Greetings and Salutations, Carylers! Happy Valentines Day to one and all!

Tonight is the night - The Walking Dead returns to our screens to finish out Season 6! The energy is high & we're all super anxious to find out what's going down with our favorite characters. (Is Daryl ever going to get back to Alexandria?! Is Carol going to wake up and kick Wolf ass? SO MANY QUESTIONS!)

We felt that now would be a good time to toss out a few important reminders:

• THE SHOUTBOX: We've been pretty chill about the shoutbox lately, but that's coming to a halt, so everyone needs to reacquaint themselves with the Shoutbox Guidelines. In particular - no spoilers in the shoutbox for 24 hours after an episode airs and remember that the shoutbox is not a chat room. Which leads me to...
• THE CHAT ROOM: The chat room is open 24/7 for you guys to use! Spoilers ARE allowed, so if you want to stay spoiler-free, you may not want to hang in there during/right after an episode. 
• OTHER CARYL EVENTS: There are a lot of other Caryl-related groups floating around the interwebs and in general, we support everyone as long as they don't actively promote hate towards other characters/actors. If you know of an event or challenge another group is putting on & you want to advertise it on Nine Lives, please send a PM to one of the admins with the details and we will post it under Events.
• All of these and more can be found in the FAQ, which we encourage everyone to read and refresh themselves with the ins and outs of Nine Lives.

In addition to that, we have something new for our Featured Story of the Week! The blue and red ribbon icons that denote current and previous Featured Stories will continue. However, the amazing unofficial-but-totally-official-NL graphics artist untapdtrasure has created a banner for our FSOTW winners! This will now be gifted to the authors to post on their Featured Story forever and ever. We'll also be sending this to all the previous FSOTW authors to put on their Featured Stories, so everyone who has had a story Featured will get this!

We will be sending the link to the banner to all the previous Featured authors over the next week via PM. Current and future Featured stories will have the banner added by the admins when the Featured announcement goes out every Monday.

That's all the official business we have today... So now, onto something a little more fun! February 15 (yes, tomorrow) is International Fanworks Day! This was started just last year by the Organization for Transformative Works (aka the folks behind AO3), quickly gained tranction with support from folks like The Mary Sue and The Daily Fandom ... and we thinks its pretty freaking awesome ourselves. Like OTW said in their initial press release last year:

"Across the web, thousands of fan-created and fan run archives can be found that host works in text or multimedia formats. Fans also create scores of offline fanworks whether in cosplay, fan crafts, or live productions."

This is a chance to show our thanks and appreciation, not just for fanfic writers, but everyone: artists, designers, graphics makers, gif creators, meta writers, poets, video editors and cos players. Fandom is everywhere, even if mainstream media wants to make fandom seems silly, kooky, abnormal and rare. Caryl fans are everywhere - here, tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Deviant Art, Instagram, YouTube, spoiler sites and a hundred other places. 

So what are we at Nine Lives doing for International Fanworks Day? It's really very simple:

Share The Love

Here's how:

• There are 181 authors on Nine Lives. Chances are that (unless you're serpetinefire, lol) you haven't read everything the archive has to offer. You can find the full list of authors here. Pick someone who haven't read yet & get reading! Leave them a review and let them know what you liked about what you just read and how much you appreciate their contribution to the Caryl fandom.
• Flood our tumblr and Twitter accounts with recs for your favorite stories, fan art, graphics, metas, video montages, whatever. We'll share them for the world to see. 
• Create something yourself - even if you don't write! Compile a playlist of your favorite songs that give you Caryl feels, do a rec list of your own, show off your best TWD Halloween costume. (Even walkers need love!) 

There are a hundred ways to celebrate International Fanworks Day. Make it a party! Just remember to Share the Love to everyone who contributes in their own ways to fandom life and culture.

Forward ho, my friends, and as always: Caryl on!