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PSA: petra is offering to sponsor OTW memberships. If you want to vote in the upcoming OTW board election but find the membership fee too steep for any reason at all, this person is willing to spot you the 10 USD, no questions asked. More info over here; comments to that entry are screened, so you can leave your email for further discussion about the paypal transfer.

There are a lot of slots still available, so if you are interested in voting but need a hand, do consider it!

You have until 19:59 EST on June 30 to get an OTW membership if you want to vote.

As for me, I did end up getting a membership after all. ...This'll probably end up being like how I paid to vote for the Hugos that one time due to drama and then never again. But like. Whatever. :V

Creator signups are open for this year's round of the Fandom Trumps Hate multifandom charity auction. They close on February 13th.

Signup Info | General FAQ | Tips For First-Time Creators

Can't find the tumblr post with the schedule for this year, but it's over at their Dreamwidth here.

I'm kind of bummed that I'll have to sit it out this year, but I know that Future Me will be grateful for that decision. Really looking forward to browsing week, though!

☆ Both fandomtrumpshate and fandomforoz are in browsing week right now! Yay!

AHH, I can hardly wait until bidding starts - I'm curious about how my own offers will do, but also there are so many auctions by other people that I'm interested in, it's going to be really hard to narrow it down. Every time I browse through the lists, I see something else that looks good!

☆ Bidding for Fandom For Australia opens on February 23rd. Main offerings blog is here. Taglist of all fandoms + creators is here.

☆ Bidding for Fandom Trumps Hate opens on February 24th. Main offering blog is fth2020offerings. Taglist of all fandoms + creators is here.

I've had a lot of fun working on auction fic in the past, and I've been really looking forward to this year too. :D Here's a condensed summary of what I'm offering:

☆ Fandom For Australia: Yuuago's creator page

+ Fandoms: Hetalia, Stand Still Stay Silent, A Redtail's Dream, and anything else I've written before - so if you want me to write Frozen or VME or YOI or Ex Machina or Nirvana in Fire, you'll want to bid on one of my slots for this.

+ Details: Any characters, any pairings, any rating. No AUs*.
*Canon-divergent AUs are OK, especially for canons like NiF etc. But it's good to ask beforehand to make sure we're on the same page.

+ Offering 3 slots.
Slot 1: Short fanfic up to 2k.
Slot 2: Basic beta reading up to 5k.
Slot 3: Poetry up to 20 lines.

☆ Fandom Trumps Hate: Yuuago's creator page

+ Fandoms: Hetalia, Stand Still Stay Silent, A Redtail's Dream

+ Details: Any characters, any pairings, any rating. No AUs.

+ Offering 3 slots, all for fic up to 5k.

So, that's that! If any of this sounds good, make sure to bookmark those offer pages and drop some bids on my stuff next week. ;)

☆ [Exchanges] Chocolate Box assignments are out. I'm excited about mine! Already starting to brainstorm ideas for it. Hopefully I'll be able to come up with something really cute for my recip. :) I hope all of you who are doing it are happy with your assignment.

☆ [FTH auction] Signups for the Fandom Trumps Hate charity auction open on the 13th. I'm definitely planning to participate again - I'll have three fic slots open. Anybody else? Imagine if we brought its 4-year running total up to 100k. IMAGINE. We would have to raise around 27k, which is a lot, but I think it's possible. I'll be posting more info and trying to promote it around once more details are up, because I really hope that people in my fandoms will participate. I like writing fic for this, but it's also nice when there are people offering things that I can bid on. ;)

☆ [Books] Continuing with Cherryh's Chanur saga. Still enjoying it. I like that this series has some very... alien... aliens. The methane-breathers (especially the knnn, but the others as well) are so interesting and weird! Though it's possible that it's just a novelty for me because I don't read much scifi.

☆ [Fanart] Haranonaka has a tumblr for her Vinland Saga art now: here. Lovely as always. Nidsk has also been posting some very neat things since the anime aired. Man, I need to catch up on the manga - I've only read a couple volumes of it, but it's so good. Unfortunately, the library doesn't have it, though I could ILL it. Or I could watch the anime, though I don't stream via Amazon, so that might be a bit more challenging. ...I've heard it's so good that in either format it'll probably be worth jumping through hoops for, though. Anyway, go check out those artists if you like that series, their stuff is great.

☆ [Photography] Nils Nordenswan - I came across this guy's tumblr for original photography recently, and man, I love it. He mainly posts b&w Finnish landscapes. Some of the ones he's put up recently are really minimalistic and beautiful, I'd even say abstract.

☆ [Charity] Short comic by Cat's Cafe about the wildfires in Australia. The author notes at the bottom have links to various charities to help people & wildlife affected by the wildfires. Probably the same link list that has been floating around and everybody has already seen, but maybe some haven't seen it yet.

* The New Zealand Islamic Information Centre is running a campaign via Launchgood to raise funds for the victims of the Christchurch attack.

* There is also a different campaign run by NZ Council of Victim Support, via NZ-based crowdfunding site Givealittle. The site seems to be having issues right now, probably because of so many people accessing it. [Edit] Seems to be working fine now.

* Victim Support has opened an additional campaign at Everyday Hero on account of the overload/timeouts at Givealitte. (Details)

If any of you know of any others to take note of, let me know. I'll add them to the list. I'm looking mainly for NZ-based organizations; I figure they'd be the most effective.