Hey everyone! Pride and Positivity 2020 will wrap up tonight, though if you're working on a story that you think will be done soon but after the deadline, just tell me and I'll still donate when you publish it.

I'm really happy to see so many people participate, with 49 stories in our group. From the start, I accepted stories that weren't specifically written for the event, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how many people wrote fics specifically for this, including first-time authors and authors who haven't published here for years. Thank you, Monochromatic, for signal boosting this, along with everyone else who nudged authors they knew or just found on the front page to participate.

Between the $20 per fic, Lord Camembert's $10 match, his company's $10 match, and the other donations people have informed me about, we've donated about $1720! And there's still this week's Camambert match and people who haven't given me a charity to donate to yet. Overall, I'd call this a huge success on the donation side.

There was another purpose behind this event, though. Early June, there were reports that a man who attacked Black Lives Matter protestors with a sword was in fact a brony, and a well-known one at that. I made a blog post condemning his actions, but there was a blog post from another user that supported him. Other more well known authors then condemned the sword brony and the blog supporting him, and also took this opportunity to call out the negative aspects of the brony fandom. The comments were a mess, but so many authors speaking out made me hopeful. I started to realize we were at an inflection point and things were going to blow up soon.

With all this happening in Pride Month, I thought it was important to show the people who would be scared by the unsavory side of the fandom acting up that there were plenty of people to support them. That led to the idea of donations for each fic added to this group, to make it so just participating would be helping out in the real world. In the time since, the brony fandom has indeed blown up, more than I would have imagined, but things also feel better. I feel like the side of the fandom opposed to bigotry is winning out. People are choosing to stand up and speak out. I hope the Pride and Positivity event played some small part in making LGBT+ people and allies feel comfortable enough to stay in the fandom and assert their place in it.

Thank you, everyone! Hopefully when we do this next year, we'll be in a better place than we are now.

Thank you, Sigma, for organizing and for donating. It was an honour to be able to take part.

7272328
Thank you for organizing this. Like, this was an honor to participate in and even more so upon reading the backstory for all this.

Thank you for hosting this! You're a very swell individual who I say nice things about on occasion!

I had a lot of fun writing my first real fanfic in like a dozen plus years. Glad it got to raise money for good causes.

Could I maybe add my story "I've Been Thinking" to the Pride and Positivity event, or did I just miss the deadline?

7272674
You're still good.

7272691
Thanks, good to know. Is there some sort of external website I have to go to submit it, or do I just say on this thread "Hey, I wanna submit my story"?

7272693
There are buttons on both your story and in this group to add it to the group, but I'll just do it for you.

I have set it so only I can add stories to the group now. If you're one of the people who contacted me about adding a story later, then message me when it's done so I can add it to the group.

And here's catching up; $520 from me, $520 from my employer for $1040 to the Transgender Law Center. Thanks for your contributions, everyone!

7273222
Sorry, that picture shows $120 or $250 donated, and neither matches the $520 you mentioned. Not doubting you, just confused about the image.

7273366
I was referring to the total over the course of the event; the $250 figure is for the entirety of July; my other comments have the receipts for each of the other donations.

7273413
Ah, OK, got it.

7273222
finally, some good fucking content.

Question: Is a similar event going to happen this year?

7507275
That would be very fun. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have the chance to participate this year, but I'm always around to read.