iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

I think acknowledging that you probably couldn’t do much better makes you more… idk the word I want. Responsible, maybe. Kilby kept insisting she had all this experience running non-profits as she killed it and ruined the goodwill the community had left being a diva. Woof indeed.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Ate three bacon egg bagels this morning and just polished off chicken tenders and fries. God I’m both still hungry and so full. I wouldn’t wish stomach bugs on my worst enemy. You’re suffering even after you recover.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Back at work after recovering from getting a stomach bug being passed around. I am so hungry. So tempted to get like five breakfast sandwiches and just unhinge my jaw.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

In case anyone is interested, the wordmark on NaNoWriMo completely runs out next year. The one for National Novel Writing Month is good until 2031. Not that I really think they’d bother to sue for it at this point.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

I know I already compared this situation to the Colleen Ballinger debacle, but Kilby posting the #NaNoWriMo “state of the union” video to her personal channel instead of the program one has the same vibe as posting an apology video titled “hi” to an obscure side vlog channel.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

In its heyday, it raised money to build libraries and was actually engaged in community outreach both for the NaNoWriMo program and writing/reading in general. And then they made a lot of bad choices and changed hands to people like the interim director who, yes, is incredibly out of touch.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Related to what I’ve been discussing, calling a month of writing “The Month of Letters and Light” after what #NaNoWriMo originally called their nonprofit I think would be a funny fuck you to what it became.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Office of Letters and Light, rather. But yeah they changed the name to just NaNoWriMo and kind of lost the plot as far as the charitable side of it.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

So pretty much back in the day, it was on track to be a writing and literacy-based non-profit that did a lot of its community outreach via its flagship program. It even used to be called The Office of Letter and Light when they first became a non-profit. And then they fell off. Hard.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

The thing is, the org actually used to do charitable things as well. I took a look at the Wayback Machine to the site in 2005 when I first did it, and it talked about how that year they were raising money to building libraries in Africa. Now? Not so much.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Honestly with how many articles are coming out about it today it’s not surprising it seems like the news came out today! But yeah it was all a lot.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

It actually happened last night, March 31st by their local time. So the timing is only unfortunate because news takes time to spread.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Just checked the video Kilby posted about #NaNoWriMo on its actual YouTube page and comments are open. How brave.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

I mean going back to AI, ProWritingAid wasn’t even the worst; at least it was actually a writing tool. Did you see their other sponsor last year, the one that was nothing but a landing page and a logo that they sponsored NaNo? AI tech bro owned whatever the fuck it was supposed to be.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

To be fair (lol not really) the mod who was accused of grooming was their resident Discourse expert so acknowledging the forum at all would mean they had to acknowledge she existed as anything more than a concept, and we can’t have that. /very heavy s

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

A lot of things happened. The AI debacle, but there was also a number of things about how they handled the underage members of the community (including an ongoing accusation that a mod in charge of them was grooming them). So yeah, it’s a mess.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

This. Even accounting for that it was a local thing between friends at first, it ran for YEARS. I think the first year it opened to the public with a forum was 2002. Its format is a product of a different time. And honestly could have kept going if they didn’t nuke the trust out of the community.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

youtu.be/TR6NnjgeIIY?... This is the video in question. Tl;dr it’s a bunch of the interim director blaming the community for not supporting and donating enough.

youtu.be

The State of NaNoWriMo - A Community Update - March 2025

YouTube video by NaNoWriMo Kilby

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Plz appreciate these two they’re the lights of my life.

Image of a Maine coon cat and an orange cat laying together in a chair.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

I’m a minimum wage service industry worker and I still did at least the ten dollar minimum to get the halo, and often got the program shirt for the year as well. And yet they went from regularly getting multiple millions to capping at around $165k last year. Gee I wonder what the problem is.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

That is definitely the line that got me the most. So many of the people I knew through the program were low-income, on disability, or similar situations. They HAD no money to donate. While Miss Kilby Blades promoted fucking writer retreats in Italy.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

A lot of mine are old enough to have holes in them and probably could have been tossed, anyway. Like on the one hand clothing for the needy is always good and it’s not like they’d be wearing something that said “H*il H*tl*r” but I still kind of don’t wanna put them out in the world.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

If you haven’t already watched the video the interim director posted, she claims they rejected a bunch of other AI sponsorships that “could’ve kept them afloat.” Even if that were true, to what end? They’d already lost over 90% of their donations over the past few years.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Me re-reading the details of the #nanowrimo grooming scandal and just thinking about Colleen Ballenger’s “apology” video where she’s like “I’m not a groomer, just a loser.” Bothisgood.gif.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Not screenshots, but someone posted the text of the email and a summary of the video here www.reddit.com/r/nanowrimo/... There are bits and pieces of screenshots floating around the #nanowrimo hashtag here.

reddit.com

NaNoWriMo officially shutting down

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Reaching day four of the stomach bug. Ended up being sent home from work because even though I haven’t vomited since Saturday, a single, short rush had me exhausted. I need to sleep for about three weeks.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Yep, before they rolled the donation meter over they were only at, I wanna say about 165k for the 2024 season. That was a stretch goal in 2005 when I first participated. Now? That’s a concentrated donation picketing, not typical drop because of a bad economy.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Only thing better would be if the emails went directly to you. I long for a day when I can say “I’ve discussed this with myself and we’ve determined I’m not going to fire myself, have the day you deserve.”

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Yep, that was in the summary as well. And yeah, I ended up shutting it off after a few minutes because it was just awful. As far as free tho like. Yes? That’s the point? The program is free to participants. You didn’t need to pay them a cent. A lot of people had no income and couldn’t donate.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

From what I saw of a summary of the vid, Kilby even claims they rejected a bunch of AI sponsors that “could’ve kept them afloat”. Sure. And Umbrella Corporation can keep people alive.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Sorry, I realized after I said that it was a REALLY bad phrasing. I really just mean “it was literally kids barely old enough to be there.” It was also a “Christian teens” thread with a bunch of them only able to be on that, with no social media. So young teens, sheltered. It was gross.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Specifically a mod and their accomplice were said to be leading minors (not even “on the line” ones like seventeen, legit 13 year olds) to their fetish site. The org claimed no knowledge of it at all, and claimed they had no personal info on her when they finally reported it to the authorities.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

I haven’t watched the whole video yet, either, but I am so not surprised about the blame game. It’s all they’ve been doing the past two years.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

Welp, #NaNoWriMo is officially deceased. Can’t say I didn’t expect it, but it’s still a sad day to see. Here’s hoping all those efforts to start replacement programs weren’t in vain.

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Reposted by Joana (she/they)

I_AM_KUPO @iamkupo.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Add Kupo to all of your searches for moogle magic (Killing AI)

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

So apparently the Department of Labor was at my work yesterday (fast food restaurant). My friend asked me bc I’d been saying for months I was going to just send an itemized list of all the shit they do but nope, wasn’t me. Hopefully stuff actually happens. Pray for me, y’all.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

“AI is going to replace human artists and writers” Well what the fuck is this, Karen?

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Rick Desolate 🪦 | The D-Pad @ricdesi.dpad.fm · 28/02/2025

And to be so very clear, JKR has openly stated that the money she makes from Harry Potter (in all its forms, right now) goes directly to conservative and specifically anti-trans causes. Do not financially engage with Harry Potter. Don't even engage with it for free. It's a Faustian IP, do not.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Thanks, I was mostly curious because I found this out myself from their Charity Navigator page. It notes they’re delinquent on registering and “Please Note: In compliance with California Assembly Bill 488, we have disabled donations to this charity on our platform at this time.”

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Do you know if this means any donations they do receive right now could be confiscated/forcibly refunded? Last I looked, they still ask for them on their site.

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Jon Campbell @jon.camp · 25/02/2025

I wrote to all the sponsors of NaNoWriMo to make them aware of the delinquent status and to ask if they planned to continue to support a non-profit that's not allowed to accept donations and isn't filing taxes. Only ProWritingAid responded? Weird.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Just looked it up, them not being registered means they can’t get charitable donations! Excellent.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

So I looked up #NaNoWriMo on Charity Navigstor and looks like their delinquency finally caught up to them

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Pop Base @popbase.tv · 24/02/2025

1 year ago today, the infamous 'Willy Wonka Chocolate Experience' took place.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Cat didn’t wake me up at 4am for their morning food. Weird, usually he only leaves me alone if I’m visibly sick. …I really hope I’m not getting sick, I have Bangor Anime in two days.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Spent the day at work expecting the power to go out. If it gets any stronger we might be swept off to Oz.

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

Why do I go, you might ask? It started with spite. I read an awful series years ago and the author of it posted about how she went to conventions. I was like “Hell if she can do that, so can I!”

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Joana (she/they) @romancestarlight.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

Less than a week until Bangor Anime. This isn’t my first time tabling at a convention but as someone who gets anxious at the thought of talking to people I still have a mini freakout as one gets closer every time.

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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Please stop with the generative AI. It's garbage, theft, making us less capable. Image by www.nobodyssweetheart.com

"Stop forcing AI into fucking everything. Nobody asked for it. Everybody hates it."

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