To paraphrase Lin Manuel Miranda: HellohelloHELLO Nine Lives! We are one week from the Season 7 premiere. Can you believe it? We are so ready for this hiatus to be over. More Carol, more Daryl - give it to us!! But before that happens, we have some stuff to go over.

You may have noticed that the admin team has been rather quiet lately. Some of this has been life, but much has been an ongoing and very in depth discussion about the current state of the Nine Lives archive and its potential future. I think the best way to kick this off is to address the proverbial elephant in the room. About a month ago, there was an incident over a story posted on NL that led to such a rash of inexcusable abuse that FM deleted all of her social media accounts to escape it. It also led to a deep discussion behind the scenes with all admins pondering what we wanted, why we were here and putting our work into Nine Lives, and if the archive was worth continuing. We’re not going to get into the nitty gritty of that discussion because that isn’t the point of this post. What you need to know is the result of that conversation: Nine Lives is here to stay, but we’re making some changes.

One of those changes is our Member of the Month event. Honestly, it’s not getting a lot of participation these days, but a lot of work goes into its current incarnation. Taking into account suggestions FM received from site members last month along with some of our own ideas, we’re doing a full revamp of the Member of the Month feature. Part of this revamp will include resetting the previous winners list so that everyone can participate and be open for the accolades available in MOTM 2.0, as well as changing how the process is run behind the scenes and what is awarded to our winners. This new format will premiere on January 1, 2017 as part of our 3rd anniversary celebration. In the meantime, the Member of the Month feature is officially closed, effective immediately.

Now onto part 2: In September, we announced our plans for a fundraiser and asked for members’ votes on when we should hold it. The prevailing vote was for October and we figured the week of the S7 premiere would be the perfect time to host it. And then shit hit the fan, FM went off the grid, we all took time to regroup as a team and as participants of the TWD/Caryl fandom, which frankly threw our timetable of events into a tailspin while we figured ourselves out. So, we’d like to thank everyone who participated and apologize, because we will not be hosting a fundraiser this week.

Our fundraiser is coming though. We have what we feel is a really fun plan in place that we hope everyone is going to enjoy during our fundraiser. Mark your calendars: the fundraiser itself is going to run from November 1-15 and will be open to all who would like to participate and offer their support to the Nine Lives Archive. We’ll be posting the full fundraiser details, as well as why we’re fundraising and what our hopes/dreams/plans are later this week. So stay tuned for more details headed your way!

As always, if you have any questions, comment here or drop a private message to FM, Ikkles or Subs. Thank you and Caryl on!