#fth2018

Jack’s agent had promised this shoot would be quick and easy, a single shot for a luxury car commercial featuring famous retired hockey players. Jack hadn’t wanted to do it, but Alain argued that if he wanted to be seen as one of the greats, he was going to have show up every once in awhile.

Jack had finally decided to say yes when he realized he could visit his old family friends, the Krugmans, in LA while he was there. And a few days in the sunshine in mid-February wouldn’t hurt either.

Tucked into the make-up trailer in front of this damning mirror, he wished he’d reconsidered.

Shonda was just getting set up, brandishing her brush in front of Jack’s eyes, when the door to the trailer swung open and a cheerful voice called out, “Y’all decent in there?”

Shonda called back, “Decent enough, Bitty.”

Then she leaned in close to Jack’s ear. “You met Eric yet?”

Hey, remember last year when fans came together to offer nearly 700 fanworks for auction, in exchange for donations to nonprofits that benefit groups targeted by the Trump administration?

Remember when we raised over $32,000 for those groups? And created hundreds of new fanworks that the world wouldn't have seen otherwise?

Well, due to a very sad lack of impeachment, it's time to do it again.

If you are interested in offering a fanwork for auction, please read the FAQ first, even if you participated last year.

We have changed a few things from last year, including:

1. There is now a limit of three (3) auctions per contributor. You will have a chance to offer a fanwork to one (1) second bidder per auction, but we'll worry about that later.

2. Our list of supported organizations has changed. See the new list here. Just like last year, you can select one or more that you'd like to support, or just leave it up to the bidder to pick.

3. You can choose up to three (3) fandoms to offer your work in.

4. You must provide an email address as your primary contact method. Sorry, but tumblr asks are just too unreliable.

5. We are going to be imposing a deadline of November 15th, 2018 for all fanworks in the 2018 auction. This is to prevent overlap between auctions and to make sure bidders have a reasonable timeframe in which they can expect to receive their finished fanwork*.

*If you are still working on your 2017 fanwork, don’t fret! We didn’t have a deadline last year, and we’ve learned our lesson since then. That said, do try to finish up your 2017 works soon!

Many of the protocols from last year still apply:

1. You can offer fanfiction, fanart, podfics, videos, or fan labor (betaing, translation, etc). Anything that can be delivered digitally can probably be worked into one of those categories.

2. You can only offer one fanwork per auction, in one of those five categories.

3. You will have a chance to specify themes or pairings you are or are not willing to create for.

4. The minimum bid is $5; if you are not willing to create something large for a single $5 bid, please use the "length depends on amount bid" feature and specify how high the bid needs to be for a particular length/size of fanwork.

5. You will be expected to follow through with delivering the promised fanwork, including keeping your bidder informed of your progress or any delays, and may be banned from future auctions if you do not.

If you've read the FAQ and are ready to sign up, you can fill out the form here!

Chapter 3 is up, and the angst is juuust starting. Arthur brings Merlin home and finds Gwaine waiting for him. You can read from the beginning here :)

“He was trying to ring you,” Arthur said, his arms crossed over his chest.

Gwaine ignored him, holding Merlin by his shoulders. “Are you OK? What happened?”

“Bee,” said Merlin with a sheepish half smile.

“Why the hell did you bring someone with a bee allergy to a garden centre?”

Gwaine blinked at him. “You’re… it’s that bad?” He looked like someone had kicked him in the guts. “Merlin… I thought you were just… I thought, like, you’d come out in hives or something. I’m so sorry. Oh God, I could have killed you.”

“Hey, it’s not your fault,” he said, pulling Gwaine into a hug. Gwaine wrapped his arms around Merlin’s ribs. “Too tight!” he gasped.

“Fuck!”

“S’okay. Just… I’ve just had a pretty big reminder of how awesome breathing is, you know?”

Gwaine looked even more distraught. “Mate, I’m so sorry.”

Merlin laughed and hugged him again to make a point. “It’s not your fault.”

It’s (almost) the most wonderful time of the year! Fandom Trumps Hate is back online for another year, and we’re hoping to raise even more money to benefit the vital organizations that are fighting back against the Trump regime and supporting those most vulnerable.

If you are a fan creator, or if you have fan labor skills (e.g. beta-ing, translation) then you can help the auction by offering your skills! We are accepting participants in five categories, each very broad: fic, art, podfic, vids, and fan labor.

If you are a consumer of fanworks, you are no less vital to this auction’s success! Once bidding opens, you can bid for fanworks in any of these categories. Your donations will go directly to one (or more) of the nonprofits on our list: we are a zero-overhead operation, run entirely by volunteers.

Want to know more about us? Check out our About us and FAQ. You can also read about the nonprofits we are supporting here.

The calendar for the auction is below the cut:

Friday, Dec 15th -- sign-ups open. Follow us to see the posts, or visit our page for links.

Friday, Dec 29th -- signups close.

Monday, Jan 8th -- bidding begins

Sunday, Jan 14th -- bidding ends

Wednesday, Jan 24th -- proof of donation due. If a bidder does not supply proof by this date, auction will be offered to second-highest bidder

Wednesday, Jan 31st -- we announce total donation information for the year

This year we had 324 fans offer 405 fanworks for auction, in 197 different fandoms! 

You guys bid nearly $14,000 for these fanworks, but that's only the beginning of the story. 61 of our creators offered additional works to the second bidders in their auctions, dozens of people donated amounts above and beyond their high bids, and we had 8 people who threw in donations that weren't even connected to a specific auction, just because they wanted to support these great organizations!

Thanks to hundreds of fans working together and showing how generous and powerful fandom can be, we're proud to say that we've raised

*drumroll*

$18,536.43 !!!

Put together with last year, you all have raised a combined $50,539.28. Holy wow that is a lot.

Is it lower than last year? Yeah it is. That’s what happens in the second year of multi-year projects like this. People get resigned, or depressed, or they realize they have to hunker down for the long haul. That’s where we all are, and EVEN SO, almost 350 of you signed up to offer stuff, and hundreds more placed bids and otherwise helped to spread the word. Dozens of people rounded up, donating more than they had initially pledged. A handful of people stepped up and made additional donations just because they wanted to increase the auction’s impact.

If this is what Year Two looks like, we can’t wait to see Year Three!

We’ll start posting details about next year’s auction sometime in Sept/Oct. Here are some things you can do in the meantime:

1) Follow fth2018offerings. That’s where we posted creator forms; now that FTH2018 has wrapped, we’ll be using it to reblog completed fanworks that were created for the auction.

2) Run your own fandom-specific auction! Big pan-fandom auctions are a lot of work, and are also a sort of diminishing marginal returns type of deal (this year, we saw several people talking about how their participation in FLPR impacted their participation in FTH.) But fandom-specific auctions are easier to run, and easier to publicize, and they help bring out people who might not show up for a big pan-fandom thing. If you’re interested in organizing an auction in your fandom, we will help you get started by sharing our playbook and our organizational materials with you. Just drop us an email at fandomtrumpshate at gmail.

3) Keep up with the groups you have contributed to. They’re doing good work. They need $, and some of them also sometimes need other kinds of support.

One of the things we will be doing with @fandomtrumpshateaction this year is reblogging action alerts from the nonprofits supported by this year’s auction. Follow that blog to keep up with what all of these terrific groups are doing, and to find out when and how you can help.

Last year, after the auction got far bigger than any of us has anticipated, we worried that a lot of creators were getting lost in the (in other respects, delightfully) enormous list of folks who had volunteered to participate. We also heard from a lot of bidders who wanted to use the auction as a way to connect with creators whose work they didn’t yet know, and weren’t sure how to find them.

For that reason, we came up with the term “golden needle” as a label for the less active auctions, to make them easier to find. We picked that name because finding them on the offerings blog is like looking for a needle in a haystack (or at least it would be, without the tag!) and because each of them is a treasure whose participation enriches the whole project.

So if you are interested in bidding on a creator but don’t have a lot of money to spare, this is a great way for you to connect with a fellow-fan, to get the fanwork or fan labor offer of your dreams, and to participate in this awesome multi-fandom venture without putting yourself on a ramen-only diet for the next month.

The golden needle tag is now live, and all of the relevant posts will be tagged by midnight EST.