katherine Plumber Pulitzer, David Jacobs, Ensemble
Additional Tags: Canon Relationships, Suggestions of OT3, There is Power in a Union, Police Violence, Ableist Violence, Depictions of Police, Fanvids, Festivids 2022, Festivids, If I can't dance it's not my revolution
Summary:

If you just give me a chance // you'd see what I see // you'd see what I see.

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Dear Festivider!

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 20:26:30 GMT

The long-delayed Festivids letter! Sorry I was so slow in getting this written and posted!

I love vids of all kinds, and I'm sure anything you make me will thrill me! The only thing I'm not fond of is vids that use audio from the original source, especially if the music also includes lyrics, as I find parsing the multiple streams of audio distracting.

Info behind the cut on my requested fandoms. ( Busby Berkeley Movies [Umbrella], The Apartment [Safety], Hornblower (TV), mrandrewcotter [Olive & Mabel] (Youtube Channel) [SAFETY], blairbraverman (twitter - sled dogs), Better Than Chocolate (1999) [SAFETY], Our Flag Means Death (TV) RPF, Romancing the Stone (Movies), Victor Victoria [Safety] )

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Fanworks 2022: Collective Action

Sat, 13 Aug 2022 21:26:39 GMT

I am at Fanworkscon!

And I put together a vidshow that aired this afternoon. I'm really proud of how it turned out and I've gotten a lot of great feedback on it, so I'm very happy to share it here as well.

Collective Action

Solidarity Forever by Rhea
Fandom: Pride (2014)

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free

Born to Fight by AurumCalendula
Fandom: Hidden Figures (2016)

The collective fight for systemic change

A Beginning Song by sdwolfpup
Fandom: Seattle Mariners - Fandom

The collective act of a team, a city, a community, a season.

Landsailor by raven
Fandom: Multifandom

Infrastructure is a collective act

Shut Your Mouth by e-transitions
Fandom: Iron-Jawed Angels

The collective fight to change the rules

Get Better by absternr
Fandom: Hawkeye (Comics)

The collective act of getting your shit together

Sea Fever by heresluck
Fandom: Slings & Arrows

Theatre as collective dream-weaving

Mighty Real by metatxt
Fandom: Kiki (2016)

"If somebody was doing it with me I would do it"

I Know What I Am by mithborien
Fandom: Ocean's 8 (2018)

The collective act of stealing from the rich

I'll Be There For You by eruthros
Fandom: Pit Bulls & Parolees

Animal rescue is collective action

Give It Up (vid) by jarrow
Fandom: Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), The Breakfast Club (1985), Footloose (1984)

I act as one, but I'm not alone.

Pressure by California Crew
Fandom: Meta - VCR Vids ~~[This vid is not currently available online, this link goes to the Fanlore page about the vid.]~~ ETA: online link found!

The collective act of making a vid. (VCR vidders were fucking badass.)

Long Live by gwenfrankenstien
Fandom: The Lord of the Rings (Movies), Lord of the Rings RPF

Collectively, we can make magic.

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Wiscon Panel Brainstorming!

Wed, 08 Dec 2021 17:15:49 GMT

In case you haven't heard, Wiscon 2022 is happening! and we are very much looking for panel proposals. It's going to be a hybrid con, with a virtual programming track as well as the in-person panels.

I say we, because I got very opinionated in 2019 and now I'm on the Panel Programming Committee. Panel submissions have been slow this year, which doesn't surprise me. I'm sure a lot of people are still undecided about going, and thus uncertain about submitting panels. Also, I know I feel like my panel-writing skills have atrophied and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

So, I thought a good old-fashioned panel brainstorming/proposal writing post might be in order!

Especially this year, I encourage panel submissions even if you're not sure if you'll be able to go to the con. If you're a previous Wiscon attendee, a future Wiscon attendee or a maybe-someday-Wiscon attendee, I want to know: if you were going to a feminist sf con in the year 2022, what would you want to see a panel on??? (And if you do, may I suggest Wiscon?!)

Fully-developed ideas and nebulous thoughts both welcome!

This is one small way, but far from the only way you can help save Wiscon! Registration for Wiscon 2022 is live, and the con is is currently actively seeking both volunteers and monetary donations to make the con possible in 2022 and going forward.

Note: This post is for brainstorming panels! This is not a post to discuss whether or not there should be a Wiscon in 2022. As noted in the linked post, not having a Wiscon in 2022 is not a financially viable option.

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Dear Yuletide Author, 2021 edition!

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 01:30:31 GMT

Dearest Yuletide Author,

I promise I will like anything you write for me, because it will be for me, in one of the small fandoms of my heart. And they are all fandoms of my heart.

I read het, slash, gen and poly fic pretty much indiscriminately, and I will be thrilled by anything you write whatever genre it fits into, as long as it respects my DNWs.

I'm highly smut-positive, but I certainly don’t expect it, and indeed several of my requests are mostly gen-focused. For everyone's convenience, I've split my "Things I love" into two lists, one general, one porny. Feel free to read or ignore the second list as you prefer.

On the AO3 I’m fairestcat

I’m most active fannishly these days here and on twitter, where I’m also fairestcat.

Things I Love: queerness, polyamory, found family, emotional intimacy, friends to lovers, friends with benefits to lovers, enemies to lovers, age differences, shifting power dynamics, emotional h/c, almost all AUs (exceptions noted in DNW), time travel, future-fic, characters who are bad at feelings, relationship negotiations, trope subversion, cultural differences, class differences, self-destructive tendencies, moral ambiguity, loyalty, first times, banter, snark, historical details, unreliable narrators, trust, political maneuvering, unusual mythology, competence, porn with plot.

I love unusual and experimental fic styles: epistolary fic, found documents, oral history, interactive fiction, poetry, unusual povs. If you want to try something of this sort, I promise to be thrilled by anything you come up with.

Porny Thing I Love: D/s, bondage, rough sex, orgasm delay/denial, multiple orgasms, body worship, possessiveness, fisting, double-penetration, oral sex, fingering, dirty talk, praise kink, strength kink, sex toys, biting, bruising, angry sex, pain play, wall sex, consent play, partially-clothed sex, strength kink, spanking, overstimulation, impact play.

I love smut most when it tells me something about the characters involved and their relationship to each other. If a particular act/kink/setting feels right for the characters and it’s not on my DNW list I’m all for it.

Things I DNW: infidelity, jealousy presented as romantic, monogamous soulmates/soulbonds, body horror, non-sexual humiliation, embarrassment, character death, unhappy endings, food kink, medical kink, pregnancy/childbirth, pregnancy/breeding kink, public sex, animal harm, disparaging previous romantic/sexual partners, we're not gay we just love each other, bisexual erasure, non-con, scat/watersports, age play, mundane AUs for fantastical canons, modern AUs for historical fandoms.

Now on to the fandoms-specific details!

( Nirvana in Fire - Lin Shu|Mei Changsu|Su Zhe, Mu Nihuang, Xiao Jingyan )

( The King: Eternal Monarch - Jeong Tae Eul, Jo Yeong, Lee Gon )

( The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle - Charlotte Doyle )

( Will Darling Adventures - Archie Curtis, Daniel da Silva, Will Darling )

( Street Dance of China - Rochka )

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Fannish update: BJYX (Untamed RPF) edition.

Thu, 22 Apr 2021 13:51:47 GMT

I have now written five Untamed RPF stories, which is wild, and makes it my most-written fandom by both stories and words.

Before this fandom, I'd never written RPF and I'd never written porn, and now I've written both--repeatedly--and I'm having rather a lot of fun with it.

I wrote two stories for the BJYX exchange last year which I actually remembered to post about here at the time.

And then in September I discovered I was only one fic short of being able to participate in the remix exchange, so I finished a of porny WIP I'd started on a whim, based on this video of Xiao Zhan and Ya Ning performing the Chinese translation of Gimme, Gimme Gimme on a variety competition show.

gimme, gimme, gimme (annoying breeze) (2226 words) by FairestCat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) RPF
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Wang Yi Bo/Xiao Zhan
Characters: Wang Yi Bo, Xiao Zhan
Additional Tags: First Time, PWP, Gremlin Wang Yi Bo, This isn't songfic, but it's definitely songfic adjacent, Blow Jobs, a little bit of pain kink, as a treat, putting the FICTION in real person fiction
Summary:

Yibo's lips are turned down in an exaggerated pout, but his eyes are laughing and there's a flush high on his cheekbones. "You practically invited me, Zhan-ge. How could I say no?"

I had an awesome time doing remix. I've written two remixes before, both as pinch hits, as I never had enough fic in any one fandom to sign up before.

I received a completely amazing fan comic as a gift, based on the treat I wrote last year about getting cockblocked by a cat. Told from the perspective of the cat--an absolutely GENIUS choice.

Jianguo and the New Boy (159 words) by ravyn_ashling
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Wang Yibo / Xiao Zhan
Characters: Wang Yi Bo, Jian Guo (Xiao Zhan's Cat), Xiao Zhan
Summary:

Xiao Zhan has brought a new "buddy" home, and Jianguo must make sure he is not a threat.

And I wrote a remix based on art, another new experience for me:

Wang Yibo Has a Good Day (the Gege Thirst Remix) (2001 words) by FairestCat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) RPF
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Wang Yibo/Xiao Zhan
Characters: Wang Yibo, Xiao Zhan
Additional Tags: Sleep, Motorcycles, a very good cat, thirst, Established Relationship, Strength Kink, Long-Distance Relationship, Wang Yibo is a Proud Member of the Muscle-chan Fanclub, almost-cameo by Yin Zheng
Summary:

Wang Yibo knows it's going to be a good day as soon as he opens his eyes.

And finally, for this year's BJYX exchange I received longfic for the first time. A neat, vaguely historical noir AU.

Come a Little Closer If You Dare (33147 words) by Temporaryism
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) RPF
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Wang Yi Bo/Xiao Zhan | Sean
Characters: Wang Yi Bo, Xiao Zhan | Sean, Xuan Lu | Lulu, Meng Ziyi, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Noir, Detective Noir, Murder Mystery, vague 1920s vibes, Dubious Morality, Dubious Ethics, sleazy characters, Light Angst, not historically accurate, mentions of human slavery, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Underage, Blow Jobs, Intercrural Sex, Cum Play, Slow Burn, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Happy Ending, Immigration & Emigration, Emotional Hurt/Comfort
Summary:

Xiao Zhan is a private detective hired to investigate Wang Yibo for the death of well-to-do Mrs. Archer's deceased brother—Wang Yibo's late husband, Frank Ellsworth. Things quickly get complicated when Xiao Zhan meets Yibo while undercover as a photographer for a local newspaper and develops feelings instead of making headway on his case.

I initially had trouble with my assignment, which had two prompts that didn't speak to me at all, and a third prompt of "Pick any song that you like and turn it into Yizhan Fanfic." But eventually I went with Neil Finn writes a lot of songs about oral sex + Wang Yibo has an oral fixation and looks good on his knees = blowjobs!

I'm pretty pleased with it, and it's gotten good responses so far, but I haven't heard anything from my recipient yet, which is always a bit fraught-feeling.

let me have my way with you (fallen down between your knees) (1918 words) by FairestCat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) RPF
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Wang Yi Bo/Xiao Zhan
Characters: Wang Yi Bo, Xiao Zhan
Additional Tags: PWP, Pining with Porn, Blow Jobs, Developing Relationship, Wang Yibo looking good on his knees, Wang Yibo feeling good on his knees, Really just a lot of Yibo on his knees
Summary:

Whenever you invade my home // Everything I know flies out the window

Yibo doesn't do this. But for Xiao Zhan he breaks all his own rules.

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