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{{Community InfoBox
{{Community InfoBox
|name=Fen Spinner
|name=Fen Spinner
|image=
|image={{#setmainimage:FenlogoBlack.png}}
|country=All
|country=All
|language=English
|language=English
|founders=[[V 0 1 D]]
|founders=[[Varoza]]
|created=30th July, 2020
|created=30th July, 2020
|website=[https://wiki.fenspinner.net www.fenspinner.net]
|website=[https://wiki.fenspinner.net www.fenspinner.net]
}}
}}
'''Fen Spinner''' is an English-speaking [[pen spinning community]] created on July 30th, 2020 by [[V 0 1 D]]. 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.
'''Fen Spinner''' is an English-speaking pen spinning community founded by [[Varoza]] on 30 July 2020. It operates primarily through a private Discord server and maintains the '''Fen Spinner Wiki'''. The community emerged as a distinct group following disagreements between some of its members and the administration of [[The Workshop]] in September 2020.
 
Fen Spinner has participated in international community and competitive events, including SpinFest in 2021 and 2023. A team composed of Fen Spinner members, Final Boss, won the [[Pen Spinning World Cup 2022]].
 
==History==
==History==
Fen Spinner was originally created on the 30th of July, 2020 to serve as a hangout for several members of the private team OPSD to interact with non-members outside of the major public communities. It served as a social space with little to no rules until September 11th, when several events leading on for several months changed the server's direction. Numerous prior disagreements had taken place between Fen Spinners and the administration of The Workshop, criticizing The Workshop for heavy-handed moderation, ignoring community input and being selective about rules. The administration dismissed all complaints and labeled critics as ungrateful children.
===Formation and separation from The Workshop===
[[File:Fentember.jpg|thumb|200px|The September 11th 2020 call and the infamous "Fentember 11th" message]]Fen Spinner was established in July 2020 as an informal Discord server where members of the private team OPSD could interact with other pen spinners. It initially had a small membership and limited moderation.
 
The name refers to the fennec fox,<ref>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fennec_fox Wikipedia article on Fennec Foxes]</ref> the community's mascot. “Fen” was adopted as a shortened form of “fennec” and as a play on the word “pen.”
 
Relations between members of Fen Spinner and the administration of The Workshop became strained during 2020. Fen Spinner members criticized aspects of The Workshop's moderation, including what they regarded as inconsistent rule enforcement and insufficient responses to community feedback.
 
On 11 September, Fen Spinner members organized a voice call in The Workshop which reached the channel limit of 25 participants. Activity in the accompanying text channel increased considerably and included both pen-spinning discussion and off-topic posts. The Workshop administrator Coffeelucky asked participants to move to a smaller group call, prompting further disagreement about how the gathering should be accommodated.
 
Following the call, The Workshop issued several bans, mutes, and warnings for spam. These included a seven-day ban for Varoza and a fourteen-day mute for Zxntle. Participants disputed both the decisions and the explanations subsequently provided by the administration. Moderator abc later resigned, and several active members left The Workshop.
 
The dispute led more English-speaking pen spinners to join Fen Spinner. The server reportedly grew from approximately ten members to several hundred, establishing itself as a community separate from The Workshop and groups associated with [[UPSB]].
 
===Activities in 2021===
 
[[File:Fens1st.jpg|thumb|200px|Fen Spinner 1st Title screen]]Fen Spinner entered [[SpinFest 2021]] after sign-ups opened in November 2020.<ref>[https://twitter.com/Spinfest/status/1333090728273121280 Tweet announcing sign-ups for SpinFest 2021]</ref><ref>[https://twitter.com/Spinfest/status/1342137798065852416 Tweet showing Fen Spinner making it into SpinFest 2021]</ref> Its submission, ''Fen Spinner 1st'', was released on 12 April 2021.<ref>[https://twitter.com/Spinfest/status/1381843299435167745 Tweet of Fen Spinner 1st released to SpinFest]</ref> Edited by Varoza, the collaboration video featured eleven spinners and used three-dimensional graphics and visual effects.
 
A planned collaboration with [[LSPSC]] was discontinued when LSPSC closed in July 2021. On 30 July, Fen Spinner released the minicombo collaboration ''1 Year of Fen Spinner''<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QJPKzkpTmM 1 Year of Fen Spinner on YouTube]</ref> to mark the community's first anniversary.
 
Fen Spinner also sought to enter the [[Pen Spinning World Tournament 2021]]. The [[Pen Spinning Board of Directors]] grouped its entrants with The Workshop and UPSB under the name English Speaking Pen-spinning Collective, managed by [[Padrace]]. Fen Spinner was represented on the tournament's A side by Varoza, Pall, and [[Allwars]].<ref>[https://wt21.worldps.org/participants/ WT21 Participants page on the website]</ref> Pall reached the top 32, Allwars the top 16, and Varoza the top eight. Mervo represented the community in the B-side tournament.<ref>[https://wt21-b.worldps.org/participants/ WT21 B side Participants on the website]</ref>
 
[[File:SpinAwards2021.JPG|thumb|200px|Spin Awards 2021 Branding]]Fen Spinner organized Spin Awards 2021 after members of the previous committee declined to run the event. The format assigned a representative and an adviser to each participating community to assist with nominations, voting, and communication. Voting was conducted in early 2022 so that work released near the end of 2021 could be considered.
 
The results were published in February 2022 as ''Spinner of the Year 2021'', ''Collab of the Year 2021'', and ''Spin Awards 2021 – Minor Awards''. Modding results were released separately as an image. Fen Spinner subsequently withdrew from organizing the awards, citing workload and disagreements within the organizing process. Control of the event's server was transferred to Patchwork of FPSB, but no further edition was held until 2025.
 
===World Cup and Olympics in 2022===
 
[[Nine]] joined Fen Spinner in late 2021 and later became part of its leadership. Fen Spinner initially discussed forming a World Cup team with members of The Workshop, but the communities did not reach a lasting arrangement. Fen Spinner therefore entered the [[Pen Spinning World Cup 2022]] through a separate team named '''Final Boss'''.
 
Final Boss placed third in the opening round. It subsequently defeated BlackMagic of [[PSH]], The Five Fingers of Sublime Pen, and Eastern Reunion of [[JEB]], winning the tournament. The team earned fourteen of the fifteen available battle points.
 
The roster consisted of Varoza, Nine, Krogan (a pseudonym of [[Barney]]), [[Vanilla]], [[ZeGentleman]], and substitute [[Saltient]]. Saltient replaced ZeGentleman after the second round.
 
At the [[Pen Spinning Olympics 2022]], [[Reboot]] placed first and ZeGentleman placed third in the power category. Barney competed under the name KyorYuuNa in the wipers category and placed fourth after not submitting an entry for the final round.
 
===SpinFest 2023 and later developments===
[[File:Fen2nd.JPG|thumb|200px|FEN 2ND Title screen]]Fen Spinner released its second official collaboration video, ''FEN 2ND | Spinfest 2023'', on 25 June 2023. The video featured several members of the Final Boss team alongside other community members.


===Split from The Workshop===
During this period, the [[Spindys]] community grew through the work of Tilt, a Fen Spinner member whose YouTube content attracted new participants to pen spinning. As activity in The Workshop declined, Fen Spinner and Spindys became two of the principal communities serving English-speaking spinners. The Workshop closed on 20 October 2024.
On September 11th 2020, Fen Spinner members joined a voice channel in The Workshop and decided to make the largest video call on the server, resulting in a peak of 30 simultaneous users. Moderators of The Workshop were invited to also join in, but declined. The The Workshop's '#voice-text' channel had been scrolling at a dizzying rate of message and image posts, some pen spinning related and some not. There was no previous precedent for what could or could not be posted in the text channel; memes and unrelated content appeared many times before between users, just not at the same rate.


The administrator (retired as of 2021) [[Coffeelucky]] began demanding that people leave the channel and move everyone into a private group call. This was met with ridicule as the limit for group calls is 10 users, less than half the people present. Making matters worse the demand was changed to making and moving all 30 people to a new server, at which point the users of the voice channel started ignoring the demands.. The tone shifted to complaints about moderation, particularly criticizing how rules were enforced against people the administration did not like rather than being used to maintain order. An offensive meme was posted of the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks 2001 September 11 attacks] depicting Fen Spinner about to fly into The Workshop while UPSB was on fire next to it.
Several Fen Spinner members entered the [[Pen Spinning World Tournament 2025]], with their registered communities following their names:
* [[Tilt]] (Spindys, Fen) - 3rd Place
* [[Barney]] (Spindys) - Top 8
* '''Levia''' (Independent) - Top 16
* '''monsoon''' (PHPS) - Top 16
* '''Apple''' (VNPS, Fen)
Barney jokingly signed up under PSUKC, then Spindys under a fake name 'LimSeowon'. Fen Spinner member ProBloodBag participated as one of the judges for the event


The call continued until the early hours of the 12th, with no punishments appearing until after the voice channel was vacant. The day after it was discovered that The Workshop had given out punishments during the night, omitting reasons and instead providing the generic "Spam" label to bans, mutes and warnings. Notably V 0 1 D was banned for 7 days and Zxntle muted for 14 days. The reasons for the punishments took a further 2 weeks to ascertain, with users decrying the punishments and criticizing the administration on the reasons, which did not begin to be explained until V 0 1 D was unbanned a week later.
In the [[Pen Spinning Olympics 2026]], [[Barney]] would win in both the technical and infinity categories. ProBloodBag would participate as a judge for the Technical category.


It was eventually revealed that Zxntle had been muted for saying "Bruh" in reply to Coffeelucky and that V 0 1 D had been warned (but not banned) for the offensive meme being posted. The reason for the ban has never been given. In the process the moderator [[abc]] quit The Workshop, with the administration then falsely alleging that he had been harassed out, having received no abuse but having given abuse out to other users. Members DanyOn and [[Blizzardous]] left the server in protest of the administration, and moderator [[DarkT]] falsely claimed Blizzardous broke rules himself and was not a valuable member of the community. Blizzardous had a clean record and had initially been offered the post of moderator instead of abc, but had declined the position.
==Wiki==
Fen Spinner Wiki is a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki 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.


With nothing resolved on The Workshop's end, and baseless claims of harassment being made by the administration, a significant chunk of the active English-speaking community moved to Fen Spinner and other servers for socialization.
==Collaboration Videos==
* Fen Spinner 1st
* 1 Year of Fen Spinner
* FEN 2ND


===SpinFest 2021===
==Notable members==
[[File:Fens1st.jpg|thumb|200px|Fen Spinner 1st Title screen]]In November 2020<ref>[https://twitter.com/Spinfest/status/1333090728273121280 Tweet announcing sign-ups for SpinFest 2021]</ref>, sign-ups for [[SpinFest 2021]] took place, with a number of positions available for communities to enter. Fen Spinner was submitted to the draft and, after the mistake of India's community applying late, managed to make it into the lineup<ref>[https://twitter.com/Spinfest/status/1342137798065852416 Tweet showing Fen Spinner making it into SpinFest 2021]</ref>. Original plans for a parody video as the first major release from the Fen Spinner community were quickly scrapped, with ambitious plans being drawn for a genuine show of the community's ability. On April 12th 2021, after months of editing and filming, "Fen Spinner 1st" was released<ref>[https://twitter.com/Spinfest/status/1381843299435167745 Tweet of Fen Spinner 1st released to SpinFest]</ref> to the international community as the SpinFest submission, defying those who claimed a troll CV would be submitted to SpinFest. Edited by V 0 1 D, it featured prolific use of 3D graphics and special effects, and featured 11 spinners from the community.
* [[Varoza]]
* [[Nine]]
* [[Saltient]]
* [[Vanilla]]
* [[Tilt]]
* [[Reboot]]
* [[ZeGentleman]]
* [[Barney]]
* [[ProBloodBag]]


==References==
==References==
<references/>
[[Category:Pen Spinning Communities]]

Latest revision as of 08:25, 3 September 2026

Fen Spinner is an English-speaking pen spinning community founded by Varoza on 30 July 2020. It operates primarily through a private Discord server and maintains the Fen Spinner Wiki. The community emerged as a distinct group following disagreements between some of its members and the administration of The Workshop in September 2020.

Fen Spinner has participated in international community and competitive events, including SpinFest in 2021 and 2023. A team composed of Fen Spinner members, Final Boss, won the Pen Spinning World Cup 2022.

History

Formation and separation from The Workshop

The September 11th 2020 call and the infamous "Fentember 11th" message

Fen Spinner was established in July 2020 as an informal Discord server where members of the private team OPSD could interact with other pen spinners. It initially had a small membership and limited moderation.

The name refers to the fennec fox,[1] the community's mascot. “Fen” was adopted as a shortened form of “fennec” and as a play on the word “pen.”

Relations between members of Fen Spinner and the administration of The Workshop became strained during 2020. Fen Spinner members criticized aspects of The Workshop's moderation, including what they regarded as inconsistent rule enforcement and insufficient responses to community feedback.

On 11 September, Fen Spinner members organized a voice call in The Workshop which reached the channel limit of 25 participants. Activity in the accompanying text channel increased considerably and included both pen-spinning discussion and off-topic posts. The Workshop administrator Coffeelucky asked participants to move to a smaller group call, prompting further disagreement about how the gathering should be accommodated.

Following the call, The Workshop issued several bans, mutes, and warnings for spam. These included a seven-day ban for Varoza and a fourteen-day mute for Zxntle. Participants disputed both the decisions and the explanations subsequently provided by the administration. Moderator abc later resigned, and several active members left The Workshop.

The dispute led more English-speaking pen spinners to join Fen Spinner. The server reportedly grew from approximately ten members to several hundred, establishing itself as a community separate from The Workshop and groups associated with UPSB.

Activities in 2021

Fen Spinner 1st Title screen

Fen Spinner entered SpinFest 2021 after sign-ups opened in November 2020.[2][3] Its submission, Fen Spinner 1st, was released on 12 April 2021.[4] Edited by Varoza, the collaboration video featured eleven spinners and used three-dimensional graphics and visual effects.

A planned collaboration with LSPSC was discontinued when LSPSC closed in July 2021. On 30 July, Fen Spinner released the minicombo collaboration 1 Year of Fen Spinner[5] to mark the community's first anniversary.

Fen Spinner also sought to enter the Pen Spinning World Tournament 2021. The Pen Spinning Board of Directors grouped its entrants with The Workshop and UPSB under the name English Speaking Pen-spinning Collective, managed by Padrace. Fen Spinner was represented on the tournament's A side by Varoza, Pall, and Allwars.[6] Pall reached the top 32, Allwars the top 16, and Varoza the top eight. Mervo represented the community in the B-side tournament.[7]

Spin Awards 2021 Branding

Fen Spinner organized Spin Awards 2021 after members of the previous committee declined to run the event. The format assigned a representative and an adviser to each participating community to assist with nominations, voting, and communication. Voting was conducted in early 2022 so that work released near the end of 2021 could be considered.

The results were published in February 2022 as Spinner of the Year 2021, Collab of the Year 2021, and Spin Awards 2021 – Minor Awards. Modding results were released separately as an image. Fen Spinner subsequently withdrew from organizing the awards, citing workload and disagreements within the organizing process. Control of the event's server was transferred to Patchwork of FPSB, but no further edition was held until 2025.

World Cup and Olympics in 2022

Nine joined Fen Spinner in late 2021 and later became part of its leadership. Fen Spinner initially discussed forming a World Cup team with members of The Workshop, but the communities did not reach a lasting arrangement. Fen Spinner therefore entered the Pen Spinning World Cup 2022 through a separate team named Final Boss.

Final Boss placed third in the opening round. It subsequently defeated BlackMagic of PSH, The Five Fingers of Sublime Pen, and Eastern Reunion of JEB, winning the tournament. The team earned fourteen of the fifteen available battle points.

The roster consisted of Varoza, Nine, Krogan (a pseudonym of Barney), Vanilla, ZeGentleman, and substitute Saltient. Saltient replaced ZeGentleman after the second round.

At the Pen Spinning Olympics 2022, Reboot placed first and ZeGentleman placed third in the power category. Barney competed under the name KyorYuuNa in the wipers category and placed fourth after not submitting an entry for the final round.

SpinFest 2023 and later developments

FEN 2ND Title screen

Fen Spinner released its second official collaboration video, FEN 2ND | Spinfest 2023, on 25 June 2023. The video featured several members of the Final Boss team alongside other community members.

During this period, the Spindys community grew through the work of Tilt, a Fen Spinner member whose YouTube content attracted new participants to pen spinning. As activity in The Workshop declined, Fen Spinner and Spindys became two of the principal communities serving English-speaking spinners. The Workshop closed on 20 October 2024.

Several Fen Spinner members entered the Pen Spinning World Tournament 2025, with their registered communities following their names:

  • Tilt (Spindys, Fen) - 3rd Place
  • Barney (Spindys) - Top 8
  • Levia (Independent) - Top 16
  • monsoon (PHPS) - Top 16
  • Apple (VNPS, Fen)

Barney jokingly signed up under PSUKC, then Spindys under a fake name 'LimSeowon'. Fen Spinner member ProBloodBag participated as one of the judges for the event

In the Pen Spinning Olympics 2026, Barney would win in both the technical and infinity categories. ProBloodBag would participate as a judge for the Technical category.

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.

Collaboration Videos

  • Fen Spinner 1st
  • 1 Year of Fen Spinner
  • FEN 2ND

Notable members

References

  1. ↑ Wikipedia article on Fennec Foxes
  2. ↑ Tweet announcing sign-ups for SpinFest 2021
  3. ↑ Tweet showing Fen Spinner making it into SpinFest 2021
  4. ↑ Tweet of Fen Spinner 1st released to SpinFest
  5. ↑ 1 Year of Fen Spinner on YouTube
  6. ↑ WT21 Participants page on the website
  7. ↑ WT21 B side Participants on the website
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