Fandom Trumps Hate

Folks, we had a whopping eighty-nine people sign up to offer fan labor this year, for a total of ninety-four fan labor auctions, and the range of things on offer is nothing short of phenomenal. It’s truly an embarrassment of riches.

The one and only drawback of this incredible response is that potential bidders could easily get overwhelmed by the task of perusing all ninety-four of these offerings. That’s why this post exists! It’s designed to offer you a sampling of the amazing offers we have this year, and to help you find and connect to the fan labor auctions that appeal to you most.

What we’re giving here is an overview of the specific kinds of support and expertise that our fan laborers are offering. While almost half of our fan labor offers are open to any fandom at all, fifty of the offers are fandom-specific in some way. It’s also the case that some fan laborers have restricted the ratings level that they are willing to work at. You can find out these details by reading each offering post carefully, or you can preemptively limit which auctions you see by searching multiple tags at once (e.g. “fanwork: fan labor: culture picking” + “fandom: teen wolf” + “rating: explicit”) Our post on searching tags explains how to do this.

The majority of our fan laborers are offerings beta work (though some of them are also offering others things, too!) This includes everything from SPAG (spelling and grammar) through developmental editing, helping you work out the basics of your story structure. We have a number of professional editors of various stripes (find them here, here, here, here, and here, and we are pretty sure there were a couple more we couldn’t turn up, sorry!) We also have a lot of experienced and insightful people even though this isn’t their day job. We also have a fan laborer who specializes in helping non-native speakers of English with English-language fic, and someone with professional expertise in upgrading translated works “from ‘rough draft’ to ‘sounds like a native speaker,’“ both of which may be of special interest to non-native English speakers writing in English. Check out the beta reading tag to see them all!

Some of our auctions tagged “other” (rather than beta reading) are offers to help you build your story from the ground up. We have a developmental edit offer, an offer for brainstorming, for plot and structure beta, and for cheerleading. We also have a couple of podfic beta offers in the other category: a beta listener for podfics and an offer for podfic editing!

Many of our fan laborers are also offering culture-picking or expertise picking. The culture-pickers can help you capture the nuances of a particular geographical region or of some other kinds of subculture; the expertise pickers can provide with you an expert’s knowledge of some specific skill or craft, or an insider’s view of a particular profession, or simply the insight into a kind of lived experience you don’t have yourself but want some of your characters to have.

We have a wide range of culture pickers to advise on the culture and speech patterns of various places, mostly (but not exclusively!) on various parts of the Anglophone world.

We have several Brit-pickers (here, here, here, here, and here) including some who can offer specific insight into London (here, here) Oxford, or Durham.  We’ve got some Yank-pickers (thanks to HugeAlienPie for this term!): find them here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) We also have some experts in the culture and geography of New York City (here, here) and the American Northeast more generally. We have someone who can tell you about Los Angeles, and someone to advise on Illinois and the midwest more generally. We also have an offer for the rural US, one for the American South, and one for rural Alaska.

 Outside the Anglophone world, we’ve got an India-picker, a France-picker, and a Czech-picker. We’ve also got community insider perspectives for you on both goth subculture and riot grrl subculture.

In terms of necessarily second-hand cultural experience, we have someone who can advise on ancient Greece and Rome, someone who can help with Victorian/Edwardian period language as well as French ancien regime. and a Star Wars slang-picker!

Our expertise and experience pickers cover an amazing array of topics. We’ve tried to organize it into sections as best we could... But honestly, some of this defies easy categorization.

If you’re looking for an expert in religion and/or mythology, we have people to help you with Hindu mythology, Norse mythology, American Catholicism, Ashkenazi Judaism, (two of these, one specifically for Good Omens,) an expert in oral history in general, and a someone with a PhD in religion.

If you’re writing about characters struggling with mental health, we have a lot of people who can help with that! People with experience of depression (here, here),  anxiety (here, here, and here,) PTSD, and someone who can talk about bipolar. We have a couple people who can advise on being chronically ill (here and here.) We also have a professional counselor who can help with mental health topics.

If your characters work in a particular field or profession, or if your story involves professional expertise, our fan laborers have you covered! In particular, we have many people to help with educational settings: a couple of professors who can help you get the details right in your college or university AUs (here and here,) several current and former secondary school teachers (an English teacher,  a middle school teacher (who can also help with science education), and a special education teacher. We also have someone who went through Bible School and can advise on that setting.

We have a couple people who can help you with legal-picking here and here, and if you specifically want to know about family law, we’ve got that too! We also have someone who can help with the bar exam (writing about it, not studying for it.) As for medicine and physical health, we have an expert in several aspects of medicine, and a nurse with experience in trauma and surgery. 

As for other kinds of professional and work environment expertise, we have someone with experience of small tech companies, someone else who can advise about the publishing industry, and two people in the translation industry (here and here.) We also have someone who has worked as a personal assistant and two people who have worked in libraries (here and here.) We have two fan laborers who have worked in disaster response (here and here.) We have someone with a longtime involvement in theater who can also advise about other performing arts )  And if you’re looking for information about the paint industry, someone’s got you.

If you’re centering sex or relationships, we have many folks with experience in BDSM (here,  here, and here) including a trained dungeon monitor, and a couple of people willing to advise on polyamory/nonmonogamy (here and here.) We’ve also got someone with firsthand knowledge of sex work (including online sex work).

In terms of sensitivity reading for sexuality and gender identity, we have nonbinary folks willing to help you think about enby experience (here and here)  and ace folks who can advise on asexuality (here, here, here, and here.) We have trans folks offering to advise about their experiences here, here, here, and here.

Other experienced-informed readings available are for fat experience, for addiction recovery, for tattoos and body modification, and for celiac disease. And, for your kidfic needs, we have someone offering to help you with parent/child relationships, and someone who can help you create a realistic toddler character.
 

Are you writing about animals? Our fan laborers include a professional veterinary technician and two people experienced in working with farm animals (here and here.) We also have someone who can advise on service dogs in your fic, and someone else to advise on raising kittens.

We’ve got lots of experts in craft and other recreational sorts of things. (This is a broad and messy category, we know. Work with us, here.) We’ve got people who can advise on American team sports and someone who can advise on circus performance. We have fan laborers who have offered to advise on martial arts, various kinds of dance, guns, and tarot.  We have a cooking and baking expert, and someone who does gluten-free baking. We’ve got experts to advise you on calligraphy, knitting (or yarn crafts more generally), origami, and of course taxidermy.

Finally, if you’re thinking about world-building, we have a professional environmental sciences researcher who is excited to help you with sci-fi or fantasy worldbuilding.

And if you want someone to help you set up a Fanlore page or help run a fanworks challenge, we have that covered too!

fth2020offerings