#i copy pasted this directly from my word doc i'm not to concerned if it makes

[karalianne]

NaNoWriMo Fire

I have been posting comments on NaNoWriMo's Facebook page, to the most recent three posts there (copied and pasted). My latest one has apparently been blocked or something, so I'm going to start sharing here. Please do share this far and wide.

If you don't know what the NaNoWriMo fire is, I have two resources for you:

Reddit Post (took two to post the whole story)

Google Docs summary (being actively updated as things continue to burn)

So below the fold I'm pasting the comments I put on Facebook, in order. Enjoy!

March 5, 20204

It's becoming increasingly obvious that the goal here is to shutter NaNoWriMo as an organization. I wish you guys would just DO IT ALREADY instead of pretending you're trying to do right by the community. That ABSOLUTELY ATROCIOUS ABOMINATION of a new ML agreement is reprehensible. I hope NOBODY signs it, because it is BLATANTLY trying to put ALL BLAME for anything that goes wrong directly on the ML's. Which is ludicrous. On top of that, if people have concerns about the agreement they are automatically being removed as ML. That's not good faith. It's not transparency. I've been trying to believe the best but obviously that was really silly of me and I apologize for believing that everyone is capable of actually doing better.

March 7, 2024

The Board Update is laughable and reinforces the impression I offered in my previous comment. Basically, nobody on the Board right now was even there when all this stuff happened. NaNoWriMo the organization is not actually listening to the feedback from the community; supposedly there have been focus groups but none of the people I'm in contact with (which is a lot of people who have all been very heavily involved with the organization over the years) ever got an invitation. I am just one person, and I am aware that I am not owed anything. However, this entire thing continues to be mismanaged, and I do not for one second believe that the organization is heading in the right direction.

Again, I suggest you just shut things down completely like you're obviously planning. All the noises about trying to do the right thing, followed by this alarming lack of actually doing the right thing and incredibly tone-deaf approach, are not helping the situation. Support for the organization is dwindling, and I am not surprised. That's what happens when you ignore and/or woefully mismanage your response to concerns.

March 9, 2024

Well, I'm back for another round of "I thought I told you not to do this kind of thing." Again, I know I'm just a person and nobody has to listen to me, but I know plenty of people who agree with me.

First, regarding the FAQ for MLs, there are contradictions and missing words. I try not to criticize that sort of thing too much (in spite of being a trained proofreader) but this is supposed to be a writing organization, and you people at HQ are supposed to be writers. Do better.

Second, it has come to my attention that both the Terms & Conditions and the Codes of Conduct have been updated with no notification. That is ridiculous and unethical, not to mention poor business practice. Literally every organization I am connected to sends an e-mail to let me know when there are changes upcoming, and often those changes are outlined so I know what to expect. And then I have the option to leave if I don't agree with those changes.

If you did send a notification e-mail prior to these changes being implemented, well, hey, we already knew the e-mail system was borked so whatever. But it looks like literally NOBODY got a notification of the upcoming changes, which indicates that there was no attempt to follow best practices.

It is clear to me, and to many other people in the community, that nobody at HQ actually knows how to manage a non-profit. I'm also pretty sure you don't understand ethics or best practices. You're trying to get ahead of bad things that ALREADY HAPPENED, and if you're actually consulting a lawyer about all of these things before you do them, they are giving you horrible advice. You also needed a PR team back in like November (maybe even October).

There's a weird attitude that I've seen all over the place, that people who are being vocal about this disaster are being mean or trying to destroy NaNoWriMo or something like that. I want to be crystal clear here: People who are being vocal are speaking up on behalf of people who needed a voice. People were being abused and others decided to help them get out of that situation. When the expected solution (reporting to HQ) did not result in appropriate actions, they moved to make the situation public. (That's when I found out and got involved.)

When we were discussing problems and asking questions on the forums in November, we were trying to be productive. We were looking for answers, making suggestions, explaining what was wrong (because as we talked we learned that there was far more than just the Mod X situation that was wrong), offering our assistance... and we got shut down.

Now I'm also hearing that there has been a focus group. Who was in that focus group? How did you get the participants? Nobody I know was contacted to be on that focus group. Are you actually LISTENING to the participants? Are the people you're recruiting all folks who've made it clear they're mad at those of us who are using our voices to call out abuses of power, poor organization and business practices, and unethical behaviour? I don't care if I'm not approached to be a part of a focus group, but making sure you involve an assortment of viewpoints would be beneficial.

I am just incredibly disappointed in how everything has gone and is going. The yacht has sailed. It's time to accept that and move on.

March 12, 2024 (the one that isn't showing up)

Every time I turn around, it seems, there's something new to facepalm over. It is becoming increasingly clear that HQ is on the defensive. You need someone on staff, like, six months ago, who is actually capable of professional communication. Right now, we're receiving passive-aggressive whinges about how many e-mails there are and how you're giving up vacations in order to reply to them. At least some of the foolish "answers" on the FAQ (which again, why is that on Zendesk? That makes no sense.) have been removed. The thing is, nevermind Pepperidge Farm, the Internet remembers. EVERYTHING.

It is not professional to tell your subordinates (whether staff or volunteers) that you're giving up personal time in order to deal with a mess that is your responsibility to deal with. It is not professional to complain about having to do a job you agreed to take on.

It is not ethical to try and get anti-union verbage into an agreement for volunteers. It is not ethical to try and get volunteers to take on all liability for events they organize on your behalf.

It is incredibly rude to treat adults as if they are misbehaving children. Especially not when they are bringing you legitimate concerns and criticisms about how your organization is handling a serious situation.

And yes, a lot of this one is specifically about Kilby, because WTF? How have you been on multiple boards and not learned how to do all of this stuff properly? You were absolutely NOT the right person for the job, and it's laughable that you think you were.

[janus-stanus]

Hi there! I'm the commenter on your fic These Good Lies who wanted to know what happened to Thomas that Janus is keeping under wraps. Do you wanna tell me here, after all?

Hi! I come with the answers you seek. I'll even post it publically since some of my followers might be interested in how this factors into my general Janus takes - because, while I can't imagine this ever being canon, it is, to some extent, canon to me.

First, for context, is the bit in Those Good Lies for those who haven't read it: Thomas asks Janus why he hid himself from him, then whether they ever talked before that point. Janus tells him not to press the issue, but Thomas does, and he experiences a vision of a memory where teenage Janus is trying and failing to convince him of something, but then there's some kind of magic blast hurtling towards them,

And Janus sees it. He turns to see it, then turns back to Thomas, and then he- He-

That's where the vision cuts off. The full scene is the... midpoint, I suppose, of a multi-chapter backstory fic I have half-outlined but will likely never finish, titled would you leave yourself alone (when everything goes dark), or goodbye dark sides as a joking shorter alternative.

If you want to know what actually happened and some of the context, you'll find the spoilers below the read more. I'll warn you now, it's long, and melodramatic, but hopefully enjoyably so.

When the fic begins, Thomas is a preteen, and the sides aren't officially split between the light / core and the dark / others. However, Remus is already a pariah, and there is something of a rift between the sides who are friends with him, and the sides who, at best, tolerate him. All of the sides have stopped appearing to Thomas and conversing directly like they used to as kids, and Janus is tasked with keeping Remus in particular from having much influence at all... though Janus keeps him on a looser leash than, say, Patton might prefer.

The moment which gets referenced in Those Good Lies starts with Remus, who with Janus's limited permission has been trying to reach out to and bond with Thomas in his dreams, pulling Thomas into the Imagination while he's supposed to be paying attention in English class. Virgil finds out and tries to intervene, but, long story short, it backfires. He loses control over Thomas's fears, and suddenly there's a monster on the loose.

The other sides show up soon enough (minus Logan, who's trying to keep things on lockdown from the outside). They try to make Thomas snap out of it (thus ejecting him from the Imagination), but his fear has him rooted in place. So, while the others deal with the monster, Janus is tasked with protecting Thomas.

Keeping one eye on the monster fight, Janus continues trying to convince Thomas that none of this is real, concerned that, if he's genuinely scared of this product of his own mind, then it could genuinely hurt him. He's using something of a prototype for his comforting lies voice - hence the line in Good Lies, "He [Thomas] knows the voice; he knows how it’s supposed to make him feel."

But Thomas won't believe him. It isn't helped by the fact Janus's scales had only started coming in after the point where the sides stopped appearing to Thomas, or at least hadn't been as bad as they now are (which is more than in current canon). A bit harder to trust the words coming from a face like that.

At this point, I'm going to copy-paste from my Google Docs (which is written in past tense).

Janus realized that there was no convincing Thomas, not with words alone. He needed to experience something; a shock that would trigger the subconscious to force boot him from his own head. And it was at that moment that he sensed the projectile heading straight for them.

What happened in Janus’s mind in the next few seconds was something like a conversation.

Move, said the part of him that was self-preservation. Don’t, said the part of him that was Thomas’s self-preservation.

Move, said the part of Janus that knew (or believed, in this moment, enough (hopefully) to make it true) that Thomas would not really be hurt by this. Don’t, said the part of him that couldn’t swallow it, out of disbelief or apathy.

Move. Some hurt is unavoidable. Some hurt is necessary.

Don’t. I got him into this, I can’t let myself Don’t. I’m here to look out for him, I can’t

Let him get hit. This is the only way to end this nightmare; if we don’t terminate it now, things will only get worse, until we won’t have a choice in the matter.

You don’t know that. We don’t know that. What if... What if seeing me get hit would be enough t-

He won’t care. Move.

That voice was the one in his head when time ran out. So that’s what he did.

...

Good news, it works. And no one else saw that Janus let Thomas get hit.

Bad news:

Things got so crazy in there that Logan wasn't able to keep Thomas from vocally expressing some of his thoughts/feelings during the crisis. In the middle of class.

Janus proceeds to have an existential crisis over this choice he made and seriously questions, between this and the whole arc of the fic leading up to this where he (and Remus) were working to shape Thomas into a less "good" person purportedly for the sake of fitting in with his middle school peers and helping him "grow up", whether he's actually good for Thomas. Janus has such a breakdown over this, in fact, that it causes the first instance of him splitting in his room.

Long story short, Thomas's sense of self is in a precarious place, debatably even more so than at the start of the fic. All he knows is that he wants to be good.

And if Janus is self-preservation and denial, and Thomas wants to believe he's good... then he'll make it possible for him to believe that. He'll save Thomas from the worst of himself.

And hopefully, in doing so, he'll make it possible for him to trust himself again.

...Which is why Janus would really rather Thomas not start unearthing those memories in Those Good Lies, at a point where a) he's currently going through a similar personal crisis (if on a longer timeline and with less immediate stakes), and b) Janus has only just begun cultivating his trust.

There's a lot more going on in this fic, with the main arc I mentioned, how Remus is affected by the fallout of the monster attack, and stuff with the other sides, but I'm forcing myself not to give too much away. Perhaps I'd be willing to divulge more if people ask? Not tonight though, I'm tired.

I hope these ramblings were enjoyable! I love thinking about the contradiction of how Janus is the embodiment of selfishness, but the distance between him and Thomas means that he's selfless in the pursuit of "someone else's" selfishness, and this whole little scene is really just a crystallization of that. Plus the monster representing- well. I can't say. Not yet. :)

[latetoeveryparty]

Listen, I’m having enterprise feelings and I can’t draw or edit video, but Trip and T’Pol deserved a happy ending and all I want are the adorable home videos:

Completely deadpan Trip eating cheerios straight from the box, probably at like 5 am when the kids woke up.

Trip sneakily filming T’Pol trying to explain the logic of wearing tie shoes to 5 year old someone.

Trip, bursting through the door w/ giant grin: “I’M HOME!” T’Pol, on the couch with her paper work, barely has a chance to look up before he’s planting himself all over her lap. She sighs, long suffering, but offers him a Vulcan kiss and he grins at the camera again, very happy and very smug.

Trip, filming the millions of candles all around the house, murmuring: “goddamn house is going to burn down—”

Trip filming, T’Pol has wrapped herself in the blankets like a burrito, Trip has none atm, queue bitch face and slow pan to the clock that says 3:17

Visiting the lava fields with T’Pol and kids, T’Pol filming Trip, who loves the place, trying his best to hold on to all three children at once and looking stressed as hell, despite the fact that there’s plenty of handrails and none of the kids are even trying to move away from him.

A compilation of T’Pol quoting/referencing Frankenstein, and Trip’s exhausted expression each time.

Engineer shaming videos, where T’Pol takes the camera around the house to showcase the latest thing Trip is fixing (that will therefore be broken for the next week).