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🎉 NaNoWriMo is here! 😱 ✍️
Here are some tips on making sure you're all set for success these first few days:
1. Make sure you've set your goal for November!
You can do this by clicking on your main dashboard. You'll see buttons to either join with a new novel or join with an existing novel.
2. Update your word count!
When you're knee deep in writing, you might forget to update your word count! Remember to update it when you can, since it helps you track your goals for the month. If you need help updating your word count, check out our FAQ!
3. Connect with other writers!
Find and join your local region on the NaNoWriMo website to connect with other writers in your area. You can even join multiple regions! You can also create or join a private writing group of up to 20 people. We've shared some tips on what makes a good writing group!
4. Join a NaNoWriMo event!
We're kicking off November 1st this year with a series of Write-Together-A-Thon livestreams where published authors share writing prompts and we all write together on YouTube. Plus, you can check out other virtual events happening through the rest of the month!
5. Have fun writing!!!!
No matter what happens during this month, just know you already have whatever it takes to bring your story to life. You got this!! 💖
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that last ask was me hard launching my april nano project btw. come talk to me about pacific rim.
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scratches and bites - 4
pairing: miguel o'hara x spider-girl!reader
cw: suggestive scenes, insecurities, a bit of cussing
wc: ~2.1k
a/n: god i am SO sorry how long this chapter has taken. i'm not the type of writer to have multiple chapters in a series done before posting them every week, i literally post chapters right when i finish them lol. thanks for sticking with me and being patient!
series masterlist | main masterlist
----
Miguel is still a grumpy man, sneering at anyone who dares to get in his way, still stressed out about keeping the multiverse on track and recruiting capable Spiders to assist him, but at least you’re no longer the main culprit of his frustrations.
Well, you’ll take that back, you’re no longer the one being yelled at.
Your transgressions are dealt with in another way…
Miguel is…insatiable to say the least. Since the day he reprimanded you through very unconventional means, seven suits have fallen victim to his desperation, shredded until they slipped into a pile below you.
Before he could destroy another one, you demanded a nanotech one of your own, tired of having to wait days in between for another one to be tailored, but he refused to give you one because he’s concerned about the unstable WIFI.
Eager fingers tug at the neckline of your suit. He groans, listening to the delicious sound of his claw tearing at the fabric. Red eyes darken as he watches each thread give out to the sharp point of his claws, slowly revealing the supple skin of your throat. He only gets down to your collarbone when you suddenly move away with a huff.
“Mig! Stop.” He frowns when you pull away from his touch, confused as to why you’d reject his advances.
“Sweetheart?”
“You’re always tearing up my suits.”
He’s still confused. You’ve never complained about it before. Actually, you seem to enjoy it, flushing with desire when he uses his claws on you.
“Look, I’m done wearing the extra shirts you keep in your office, Miguel. It’s…awkward having to navigate through HQ to get home without real clothes.”
Miguel’s frown grows deeper. He loves seeing you in his shirts, watching how your smaller frame practically drowns in the fabric and brushes against the softness of your thighs. There’s a hint of domesticity in a sight like that, one that he’s longed for since losing his family. It brings out a whole new side to him and he’s stubborn to let it go.
“Plus, all the Spiders wear their suits 24/7 so it’s even weirder that I’m only in a shirt!” You don’t seem to notice how lost in thought he is, how much your words are impacting him. “...so how about getting me one of those nano-suits? That way I don’t have to worry about bothering the seamstress for the fifth time this week…”
Miguel’s hands pull you closer, cradling the back of your neck as his thumb fiddles with the small tear against your throat. “Mm…no, nanotech isn’t super reliable…” His hand drifts down and cups over one of your tits, “and I’m not letting anyone see what’s mine under here.” He squeezes gently, watching avidly as your lips part with pleasure.
“Yes, but–”
“No ‘buts,’ honey. This isn’t up for discussion. You know exactly what I’m talking about…”
It’s true, you’ve seen the risk of technologically powered nano-suits first-hand when Miguel gave the Spiders a glimpse of his impressive *cough* stature *cough* during a debriefing meeting.
Needless to say, he was the talk of the city for reasons other than being the grumpy boss…
“Okay, fine. But still…I’m serious about the suits.
That’s when you established the first ground rule of the relationship: no ripping suits unless there’s another one ready to go.
Sure, Miguel sulked about it for a week, making sure you saw his pout when he’d peel your suit off you, but he still made an effort to follow it, carefully evading the sharp tip of his claws when he’d get too eager to see what’s underneath.
You weren’t surprised when you returned to your apartment a few days later to boxes full of suits. Miguel stood there with a proud grin, fangs and claws ready, eyes glowing like rubies. You barely got in the door with your suit still intact.
You also made another rule: no touching during work hours.
You were surprised that you had to make the rule as Miguel is universally known as a strict boss, but similarly with your shredded suits, sometimes he just can’t help himself.
There were enough instances of almost being caught and having to scramble for one of his shirts (or tug on the biggest piece of suit left on the floor) because Miguel forgot to lock the door, that you had to put your foot down.
You grumble as Miguel attempts to pull you onto his lap.
“You know the rules, baby.”
His arms loop around you as you stand between his legs, “But it’s five o’clock!”
“Mm…check again.” He looks up at the holographic clock, you were right, it isn’t five. “It’s four fifty-five.” He raises a brow, unamused.
“Hm…” He yanks you against him causing you to fall over his seated figure, “Fuck it.”
“Miguel!”
—
Sure, being with him is hot and fun, but Miguel isn’t exactly ‘boyfriend’ material.
But it’s not like you’re any better.
Back in your dimension, you were never interested in relationships. You preferred to coast through flings and crushes rather than get emotionally involved with someone.
So this, whatever it is, is all new to you.
That being said, you had zero expectations when it came to this thing between the two of you. You’re like an eager puppy, enthusiastically taking everything he gives you and returning it tenfold. This could mean everything…or nothing.
You assume it’s been a while since Miguel has been with anyone. He’s…hesitant with you, sometimes, like he’s holding a part of himself back. Like it would be too much if he were to fully commit to you and show you what he wants deep down. There’s a constant push and pull with Miguel and it’s either very intense or barely there at all.
It’s a dynamic you’ll never get used to.
Sometimes you spend hours curled up on his lap, content with enjoying his company without a word exchanged between the two of you as he works on his computer, matching anomalies to dimensions and answering messages from different Spiders.
It’s peaceful and oddly domestic. You can almost forget about the collapsing multiverse, the worries that loom over all Spiders, and pretend it’s just you and him.
But then, there are the other times.
Moments that you’d like to forget.
Sometimes he needs space. He needs time to methodically plan out missions and brood in his office until it gets late enough that you know he isn’t coming to your apartment.
Sometimes he disappears for days, or even weeks at a time, never giving you a hint of where he’ll be, just an, “I’ll be back,” thrown over his shoulder. And then you’re left at the entrance as he shuts the door behind him, desperately waiting for him to return so you can be happy again.
You don’t know why he turns cold, and you’ll probably never find out because he doesn’t talk about his past.
It could be your fault.
You never ask.
You never push him to tell you about that little girl whose photo floats on his desktop, or the ring that sits in a drawer right beside his side of the bed.
Sometimes you wonder if you should. If that’s what you’re supposed to do in a ‘relationship’ like this. If you deserve even a crumb of vulnerability from him. But you’re too afraid to lose the fragile thing you have.
You left everything for Miguel. Without him, you’d just be a girl floating in a sea of spiders.
For some reason, you’d rather constantly be on the edge of your seat than lost without him. Because that’s how it would end. You convince yourself that the good times outweigh the bad.
Your infatuation blurs the blue waves and disperses the confusion and hurt until it barely feels like a pinch. He buries your seeds of worry with delicate kisses and numbs the creeping feeling of defeat with the heat of his touch.
With every cold shoulder comes a warm embrace, and you’ll wait weeks in the chill if it means you’ll be in his arms again.
—
Hobie is back, again, despite claiming to quit a couple of weeks ago. Always expect the unexpected with Hobie because consistency is not in his (very British and barely decipherable) vocabulary.
“Oi, Black-Widow, long time no see, eh?” His eye must’ve caught on to your new outfit, a custom dark-gray suit with nano-tech details. Miguel finally reimbursed you after carelessly shredding through your one and only suit.
It’s really nice, and you’re finally more recognizable with this one than the old red and blue traditional you sported before. You turn, spotting his iconic hair and piercings.
“Hobie! You’re back!” You practically jump into his arms, and he catches you easily. “Where’ve you been?”
“Ah, you know, here and there.” A cleared throat echoes through the room and he sets you down on your feet before slightly stepping away from you. Right, you’re still in his office. Whoops.
“Brown.” Miguel acknowledges Hobie, barely, despite talking directly to him. Hobie looks between the two of you, picking up on the change almost immediately. Whatever he’s thinking, he doesn’t show it.
“O’Hara.” He replies with an amused expression.
“Ready to get back to work?”
He shrugs, clearly not shaken in the slightest. “S’why I’m here, innit?”
“Good. Go report to Drew, you’ll be leaving in 20.”
“Right…” Eyes back on you. “I’ll see you later, then?”
“Yeah, we can catch up later! Be safe.”
“Will do, Spider-Woman.” You catch Hobie sending Miguel a teasing smirk as he draws away from the two of you and leaves the room.
Freaking bugger, he’s trying to rile him up!
“I don’t like that guy.” He says it after a few seconds of silence.
You sigh, “I know.”
You turn to face him, meeting his signature scowl as he continues to glare at the door.
“With you.”
“I know.”
—
You’re still trying to do things your way, which, in your opinion, is the right way. And Miguel is still webbing you to any convenient surface and telling Parker to watch over you so he can get back to work.
“Not today, sweetheart.” You tug against the wisps of glowing red webs, nearly growling in your struggle. He’s clearly upgraded their strength after you’ve been able to escape and secretly tag along behind him.
“Wait, but, Miguel–!”
“This operation is especially sensitive. I can’t have you window shopping in a crumbling mall again.”
“That was one time! And we weren’t even on a mission.”
He raises an accusing brow, “Exactly.” He starts to walk away, ignoring your groaning and moaning. “Don’t forget you’re still on thin ice after you disobeyed orders last time.
“Ugh! C’mon, that was eons ago. I think I’ve proven myself.” He walks away, clicking a few buttons on his watch before a portal appears.
“Yeah, on unauthorized trips.”
“Still!”
“Brown, you ready?”
Hobie pushes off the wall he is leaning on and gives Miguel a teasing salute, “Aye-aye, sir.”
“What?! I’m stuck over here, but he gets to go?” The Brit sends you a teasing wink.
“He’s dispensable, cariño.”
“Ouch.”
You look over to the other side of the room where Peter sits.
“Okay, and what about him?”
“He's on babysitting duty.”
“Really? We’re still on this?” You raise an annoyed brow.
Peter holds his hands up in surrender, “Don’t look at me, look at your boyfriend. You’re not the only one suffering from this arrangement.”
“Boyfriend? More like father…” You mumble grumpily.
Hobie’s mouth quirks up, “Father? More like d-”
“Don’t fucking finish that sentence, Brown.” Of course, this doesn’t discourage him, if anything, the low growl only makes him smile wider. Miguel sighs, releasing the sudden tension from his body with a quick roll of his shoulders. “Alright, we should be back in a handful of hours.” He begrudgingly looks over at his mission partner, “Let’s go.”
“Okay, call me if you need help!” You yell as Hobie disappears into a flash of neon lights and pulsing sounds.
Before Miguel follows and slips through the portal, he stops and looks back, not at you, but at your babysitter, “And Parker,” He pulls his mask on, always ready for battle, “Make sure she behaves.”
“Oh, come on–”
Peter grins and sends Miguel a half-hearted thumbs up, “You got it.”
#miguel o'hara#miguel o’hara#miguel o'hara x reader#miguel o’hara x reader#miguel o'hara smut#miguel o’hara smut#scratches and bites#atsv
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NANO BIKINI
New mesh by korkassims
10 swatches
All LODs
Normal and Shadow maps
HQ compatible
Download (public!)
#s4cc#ts4cc#sims4cc#thesims4cc#thesims4#sims4#ts4#s4#simscc#sims#the sims 4#sims 4#sims cc#sims4ccfinds#sims 4 custom content#sims4 cc
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The ML agreement is FUCKED.
So the MLs got a new agreement. And it’s predatory, and borderline illegal.
Some highlights!
•A confidentiality clause holding MLs liable if they speak out, and forbidding them to discuss internal documents with users or even other volunteers. Unclear rn if that includes co-MLs.
•A mandate that MLs report anyone in their forums [because oh yeah they have to mod regional forums on their own now] that break any kind of supposed rule to HQ (including, literally, use of profanity), and an obligation that they report other MLs and participants for violations of the literal written letter of local laws (including places where being queer or speaking against the government is a crime).
•MLs have to swear to listen first to Nano HQ for directions in case of a public health emergency (instead of, you know, government health agencies).
•MLs are legally liable for everything that happens in their regions, giving the HQ that's telling them what to do and when to do it a free pass.
Also this:
As of right now the Director of Community Engagement is…
Difficult to contact and best reached on an ‘unofficial’ discord server. Which two MLs were kicked from for sharing publicly available info and one for being in a server that had criticised HQ.
The full agreement can be found here.
Make no mistake, this is trying to silence and exploit MLs. Nano has not changed.
#antinanowrimo#nano#nanopocalypse#nanowrimo#nanowrimo controversy#so fuck nanowrimo#fuck sarah#Fuck Kilby#fuck them all
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hey has anyone else seen both tmnt 2003 and generator rex? no? okay
crossover au where rex, six, holiday, and maybe bobo get pulled into the tmnt 2003 universe, but they all end up in different places when they go in
bishop and stockman find rex and try to control his nanites like how they try to control nano in “membership drive”, but it obviously does not go well and then they find out that rex is not just a very human-looking robot but actually is a little boy. and now hes malfunctioning bc their control chip is reacting bad with his nanites
bishop then gets a call that someone just materialized in the middle of epf hq so he goes to investigate and holiday is there and hes like WOW! HOT a What Baabhabhiat. theres also another version of this idea where bishop and stockman dont care that rex is intelligent and they still want to try to get a control chip on that boy but they need to deactivate the first one bc its malfunctioning anyways
meanwhile six would probably first be found by april or casey while bobo is first found by the turtles i think. the only reason bobo is there is so that six doesnt Fucking Leave the moment anyone interacts with him. he needs the icebreaker
(it wouldnt be at this point in genrex bc six still has his memories, but i also think karai and chaplin interacting with black knight and caesar would be extremely funny)
#tmnt#tmnt 2003#generator rex#genrex#bisholiday#agent bishop#john bishop#rebecca holiday#baxter stockman#rex salazar#april o neil#agent six#digital art#i love self indulgence#rex WILL eat a pizza with the turtles this is a promise
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In case anyone was wondering regarding the state of the NaNoWriMo organization, well, it's still entirely fucked.
To address some of the misinformation floating around out there, in a format that will essentially reach twelve people, if I'm lucky, I would like to clarify that Mod X (the alleged groomer) is not, and has not been involved with the situation and toxic culture that has developed on the YWP forums.
Why do I call it toxic? Simply put, it is. It is a toxic environment that has forced teenagers to bear the burden of mental health support for other teenagers. The sheer amount of trauma bonding I've witnessed as these teens have come forward with their stories is alarming. This is not the fault of the teens. It is the fault of the staff members assigned to moderate them, the same staffers who absolutely failed on every possible count to protect their charges.
The Board is continuing to "investigate", which I have to actively choose to believe means they're sifting through the data they've been sent and are hoping to supplement it with their own findings. The forums (both the main site and the YWP) are still shut down, outside of the one thread in the board section. It's pretty much perpetually off-topic, anyway.
It is hard to see any future where the forums are allowed to continue. That is not entirely the fault of us, the community. The blame rests on HQ and staff refusing to acknowledge there were problems and on the moderators for being reactive instead of proactive.
The drama has reached some less than savory parts of the internet, as well, and concerns raised to the Board via email regarding a possible influx of hateful and dangerous people have thus far gone ignored.
To anyone who sees this post and uses the NaNo websites, I urge you to remove any personal information your profiles may have. Switch your attached emails to burners, if possible. I have been assured by former moderators in regards to the supposed "data breach" that Mod X did not have access to any passwords or email addresses, and only maybe could have seen username changes, but I will reiterate:
NaNoWriMo is not safe. They have not protected you. They aren't protecting you. You will have to protect yourself.
May your whisper networks be free of hateful rhetoric, and may your off-site discussions not turn to negativity.
I wish you all well.
-Definitely Not Grant
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and the hq image, original was in 240x320 to allign with the ipod nanos screen resolution
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🎇Attention All Nimona Writers! 🎇
If you are planning on writing a story, event or not, there is a wonderful site you can use that lets you pace yourself on a daily word count.
NaNoWriMo (National November Writing Month)
About NaNoWrimo:
"NaNoWriMo is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that believes in the transformational power of creativity. We provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people use their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page."
How It Works for Writers (their links are included as well in the quotes because why not):
"Once a writer (or soon-to-be writer!) signs up on our site, they can participate in our programs in a variety of ways. Prefer to write on your own timeline? Set independent writing goals and work at your own pace. Prefer the exquisite pressure of an ambitious deadline and enthusiastic community egging you on? Set an official challenge goal during National Novel Writing Month in November or Camp NaNoWriMo in April or July. You’ll receive resource-packed messages (and the occasional celebratory gif) from us, and if you reach your word-count goal, you can access a special winner page with sponsor offers and more.
Either way, once you’ve signed up, you can explore our how-to materials, make writer friends in the forums, join your local region(s) to see what’s going on nearby, pop in on the occasional virtual event hosted by NaNo HQ, make buddies and join writing groups, get inspired by pep talks from authors like Gene Luen Yang, Roxane Gay, Kacen Callender, John Green, and N. K. Jemisin, and—of course—track your writing progress, novel or otherwise."
Feel Free to check out the rest of their site for more information as well!
CB the Mod Uses this Religiously!
I also want to let you know that I (CB) use this site for every single one of my stories when I get close tof inishing them, I also use this for other big bangs that I wrote for. While it is for the NaNoWriMo (National November Writing Month) challenge, it can be utilized for everything!
Back to the Big Bang:
So, big bang writers, if you have trouble pacing, or are worried about that, please use this to give you some peace of mind for the event. And if you need to adjust the word count, or due date, either make a new project, or edit the one you're working on!
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Getting ready for NaNoWriMo?
Over the past six weeks, we've shared tons of resources, activities, and advice to help you get prepared to write a novel in our "NaNo Prep 101" course.
If you literally just decided "oh hey, writing a novel sounds cool, I think I might try that," no worries! Here's a round-up of some of our favorite NaNo Prep activities, or you can check out our full NaNo Prep 101 page and choose your own favorites.
Doing a bunch of prep work isn't necessary, of course—there are many NaNoWriMo writers who identify as "pantsers", a.k.a. people who "fly by the seat of their pants". But we hope these resources will help you find some fun and inspiration, too!
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More NaNo shite.
These are screen shots of the new ML (local leader) contract that NaNoWriMo HQ has put out. It's in screen shots because they've disabled print and save and right click, so there's not any other way to share it. Although it is in a publicly accessible location on the internet without any password protection or any other attempt to keep other folks from reading it.
There are so many things wrong with this that several people with contract experience are writing large documents about some of the problems, and I agree with them that anyone who signs this is a fool.
This is just another way that Kim Palacios, aka Kilby Blades is "fixing" NaNo as the interim ED.
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idk how I missed all of ur posts about the hq pacrim au until this morning??? but now that ive been exposed im so excited oh my god (I am Very Normal about both of these things)
anyway what does raptor three look like? is it just a crimson typhoon kinda setup? who works on her? (ik u said hanamaki and matsukawa were jaeger techs but these r big ol bots and I can't imagine those two work on All of them especially when they designed Blue Castle so they know her specifically in and out)
also kuroken k-sci division, pls tell me more about kuroken k-sci division🙏🙏🙏
oh my god SO sorry this took me a hundred years to get to! i got busy and lost track of this au…but it has been reborn in the form of my nanowrimo project LOL. you (and anyone/everyone) should continue to ask me about the pacific rim au please and thank you. so many things have changed since my first posts !!!!!
also this ask did remind me that kuroken were going to be the scientists, which i had lowkey almost forgotten about when i restarted the fic on april 1, so ty ty ty for that. here’s some more about them and the jaegers under the cut !
kuroken:
first off, they didn’t know each other before coming to work at the shatterdome together! the only people who knew each other before coming together in tokyo were iwaizumi and oikawa, the rest of the haikyuu characters involved have never met before. there will be no explanation for this
kenma was recruited in his first year of university because he was posting his theories and amateur research online and it caught the attention of people with resources who wanted to see if he could find anything if given access to more tech and info than his dorm room gamer setup
turns out that yes, yes he can find things if given more resources. he’s the one who comes up with the theory about kaiju attack patterns and the increasing rate etc etc
kuroo, for his part, became a researcher in the science dept after incessantly sending his findings to whoever he could get in contact with, knowing he was On To Something and needed resources to share it
kenma is one of the people he gave his research to (twitter besties!), and kenma invited him to the tokyo shatterdome to work together
turns out that working together is frustrating sometimes but they love nothing more than to constantly annoy each other <3 but they do respect each other’s work even if they don’t always agree on methods or conclusions
ex. kuroo’s research was founded on samples he got from the black market; kenma’s research is all too theoretical for kuroo; etc etc
daichi and suga’s jaeger
so ngl i forgot that asahi was originally a part of this
he is not longer a part of this
rip raptor three
anyways daichi and suga now pilot a mark-3 together called raptor flight. i’m imagining something like saber athena, which is from uprising but who cares. i can do whatever i want
most important features of raptor-2: fastest model to date, extremely acrobatic/dextrous/agile, equipped with ionic twinblades (she gets two swords <3 ) that can be synced/combined into one stronger weapon (are you seeing the references i am making. are you seeing them), and an n-16 particle charger (plasma cannon thing)
i’ve decided that asahi is the main tech for raptor-2 (hey he’s still here! yay!). he was also the main designer and tech for daichi and his sister’s jaeger, ursa juliet, before his sister dies and the model is ripped apart
daichi is on the right in both raptor-2 and ursa juliet; suga is on the left in raptor-2
iwaoi’s jaeger
blue castle is going to be vaguely modeled after striker eureka
trivia fun fact of the day: striker eureka was planned to be the main jaeger in the movie until they were like well actually this robot is too cold and arrogant appearing to be the hero robot. this is deeply funny to me and also why it is perfect for blue castle
blue castle is a mark-2 and was an experimental design by two intern jaeger tech development scientists, hanamaki and matsukawa (who get promoted to active jaeger techs as soon as blue castle is successfully put into use) - as the years go on, this design becomes a pretty common basis to design off of for future models
most important features: extremely strong, aerodynamic, stable, and agile, equipped with 4.211 brass knuckles (exactly what it sounds like) and assault mount 3.25 sting blades (two swords attached to arms), missile launcher mounted in the chest, and advanced displays in the conn-pod which allow them a 4-way view of their surroundings
also not unexpected, but worth saying: iwaizumi is on the left, oikawa on the right
jaeger visuals
ok so i wrote all of that out and then i found the pacific rim: uprising jaeger design maker thingy online here and i decided i’m bored enough to do that actually. these aren’t , like, exactly what i’m imagining, so kinda mush together the canon jaeger references with these generated images lol. i’m gonna try so hard to describe them in the fic. we’ll see how that goes.
anyways, blue castle to the left and raptor-2 on the right! and below is striker eureka to the left and saber athena to the right. anyways i’m having SO much fun with this jaeger generator from 2018 lmfao can you tell
overall. aaaaaa.
im so excited to be coming back to this. anyways more in my #hq pacrim au tag (though much of that is outdated) or eventually also in my #april nano 2024 tag !!!! and pls pls pls come talk to me about it !!!!!
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What Happened to #Nanowrimo
A Micro Essay
By Mutiny Crinshaw, co-editor, Grinning Kitten Press
It often appears to me that people in the press & in society at large think of National Novel Writing Month, or Nanowrimo, as some cute little holiday-style project, if not on the level of Mother's Day, than at least Secretary's Day or National Donut Day. Fun, innocuous, something your quirky writer friend does.
That's a misperception. & the scandal which took down the forums & has Nanowrimo's Board of Directors scrambling proves that this perception is in error.
The rumors I have seen in Reddit & elsewhere in the Nano community indicate an abuse scandal. I will not dive into it; I am sure others can inform you much better than I can, & I am not privy to the most important details.
What I want to point out is that Nano isn't just some happy-fun project for your writer friends, although many of your writer friends also think that it is & can be forgiven for wanting to hang out with their other writer friends for this one month just to write.
I want to put Nanowrimo in its larger context.
What began as friends around a table wanting to Chase Those Words & Write a Novel was something anyone could have organized. You, me, your own friends. We organize little events like that all the time.
Nano simply had a certain social capital & gained a certain momentum.
The question of what creative types do with such momentum tells us a lot. It tells us a lot in the context of AI, the Arts, & late capitalism.
The choice of folks behind Nanowrimo was to take that momentum & create a 501(c)3, which is a nonprofit entity under US law.
The ease & lack of controversy around that choice exists in a continuum that constitutes all the rest, shaping the kinds and forms of abuse beyond the most illegal and egregious. It gives legal cover to the broader social harms.
Certainly choosing a nonprofit form is not a mistake on the level of "mistakes" that led to the kind of abuse rumored to be going on around Nano HQ, but it is not an unrelated mistake.
Because it is a mistake about power.
About control.
About bending people to your will.
Most of Nano runs off volunteer labor. Interns, unpaid regional coordinators, & the like.
It is a lot of work they do, year-round. Moderating. Writing grants. Chasing donors.
Meanwhile, HQ has worked with fundraising, PR, branding, & most of all selling memorabilia . . . & the best part of that is, you do not need to "win Nano" to participate in the shopping. Or the donations.
Another problem with a collective enterprise like Nano in our stage of late capitalism is that it encourages writers to hustle. (A phenomenon related to Large Language Models/ChatGPT/AI, but I will not be diving into that too much here.)
Successful hustlers - the REALLY successful ones - have social capital to burn, have wealthy loved ones & donor networks & credit (literal economic credit as well as social credit) that boosts their projects.
So while thousands of writers hunker down for the month of November to hustle their novel into being, the real hustlers at the top can hustle & make money in the name of The Arts.
The average Nano author will not get rich. Will not public unless it is through Amazon. Will work very hard for no money.
But who will make money off Nanowrimo?
Admin.
Thus, it should come as no surprise, if & when Nano HQ's abuse scandal(s) come more to light, that people have been harmed & abused.
The egregious harms lay atop a pervasive culture of exploitation which permeate nonprofits & shape our entire industry of cultural production.
Harm & abuse go hand-in-hand where charity work & volunteer labor are exploited.
The nonprofit-industrial complex provides legally-recognized covers for the harnessing of collective, creative spirit. It drives profits, offsets costs, & masks marketing & PR under a humanitarian guise. In the case of Nanowrimo, it yokes literacy & creativity for the profit of the few admins at the top.
This is "The Arts" in the US. Grifters preying on idealists. Incorporating. & if you are outside the US, you will not go untouched, for our nonprofits come for you & your culture as much as our for-profits do.
In conclusion, we ought to become & remain skeptical of any artistic endeavor that gains prominence under capitalism.
Whether that artistic endeavor promises a hip new movie studio, an artsy social media platform, a rising music label . . . or even a publishing press.
If the Art World & the mainstream media celebrate it, then you know it hates artists. It abuses writers. It milks us for profit.
The best way ahead for Nanowrimo will be for the unpaid regional leads to de-federate from HQ & create new, anti-capitalist enterprises. Artists and writers, we need to form collectives that will meet nonprofits & corporation in cultural combat. No words but class war <3
A rougher draft of this micro-essay was posted earlier on our Mastodon account. It has been edited for stylistic improvements and linguistic and intellectual clarity.
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!!!!!My compadres i have an announcement to make!!!!!!!
After the recent Sun and Moon show Episode: Finding CREATORS HQ in VRCHAT
i have come up with an idea for a new Fic!
It's of course gonna have some horror elements in it like Gore and body horror, love that stuff lol
Heres the idea of what its gonna be about:
Title: To fuse the Sun and the Moon
Summery: the Creators teleporter malfunctions just as he teleports Sun and Moon outside the Pizzaplex, resulting in their Nano-machines/Nanites to go absolutely haywire and overload, resulting in their bodies melting and melding together, Creating a new body that inhabits both Ai's, called Suon.
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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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Trick or treat!
Oooh... as a treat, I'm going to tell you about my nano project! It's a knb/hq cross over set in a dystopian future... with immortals, brats, and poly d/s dynamics.
As an aside most years when I do nano its lets just finish all my wips! But this year I'm focusing on a single story!
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