Call me Em. She/They. Demigirl. Bisexual. ADHD. Probable autism. Bipolar II. cPTSD. 30s. Married. Two autistic sons. Dogs. Cats. Bird. Pro-vax. Lots of fandoms, including BtVS, X-Men, Valdemar, Wheel of Time, DBZ. Love rabbits and dragons.
The crowdfunding campaign for the Deluxe Heralds of Valdemar omnibus volume has launched on BackerKit!
Pledge price is $125 for the leatherbound trilogy omnibus in the same style as last year's Grandmaster. Scholarship applications will also be available again for those who are unable to cover the cost themselves.
The complete Arrows trilogy in one deluxe leatherbound omnibus, including silver and blue foil, six ribs, full-color interior art plates, pa
Included art plates include contributions from Nene Thomas, Rob Carlos, Care Halverson, Olivia Hintz, Dasha Park, and Alyssa Trudel. Stretch goals can unlock up to 6 additional paintings from Care Halverson, Emily Pritchett, Jabari Weathers, and Larry Dixon & Ben Dobyns.
I think the funniest dynamic for arranged-marriage royalty would be a queen who came here 100% prepared to murder her future husband and rule as a widow queen in her own right, only to discover that the king is autistic as hell and responds to her wish to rule with "oh thank god please do, I don't want to be bothered by these people. I can just tell them to go bother you instead, if you really want that. I've got beetles I wanted to study."
a couple of not-as-supported orgs that could use some love
As is typical for post-auction donation period, we on the mod team are having a great time watching Number Go Up. It's also pretty typical that some of our supported organizations are getting a lot more support than others… but the disparity is especially dramatic this year. Right now, our three most popular orgs — Gaza Soup Kitchen, National Immigrant Justice Coalition, and Advocates 4 Trans Equality — have received over 55% of the total amount donated. (Given that we've got thirteen orgs on the list plus our anti-poverty umbrella category, that's a huge percentage.)
So we wanted to take some time to highlight four five amazing orgs on our list that are each getting under 3% of total donations so far. If you haven't donated yet, or are considering an extra donation on behalf of ROFL, please keep these fantastic orgs in mind!
Fight for the Future Education Fund works for freedom and equality in the digital sphere. Through advocacy, education and creative campaigning, they fight to ensure that technology is a force for empowerment, free expression, and liberation rather than tyranny, corruption, and structural inequality. Their work -- as shown in their campaign to take back power from data brokers -- combines policy-level interventions with education about the steps individuals can take to protect themselves and their neighbors.
Greenlight America gives ordinary citizens a pathway to fight climate change by helping them advocate successfully for clean energy. A unique team of grassroots campaigners, clean energy experts, public policy professionals, communications specialists, and coalition builders, GA helps mobilize and support local groups and volunteers who want to get utility-scale clean energy projects built in their communities. In so doing, they do two vitally important things: they drive meaningful progress toward environmentally safer and more sustainable energy, and they offer people who feel frightened and helpless a path toward participating meaningfully in positive change.
In Our Own Voice: National Black Women's Reproductive Justice Agenda fights to secure reproductive justice for all Black women, girls, and gender-expansive people. In coordination with state partners, IOOV works with key decision makers to shape public policy to address the many interconnected issues and the unique reproductive health concerns of Black women. Those include the right to health care, dignified birth, and access to abortion care; equity in housing and education; fair employment and clean water; and the full range of social, economic, political, and cultural supports needed for Black women and families to thrive.
Open Secrets works for transparency in a vital domain of politics: money. They track the movement of money in US politics, and chronicle its effects on both elections and public policy. By creating high-quality and timely datasets and publishing analysis and reports, they work to fuel conversation among journalists and policymakers alike. OpenSecrets also regularly works with media outlets and journalists to provide exclusive data and analysis to power investigations alongside their own original reporting.
VoteBeat is working at two vital junctures for democracy: reinvigorating local journalism and reengaging Americans in local politics. VoteBeat reporters embed for three-month stints in local nonprofit newsrooms that provide expert knowledge of their communities. In addition to providing critical nonpartisan coverage of election-related issues at all levels of government, VoteBeat seeks to revitalize political reporting at the local level.
In 2025, we responded to the infuriating influx of AI-generated slop in creative spaces with the following policy: Our Stance on GenAI. Given the significant developments in GenAI since last spring, we thought it was important to issue an updated statement and remind you where we stand. The TL;DR is that we’re more anti-GenAI than ever; please see below for our expanded policy for FTH 2026 and onward.
To start, let us firmly reiterate:
Generative AI has no place in FTH. It is not welcome here, under any circumstance.
Non-exhaustive list of unwelcome slop generators:
image generators like Imagen, Midjourney, and similar
video generators like Sora, Runway, and similar
LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and similar
vibecode generators like Copilot, Roo, Replit, and similar
audio generators like ElevenLabs, MusicLM, and similar
text editors like Grammarly that are known to be powered by LLMs
Starting this year, the following policies apply to all creators (including those in ROFL) and bidders, respectively:
For Creators
Participants found to have used generative AI to produce a fanwork, in part or in whole, for their bidder(s) will be permanently banned from participating in future iterations of Fandom Trumps Hate. This includes fan labor of all kinds.
We strongly advise (in FTH, but also more generally) that creators of all mediums keep some kind of work history, insofar as possible (we understand this may be more difficult for fan labor). You likely already do, intentionally or otherwise! Documenting your fanwork progress is one of the easiest ways to prove that your work is truly yours, should the need ever arise. To be clear, we don't require that you provide your bidder with intermediate stages of your fanwork—that is entirely up to you.
For Bidders
Participants who deliberately introduce any AI-generated materials into the fanwork creation process (see below for concrete examples) will forfeit any unfinished portion of the won fanwork and will be permanently banned from participating in future iterations of Fandom Trumps Hate.
This includes (but is not limited to):
giving a creator an AI-generated prompt (of any medium) (e.g. requesting a fanfic based on an AI-generated image, generating a fanwork prompt using ChatGPT, etc.)
requesting fan labor be performed on AI-generated material (e.g. beta-reading a slopfic, getting help with a vibecoded workskin, etc.)
requesting a fanwork (of any medium) that is intended to accompany AI-generated material (e.g. cover art for a slopfic, photo manips of AI-generated images, podfics of slopfics, etc.)
feeding creators' fanwork(s) into a generative AI model
We are keenly aware that since last year, existing beloved tools and workflows have had unasked-for generative AI features forced into them, with varying degrees of transparency about whether or not they can be shut off or excluded. Our ask is that all participants make an effort to avoid using features known to rely on generative AI in anything even peripherally auction-related. Familiarize yourself with the tools you work with and use your best judgement; if a new feature would make your fanwork trivially easy for someone without your skill set to create, it may rely on generative AI.
A Reminder:
The more generative AI intrudes into creative spaces, the harder it becomes to distinguish between slop and human-made work, even to a trained eye/ear. We absolutely encourage everyone to educate themselves on how to get better at spotting it. That said, it can be very tempting to over-correct and default to the assumption that anything you come across with certain characteristics is AI-generated. We ask that everyone strive to assume that your fellow FTH participants are operating in good faith. Not every piece of text containing em dashes* was generated with ChatGPT; not every video with a cool, improbable-looking effect was generated with Sora; not every piece of audio with a noticeable skip or glitch was generated with ElevenLabs.
Please be kind to each other. If you suspect your fanwork or prompt contains AI-generated material, please reach out to the mods via email so we can address situations on a case-by-case basis.
We recognize this policy may seem unusually rigid in comparison to our others; most aspects of FTH operate on an honor system, and in general we try to be as flexible as we can in our policies to allow for the best experience possible for all FTH participants. This, however, is something we are not willing to be flexible on. We ask that you trust we have given this serious consideration and respect that while we are always willing to answer clarifying questions, we are not open to debate on this topic.
Why do we care about this?
We understand that there can (still, somehow) be contentious debate around the use of generative AI, we know individual people have their own reasons for being in favor of it, and we recognize that many people may simply be unaware that generative AI comes with any negative impacts at all. Regardless, we are firm in our stance on this for the following (non-exhaustive) list of key reasons in no particular order:
Over the years, we’ve supported multiple environmental organizations doing important work to combat climate change, preserve wildlife, and advocate for renewable and sustainable energy policy changes. The increasingly massive computational demands of generative AI models are causing a spike in greenhouse gas emmissions, polluting the soil around data centers with hazardous e-waste, and gobbling up our already limited supply of fresh water (which we hear is critical to the survival of organic life or something). Using generative AI to produce a fanwork flies in the face of the work of every environmental organization we have supported to date.
negative, unregulated societal impact
Paramilitary-wannabes, among others, are leveraging AI to enable mass surveillance and commit unforgivable acts of domestic terror, primarily against already underprivileged groups. Using generative AI to produce a fanwork contradicts the efforts of all immigrant-justice related organizations we’ve supported to date.
Actual creative work is being increasingly devalued, leaving writers, artists, computer programmers and many others unemployed at a time when inflation is high and housing costs are out of control.
Use of generative AI is enabling students to avoid learning, and even reducing brain activity in people who use it in lieu of doing their own research using standard search engines (a valuable skill to develop in its own right). Having a less-educated populace with lower critical thinking skills paves the way for political manipulation used by fascists everywhere.
The companies responsible for forcing generative AI into all aspects of our lives are helmed by increasingly right-wing tech bros who lack the capacity to care about who or what they may be destroying in the name of alleged technological “progress,” and who leverage their over-inflated wealth and influence to effect major policy decisions (either via lobbying or by being directly hired to do so).
plagiarism and lack of artistic integrity
Most if not all generative AI models are trained on some amount of stolen work (across various mediums). They operate by taking massive amounts of data (much of which they do not have sufficient consent to use, in our opinion) and averaging it down into a uniform sludge. As a result, any output generated by these models is at worst plagiarized and at best extremely derivative and unoriginal. In our opinion, using generative AI to produce a fanwork demonstrates a lack of care for the craft, a lack of respect for the work of creators, and a lack of respect for your bidder and your commitment to them.
undermining our community-building impact
The pervasiveness and sheer volume of generated AI slop is skewing the perception of what kind of creative work is considered “polished” or “professional”, exacerbating existing harmful implicit and explicit biases along the way and leading to an increasingly narrow (and boring) scope of what constitutes valuable creative work. This is bad news for creatives and consumers of creative works alike.
One of the best things to come out of the auction every year—we can’t even call it a side benefit, because it’s so central to us—is that bidders and creators form collaborative relationships which sometimes even turn into friendship. Using generative AI undermines that trust and collaboration.
undermining the value of participating in FTH
Creators: bidders participate in Fandom Trumps Hate for the opportunity to prompt YOU to create a fanwork for them, in YOUR style with YOUR specific skill set. Any potential bidder is perfectly capable of dropping a prompt into a generative AI model on their own time, if they want something generic and soulless.
Bidders: creators participate in Fandom Trumps Hate to channel their creative energy into a force for good, enriching the available content in their fandom while supporting causes they care about. They are offering their time and talent to create something to YOUR specifications that YOU will love and appreciate. Any creator is perfectly capable of generating themselves an uninspired, milquetoast AI prompt to work from, if they wish.
Ideally, all who participate in FTH aim to play a role more significant than “unnecessary middleman.” We appreciate your taking the time to read this, and we hope some or all of our reasoning here resonates with you too.
The browsing period for this years FTH auction has opened! We have nine offerings for Tortall this year:
growstheoak - drawing/painting/etc.
merwinist - fanfiction (new or remix), fan poetry, meta/analysis, other written fanwork, 10k-20k.
lady-ragnell - fanfiction (new), 5k-10k.
Silver_Adept - fanfiction (new), 5k-10k.
Annika - fanfiction (new), less than 5k.
MimiHylea - fanfiction (new or remix), fan poetry, less than 5k.
Lelarin - fanfiction (new), less than 5k.
Arokel - fanfiction (new), 5k-10k.
dragonem - fanficion (new), fan poetry, less than 5k.
Bidding will run from Tuesday, March 3rd, 8am ET to Saturday, March 7th, 8pm ET.
Wattpad: pay me monthly 🤩 and we will remove ads for you. also free offline stories I guess as long as you keep paying me. but we have censorship so keep your kinks to yourself. what we don’t have is tagging systems, so good luck trying to find what you want or avoiding what you don’t want to read lol
meanwhile AO3: so everything is free in our house. read whatever you want offline. also no ads. no capitalism. no censorship. be as wild as you want with your fics. also we have tagging systems so you can search or avoid any specific tags, pairings, relationships or characters. whatever you want.
I’m sorry but if you’re still complaining, you don’t realize how good you have it with AO3, one of the last platforms on the internet that is free of capitalism and censorship. just artists and writers creating and sharing their works with the community for free and for fun. just authentic love between artists, their works, characters, stories and audiences.
