As you all know by now, February 15, 2020 was the sixth annual International Fanworks Day, which the OTW marked with a series of challenges and activities for fanworks consumers and creators in the preceding week and on the day itself. We wanted to take this opportunity to thank everybody who participated through our social media channels, on our websites or in any other way, and to pick out some highlights of the celebrations. We saw many returning participants and plenty of newcomers to our IFD 2020 activities, and we are grateful and humbled by the growing response this celebration continues to receive.

So, what did we get up to?

Last month, we issued an #IFDrabble challenge with the prompt, ‘characters discovering fanworks about themselves’. We reblogged selected responses across our social media from February 8 - 15, but you can find many more at the tag we created for IFD 2020 on AO3.

Meanwhile, Fanlore celebrated IFD with their third annual Fanlore Challenge, posting daily editing challenges throughout the week leading up to February 15. Visit Fanlore’s IFD 2020 Challenge page to find out more about what they did, and stay up-to-date with Fanlore on their main page if you'd like to contribute to their ongoing editing work.

Next up, we held a Feedback Fest. Posting shortly before IFD, we asked fans to show some love for their favorite fanworks and creators by posting recs, leaving kudos, and droppings comments online. We also asked fans to respond to the question: ‘What’s your favourite fanwork trope?’ You can find the answers, along with a ton of exciting fanworks recs, in the #IFD2020 tag on Twitter and the #IFD2020 tag on Tumblr, too.

And finally, the OTW hosted our now-traditional chatroom games session round-the-clock on February 15. The live 29-hour party saw two new games introduced this year, Circle Stories and Don’t Get Me Started, to join our many existing favorites (find the rules to all of them in our ‘It’s IFD!’ post). Also new this year, AO3 International Fanworks Day is now its very own fandom! Thanks to our moderator Eliot from Policy & Abuse and Tag Wrangling, we have the content created by participants during the Games and Fan Chat available to be viewed under the pseud MODEliot on AO3. We’ve picked out two of the highlights to share with you guys below, and would like to say one final thank you to everybody who returned to hang out with us this year, as well as welcoming those of you who dropped in for the first time. The moderators had a blast and we can’t wait to be back again next year!

Chatroom highlights

From Poetry Round Robin, hosted by Izzy:

The library never really burned down

because all of the works were digitized

Instead the librarian went to town

Where her presence was by all greatly prized

She taught the villagers both small and large

To take their words and make them flower

Do what you please when you’re in charge

Because personal stories have the most power

The people took up keyboards, notebooks, pens

To spread the words of adventure

They shared their stories with their family and friends

And their stories no person could censure

So the digital library filled with poems and prose

With an ending that left readers on their toes.

From Circle Stories, hosted by C. Ryan Smith (find the end of the story on AO3)

That house is haunted, but not for the reason you probably think. Yes, it is haunted by what we call 'teenagers.' But these are not your average teenagers, no sir, they all have special abilities, they mostly use them to mess around though… Special abilities, to be able to transcend into the "spiritual" plane - we did say the house was haunted, didn't we?

These super powered teenagers also liked to help little old ladies cross the street, but invisible so no one knows it's them. They usually interacted with the spirits of little children and animals who left the mortal world too early. Giving them a place in their home, just to 'adopt' them in the end.

Each dia de los muertos there’s a huge line outside so they end up throwing a house party that invites the townspeople to come see their deceased relatives and pets.