I'm with you now!

[pocketmouse]

OK, I finally figured out the mental block on what you guys are talking about with the relationship tags. Between that and getting rid of the request restriction above, I think I'm on the same page as everyone else now. It's the nominations step that's been messing up my brain, but I'm back on track now. Man, pictures would've made this a lot clearer.

OK, so scratch half of the last post, basically. Shorter version:

* No more unlimited requests or offers. The max on AO3 is 10; so now the max for the challenge will be a firm 8, without the option to be matched a second time for another 8 prompts.

* Nomination fields: People nominate fandoms and relationships, and will match on same plus freeforms (media type). The tagset will then consist of fandoms, relationships, and freeforms that are the media types. (Am I missing anything here?)

* Crossovers: sound possible but I'm waiting for clarification on how they work. But I'm not expecting this to be an issue.

* Requests: There's an option to make requests visible from the get-go. Do people want this option turned on? It theoretically helps for people who want to do madness-style treats near the end, but that didn't exactly pan out last year.

* Tagsets - if we do it on AO3 we would have to also make room for a nominations period, which would cut down on either signup time or creating time. Right now the schedule is for sign-ups to go from Oct 10 - Nov 1, with assignments due Jan 6. I know the biggest conflict for a lot of people is obviously going to be Yuletide, which is why we have that nice two weeks afterwards before things are due. So the most obvious place to cut into the schedule is the sign-up period. If nominations run Oct 10-25, and signups still close Nov 1, will that work? Or I can push signups closing to Nov 8, and assignments going out a week as well, but I don't want to cut into writing time too much. Thoughts?

* Tagsets also mean establishing a policy of what megafandoms get grouped together versus what are separate. I would say, for ease of tagset creation, that people nominate megafandoms only, and then characters from any subfandom get assigned to that megafandom. So you nominate Doctor Who for fandom, and for characters you nominate Jack Harkness, the Eighth Doctor, and Andy Davidson. If anyone is planning on offering or requesting any fandoms where separate canons would make this not work, please let me know, and we'll see if we can make specific rules for specific fandoms instead, but I'd like to keep this as broad as possible, since it's already quite complicated.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Since the schedule isn't fixed yet, is it possible to push the deadline back of a week, instead of cut out the signup period? I'm considering to sign up, but it would really help to get more time to work on my assignment in January.

[pocketmouse]

The final deadline? I'd figured cutting into the signup period would be OK, because people who are going to sign up would probably be nominating as well, so there wouldn't be any reason for them not to sign up as soon as the nomination period was over, and it would just push the start of signups back, not the deadline for it.

The reason for the Jan 6th deadline is because this exchange was a replacement for three_ships, which had that deadline as part of the (nominal) Epiphany theme as a post-Secret Santa exchange. But I did change a lot of other stuff...

[evilmuffins]

I would prefer a slightly later deadline as well, since I tend to work down to wire for my Yuletide fic(s).

I'd also like to see requests from the get-go. It helps me start brain storming early.

I'm not in any megafandoms, so I can't speak on that.

I'm really excited for this exchange! :)

[(Anonymous)]

I would also prefer just pushing back the entire schedule to make rooms for nominations. A slightly later deadline would be great since January 6 is also the fandom_stocking deadline.

[pocketmouse]

Yeah, as it is I don't think we'll be ready to start nominations tomorrow.

Re: Megafandoms

[(Anonymous)]

May I request that ALL of the Marvel Cinematic Universe be grouped together? That would be:

All movies (Iron Man 1-3, Captain America 1-2, Thor 1-2, The Avengers 1-2, The Hulk, Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, plus maybe the announced ones)
All network TV shows (Agents of SHIELD, Agent Carter)
All Netflix TV shows (Daredevil is the only one so far, though there are probably people who want the option to request characters from upcoming series too)

Several exchanges I wanted to participate in this year separated the movies from the TV shows, but given that you are going with relationship matching (thank you!) it doesn't make sense to me to either deny intra-MCU crossovers or force them into the "Crossovers - Fandom" section, when they really are one shared universe with plenty of canon interaction.

Re: Megafandoms

[(Anonymous)]

And I'd request that the TV shows are kept separate. I don't want to be matched with someone who wants AoS Coulson or Agent Carter Peggy or the like because I haven't seen the shows and have no desire to.

Re: Megafandoms

[(Anonymous)]

(This is the anon below you, also not interested in TV show, but not as worried as you)

I would think you wouldn't risk to be matched to someone only requesting for the TV show, since this is about threesomes or moresomes all you have to do to not gey matched to TV show fans is to avoid ships that include TV show characters:

Peggy/Steve/Bucky, there's no way this is for TV show requests, but Peggy/Jarvis/Anna can't be a ship meant for the movies. If mixed ship will appear in the tag sex, like Peggy/Jarvis/Bucky, you'll avoid those too, so I wouldn't worry anyway to get matched to people requesting the 'wrong thing'. Besides, if requests will be visible, you can check what people will be requesting anyway and offer for what you prefer.

I don't think it's worth to limite shows-and-movies fans when we only-movies fans can avoid their requests. *shrugs* What other MCU shippers say?

Re: Megafandoms

[(Anonymous)]

You're assuming a canon setting. Lots of people like to request what if scenarios.

I think Coulson would be a bigger problem than Peggy anyway.

Re: Megafandoms

[(Anonymous)]

Well, that's easily sorted if you nominate the pairing as:

Coulson(AoS)/Clint(MCU)/Laura(MCU) or some variation of thus.

Add the canon name in brackets behind the character name.

Re: Megafandoms

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed.

Re: Megafandoms

[(Anonymous)]

MCU fan who doesn't care for the shows is all right with it: I won't be requesting TV show characters anyway, so it wouldn't complicate my sign up.

And about mod's questions:

- I'm good with 8.

Nomination fields: People nominate fandoms and relationships, and will match on same. The tagset will then consist of fandoms, relationships, and freeforms that are the media types. (Am I missing anything here?)

- You should match on the freeform tags too, or else people requesting only fic could get art instead, I wouldn't sabotage the artists whose work would risk be a disappointment because not what their recipient requested.

- I'm OK with visible requests.

- Also voting for push back the due date for the assignments instead.

- About the megafandoms, see what I said at the beginning of this comment.

Thanks for changing how this works.

Re: Megafandoms

[pocketmouse]

Right, yes, matching will be on the freeform too! Whoops!

[starry_wolf.livejournal.com]

- I would like Visible Requests please as I'd like to have the option of writing a gift without signing up. This is in no part an issue with the mod/exchange, just to clarify, but rather because I do not wish to receive anything in return.

- I've seen plenty of exchanges that allow crossover pairings and haven't seen an issue with any of them. Just make sure people add the original canon in brackets behind the characters' names.

- For the MCU megafandom, there's two potential solutions:
1. Have everyone nominate their MCU pairings with the canon specified in brackets at the end. Toss everything into an MCU - All Media Types tag to make it very clear it includes the TV shows too. The disadvantage is, of course, the 100-character limit on tags, but since the canon abbreviations don't go longer than 3 letters that shouldn't be a huge problem.
2. Allow a separate MCU - All Media Types fandom. However, this would mean that MCU/TV fans have to look under more than 3 fandoms (MCU, Agent Carter, AoS, AMT, etc.) to find all their pairings.

[sirvalkyrie]

I'm tentatively cool with megafandoms being grouped together with a just a few areas I am concerned about.

For things like Star Trek would AOS be grouped with the shows? It is canonically an alternate universe to the shows, but I don't see the characters of the two versions being interchangeable.

Would all Marvel Comics and DC Comics be lumped into two big categories? Those two cause a lot of problems in exchanges when some people want specific version, others want main universe, and then you have people that want to nominate specific canonical alternate universes.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with you that the Trek Reboot movies and Marvel and DC comic titles should be nominated separately or considered a case by case situation. The Original Series, Voyager, Deep Space Nine, The Next Generation and Enterprise, could be lumped up together because of canon and character interactions here and there, and some people could nominate characters from 2 or three of them (like me) under a Prime Star Trek Universe, or something like that, while who doesn't want that they just nominate/request/offer non-across-the-series ships.

[(Anonymous)]

Is there going to be minimum number of ships we have to request per fandom, or will we be able to go as low as one per fandom? I have a lot of fandom where I like one or two poly ships, but I'm not sure if I'd have enough fandoms for a signup if we need to request three or more ships for each one.

[trobadora]

I have the same question (both for requests and offers). There are fandoms where I'm really only interested in one ship, and it would be great to be able to include those.

[pocketmouse]

Fandom is the only category that requires multiple unique requests. You can ask for just one specific threesome per fandom, that's fine.

[(Anonymous)]

I was looking at your suggestion of running nominations from the tenth to the twenty-fifth, and I'm not sure you really need to let them go on that long. Besides, if you cut the nomination period down to a week and a half or less, then you could use some of the leftover time to do tag set cleanup before signups start. It would give people a chance to point out the same OT4 getting nominated three times with different misspellings in each one and other potential problems like that.

[pocketmouse]

I think I can do clean-up as I go. I feel like two weeks is actually short for nominations, because if people don't get time to nominate the things they want, then they won't want to participate in the exchange itself.

[(Anonymous)]

"so long as it involves more than two entities and is consensual between all parties (relationship conversations and negotiaion and communication is sexy!)."

So that means dubcon and noncon poly fans are not welcome in this exchange? What if what one person sees as consent another person doesn't? Characters with complicated relationships? What if it is considered consensual by the character's standards but not by our standards?

This rule just feels rather kink shaming and limiting.

[(Anonymous)]

It's not kinkshaming, it's been a rule here since the beginning. Gangrape (or one person raping two others, and so on) isn't the same thing as polyamory. This is an exchange for poly ships. Not for any combination of sex that's more than two people.

Members of poly ships can still encounter noncon scenarios! It's not like you can't say you like that kind of fic. But the basic poly ship ought to be consensual for the purposes of this exchange.

[(Anonymous)]

Does that mean that tropes like sex pollen are entirely out?

[(Anonymous)]

Different person here, but assuming it's not meant to be a one off, I don't think it would be a problem.

[(Anonymous)]

You know, that opens up another question for me: say you write a longer story, and it contains dubcon in parts but ends with a consensual relationship, would that be okay? Like you, I'd assume so, but I'm not quite sure. It would be good to have clarification in advance!

[(Anonymous)]

ntayrt

It's fine if the person you're writing for says dubcon is okay, and not okay if they don't.

[(Anonymous)]

For the recipient. But I want to know if it's okay in the context of this exchange. IMO the rules aren't clear on that.

[pocketmouse]

At the conclusion of the work, the relationship must be healthy, consensual (by their definitions, and they must be of relatively sound mind), and still involve at least 3 parties.

And obviously this would only come up if the requester asked for a story involving such elements.

[(Anonymous)]

Does this mean that ships like The Joker/Harley Quinn/Poison Ivy are out of the question? Or would they be considered to be of sound enough mind for the purposes of the rules even though they're all homicidal comic book villains?

[pocketmouse]

What I mean by that is no gaslighting or mind control etc in order for a participant to be okay with the relationship - in your example all three are equally nuts.

[(Anonymous)]

(different asker)

Does this mean no gaslighting/mind control/etc. to be okay with the poly nature of the relationship, or with the relationship at all?

e.g., Practically every two-person ship with Hannibal from the NBC series is unhealthy. Does that mean that any 3+ person ship with him is also disqualified for this exchange? Hannibal's penchant for manipulating people he likes into joining his cannibalistic serial killer lifestyle has nothing to do with how many people are in a relationship with him, nor is something like Hannibal/Abigail/Will (at least with most shippers) a drunken accident, one-off kinky encounter, gangrape, etc.

[pocketmouse]

To consent to the nature of the relationship. There are ways to write around it, I'm sure, but I'm not familiar with Hannibal canon enough to give more specific examples than 'slight AU.'

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT

you write a longer story, and it contains dubcon in parts but ends with a consensual relationship, would that be okay?

In my opinion the nominated/requested poli-ship should be the endgame of the story, it's not so important that it starts off as dub-con if it ends as threeway (or moresome) consensual. Besides, if initial dub-con is what your recipient is requesting I don't see the problem. Same argument about non con, if for example it's tropes like sex while drunk, or sex pollened, or aliens made them do, etc, I see them as perfectly valid for the purpose of this exchange, if all the partners get together eventually.

To be honest I don't see it much differently than a couples exchange, where I'd be quite disappointed with getting a story where the one character has unrequited feelings for the other character and they don't get together.