#nanowrimo 2016
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so ive been meaning to explain more about ironwall than the lil hints u get from that one story i posted a while back but essentially it's a city that grew out of the necessity of making a place for people with monstrous or non-standard anatomy. it grew from a few alehouses with double-high doors into an industrial city in the 1700s, one which remained largely independent of the nation around it by virtue of being essentially "worthless" to the kingdom. it was ruled by a self-appointed Protector who was supposedly chosen by council vote at regular intervals but we'll get into that
So due to being the only place with accessible infrastructure for centaurs (of all animal types), it became a major population centre and, of course, with no alternatives and a rapidly depleting countryside due to population growth and farmers/peasants being unable to support themselves on their land anymore, Ironwall became something of a prison, too. Where else could anyone go? Ironwall in the 1800s was known to be a deeply corrupt cesspit built on the exploitation of citizens who had nowhere else to go. The council did not allow non-landowners to vote in elections resulting in a ruling class of landlords only voting in their own interests and a strongly stratified society. All because the majority-human settlements elsewhere were not obligated to build suitable housing or accommodations, and some would actively work to avoid such accommodations, like entire streets of houses where access is by steep flights of stairs, or houses on stilts in smaller villages etc. They had heard stories of how awful it was to live in Ironwall and wanted none of it in their backyard thank you very much.
The structure of Ironwall in the early 20th century took the form of a huge wheel-shaped city with accessory satellite towns at each spoke. Centaurs being able to comfortably travel long distances, they kind of invented the commuter town before anyone else out of necessity, as there was a well-developed housing crisis within the city with citizens crushed between sky high rents and few if any places to live. It took until the 70s before motor vehicles were legalised and they were not popular, mainly used by the wealthy who could afford to modify them.
The culture of Ironwall was extremely conservative for most of its existence due to the religious leanings of its founders and landlord class, with strict modesty laws for all centaurs (specifically banning the display of the juncture between human torso and animal body) and a "hard work shapes character" attitude.
When the steel industry finally collapsed, the centre of Ironwall saw an exodus of businesses and people until suddenly, low-quality housing was readily available and super cheap - and the regular humans began to move in. This was matched by similar economic pressures elsewhere, and the different populations finally starting to truly mix; factory workers from Ironwall had gone anywhere that was still hiring and centaur accommodation was being built outside Ironwall and its satellite towns by unscrupulous business owners seizing upon this new supply of cheap labour.
With Ironwall's historic heart starting to rot, there was a big push towards making the city welcoming to tourists and rehabilitating its shabby image. This was largely successful and the first wave of poor human arrivals was quickly drowned out by a second wave of gentrifiers. The historical city centre was preserved as high rise apartments (inhospitable to centaurs) went up around the outskirts, and many of the people whose families had lived in Ironwall for generations, who'd stuck around through the recession, found themselves in the tourism industry, in a very different place than the one they'd grown up in.
And that's why ironwall au Pascal was a taxi driver miserably trying to go viral on the internet in the hopes he'd finally be able to quit ferrying tourists around his ancestral home
#ironwall#anja (tiger centaur) was the main character of the nanowrimo i did about ironwall in 2016#i also did a tiny régian era inver au where certain con artists are trying to fix the (horse?)racing games to win big#ofc they love racing and other equine sports. ironwall polo goes unbelievably hard
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Not enough protagonists passing out and waking up in random fields or something anymore, need me some more characters passing out and waking up in random fields
#writing#writeblr#this is referring to nothing specific except partially my 2016 nanowrimo project#which is prob the 1st+last time I ever wrote so much so fast+actually enjoyed it before my power went out and I lost 3 pages of progress#i was not giving that protag a moment's peace except for when he passed out. opening chapter out cold#writer things#relatable#textpost#i don't know!#writing humour#ish#knock em out baby
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Think I'm gonna try doing NaNoWriMo again this year for the first time since 2015
#nanowrimo#i did do camp nano in 2016 but not proper nano#and i think it might be time#just gotta get my world-building and some semblence of a plot outline in order
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ough i hate that hazard ends on a cliffhanger bc i wanna read hazard 2 now but cant bc i dont have it compiled into one doc for some reason
#the reason is i never edited it so its just the nanowrimo draft from. 2016#watch your feet#im back on the hazard train all aboard#i am going to work on hazard when i get back to my pc i miss it#i should draw more of the characters. jc and andrea and cam mostly#i REALLY loved cam on this read through which i didnt expect but they r so charming. the messiest bitch alive
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i am full of coffee and love and a deep and unbearable longing for a past i can never return to
#elise lives a life of excitement and intrigue#everyone read my 2016-2017 summer nanowrimo talk all you like
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Milk Wood through the years 2015-2023
alternatively, how to find inspiration and companionship during NaNoWriMo (and camps) on Second Life.
#Second Life#NaNoWriMo#Milk Wood#I am missing a picture from 2016#I'm not missing a NANO picture from 2016 but apparently I wrote elsewhere then#the sim really has grown. slowly ever so slowly lol#due to my nostalgia yesterday I went looking for my Second Life pictures starting last night#the thing is I lost most of the stuff before 2012 from switching computers and the harddrive dying#and then I realised I haven't been taking SL photos lately#so I gotta amend that
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Me, 1 year ago: Okay, I've really liked this Sandman series, but I'm not going to commit to writing any long fics for it. Maybe a oneshot or two. Yeah. Small things.
Me, today, the end of NaNoWriMo: WHOO BABY 20,000 WORDS, 10 CHAPTERS, AND COUNTING FOR THIS SANDMAN WAR FIC LET'S GOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
#The Sandman#nanowrimo#I've not finished a Nano goal since 2016!#Not included are the 10000 words I wrote for a completely unrelated fic based on fanart#That seriously distracted me#But hopefully coming soon to an AO3 near us all!#My Sandman Dreaming vs Hell fic that really wants to be dark#But then ends up being so much funnier than it ought to be#Gosh dang it they're at war#Matthew and Hob STOP BEING FUNNY
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on nanowrimo
(copied from my thread on twitter)
the discourse about NaNoWriMo is so heartbreaking. three of my fics - including my most popular - were written or partially drafted during NaNos. forgive my bit of nostalgia rambling here, as I mourn the final death of the thing that taught me I could be a writer too.
I wrote my first NaNo the fall of grade nine. My dad had just died, and I was stuck looking for something to take my mind off of it. I don’t remember now how I heard about NaNo, but soon I’d roped a friend in, and we set off. We were the youngest writers at our meet ups, but they welcomed us with open arms. I read all the author emails, sapped up every encouraging word. that year, I wrote 50,000 words. the next I did 75. I didnt always win, I didn’t always try, but because of NaNo, November has always felt like a month of possibilities in the dark.
in 2016, I moved away for grad school. new province, no friends, an outsider who was quickly homesick and heartbroken. I’d fallen back into dramione and read a TERRIBLE marriage law fic - rapey and gross. And I said “I can do better than THAT. hey look, its november tomorrow!”
I knocked out my 50k and kept writing. the story eventually hit 90k, still my longest fic by a landslide. I mentioned it to my dr, an inability to focus on school but this all encompassing fixation on my story. I got diagnosed with ADHD (the biggest blessing). I started to post.
I’m still not sure why - I wasn’t a bnf with a following - but DTTS took off. As of today its sitting at 219,000 hits. 5,000 kudos. To know that 5000 people have read and liked my writing, asked for more, told me they love it… I still get comments on that fic, and they all remind me that I AM a writer. that i AM capable. that fic taught me that there is a world who likes my work. that fic gave me the courage to keep writing, to switch fandoms, to post without expectation. that fic gave me the hundreds of thousands of words I’ve written since.
NaNoWriMo gave me that. the courage to do something a little insane. to find myself along the way. to step out and say “look, I made this, do you want to see it?”
and AI has taken some of that joy. AI has made me consider locking my fics, so my words don’t get scraped for the machine. AI has made me wary on tumblr - of art and voice notes and, yes, fic too. AI has taken my community and plundered it for our very soul.
and now @nanowrimo has coopted the language of disability. has taken an amazing accomplishment - something that has been part of my life for 17 years - and broken it, just a bit. still, as the leaves turn, as the air cools, the call to my desk is unmistakable. the words are there. they’ve always been there, waiting, ready. in november I will be writing, and mourning a community that made me who I am, but because of all of you, I will not be alone.
#NaNoWriMo#AI#discourse#on writing#this has been simmering this week#I've seen a lot of tweets from the author space about this#broadly heartbroken or upset#but some are just like 'why do you even need this just go write a fucking book already'#but for me - this is why i needed this#nanowrimo gave me a gift that cannot be taken away#fanfiction has given me the community and the love to carry on#but i had to put this in words somewhere so. here you go!#hexiewrites#hex is (not) writing#but she will be#soon#yes i will finish the christmas fic before christmas i promise :)
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November Plannin'
All right, I've been thinking it over, and I think I'm gonna have to pull the plug on my NaNoWriMo account. The AI thing irks me, because to me the organization seems to think that it doesn't matter if you use Chat GPT or some other damn thing to reach the goal. And I do think it matters, because to me the whole point of the exercise is that those 50,000 words come from me, and me alone. The only software I need is Notepad.exe. I only downloaded iA Writer because it was like a Notepad.exe for my phone, and I got FocusWriter because it's like Notepad.exe with a wordcounter.
I've heard about the Nano community, and the writing groups, and the public meet-ups, and I'm not knocking any of that stuff, but I never had any interest in that. I just used the website to keep score, and I guess that's what bugs me, because by refusing to condemn AI, they're basically insinuating that the score doesn't matter. "It doesn't matter what you wrote." Someone told me that once and it still gets me kinda hot.
NaNoWriMo doesn't care if I write the words or not. All the org seems to care about is having participants who'll buy the merch and click on their sponsors, or whatever. They're gonna do this shady crap and they take the participants for granted. "What are you gonna do? Leave? You need us to reach your writing goals!"
That's the message I get from them. That's what made me reluctant to decide, because it is handy, and there's a certain anxiety that if I give up the structure the site offers, I might not reach my goal.
And that's the "creative monster" I need to slay this year. When I was in college, I took a semester of creative writing, and there was an assignment called "Killing the Creative Monster", and I interpreted it as a sense of not having enough time to write. Things kept happening, and the stuff I wanted to do seemed like it would take too long with no certainty that it would be worthwhile. That was in 1998. In 2024, the Creative Monster is the idea that I'm dependent on NanoWriMo to get me where I'm want to be.
So I'm gonna close down my account on the site. But I'm not doing it right away, because first I'm gonna save all the stats and stuff that belong to me. We'll start with the banner image I put up on my profile.
This is Zack Sabre Junior. This year, he won the G1 Climax tournament. He made a big deal about how his career wouldn't be complete until he won the G1. Not just any G1, but this year's tournament. I just put this picture in my profile because I was digging his tag team stuff with Taichi a few years ago, but suddenly I'm reminded of him winning the G1 this year. It was a big deal. He's the first guy to win that I actually wanted to win.
I've won NanoWriMo seven times from 2017 to 2023. But that doesn't matter. Unless I win Unaffiliated Autumnal Writing Challenge (UAWC) in 2024, I'll always feel a bit unsatisfied. That's what this one is about. No pep talks from some author I never heard of because I'm too busy watching anime to read. No funky word-count widget that always malfunctions around midnight. Just me and this computer, and a bunch of tekkers. That's how we're gonna do this one.
Good. I finally feel fired up about this one. I was beginning to get nervous. Let's figure out what I need to work on.
Luffa Annual 6. Ironically, this one actually takes priority over the main fic, becuase it's the Christmas Special, so it has a hard deadline. I was gonna work on it last week, but I kind of blew it off.
I don't know that the annuals are all that popular, but I enjoy making them, even if they are a huge pain in the butt to figure out. I'm glad this is the last one in the set, but I won't just slap it together and call it good.
Tellurium. This is a weird side-bet I'm making here. On my main blog, I used to do a series on the discovery of the chemical elements, and this was the next one on my list back in, uh... 2016. The tricky thing here is that the writing is just part of the job. There's research that goes into this stuff, and I don't want to get lose a days' worth of wordcount trying to wrap my head around molecular orbitals. Call me a glutton for punishment. It'd be relatively easy to just do 10-12 Luffa chapters and call it a month, because I've done that before. I feel like this year needs to be trickier. Also, I really, really want to get Te in the books. I don't think I like the chemical elements more than Luffa, but it is telling that I'm even having that conversation with myself right now.
Luffa 225-234. Of course I still plan to stick with what brung me to the dance. Kakarot is behind me but this fic isn't finished. The problem is that I only have a nebulous plan on where to go from here, and it's coming together a lot more gradually than I thought it would. I plotted a cool scene on my commute this afternoon, so that's a good sign, but I need to be realistic here. Last year went really well because I was writing the Luffa vs. Goku fight that I had been dreaming of for years. Motivation-wise, I've got nowhere to go but down. But I had similar problems in 2018-2020, and I prevailed then.
That Bulma project I was horsing around with. Last year, there was some crank on Twitter getting pissy at anyone who shipped Bulma with any non-canon partners, like there's a rule or something. That kind of inspired me to try to do some shorter works featuring Bulma hooking up with different characters. I didn't get very far last year, but I liked having a side-thing that I could jump into whenever I got stuck with the main work.
You know, thinking about it, I really need to use 2025 to work on some non-Luffa fanfic. In the early years, I worried that working on a longfic would eat up time that I could use for one-shots, and I slowly acclimated to just focusing one thing. But now that the Goku fight is done, the pressure is off to finish Luffa before I die. I mean, it's still not finished, but the Goku fight was a major milestone, and I didn't like the idea of never getting that done.
I mean, I still get kudos on that Caulikale fic I wrote in 2018, and the Gochi thing I did. People like that stuff, and I'm pretty good at making it. Maybe I should run a poll.
I dunno, that's probably enough for now. I should go back to bed. But I feel a lot better about November than I did a few days ago, that's for sure.
#unaffiliated autumnal writing challenge#next year i should just change the dates so it's october 20 to november 19#that just works way better for me#that wednesday before thanksgiving is useless for writing goals#i don't even have far to travel for the holiday it's just not a day where there's much alone time#maybe dust off that bulchi thing...? we'll see...
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Discords, forums and a decade’s worth of allegations: how Nanowrimo started a revolution against it.
I’m just gonna copy paste the Reddit post since. I cannot figure Tumblr out. So I apologise for the weird formatting. If you’d rather read the Reddit posts:
Trigger warnings: child abuse, assault, predators, racism, fetishes, ableism, terrorism, bombings, and just plain abuse.
This will also include brief mentions of religion.
**Terms used in the Nanowrimo community:**
Nanowrimo: national novel writing month: a writing challenge to write 50k words in November. This is also used to refer to the organisation, a Californian 501c3 that the challenge originates from, with a website and a forum. However the challenge can be done without the organisation. Often called ‘nano’ for short.
Young Writers’ Program: a Nanowrimo run platform aimed at people under 18. A separate site with classrooms and its own separate forum. The forum is for people aged 13-18. Often called ‘YWP’ for short.
Municipal Liasions: community organisers responsible for one region. This could be a city or a country depending on size and population. They help organise local events and mod their regional forums. Municipal Liasions are not paid. There are several hundreds of them. Often called ‘MLs’ for short.
Christian Teens Together: a group on the main Nanowrimo forums, and the largest group on the forums. Despite the name the group is not entirely composed of Christians or teens, however that is where the group originates. The majority of the group are minors. Often called ‘CTT’ for short.
Random Thoughts and Exclamations: the main thread of the YWP forums, basically a general. Often called ‘RTAE’ for short.
Prior to the meltdown, Nanowrimo had around 15 salaried staff. These are collectively referred to as HQ. However, they also have several forum moderators. These receive a $100 check at the end of the year, but are mostly considered volunteers. These mods have no involvement in the main site. However, some staff that worked on the forums were salaried and had main site involvement and so will be considered part of HQ unless stated later on.
**Scam sponsorships.**
In December 2022, a group of Nanowrimo users raised concerns about a pair of vanity publishers that had sponsored the Nanowrimo challenge. (A vanity publisher or vanity press is a publisher where the author pays the costs and surrenders a large portion of the rights to their work.) Nanowrimo had promoted discounts for these publishers, Inkitt and Manuscripts, to winners of its challenge. Staff and mods suspended and muted multiple accounts who raised the initial concerns, but eventually allowed a forum thread discussing concerns to remain. One of the affected users explained the concerns as follows:
> Now that I’ve been unbanned, I will try to keep the last 24 hours of thoughts…concise. Inkitt should NEVER have been accepted as a NaNoWriMo sponsor. They have changed business models every few years, and every business model has involved using up the first pub rights of any author who submits, WHICH IS A BIG DEAL, and promising them sketchy ‘prizes’ or ‘contracts’ in return. People who have given them a try also say that getting their content removed is a nightmare and they had to threaten legal action. These are just the starting points.
> There are blog posts about them from many authors dating back to at least 2016, [including my own](https://wrrrdnrrrdgrrrl.com/2016/05/23/inkitt-scam-spam-no-thank-you-maam/), that are easily discoverable by searching “Inkitt scam.” None of this should ever have happened.
> That said, it happened. And the mods panicked, and I went and wrote a [whole new blog](https://wrrrdnrrrdgrrrl.com/2022/11/30/on-nanowrimo-inkitt-and-being-an-author/ ) (which I will update soon to reflect NaNo’s better handling of things today) to warn people away from Inkitt because I wasn’t allowed to do so on the forums. And because I have some audience and writer friends, that got around, and [Victoria Strauss](https://twitter.com/victoriastrauss/status/1598114401818902529) got involved, and eventually we got here.
The following day, the Executive Director responded to the concerns with this message:
> I appreciate everyone’s thoughts and feedback, and want to start with an apology that our vetting process hasn’t met the high values we place on our community care. It shouldn’t have come to this (like so many of you said), but now that it has, we’re taking it as a learning moment to improve our sponsorship processes and find ways to dig deeper into an evaluation of a company.
> We’ve also ended the sponsorship with Inkitt and Manuscripts.
> Currently, the vetting process involves talking to writers, editors, or those working in the writing/publishing “ecosystem,” and then interviewing the potential companies. We often have a long-term relationship with a company and work with them year-over-year, but as the writing/publishing landscape changes so dramatically every year, we often find out about new companies and reach out to them or they reach out to us. We will do a more thorough evaluation of these processes and policies as part of our 2023 planning process to see what changes we need to make. Our goal will be to ensure our policies are in line with our organizational values, and to make sure the process is more transparent. For example, we’re discussing how we can ensure that a wider range of community and trusted industry voices are heard in this process, and on that note, we have already asked Victoria Strauss from Writer Beware to act as a consultant. We’re really pleased that she’s generously agreed to this, as this is her area of expertise and her ethical standards are admirably high. Also, she’s been passionately committed to analyzing products and services for writers for so long.
> We’ll also be sure to consult the resources you’ve already named, such as the various forum threads where you all have been sharing your experiences with companies.
> Thank you again for raising your concerns. We take your feedback very seriously and center it in our plans to care for the community. I’m not just saying that—this has been a valuable learning moment to help us do a better job of vetting sponsors more thoroughly. Your voices are the most important thing we consider when making decisions—not sponsors, but you. I’m sorry that it hasn’t always felt like that in the past, and hope that we can make sure it does in the future. Like you, we think NaNoWriMo should be a place where writers can come for trusted resources. We’re disappointed in ourselves that we lost that trust, and we hope to regain it. I invite you to send on feedback at any time to [email protected].
While Inkitt and Manuscripts were removed as sponsors, it recently emerged that Inkitt was a major donor for Nanowrimo. Some users were beginning to feel that Nanowrimo was protecting their own interests over the interests of their users, which only got worse when new allegations came out the following year.
**Inaction against predators.**
In May 2023, a group of users raised allegations about a moderator of Christian Teens Together. The [allegations](https://nitter.net/Arumi_kai/status/1722007756058574916#m) were that this moderator was luring minors onto a fetish site they ran. The allegations were sent to the Executive Director and the Director of Programs, but no actions were taken after a month. An FBI report had already been filed, but the fetish site was being scrubbed, suggesting that the staff there had been tipped off after the allegations. The group built a new case and after public pressure, got the moderator removed for violations of the forum Code of Conduct after they started threatening the group and the Nanowrimo organisation offsite. This moderator could be a whole post on their own, and has used sockpuppet accounts to lurk on the forums and has commented on the situation on their tumblr. They are often referred to as Mod X, and will be referred to as such in this essay.
In June, a thread on moderation was opened, and a discussion began about the culture of CTT, where it became clear that Mod X had isolated the group and emotionally abused them. It was also revealed that the CTT had a ‘three strikes and shutdown’ system for a group with over a thousand members. One user explained the problem as follows:
> How the CTT members were given only three strikes for over one thousand people is, frankly, appalling and obscene. I can understand treating them as a group; if you give them all three strikes, that’s over three thousand strikes. But they need more than three. But even with that, hanging that last strike over their head for over six months is unacceptable, and yes, I said it before and I’ll say it again, it is emotionally abusive to tell them that one more strike and they’re getting shut down for over six months. Never knowing who’s going to make the mistake that gets them shut down or when, and worrying about when someone messes up. Worrying that they’re going to be one that messes up and is blamed by the group. Terrified of reporting things because what if that report is the reason their community is shut down?
More users came forward with grooming allegations, but these posts were frozen and hidden. However, the cat was out of bag, at least on the main forums. And in a retrospective thread on the 10th of November, a former YWP user spoke up about a similar situation that had happened the month before.
> They did this to the YWP too. When a message was sent outlining evidence of a predator it was ignored for 3 days (iirc) and initially responded with ‘we reviewed this account and found nothing that broke our rules’ only after it was posted publicly on the forums. They did take the account down, but only hours later (once we had made a major fuss with pretty much everyone who knew the situation calling the mods out) and with no further communication for two days, which sent us into a spiral of panic and teens leaving as they didn’t feel safe on the platform.
The following day, the COO responded to this post with:
> Hi there, I wanted to speak to this directly since it relates to a lot of the youth safety issues people are bringing up, and YWP has different systems. First off, we did indeed look into the participant that was flagged on YWP. [YWP lead] and [Director of Programs] discussed and investigated on Oct. 3; they responded on Oct. 4. Our search into their history and their other social media accounts did not find evidence that they were a predator or someone else than the person they claimed to be. We were wrong to say that nothing crossed the lines set by our codes of conduct, and we should have issued a reminder about those codes. However, no violation crossed the line that would require banning. We kept a close eye on this account following the reports and encouraged participants to follow their guts and keep a wide berth. After the account was suspended due to user flags, we agreed their account should not be reinstated.
> In the long term, we’re bringing in additional moderators in the YWP forums. Role plays occasionally skirt the codes around keeping it PG and partly in response to this situation we’re adding a volunteer mod next week who will just be monitoring role plays and the forum for personal conversations, where the majority of these flags came from.
This response was immediately torn apart by the adults on the thread, while more members of the YWP started speaking out about what they had been dealing with for years.
**The Wild West of the YWP.**
The YWP had two or three mods, which changed across the years due to differing roles. These were members of HQ, and now have all been fired or quit. These were: a Lead Forums Moderator who resigned in October 2023 and had stopped working with the YWP a while before that, a Community Manager who was put on leave at the beginning of November 2023, and the aforementioned YWP lead and Director of Programs who were either fired or quit in December 2023.
There are three parts to the YWP: the individual users, which are under 18, the classrooms, which are controlled by a teacher and are meant for educational settings, and the forums, which are open to users aged 13-18 whether they’re writing individually or as part of a classroom.
However, investigation revealed that the security of these classrooms are remarkably lax. It only required an email, username and password for an ‘educator’ to set up a classroom, and student accounts didn’t even need an email. Multiple YWP users confirmed that they had used this to gain access to private messages, as the classrooms have a PM feature while the forums did not. On top of this, it was confirmed by a moderator that classrooms are basically unmoderated:
> it's almost impossible to moderate these. There was a rash a few years back of the kids themselves making classrooms and the only way I could track them was to manually go through the admin panel and look for the most recent ones and click. They're almost entirely disconnected from the moderation tools and are completely unmoderated unless someone in one reports something. I actually gave up even trying to patrol the classrooms in any form because there's too many and the admin tools suck.
And on the forums themselves, it only got worse. The moderation often ignored its users, and when they intervened, the intervention often worsened the situation. This got to the point that in August 2022, a group of users held a [strike](https://speak-out.carrd.co/) against the moderation due to neglect and incompetence. However, the problems only continued to grow, and in December 2022, there was a incident of a user faking a disorder and, when called out on it, sending death threats. This user also made accounts in order to impersonate and harass users on the sites. It was not uncommon for users to run others off the site, which, justified or not, was often fueled by lack of mod intervention.
This came to a head in October 2023, when a predator was found and the moderation response was once again inadequate. On the 1st of October, moderation was privately contacted by a group of YWP users about a predator that had been on the forums for two years. After three days with no response and no action taken, the group took the information public and a mass flagging campaign began in order to gain the attention of the mods. And five hours after it began, a response was finally posted by the YWP lead:
> Ні,
Thanks for writing to us with your concerns, and for being so thorough keeping track of the places that made you uncomfortable.
> First of all, I want to say: good on you for following your gut. If you ever run into something online that makes you feel scared or worried or unsafe or just seems a little bit off, it's always okay to back away. Trust yourself, and don't do something that makes you feel uncomfortable, no matter who is asking you.
> The other moderators and I looked (and are continuing to look) more into this person, and from what we can tell, it seems like they are who they say they are. Nothing in their posts crosses the lines set by our Codes of Conduct (though they do come right up to the line sometimes). Like I said before, you can absolutely draw a boundary and not interact with them anymore. It just means we can't take any action on site besides marking their profile such that we pay extra attention to their posts, as well as the other account you flagged as a potential alt.
> If we notice anything in the future we can follow up on it more directly.
> Thank you for being so passionate and thorough about trying to make sure the YWP forums are a safe space, and let me know if you have any questions or want to talk anything through more.
This response was torn apart by the users, and 12 hours later people noticed that the threads the predator created had been taken down. However, there was no comment in the public moderation thread on the situation, and the users had no idea whether the account had been banned or not. This caused a mass panic, and several users pulled back or left the platform due to safety concerns.
Early on the 6th of October, a user tried to goad the moderators into responding to the mess by posting a message to the mods in the official announcements forum, which was supposed to be mod-only:
> There is always an explosion of newbies in November, and you have children as young as 13 here. And your inaction is making the site dangerous. We are being forced to defend ourselves against something we should not be dealing with because you can't be bothered.
> This is more than inaction. This is dangerous incompetence. And don't respond to this with another 'we'll do better' apology, because they never last. I've seen this cycle too many times. Tell us that he's gone, that we don't have to worry about him, and tell us what you're doing to make sure this doesn't happen again. And stop forcing children to be the adults in your place.
However, this post remained up for around 12 hours. At that point, the moderation decided to close the forums for a week, giving the users only a day’s notice. And when they reopened, they threatened to make the forums for writing topics only. Although they walked this back due to user pressure and claimed it was due lack of staff, it came off to some users as a punishment for complaining.
There were more incidents over the next month, and these were mentioned in the retrospective thread, which came as a complete shock to the adults, who had been told that a large part of the funding was going to the YWP. Some began to call for the moderators to resign:
> I sincerely hope they are all drafting their resignation letters. we won’t even give them grief this time for writing it together and recycling the same wording.
> they had their chance to listen to their users, to develop action plans and timeline and to publicly respond. they chose not to do that and knowingly let abuse and harm continue on their watches. both here and on ywp.
> resign or get fired. either way this is no longer their house, they are being evicted.
**The Nanopocalypse.**
The Nanowrimo Board intervened in the evening of the 12th of the November, having been contacted by users in the retrospective thread. They immediately set the main forums to read only barring threads they made to discuss the many issues. However the YWP forums were not immediately closed, and so the users from the retrospective reported back on RTAE.
Two hours after the main forums were closed, a YWP user received a message from the Director of Programs threatening to ban the user. Moments later this user and two others were temporarily banned from the forums. And the forums exploded on both sides. On the main forums:
> Do something for these YWP kids being banned for speaking up about their abuse.
And on the YWP:
> no cause if you're so threatened by MINORS joking at your expense take a good long look in the mirror
The same user on commented on the main thread:
> Just so yall know, the ywp is honestly going to hell rn. People are getting banned, some of the people who talked to you yesterday got banned for saying enough. I got warnings for saying that adults shouldn’t be threatened by teens making jokes. It’s a really bad situation and a lot of people are stressed and overwhelmed
One user commented on how bad the YWP had gotten as follows:
>FOR REAL !!! i joined when i was 16?? THE FIRST FUCKING THING I DID WAS MODERATE. i had to skip the classic nano ywp cringe newbie stage because i had to swoop into an argument that was obvious a moderator wasn’t going to ever deal with. and i did that for like the year and a half i was on nano. and like i don’t give a shit in the sense it doesn’t hold a candle to being 14 and moderating for three years straight but. the amount of power hierarchies the ywp has because of us who. play mod. it’s stressful and not fun and i would not wish it upon my worst enemies. this might be petty but? i’d pay real money that none of the staff team remembers me despite me doing their jobs since the moment i clicked create account
> i have not seen a single case of
someone getting fairly banned, nor of someone problematic and upsetting having consequences for their
actions.
>nano is a weird place because a lot of shit happened offsite (ex; my connection to [redacted]. the nanoer who was lying and trauma dumping to me and some of my close friends. that all happened in “adult nano” dms. but we were open about it. and even with multiple call-out posts in places with chats that don’t bury posts often and theoretically ones mods should be checking? nothing was done.) but the guessing game on when mods finally arrive to a scene is awful. the brace for impact everyone collectively did when
someone finally showed up? was awful. these are teenagers. and when these teens can’t trust the moderators who’re supposed to be monitoring their website, who are they supposed to trust?
A few hours into the board thread, YWP users called out one of the accounts on the main forum for being a predator. The group confirmed that this person had been removed from the YWP but that they had been allowed to remain on the main site. Users confronted this account directly:
> correct me if i’m wrong (i’m not) but i do remember you being one of (if not the most) manipulative, spiteful, maliciously incompetent people i have ever encountered. do you, perchance, remember all the times you told that little 15 year old the sexual things you wanted to do to her? i remember. i remember everything you said. i might not be able to prove all of it but we know. we didn’t forget. playing dumb won’t save you now, boy.
> don’t you dare sit here and pretend this was an okay thing for you to do. you got suspended but you’re still here talking aren’t you ?? it’s two years old we still have the very same predator (most people active in the lounge in the last year or two [in the ywp] knows you. no one who knows you likes you.) roaming the adult site. how is this not an issue that needs to be addressed?
The account was suspended a few days later.
That night, the board confirmed that they were unaware that the YWP was a separate site, and the YWP forums were shut. With no read only mode on the YWP, it erupted into chaos. Users said their goodbyes, and some expressed their anger with the moderation for how they turned out. This led to the Director of Programs threatening to close the forums early, despite the users only having a few hours to say goodbye anyway. One user put it as simply as:
> me when my entire community of the last three years is being ripped away lol
And the last three posts?
> FUCK THE MODS FR
> im gonna miss this website so much. love you all and its not our fault this is happening, it’s the mods stay safe stay amazing and love you all, youre the best.
> Im so sorry the mods destroyed this. hate that we have to lose this beautiful thing because of them. I have one last
thing to say:
>FUCK. THE. MODS.
> Imao
And with that, the weekend from hell was over.
But the Nanopocalypse had barely begun.
**It wasn't just kids that were abused.**
The board threads went down a few rabbit holes, but it was a testimony on the 28th of November that started the next fire. This came from an ML, and spoke of a situation a decade before.
> In 2012 (might have been 2011) I had an adult participant explain the explicit omegaverse erotica that she was writing to a 14 year old. She then left her laptop open to go and get a drink, with the instruction “i’m not telling you to read it, but I’m not not telling you that, and if I just leave my laptop open and you happen to see it, there’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”
> The teenager approached me before NaNo the next year and told me about this. She said that it made her extremely uncomfortable and that the adult participant had spent a lot of time telling her how clever she (the teen) was, how she was more mature than other teens, and how other adults just didn’t understand. Which is all classic grooming. The teen asked if this person was going to be at events that year, because she didn’t want to see her again.
> I contacted HQ with this, and asked if they would back me up if I told this person that they were no longer welcome at our events.
> The response I got was that not only would they not back me up, I was not allowed to ban this person from our events because they had to be held in a public space and be open to anyone who wanted to come and write.
> the teenager never came to another in-person event.
> The adult in question came back, and that year groomed and sexually assaulted a 17-year-old who she met at our events. I didn’t learn about this until several months afterwards. I once again contacted HQ, and was told that I still couldn’t ask her to stay away from our region because the incident took place after our event and we weren’t allowed to ban people based on behaviour outside the scope of our events
>I then posed the question: If the abusive ex of one of our wrimos turned up at an event, with the apparent intent to write with us, could I ask them to leave?
> Once again the answer was no, unless there was evidence of a police report, or the ex became abusive during the event. It was heavily implied that the victim ought to leave if they were uncomfortable.
> I had no training in how to handle this kind of thing, and I received the opposite of support.
> Having heard stories from other MLs I am convinced that the only reason I was not removed from the position is that I chose not to fight them.
The ML spoke more about trainings regarding racism.
>It’s been videos (I think 2 were workshops, but they were only run in US timezones so the rest of us just had to watch the videos and read transcripts) which have so far been exclusively on a US-centric approach to race and racism. One of the first 2 was run by a white person with a… questionable background… And [Director of Community Engagement]’s response to that being raised as an issue boiled down to “we have some MLs who won’t listen if it’s a black person”. Honestly, if you can’t handle being taught about racial issues by a person of that race, maybe you shouldn’t be in a position of power?
> We have the ML Agreement (which, until very recently, forbade MLs from criticising NaNoWriMo in any way. So recently that [Director of Community Engagement] used that clause to remove at least one ML in the last year without knowing/remembering that they took that out).
The discussion quickly pivoted to the treatment of MLs, and to the ML discord server. This was considered unofficial, but needed to get in touch with the Director of Community Engagement, who oversaw the MLs. The user who broke the news about Mod X gave a summary of the problems there:
> A ML was banned from the ML discord for suspicion of "leaking information shared in the ML discord with non-MLs".
> I've seen the (frankly a bit baffling) accusation by MLs (both on and off the main discord) that I have ulterior motives in bringing light to the issues facing the NaNoWriMo organization, so I'll reiterate - again - that l'm only one of a very large group of users over multiple offsite platforms who have been documenting these issues.
> The only reason I'm fairly visible in this situation is because it was decided my twitter platform was the best chance to bring wider attention to the issues in a way HQ would listen to (since efforts here on the forums were being shut down, silenced or obfuscated). I want to note that it's extremely concerning that the default in the ML discord is to focus on "someone leaking information or sneaking into our server" rather than address the systemic problems that have led to so many MLs feeling like they need to seek outside help for their treatment by the ML community. Not to mention the harm of indulging that paranoia when energy would be better focused on strategies to address the crisis facing the NaNo community.
> The main ML discord has obtained a list of users on NaNoWriMo discord servers that allow open criticism of HQ, and is kicking any ML who appears on the member list of the dissenting servers.
However, it seems that only two MLs were kicked for being in a dissenting server.
The kicked ML explained:
> I was kicked out for supposedly sharing screenshots from the ML discord with other people. I only know this, because when I said "hey, I can't find the ml discord any more" another ML went 'holy shit, that was you?' and told me what was being said about me.
> They also told me that what I had supposedly done was not against the rules at the time. [server admin] changed the rules after she kicked me out for "breaking" them.
There was another ML testimony that deserves its own section and we’ll get to in a second, but a response to it brought a new and horrifying light on the actions of the Director of Community Engagement.
> I’ve mentioned I was co-ML 2018, 2019, and 2020. My region had no ML for 2021 because my previous co-ML and I protested how [Director of Community Engagement] treated me.
> So. I am autistic as fuck. I am also physically disabled, and legally blind. We were promised access to the new 2019 forums months before NaNo, since we were MLs.
> I got access two weeks before NaNo.
> Two weeks, for my blind, autistic ass to figure out these very non-intuitive forums before time to kick things off.
> Clearly, this was not really a possibility for me. Because, again, autistic and blind.
> So my co-ML and I decided that I would handle all the online-but-offsite things (Facebook and the discord server I’d set up the year before) while he handled in-person and on-site things. This worked out great for us; our region was well taken care of between the two of us.
> I put so much love and care into my region’s discord server when I created it in 2018 (I had unexpectedly moved a few hours from my region in October, so the three of us co-MLs for that year worked out together what I would do to still hold my end of things up). I was cheering people on on the daily, running daily virtual write-ins for anyone who wanted to pop in and write with me. Any time my co-ML had a physical write-in, I scheduled a virtual one for the same time for anyone who couldn’t go in person
for whatever reason, and a co-ML would connect on their device so that the in-person and the virtual participants could talk to each other before time to write. For the 16th, I scheduled a full 24 hours virtual write-in that people could pop in and out of as they wanted to try to double up their word counts (I ran it the full 24 hours myself and then went to bed afterwards). I was even able to run some of the virtual write-ins from the hospital. I had so many people thank me for it, because they lived too far to make it in person easily, or they worked nights, or they were disabled, or they were immunocompromised so couldn’t go in person.
> Since that worked so well, I also did it for 2019, except even more because I loved my region and I love my people. I love cheering people on. I love helping them figure out a sticky problem in their project. I love just celebrating that they wrote, whether they wrote a full 50k or not, they tried this impossible thing and they did their best and that’s what NaNo is about. I worked my ass off in 2019 to make up for the fact that I couldn’t deal with the new site. Because, once again, I am autistic and blind.
> But also, before I move on to 2020, let’s talk about some of the gaslighting bullshit that HQ fed us. And yes, it was gaslighting I do not use that term lightly.
There was no validator. We were promised there would be a validator. We tell our regions “don’t worry, we’ve been promised there’ll be a validator, it should be ready in a few days”. Then HQ says “oh, sorry, it’ll be a little longer, you’ll have it by the end of the month, though, we super promise”. So we tell our regions, “sorry, it’s not going to be a couple days but they promise we’ll have it by the end of the month”. HQ was still telling us to tell our regions that the validator would be there by the end of the month even after HQ had decided there would be no fucking validator, not even by the end of the month, just never. When we were like “the fuck??? why would you tell us this, then???” we were told that we had just misunderstood what they meant. Gaslighting. That is actual fucking gaslighting.
> So now let’s go to 2020. Two successful years running my Region’s discord - and we added a Whole [country] discord, too! Go us!!!
> I re-apply to co-ML again. Don’t hear anything, assume that I didn’t hear anything because I was approved. In May, Sarah posts in the ML Facebook that if we re-applied and didn’t get an email from her to email her and let her know. So I emailed her. She had forgotten to email me. She had set my application aside because was I sure I could be a good ML since I had barely posted to the site in 2019. The year that the entire site changed and my blind autistic ass could not navigate it. I explained the situation, that I hadn’t been able to navigate the site so my co-ML and I had divvied things up so that I could run all the online-but-offsite things, etc. I told her about the region Discord and all the virtual write-ins.
> [Director of Community Engagement] says that all my efforts the previous years don’t count because it’s not on the site. That off-site can’t be moderated so it’s really discouraged that regions have anything online but offsite. She emailed my co-ML to tell them that she’d find a co-ML that could support them better. My co-ML responded along the lines
of “if you take [ML] away from me, I fucking quit”. So [Director of Community Engagement] tells them that I’m on probation but not to let me know. Which. They did anyway because they’re also one of my best friends and platonic life partners.
> I’m fine now, it’s been three years, I can deal. But when I say that being told that everything I’d set up didn’t count, that broke me. I had worked so hard, literally from the fucking hospital, to be told that it didn’t count. That the thing that I had set up as an accommodation for disabled or immunocompromised didn’t count.
> We MLed for 2020, because we finish our commitments. When 2021 rolled around and no one volunteered to ML, I still took care of my region. I still ran the discord, I still ran the virtual events, I still answered their questions and cheered them on. Because I’m not going to leave my people out to dry even if the person in charge doesn’t care.
> So. That was 2019 and the early parts of 2020. And it’s why I will never ML again while [Director of Community Engagement] is in charge.
> When I volunteered as a moderator, it’s because I genuinely wanted to help the community that I care so
much about. But I volunteered under [Community Manager]. [Community Manager] wasn’t perfect, but [Community Manager] cared. Whatever her
failings, she fucking cared about us. I told [Community Manager] when I disagreed with her, but I did it to her face and I tried to be kind. (Not necessarily nice, but kind. Because kind will tell you when you’re fucking up. Nice will not.)
> Right before NaNo started, I was no longer helping [Community Manager], I was now having to answer to [Director of Community Engagement]. So maybe I was more reactive than I would have been had [Director of Community Engagement] not broken me three years ago. Because of that, I tried to temper my reactions more, to make sure that I was reacting to the actual thing and not to who was saying it.
I have had it confirmed since I quit that [Director of Community Engagement] saw me as a problem and was trying to make me quit. And, well, she succeeded. Because I did quit when [Director of Community Engagement] said that mods would now be silencing any criticism of HQ.
> I love this community, or I would have left in 2020. I love the people, and I love the spirit of NaNo. I love that the spirit of NaNo lives in all of us, that we all have this little flame inside all of us that’s part of the bigger fire. I love that we come together to cheer each other on, and help each other when we’re stuck.
> But fuck the way MLs like me were treated. If I was treated this way, I bet there are others.
As of writing this, the Director of Community Engagement is still in her position and still oversees MLs.
So the MLs had to tolerate ableism and racism to do their jobs. And it only got worse. Let’s go back to that other testimony, which revealed:
**That time HQ made a game with a terrorist in it.**
Yep.
> In 2017 the staff decided to roll out an in-office game they had apparently played amongst themselves to the wider public.
> This game was a treasure hunt type activity, where one had to stop a terrorist called Ivan the Icy from blowing up NaNo and the world.
> This hunt included a now removed video of a very convincingly dressed man monologue at the camera about how he was going to bomb NaNo. So convincing in fact it took very long into the video before signs of it being fake emerged.
> Several faked emails sent to you, in that same vein that eventually led to a hidden page on the site where you had to disarm a bomb. Failing to do so would make it explode. Granted, upon exploding it filled your screen with penguins, but until then it was far too realistic.
> This was not communicated to MLs prior to sending out. Nothing had been mentioned. If it had we could have told them why this was a bad idea. The game might work in office where everyone knows each other’s sensitivities and humour (although even then one can wonder why this topic), but on a global scale this is tone deaf at best.
> MLs were the ones who raised the alarm and contacted HQ as quickly as we noticed. We had to explain in detail the potential ramifications, after which action was taken. We then helped NaNo cover this up.
> Note that at this point we had already lost so much faith in HQ that we were actively brainstorming how we could potentially flag it to youtube and facebook to get the video taken down if HQ would not respond to us as they often didn’t.
> To explain just how tone deaf this game was. The very convincing video was posted (not used) on 9/11. This was the year after the bombing in Brussels during NaNo. Two years after the bombing and shootings in Paris that had the Parisian Wrimos stuck in a write-in near the bomb site and active shooters for hours. And the same year a bomb had been detonated in the Manchester arena.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, a user who was on the YWP at the time confirmed that there was a YWP element:
> I didn’t find out that this came up in conversation yesterday until today but I feel like I need to add that the YWP had a dedicated forum thread to Ivan the Icy and was encouraged to participate and solve the terrorism scavenger hunt
> Yeah the terrorism scavenger hunt was a whole thing. I couldn’t even solve it because it was so heavily locked behind Facebook so I didn’t find out the full implications until the “apology” was sent out, but we on the YWP had an entire forum thread created by the mods (I want to say [YWP lead]) dedicated to solving it
So. That was a thing. Moving on.
**The board drank HQ’s kool-aid.**
The board was originally relatively helpful when they first intervened, but things soon took a turn. They took a break over American Thanksgiving [20th-26th November], and the responses soured following the break. The first clue of this was their defensive attitude towards the Executive Director’s $128K salary, when users figured out that since Nanowrimo ran a ‘salary first, operating budget second’ model, the operating budget was around $88K.
However, it was a comment about what Nanowrimo meant to the board member replying that started the anti-board attitude:
> Until two weeks ago, I had never used the forums; they just aren’t my thing. I mention all of this to say that not everybody who is part of this community hinges their experience, sense of belonging, or sense of value for NaNoWriMo on the forums. Part of my love for/experience of NaNo was doing a weekend writing retreat every November. I have very fond memories of these the years I did them. NaNo takes different forms for different people.
And when questioned about how this came across from an economic perspective, the elaboration was as follows:
> I am going on a writing retreat this weekend with my regular crew. It involves renting an AirBnB and each of us paying $200-$300 plus preparing one meal during the course of the weekend.
The fact that the first thing given as what nano meant to the board was a $200 writing retreat came off as inconsiderate in part due to reasons I’ll discuss later.
The next red flag was a reply in response to the idea having staff credentials in their account bios:
> Frankly, this isn’t a huge priority given that we’re asking staff to focus on other issues and since it’s pretty easy to look people up on LinkedIn. In a previous thread, someone posted the LinkedIn profiles of staffers.
> Again, we don’t view ourselves as concealing this information. Our staff bios are pretty standard and this information is available online.
However, users quickly pointed out that since the board member used their pen name, they couldn’t find their LinkedIn.
A few comments in a question and answer thread were also received poorly:
> The Board recognizes that people want answers now. After all, THEY ARE SHOUTING AT US IN ALL CAPS.
> We get that people ARE UPSET but we can’t do much about unrealistic expectations.
However, it was one of their last responses that really cemented their downfall:
> That is not what [other user] said. Please answer the actual question that was asked.
> And get better at reading comprehension, christ.
> Thank you for proving why the forums are so hard to moderate and for giving the Board reason to consider that we might never be able to make them safe. Because how can anybody feel safe when confronted with vicious sarcasm after committing the utterly human fallibility of misreading?
The board stopped responding that weekend and closed the remaining threads on the 4th of December.
Well. Almost all of them. A few hours later users noticed that the ‘about the Nanowrimo board category’ thread wasn’t locked. Users scrambled to post a final goodbye to the forums in a similar manner to the YWP shutdown a few weeks before.
> It has been an honour being in the trenches with so many of you. I’m sorry that it’s coming down to this, but here is where we are.
> So many of us did not deserve the way we were treated. So many of us were failed by a staff that should have done better.
> And I will never NOT be angry that protecting [Mod X] was more important than protecting children.
And with the battlefield closed, everyone retreated to their discords to discuss.
**The donation begging.**
Despite making between $1-$2 million a year, Nanowrimo always seemed desperate for more money. The first sign of this was the aforementioned Inkitt donor situation, but the second was ‘double-up donation weekend’, where donors got twice as much goodies for donating. This was during the 4th and 5th of November, and while the actual number of emails sent is disputed, one user simply said:
> too fucking many
However it was probably between 8-11. Over two days. And people have alleged that they sent more in other days.
Graphics from a recent presentation also revealed that they were trying to solicit donations from people in poverty. The graphic said to donate less if
> * Love NaNoWriMo and want to support us alongside 8,000 annual community donors!
> * Have little to no savings
> * Work more than one job to meet your basic needs
> * Have dependents (children, elderly loved ones, household partners, neighbors, etc.)
Another graphic suggested that people making $12K a year should donate $300 a year.
However, it was revealed after the forums were shut that Nanowrimo had been soliciting donations from users of the YWP since 2016, and that it had been a regular thing since 2018. And only once did they add a disclaimer:
> P.S. Today is #Giving Tuesday, and this year NaNoWriMo has received a $20,000 matching donation. So if you know someone who might want to support our organization, encourage them to donate today and double their impact!
The emails did in fact link to the Nanowrimo store.
**And then the memes attacked.**
When the forums were shut on December 4th, the some regional forums ran by MLs were allowed to remain. However, around the 11th of December, a lifeboat group received intel that the regional forums were soon to close. The day following, there was a rush of posts in the regional forums from members of this group alerting regional members of this. There were also allegations that the Director of Community Engagement had her own reasons for shutting the forums down.
> The decision to close the regional forums over the holidays was indisputably an "oh fuck" maneuver. It was NOT to shield MLs from emergency situations that they wouldn't be able to handle in Sarah's absence. It was NOT out of concern for the MLs.
> And I have proof.
> On November 30th, [Director of Community Engagement] reached out to the MLs who had chosen to keep their forums open. She asked if we still wanted to keep them open. **And she presented us with the following additional options:**
> * 1) Set it to "only MLs can start threads"
> * **2) Set it to "only MLs can post" (i.e. use it only for announcements or record keeping)**
> * 3) Set some or all existing open threads to "slow mode" so they can't be posted in as frequently
> * 4) Close some or all of the existing open threads
> **Option 2 would have eliminated this concern entirely.** My region is set to Announcements-only right now. No one else can post there. So, unless the MLs themselves were the concern, there would have been no need to close the forums *entirely*.
> Except... some MLs *are* giving HQ the migraine of their lives. **They need to silence ALL dissident voices, including those of MLs.**
> Hopefully you can view the form [Director of Community Engagement] sent MLs on November 30th here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdTbrRNrhfFV6HoXVUMWghomicP7xzvqWdLxC-R6cJ7Q8pfFA/viewform
And one member put it as:
> At this point I'm so confused, but what I see is HQ continuing to fuck up.
On the eve of the 15th of December, as the regional forums were taken down, the group discovered a thread on a regional forum, dedicated to memes about the Nanowrimo challenge. They flooded it with anti-HQ memes, in a last middle finger to HQ. A large amount of the memes consisted of promotional pictures of staff with humorous captions, such as The Good Place quote ‘I took the form of a 45 year old white man for a reason. I can only fail up.’, with the Executive Director photoshopped on. However, there was one that was purely text, from a YWP member:
> she nano on my wrimo till i shut down the forums
As the memes winded down, users settled in for a night of watching the forums go down. It was a long night, with users posting haikus to pass the time.
> Just a reminder
> The forums will shut down soon
> Save the threads you want
>Save the threads. You want
> Community, but darkness
>Prevails. Just for now.
However, some forums were never closed and are still open to this day.
**The smouldering remains.**
The entire YWP staff has gone, as has the social media manager. The Executive Director has been ‘demoted’ to Financial Stewardship Director. The current Executive Director is the board member that works under a pen name.
Nanowrimo has yet to reopen the forums, and besides disabling the ability to self-identify as an educator on the YWP, have yet to implement any of the changes that they promised.
More information can be found at r/nanowrimo, which is an unofficial Nano group without staff involvement.
#nanowrimo controversy#antinanowrimo#nano#nanopocalypse#nanowrimo#so fuck nanowrimo#Fuck this got long#Hobby drama
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WIP names tag game!
Tagged by @amischiefofmice --
Rules: Make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! Then, tag as many people as you have WIPs.
Since my file organization is what you might call nonexistent I can't take a tidy screenshot, so you get a bulleted list:
2017 Twine Project
Alligator Dreams
Brand new SCHISM
Erotica
Gaelineas Rubyeyes
Yuki and Drakain
NaNoWriMo 2016
Rasputin and his zombies
stolen identity ghost story
The story formerly known as Night City
Tower
Traveling Circus
Former Tranquil Mage
iolis
Dark Urge Time Loop
I have no idea what many of these are anymore! (I'm sure it'll come back to me when I see what's in them lol)
I tag @rainbowbarnacle (double tagged, now you gotta!), @bogunicorn, @earlgraytay, @earlronove, @lizardlicks, and whoever else wants to do it! (No pressure though ❤)
#askbox meme#sorry there's no way in hell I'm gonna sit here thinking of 15 people to tag#anyway#some of these files were last modified 18 years ago lol
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i drew such a pleasant sketchpage of a centaur that it made me want to make a whole new character and adapt inver's ironwall au into its own thing
#which is hilarious because ironwall WAS its own thing first#it was the setting of my 2016 nanowrimo novel#i won't post the sketchpage because the horse half is traced‚ like i said i just wanted brainless drawing time
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my collage book - 007 (march 2024) - dream babes circa 2016
NaNoWriMo 2016; And Rain Will Make the Flowers Grow; never finished; recently started to write about the characters again; didn't start the story over but picked it up in present time (yes that means the characters disappeared from each other's lives for years, yes it is heartbreaking); did this to remind us (as most things, this story is a collaboration with @thatsoupwitch) of younger versions of the two main characters, Shankara and Ahura.
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Greetings, all, and Happy 2024!
It's been a little while since I've shared a fic with you all. I've been writing other stories behind the scenes, I just haven't been publishing near as much as I have in the past (I hoping to change that this year and do lots more writing and publishing!).
However, I am excited to share with you all a new story that's mostly written! This is my NaNoWriMo 2023 story, titled E Pluribus Unum. In this story, Speaker of the House Karen Wheeler announces her plan to run for President of the United States. In a similar move, House Majority Leader Joyce Byers announces she intends to run for the Speakership should Karen win the election and become President.
And yes, there will by Byler. Because it's me, lmao
This story is highly inspired by Red, White and Royal Blue. I love the book and have had the movie on my to-watch list ever since it came out; hoping to see it soon!
Enjoy!
Tagging some friends: @byliever @poweredbycreativityandcake @willthecleric @seizetheedays @general-kj @w1llb7ers @dany-is-bored
#Stranger Things#Stranger Things fic#Stranger Things fanfic#Stranger Things fanfiction#Karen Wheeler#Joyce Byers#Will Byers#Mike Wheeler#Byler#byler fic#byler fanfic#byler fanfiction#byeler#byeler fic#byeler fanfic#byeler fanfiction
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how did NaNoWriMo go?
Did you mean to send this to someone else? 😅 I haven’t participated in nanowrimo since 2016 or thereabouts. It doesn’t really work for me as a concept (and I say that having “won” nano a few times in the past). Even if it were something I participate in, this year I wouldn’t have had the time. I’m in the middle of moving & jobhunting and over the course of October and November have written less on average than I have rest of the year, and that’s unlikely to change for December.
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In 2016, I was at a NaNoWriMo write-in at the Blue Moon. Earlier that day I had cast my vote for Hillary Clinton, although I hadn't been particularly happy about it. I'd muttered "good luck" to her as I marked my ballot, but I was certain I'd just voted for the first female President of the United States. There was no doubt in my mind that when I checked the results later everything would be as expected.
As the polls started to close, I began to hear bits and pieces of the news being muttered among the other people in the coffee shop. At first I thought they were joking. There are those moments people talk about, where you remember exactly where you were when a tragedy occurred. Frozen in my mind is an exact image of my surroundings when I checked my phone and saw the impossible. I remember staring at the screen in shock and disbelief. It couldn't be.
I think that moment was a wake-up call for America. A cold bucket of water to the face. Up until then, it was easy to think voting wasn't all that important. Individual votes didn't matter. The majority would keep the country rolling in a generally decent direction. We had plenty of problems, of course, but overall there wasn't much to worry about. The American populace was mostly decent people and our rights were secure.
2016 opened our eyes to the fact that many of our neighbors, our friends, our family members, held absolutely horrific ideals. Far more than we expected. In the years since then we've become increasingly aware of how fragile our democracy is. For a long time, that awareness circled the drain of despair. Recently, I found a shred of hope in the darkness that is helping me get through today.
I have hope that the polls we've been seeing are skewed. Whether it's been AI-generated or intentionally tampered with, there are signs that the data we've been fed over the past several months has been meaningless garbage. Just on a logical level, it doesn't make sense. What are the odds that every single battleground state is firmly stuck at 50/50 in every single poll? Trump's rally crowds are shrinking. He struggles to fill arenas and people are getting bored and walking out, while Harris is packing them in. Who are all these people voting for Trump? There are a lot out there, certainly, but I have hope that the percentage isn't as high as we've been led to believe.
I have hope that there is a bright side to all of this. That we've realized how vulnerable our society is, and how awful certain members of it are, and how important it is to stand up for the ideals and values that we believe in. Our dark side is out in the open, which means we can face it. We know who they are, and what their plans are. We can find ways to foil them. The threats that have been lurking in the shadows have revealed themselves, and we can fight back. This is our chance for America to take a stand against the return of fascism, and the other repulsive "values" that come with it. I have hope, however feeble, that we will.
More Americans than ever before are realizing this is serious. People are voting in record numbers. I hope we will find that more of them are on the right side of history than we fear. I hope, I hope, I hope.
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