Fandomy things

[frith_in_thorns]

I signed up to Fandom Giftbox! My extremely bare-bones entry is here. I am not good at writing sign-ups, I can never think of any details until it's too late.

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In other fandom-related topics, am I really the only person completely avoiding signing up to any exchange which has the thing where people submit miles and walls of freeform tags and then you're supposed to find about 20 out of the thousands and somehow match on them? I hate that so much. I hate how it forces everyone into being ~quirky~ and I hate how utterly overwhelming it is. It's stressful enough for me that it completely negates the potential fun of that exchange. I really hope the trend eventually dies down again.

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Still posting Cascade (DMBJ; Liu Sang gen h/c) - I'm on chapter 5 now, and it's getting a much better response than I was expecting, so that's lovely. It's both alarming and fun to be posting as I write it rather than having a mostly complete draft and a strict update schedule. Might do this again? Maybe?

Comments

[clevermanka]

I don't even understand the rules of that type of exchange so no, you're not the only person. 😆

Yay for feeling good about a story you're posting!

[frith_in_thorns]

I think the people who enjoy them really enjoy them, but unfortunately it's becoming the default for all AO3-run exchanges now, in part I'd guess because everyone else is doing it. And I just wish there would be a bit more variation!

[sheron]

I ignore most of the quirky tags because they don't really interest me much. For me it's not really that different from a ton of AO3 fic that just isn't to my tastes: ignore ignore ignore. But I'm sorry it feels overwhelming.

[frith_in_thorns]

Unfortunately, when I've signed up purely sticking to the non-quirky tags I never get matched. If it was an optional field I wouldn't mind so much, but I HATE that it's a matching one!

[sheron]

I'm curious if you had that matching problem with the request or offer side?

This may be subjective to my own experience, but I've found that lately exchanges have moved to a 'participant figures out how to be matachable' scheme. The mods expect that you will find who you can be matched to and offer at least the tags that one person has requested, or have your signup deleted. This isn't something I remember seeing much years ago (but granted I haven't participated in as many exchanges until recently). What this means for me personally, especially with fandoms on a smaller side, is that I essentially pick whether I want to write for 2-3 people, and offer the tags they offer. As for requests in these freeform exchanges, I try to give a few "safety" generic ones (e.g. "Soulmates AU") that anyone could match and use as a springing board, and then use tags to indicate the general 'feel' of stories I want more than anything I want specifically. I don't think as a writer I'm able to rigidly stick to a prompt anyway, it always gets away from me, though the basic idea underlies the final story.

I also don't mind going to pinch hits because that means whoever picks up my request likely wants to write it.

IDK if you're already doing something similar, but essentially reducing the field of potential matches for myself this way (to a few people who I could match to write for) significantly reduces the tagset for me. I don't think I even look through the entire tagset anymore (except maybe for the hurtcomfort exchange, for inspiration :D ) because it's too much stuff for me, and stuff I'm not even interested in. Sometimes I'll control+F through the tagset for keywords I might be interested in.

There's an interesting dance now, when you nominate prompts and see if anyone else nominated prompts or relationships for your pairing, and thus that there might be other people willing to "interact" with your signup. It's like a courtship dance, where you request things and see if new signups appear offering things in the same vein.

Right now though, I'm passing on an AU Exchange that's currently going on because even though the tags are interesting I know I won't be matched with anyone I can write for. There's an AU Prompt Fest that's going on (you post your prompt, no guarantee of a fill) that might be fun though.

[frith_in_thorns]

But then I just don't see the point of doing an exchange at all if you're having to do all that work of gaming someone to match with!

[sheron]

I mean you don't have to do it, you can have someone game to match with you :) But it seems to be a recent trend I've seen where you have to make yourself matchable or you aren't eligible for participation. I'm not saying I'm a fan! It can vary, depending on who else is participating.

I also think this is mostly true for multifandom exchanges only. For single fandom, I think the 'old' rules still apply.

[glinda]

I’m terrible at writing signups, I often get halfway through the process and nope out because following all the arbitrary requirements just sucks the joy out of it for me.

I also avoid those kind of exchanges, though for different reasons. They make me feel like someone has conflated prompt fests and exchanges both of which I enjoy - I probably actually prefer prompt fests as I find them lower stress - but are very different things to run and take part in. (Also it feels like the mods are making a rod for their own back, and I’m unsurprised when there’s 20 initial pinch hits.)

[leesa_perrie]

That type of exchange sounds awful! I wouldn't want to enter something like that either!! But then, atm, I'm only really doing Fandom Giftbox and the new Christmas one whose name I can't remember offhand, as they are very low key on the participation side! (Why is it that whenever I type or say 'low key' in a conversation, I think of a certain god of mischief? Marvel, you have a lot to answer for, lol!)

[elenothar]

I admire anyone who can manage to write a complete draft of a multi-chapter fic without starting to post. Possibly it's because I don't write super fast, so I'd spent several months not posting anything if I did that, but I usually end up writing a couple of chapters ahead and then posting the first one. Of course, then I feel somewhat stressed about actually finishing in a way I wouldn't if I weren't already posting (and hoping desperately I don't need to go back and edit somethin in/out later), but that doesn't seem to stop me...