Fen Spinner

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.

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. It was a social space with little to no rules until September 11th when events leading on for 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. All complaints were dismissed and critics were labelled negatively.

The name "Fen Spinner" comes from the Fennec Fox, 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

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

On September 11th 2020, Fen Spinner members decided to make the largest voice call on The Workshop, peaking at the channel cap of 25 simultaneous users. Moderators were invited to join, but declined. The '#voice-text' channel had a high activity of posts, some pen spinning related and some not. There was no prior precedent for what was allowed in the channel; memes and unrelated content appeared before between users, but not at the same rate.

The administrator (now retired) Coffeelucky demanded people leave the channel and into a private group call. This was ridiculed as the group call limit is 10 users, less than half the people present. Then the demand was changed to making and moving everyone to a new server, and the demands were ignored. Complaints about moderation were raised, particularly criticizing how enforcement targeted 'undesirables' rather than maintaining order. An offensive September 11 attacks meme depicting Fen Spinner about to fly into The Workshop was posted.

This continued until the early hours of the 12th, with no punishments appearing until after. It was then discovered The Workshop had given out punishments overnight, providing the generic "Spam" reason to bans, mutes and warnings. Notably V 0 1 D was banned for 7 days and Zxntle muted for 14 days. It took 2 weeks to ascertain the real reasons, with users decrying the punishments and criticizing the vague reasons, which were not explained until V 0 1 D was unbanned.

It was revealed that Zxntle was muted for replying "bruh" to Coffeelucky and V 0 1 D was warned (not banned) for the offensive meme. The ban reason was never released. The moderator abc quit and the administration falsely alleged that he had been harassed out. Evidence was provided showing he aggressed others and didn't receive abuse. DanyOn and Blizzardous left the server in protest of the administration, then moderator DarkT lied that Blizzardous broke rules himself and was unimportant to the community. Blizzardous had a clean record and had initially been offered the post of moderator instead of abc, but had declined the position.

With nothing resolved on The Workshop's end, and baseless lies made by the administration, a significant chunk of the active English-speaking community moved to Fen Spinner.

SpinFest 2021

Fen Spinner 1st Title screen

In November 2020, sign-ups for SpinFest 2021 opened. Fen Spinner submitted to the draft and, after India's community applied late, made it into the lineup. 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 as the SpinFest submission, a surprise to detractors who claimed a troll CV would be submitted. Edited by V 0 1 D, 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" 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:

• V 0 1 D
• Pall
• Allwars

Pall came top 32, Allwars top 16 and V 0 1 D top 8.

In addition, Mervo entered World Tournament B side from Fen Spinner.

Spin Awards 2021

Spin Awards 2021 Branding

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 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.

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 and prepare for the next round, such was the confidence that Final Boss would win regardless.

The Final Boss team members were as follows:

• V 0 1 D
• Nine
• Krogan (pseudonym of Barney)
• Vanilla
• ZeGentleman
• Saltient (substitute)

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 and rise of Spindys

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, making this comment yet another petty attack in both Coffeelucky's and PBoD's personal vendettas against the Fen Spinner Board.