Four years, folks. Four exciting years since Ravenesque had the original idea to create a Caryl-only fanfic archive. Four years since we became an island in a sea of fandom madness. Four years of community-building, fabulous stories, experiments (some more successful than others), occasional drama, and camaraderie. It's been a wild ride, and we're glad you've been around to share it with us.

So how do you celebrate four years? Is that the tin anniversary? Paper? (that would be appropriate.) Egg salad? Glitter?

We've already announced the next challenge, with prompts designed to get your creative juices flowing, but the other thing we're really excited about is THE RETURN OF MEMBER OF THE MONTH!!

The point of taking Member(s) of the Month offline and revamping it was twofold: 1) to encourage community involvement, and 2) to eliminate the perception of MOTM--valid or not--as a popularity contest. (We didn’t intend for that revamp to take more than a year, but--it did. Sorry.)

It's a whole new game this time around: whereas before we had two members of the month, one author and one reviewer, under the new system there will be only one per month. Whereas the Members of the Month were previously selected by nomination by other members, now they’ll be randomly selected from among those Nine Lives members who in the previous two months have either 1) published or updated a story, or 2) contributed at least 5 reviews.  

The selection process is all automated now, thanks to the stellar tech skills of silversundown, fairiesmasquerade, and meeshie. The list of eligible members is generated automatically: all the admins have to do is push a button and the system randomly spits out the name of one member from that eligible group. Then we get in touch with that person, ask them a series of nosy questions related to fanfic and our favorite ship, and have one of our fabulous graphics team members make them a spiffy banner to go in their member profile!  Winners are then eliminated from the pool for the next 12 months, after which they’ll be eligible for selection again.

We'll be announcing the first MOTM selected under the new system on January 28th. Going forward, the MOTM will be announced on the first of the month, like they were before.

Like with MOTM, we continue to try to find ways to improve the site. As always, if there's any improvements or changes you'd like to see made to the site, let us know! Sometimes we find they're not technically possible to accomplish (as we learned a couple of times this year), but we'll always try to make things work better for you.

So - happy anniversary, bring on the champagne! We're so glad you're here with us.