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May. 11th, 2025 09:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Have you ever noticed that Lúthien, Maeglin, and Arwen share names that mean "twilight child"? While Lúthien and Arwen might make sense, how does Maeglin factor in? For her Mereth Aderthad 2025 presentation, JazTheBard explores this connection, noting that while Tolkien was surely aware of it in his own work, "he probably wouldn't agree with the conclusions I'm drawing from it!" Maglor interviewed Jaz about her upcoming presentation, "Twilight, Child Of: Comparisons Between Tinúviel, Lómion, and Undómiel," her love of music (and musical plans for the presentation!), and how gender further complicates her conclusion.
Today I
wrote
2 (33.3%)
edited
1 (16.7%)
posted
2 (33.3%)
sent to beta
0 (0.0%)
researched
0 (0.0%)
planned
0 (0.0%)
had a cheeky break
2 (33.3%)
dealt with life
1 (16.7%)
I've kept up writing this week. I'm almost done with the piece I started from the dream I had, and... ooof. It's gone a much darker direction than I had planned. Only the first couple sections came from the dream, and the rest is just following that trajectory through to an end, and it is. Not a happy end. I'm not entirely sure what to do with that, to be honest. I'm used to writing angst and addressing some pretty uncomfortable themes, but even my usual beta reader read what I've got so far and went "o.o you'd better put some trigger warnings on this, holy hell that is sinister". So that's... something. I'll have to sit with it for awhile, I think, before I go posting it anywhere. There's all kinds of dark stuff on Ao3, so it's not that it's especially out there in the scheme of things. I'm just going to have to think through best tagging practices and author's notes for it so the people who want to see it will, and the people who would rather not don't have to.
April came with a lot of smaller changes and fixes to AO3. We also made a few bigger improvements, such as fixing gif icons that weren’t animating and updating the way we send invitations to new users. On top of that, we added a confirmation email to the email change process and created a button to delete all your subscriptions. We also made a number of changes to make the work of our Policy & Abuse committee easier as they continue to tackle a wave of spam. Special thanks and welcome to first-time contributors Emily Wiegand, Hamham6, Laura, melo, Michelle Tanoto, niic, and Tom Li!
On April 2, we fixed gif icons which weren’t animating and deployed a number of small changes all around the site.
On April 11, we deployed some improvements for the Policy & Abuse committee. We also made a number of display fixes and increased the reliability of sending invitations from the invitation queue.
On April 17, we added an option to delete all your subscriptions to the Subscriptions page. Additionally, we improved error messages all around the site to be more informative and made some other small changes.
In our deploy from April 24, we improved account security by adding a confirmation email that will be sent to your new email address when you attempt to change the email address of your account.
On April 29, we deployed some improvements to our automated tests and fixed a few bugs on the archive.
Today I
wrote
2 (50.0%)
edited
1 (25.0%)
posted
0 (0.0%)
sent to beta
0 (0.0%)
researched
0 (0.0%)
planned
1 (25.0%)
had a cheeky break
0 (0.0%)
dealt with life
2 (50.0%)
Today I
wrote
5 (62.5%)
edited
1 (12.5%)
posted
1 (12.5%)
sent to beta
0 (0.0%)
researched
0 (0.0%)
planned
0 (0.0%)
had a cheeky break
2 (25.0%)
dealt with life
3 (37.5%)
Development & Membership ran April’s Membership Drive, which ended with just over US$269,000 raised from over 8,000 donors. Communications helped distribute news posts, while Translation made Drive information available in 24 languages.
In anticipation of the April drive, Finance posted the 2025 budget.
Although AO3 has not experienced a data breach, malware and reused passwords can still put accounts at risk. On World Password Day, Policy & Abuse published a reminder about how to keep your AO3 account secure and other internet security best practices.
In April, Open Doors announced the import of Garlic Press and Poison Pen Press, a collection of fanzines for Star Trek: The Original Series. This is the first of their Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP) publisher imports.
Also in April, Accessibility, Design & Technology deployed a number of bug fixes and improvements to AO3, including performance improvements to the invitation queue and fixing the bug that made animated gifs not animate when uploaded as pseud icons. They also published release notes covering changes made in March.
In March, Policy & Abuse received 2,988 tickets, while Support received 2,909 – less than Support received in the previous two months, but still above their usual average.
Tag Wrangling announced some new “No Fandom” additional tags, or tags not specific to particular fandoms. This update included tags related to Pregnancy and Reader-Insert. In March, the committee wrangled over 460,000 tags, or approximately 1,150 tags per wrangling volunteer!
Fanlore is running a themed month for May, focusing on monsters and creatures in fandom. Keep an eye on their Bluesky, Tumblr, or Twitter/X for featured articles, and join their Discord server for a themed editing chat in May!
In April, Legal continued responding to user queries, tracking legislation, and preparing to respond to events as they unfold.
Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) has announced their second annual Fans of Color Research Prize! The award recognizes the best peer-reviewed article about fans and/or fandoms of color published in TWC in the preceding three years (for 2025, no earlier than 2022) and furthers the journal’s goal to support scholars whose work fills critical gaps in fan studies literature about racially marginalized and/or non-Western fans. The winner will receive a US$500 cash prize. Submissions are due to [email protected] no later than May 15, 2025 (Anywhere on Earth).
Board ran their second public meeting on April 26 in the Board Discord server. Their agenda was announced beforehand, and meeting minutes will be available on the OTW website soon.
The Board Assistants Team continued work on ongoing projects, including revamping the Board Discord and investigating non-profit training. In conjunction with Board and the OTW Organizational Culture Roadmap team, they also devoted a lot of focus to working on the OTW Crisis Procedures and making related edits to the Procurement Policy draft.
Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for four committees in March: Policy & Abuse, Strategic Planning, Translation, and TWC.
From March 19 to April 20, Volunteers & Recruiting received 200 new requests, and completed 208, leaving them with 45 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of April 20, 2025, the OTW has 918 volunteers. \o/
New AO3 Documentation Volunteers: chocolatedreams, Evolcahra, and 3 other Documentation Editors
New Open Doors Volunteers: bubble-sort, Maciej, and 1 other Technical Volunteer
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Ana, Murus, Yuca, and 1 other Policy & Abuse Volunteer
New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Alpha, amihan, Andrea T, ari v., Ata MÄhina, Aurum, Azure Guest, blossomshed, Canoe, Catrain, Cesario, Corbin, CrystalM, Dalmuri, ECS, Ellie-Bee, Executie, Fyodor, Gialla, greenribbon, Hai, Hima, iri, Ishmael, Jesse Reno, kaijuboyy, Knight, Krchov, Lillie, Luke, Mária_Waluigi, Mayonayys, midoriC, midwinter, Paxsky, PinkBrain, Rain, Ratty, Sarah Wallenfelsz, Shinji, skeleton-kai, Spit, Sunny1, TheDragonflyBox, tomurai, Ushio, Vip, Wicked, Xanya V, and 3 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
New Translation Volunteers: Aliandry, AilĂn, and 4 other Translators
New User Response Translation Volunteers: 1 Liaison from Policy & Abuse
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 Site Moderator and 1 Graphics Volunteer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Jennifer D2
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Policy & Abuse Volunteer
Departing Strategic Planning Volunteers: 1 Strategic Planning Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: 1 Tag Wrangling Supervisor and 4 Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Eilean and 4 other Translators
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Frost The Fox (Senior Volunteer) and 1 Volunteer
For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.