#fandom gives back

[imetyouonljpodcast]

I Met You On LJ → Episode #035: Symbiotic Relationships: An Interview with Christina Lauren

When you let women build a community, they like to do good things.

[tmnt-discourse]

If you’re thinking about giving today, consider some of these turtle-loving organizations!

Sea Turtle Conservancy receives 96.46 out of 100 for their Charity Navigator rating. Sea Turtle Conservancy is a Wildlife Conservation charity located in Gainesville, FL. The organization is run by David Godfrey and has an annual revenue of $3,034,146.

National Fish and Wildlife Foundation - Many of the thousands of species of fish and wildlife that inhabit this area are found nowhere else on Earth, including threatened and endangered species such as the Hawaiian monk seal, green sea turtle and Laysan albatross.

Turtle Island Restoration Network - Some of its numerous accomplishments include shutting down a Mexican sea turtle slaughterhouse — saving 50,000 sea turtles per year — and rescuing 15,000 coho and steelhead trout since 1990. Donations help fund the charity’s work for sea turtles, whales and marine wildlife worldwide.

Turtle Survival Alliance

Central Texas Tortoise Rescue

National Save the Sea Turtle Foundation

[smoakd]

The Olicity Bench

6 months ago the Olicity fandom raised over $7k to donate to Stanley Park through the Vancouver Parks Board. The proceeds will help the upkeep of the sea wall, bee gardens, and park maintenance. 

In recognition of this donation, the Vancouver Parks dedicated a bench to us and it will stay up for the next 10 years. The kicker? The bench is in Stanley Park which is the same location where Oliver/Felicity tied the knot! 

I love it when fandom gives back and I love it when we do good. This would never have happened if it wasn’t for Stephen and Emily. They are the reason why the Olicity fandom is so dedicated and passionate. So this is all because of them.

[notophelia]

Walk MS connects people living with MS and those who care about them.

I’ll be walking as Rey alongside a whole team of heroes from Costumers With A Cause! Please donate what you can to help us reach our goal in the fight against multiple sclerosis.

[fandom4rainne]

We Want You! (to donate to F4R)

We’re looking for your:

Stories

Poetry

Art

Original and fanwork submissions are welcome!

And don’t forget to donate to the fundraiser to get the compilation!

[smartpopbooks]

Happy Fic Friday!

Learn more about Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World here!

[giglybit]

DONATIONS: We have a small goal this year. Just $15k for ALSF. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see us go beyond that as in other years but without an auction, it will be difficult.  When we reach it, the Twilight fandom will have reached a magnificent milestone. $250,000 will have been raised for children's cancer research. The most impressive thing? It will have been done in only 21 days.  Yes, it's been 3 years, but the total time that FGB has actively run will only have been 21 days! 1 week in 09', 1 week in 10' and 1 week in 11'. That's impressive and the fandom should be proud.   Per Alex's Lemonade Stand's website.

Your donation of $50 will fund one hour of research.

A gift of $400 will fund one day of research.

A gift of $2000 will fund a week of research.

A generous gift of $8000 will pay for an entire month of research.

Breaking Dawn is the last movie. It would be great to go out with a bang :) I have to thank the wonderful Jenny, Jennifer and Sherry for their unending help as always.  xoxoNina

[llahk-blog]

twihard fan fiction

A complete stranger to online fan fiction sites, I did not know where to begin. So, obviously, I turned to Google, hoping that the search engine would point me in the right direction. After searching “fan fiction sites”, I found myself on www.fanfiction.net exploring the Twilight series. At first, I was overwhelmed. There was a seemingly endless amount of information. Not knowing what the most effective course of action would be, I decided to start by reading some of the work.

Arbitrarily, I clicked on a story written by “Stephaniie”. Not knowing much about Twilight, a pop culture phenomenon that I had declined to take part in, I began reading. Her prologue seemed nothing out of the ordinary. It seemed that she was setting the stage for a slash story revolving around the heteorsexual relationship between Edward and Bella. Not knowing very much about the original work aside from the fact that it is a vampire romance, I believe that the prologue was of Stephanie and not the original author….

It was when I reached the end of the piece that I saw her notes to the community. She posed a few questions and briefly explained her thought process and where she intended to take the story. At one point she uses the acronym “OOC”. After reading this, I once again felt a bit out of my element, I turned back to Google for some insight.  Apparently she had written Edward somewhat “out of character”. Having no concept of Edward’s character I was oblivious to it as I read.

More interesting than the story itself and the dialogue used in the community, were the links off of her page. Sixteen year old Stephanie is highly committed to her Twilight fandom and willing to talk about it pretty much everywhere (online). In addition to her personal website, Facebook, Twitter, email, and Photobucket account, Stephanie has also set up a Twilight Fanfiction Awards site (established August 2010) and a “Twific Tidbits Rec Site” (which includes interviews, reviews, and a place for members of the online community to go to make their own recommendations).

Stephanie and peers, are not just remixing the original concepts and characters from Twilight. They are participating in contests, evaluating each other’s work (she has more than 14k reviews) and perhaps, most interestingly, they too are taking up civic causes and working in a fashion similar to Dumbledore’s Army.

Following her link to thefandomgivesback.blogspot.com, this is what I found:

"A few months back, Rob DeFranco, owner of 211me and a well-known supporter of charities, created a global initiative called Twihards4Charity. The goal was simple. To unite the millions of Twilight fans and make a difference by supporting worthy causes.

With the help of nationally recognized businesses, his team commandeered the passionate generosity of Twilight fans to raise money for the relief efforts in Haiti. While T4C’s message is clear and its intentions are noble, Rob unfortunately doesn’t have the time to dedicate to it. We know better than anyone how much time, energy and manpower needs to be devoted to operate a fundraiser of this magnitude.

This is where Fandom Gives Back comes in…"

However, beyond four comments that commended the effort, nothing else followed the post. This led me to wonder, what is the relative success rate of these initiatives? To the far right of the page, the site boasts having raised more than $225k in the past year. Links to news articles indicate that the Twilight fans alone raised more than $80k in 2009. They expected 2010 to be even more successful and they were. But… how exactly does this work? If people aren’t commenting on the post, are they simply linking and reposting? How is the public informed of this and how do they go about spreading the message?

Then I noticed, Fandom Gives Back lists chairpersons and coordinators. But who’s operating fanfiction.net? There are far too many different works that are discussed on the site. It would be difficult to image that there is any single superfan behind it. Is anyone familiar with this and able to explain it to me?