Fen Spinner
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Fen Spinner is an English-speaking pen spinning community created on July 30th, 2020 by Varoza. After frequent disagreements with staff from The Workshop leading up to September that year, Fen Spinner became public and the membership greatly increased, claiming to be a new community separate from those typically associated with UPSB. The community hub is primarily a public Discord server with a secondary website, Fen Spinner Wiki. The community participated in SpinFest 2021 and 2023, as well as the Pen Spinning World Cup 2022, which it won.
History
Fen Spinner was established as a Discord server on 30 July 2020 to serve as a social hub for several members of the private team OPSD to interact with non-members. Initially characterized by minimal moderation and informal structure, the server functioned primarily as a casual hangout space.
Prior to 11 September 2020, a series of long-standing tensions began to reshape the server’s direction. Prior disagreements had emerged between members of Fen Spinner and the administration of The Workshop, with criticisms directed at the latter’s approach to moderation. Concerns included perceived heavy-handed enforcement, lack of responsiveness to community feedback, and inconsistent application of rules. Although these critiques were largely dismissed at the time, they contributed to the eventual dissolution of The Workshop.
The name "Fen Spinner" comes from the Fennec Fox[1], the mascot animal of the community. The animal is sometimes referred to as a "Fen" and sounded similar to "Pen", so the community name was chosen as a pun.
Split from The Workshop
On 11 September 2020, members of Fen Spinner initiated what became the largest voice call on The Workshop server, reaching the channel’s maximum capacity of 25 simultaneous users. Moderators declined invitations to participate. During the event, the #voice-text channel saw a surge in activity, with posts ranging from pen spinning discussions to unrelated content. Although memes and off-topic messages had appeared previously, the volume during this call was unprecedented.
The administrator Coffeelucky requested that participants leave the channel and instead use a group chat call, which was limited to 10 users—less than half of those present. This suggestion was met with criticism, and the proposal later shifted to creating a new server entirely. During the call, concerns were raised about moderation practices, particularly the perception that enforcement disproportionately targeted specific individuals rather than applying consistent rules. A meme referencing the September 11 attacks was posted in relation to the event.
The call continued into the early hours of 12 September. No immediate disciplinary actions were taken, but overnight, the administration issued bans, mutes, and warnings citing the generic reason of "Spam." Notably, Varoza was banned for seven days, and Zxntle was muted for 14 days. It took approximately two weeks for the community to uncover the specific reasons behind these actions. Many users criticized the vague and delayed explanations, which remained unclear until Varoza was unbanned.
The administration later clarified that Zxntle had been muted for replying "bruh" to Coffeelucky, and that Varoza had been warned—not banned—for posting the offensive meme. The exact reason for Varoza’s ban remains unknown. Following the incident, moderator abc resigned. The administration alleged that abc had been harassed, though screenshots circulated showing abc engaging in personal attacks against other users. In the aftermath, several active members left The Workshop in protest. Some moderators, including DarKT, described the departing users as "troublemakers," despite one of them having previously been offered a moderator position.
As a result of these events, a significant portion of the active English-speaking community migrated to Fen Spinner, which grew from approximately 10 members to several hundred.
SpinFest 2021
In November 2020[2], sign-ups for SpinFest 2021 opened. Fen Spinner submitted to the draft and, after India's community applied late, made it into the lineup[3]. Initial plans for a parody as the first video from Fen Spinner were quickly scrapped, with plans being drawn for a show of the community's ability. On April 12th 2021, after months of editing and filming, "Fen Spinner 1st" was released[4] as the SpinFest submission, a surprise to detractors who claimed a troll CV would be submitted. Edited by Varoza, it featured extensive 3D graphics and special effects, and featured 11 spinners.
Further CVs and World Tournament 2021
A collaboration video was planned for a crossover with LSPSC, but the project was suspended after LSPSC closed in July 2021.
On July 30th 2021 a minicombo collaboration video "1 Year of Fen Spinner"[5] was released, with videos from many of the active Fen Spinner members.
Fen Spinner expressed interest in joining the Pen Spinning World Tournament 2021, but a decision by the Pen Spinning Board of Directors was made to lump the community in with The Workshop and those still identifying as UPSB, with Padrace as manager and the community named as the English Speaking Pen-spinning Collective (ESPC). The rule itself currently only applies to Fen Spinner, and previous World Tournaments allowed new boards and boards split from other boards to sign up, famously Korean and German boards. Ultimately, a deal was made that allowed the combined English speaking community to enter more participants than defined in the rule book, with the following spinners entering A side from Fen Spinner:[6]
Pall came top 32, Allwars top 16 and Varoza top 8.
In addition, Mervo entered World Tournament B side[7] from Fen Spinner.
Spin Awards 2021
With no members of the Spin Awards committee wishing to step up and run the event, Fen Spinner volunteered and ran Spin Awards 2021, using a complicated multiple choice voting system and a restyling of the event to look more professional. Among other changes, the event was restructured to have an individual representative and individual advisor from each community to handle fair voting, nominations and communicating the event with their own communities.
Past Spin Awards had a limited set of representatives, typically limited to a friend group nature like the Pen Spinning Board of Directors, and the list of award recipients was chosen by the event organizer, Coffeelucky, after some consultation. This made the past Spin Awards controversial as often individual candidates were missed in nominations and voting, with a heavy bias towards popular figures.
The 2021 event also held voting in early 2022 in order to accurately receive combos later in the year from sources like the JapEn CV, which is typically released on Christmas day. Following this, the results compilation and editing process took until February 27th for the release of the awards, with some people such as Coffeelucky who had refused to assist the editing process complaining publicly about the internally communicated delays.
All three award videos were released in February, with modding awards being published as an image result due to the editing workload not being assisted by any other Spin Awards representative:
- Spinner of the Year 2021 | Spin Awards
- Collab of the Year 2021 | Spin Awards
- Spin Awards 2021 - Minor Awards
After the release of the videos, Fen Spinner announced stepping down from running Spin Awards, citing difficulties and political infighting bogging down the process of running the event. With no individuals willing to have Spin Awards handed off to them, the server was given to FPSB's Patchwork, and fell into disuse shortly after with the event no longer being held.
Leadership changes, World Cup 2022 and Pen Spinning Olympics 2022
In late 2021 a key change was Nine from UPSB joining Fen Spinner and soon making his way into the leadership of the community, with Allwars eventually departing the community for the second time. Originally Fen Spinner was to join with members of The Workshop to create a World Cup team, but the alliance was shaky and eventually broken by another Workshop conflict. The decision was made to form a new World Cup team consisting entirely of Fen Spinner members: Final Boss. Soon after these tensions resulted in Nine and Varoza being permanently banned from the workshop shortly after the tournament started.
Final Boss came 3rd in the 1st round of the Pen Spinning World Cup 2022, and defeated in all categories the strongest team from PSH: BlackMagic in round 2. In round 3, they defeated the rival team they originally split away from before the tournament: The Five Fingers of Sublime Pen, captained by Padrace. Eventually, they would defeat JEB's Eastern Reunion in the final round in all categories, winning the World Cup. The team's victories were particularly crushing as Final Boss won 14/15 round points, only losing a single battle in the event. The single lost battle was controversial, as Krogan was suggested to freestyle and troll his opponent on purpose while preparing for the next round, such was the confidence that Final Boss would win regardless.
The Final Boss team members were as follows:
ZeGentleman, the winner of the PSUK beginner's tournament, was notably only a 1 year prodigy spinner. He was swapped out for Saltient after round 2.
In the Pen Spinning Olympics 2022, Fen Spinner members Reboot and ZeGentleman entered the power category, with Reboot placing 1st and ZeGentleman 3rd. Barney entered the Wipers category as "KyorYuuNa", coming 4th place after not submitting for the final round.
Spinfest 2023, the rise of Spindys and fall of The Workshop
The second official CV of the board, FEN 2ND | Spinfest 2023 was released on June 25th, 2023, with a strong roster comprising almost all of the Final Boss team members and other Fen Spinner members.
On its release the manager of the Spinfest Twitter account, Coffeelucky, shared it with a caption stating that the video had "Excessive bright flashing lights" advising people not to watch it. In fact, the CV had been screened to a member with photosensitive epilepsy beforehand and confirmed not to have any adverse effects before release.
During this period the new community Spindys began to gain traction. Tilt, a Fen Spinner member for several years had started a YouTube channel that attracted many new spinners to the hobby. With the decline in activity in The Workshop, that same activity moved over to Spindys, with Fen Spinner and Spindys cooperating for the English-speaking pen spinning community. The Workshop would later close for good on October 20th, 2024.
World Tournament 2025
Several Fen Spinner members entered the Pen Spinning World Tournament 2025:
Tilt registered as Spindys and Fen Spinner, coming 3rd place. Barney jokingly signed up under PSUKC, then Spindys under a fake name 'LimSeowon', coming top 8. Apple registered as VNPS and Fen Spinner.
Wiki
Fen Spinner Wiki is a MediaWiki site created as a replacement for the long-defunct UPSB Wiki in early 2021. Over time, this grew to become the largest pen spinning wiki project ever made, dwarfing the original UPSB projects and other competitors. In 2025 a new responsive frontend and homepage was added to the wiki as part of a wider rollout of updates to the site.
Notable members
References
- ↑ Wikipedia article on Fennec Foxes
- ↑ Tweet announcing sign-ups for SpinFest 2021
- ↑ Tweet showing Fen Spinner making it into SpinFest 2021
- ↑ Tweet of Fen Spinner 1st released to SpinFest
- ↑ 1 Year of Fen Spinner on YouTube
- ↑ WT21 Participants page on the website
- ↑ WT21 B side Participants on the website