Feedback and Questions

[withinadream]

 We'll be starting a new round soon! The schedule is still being finalized, but it will be similar to last year's (and won't conflict with the Trick or Treat Exchange). 

Was there anything you liked or disliked about last year's exchange? Feel free to comment on this post to let us know (or email at femslashexmod@gmail.com if you don't want to post publicly). 

We have a few questions for participants, detailed below.

Vids

This year, participants can offer and request vids as well as fic and art. A few questions for vidders, so we can add to our rules and FAQ:

• Is a 60-second minimum a good length requirement for vids, or do you have other suggestions?
• Artists can add signatures to their work and host on non-anon sites during the anon period. Would you like a similar rule for vidders?
• Do you have any suggestions as to what makes a good vid prompt that we can add to our FAQ?

Crossover Ships

Last year, the crossover ships section of the tagset got rather unwieldy and hard to browse. This year, we intend to make a public spreadsheet of crossover ships sorted by fandoms of the characters in them. Would this be helpful to you, or is there another way you'd prefer crossover ships be handled?

Comments

[merryghoul]

No comment on vids, but I wouldn’t mind a spreadsheet of crossover ships.

[shopfront]

Great to hear, thanks!

[settiai]

As both a fic writer and a vidder, I think that a 60-second minimum would be a good length requirement. It's fairly equivalent to the 1000-word minimum for stories, and it's the standard I've seen for other exchanges that have started allowing vids (as well as vidding only exchanges).

The most complicated aspect of keeping vids anonymous is that there are only a handful of free sites out there that can be used for streaming/downloading vids. A vidder would therefore have to set up an anon account and then make sure to change out the link everywhere to a non-anon one after reveals. It also increases the chance of people sharing the non-signed version on social media and, once reveals have happened, the unsigned version not getting any attention.

Since artists have the option to add signatures to their works and host on non-anon sites, my vote would be to give vidders the option to that as well. That way, it's up to them to weigh the pluses and minuses of both and choose what will work best for them.

As for vid prompts, here's my two cents' worth. Hopefully other people will chime in with their own thoughts? It's definitely something that can be subjective depending on the vidder.

For me, it's usually helpful to mention any general music preferences. (Example: I love music by female artists! Songs from musicals don't usually work for me. I'm not a fan of country music. My favorite types of music are 90s pop, classic rock, and top 40. I adore anything by Vienna Tang. I've always thought "Long Live" by Taylor Swift would work great for this couple. Please don't use any music by Johnny Cash.) While a vidder may ignore more specific requests (such as using a certain song), it's very helpful to give them some ideas regarding your general music taste and let them know if there's anything that really won't work for you.

Other than music, general likes/dislikes are always useful. (Example: I'm not a fan of dialogue in vids. I love angst! I'd like to see something focusing on the parallels between the characters. Please don't include any clips from Season 2, Episode 7. If possible, I'd prefer something light and fluffy.) If you have very specific ideas (such as a song or a certain aspect of a relationship you'd like to see as the focus), definitely mention them. Try to have more general options too, though, in the case the vidder absolutely hates the song that you had in mind.

Complete AUs (of the "same characters but in the modern day/the Old West/high school" variety) can also be a bit more tricky with vids than they are with art and fics, since you're working with prexisting source. It's fine to mention ideas like that in your prompts, but there should definitely be some more canon-based options as well. A single prompt asking for a vid to "Blank Space" by Taylor Swift where Buffy and Faith work in a coffee shop in space, with no other options whatsoever... might not go the way the requester is hoping.

[shopfront]

This is all exceedingly helpful, thank you so much!

[samuraiter]

We'll be starting a new round soon!

B-) Welcome back!

[shopfront]

Hee, thank you, we're happy to be here *g*

[dirty_diana]

Agreed with the prompt ideas above. There's letter threads at equinox_exchange and festivids people could check out. Culturally, vidders often put likes/DNWs in letters and don't necessarily do specific idea prompts. Prompts are good, but not something to stress over if you can't think of any. Popular categories of likes and dislikes:

-music

-sections of the canon, especially if it's long. This could be by season, by type of scene, a list of your favourite episodes or guest stars, etc

-the types of vids you usually like or dislike: character studies, action, funny, angst, fast-paced, with dialogue, etc

-accessibility/trigger information: is it better for the vidder to avoid surprise loud noises, the violent bits, flashing lights, etc

And then a typical specific idea might be something like, I'd love a Buffy/Faith vid set to Love is a Battlefield, or I'd love to see a focus on Cat mentoring Kara!

I don't mind the anon period for vids, personally.

[shopfront]

Thanks for weighing in! I was across the fast cuts/flashing issue, but I hadn't thought of loud noises for accessibility so that's very helpful. Are there any other technical accessibility issues we might want to include in the FAQ?

[dirty_diana]

I'd say those are the main categories of issues that I've seen as far as triggers go, though the individual details obviously vary. equinox_exchange has a good accessibility policy to check out. They offer to subtitle for any recipient that requests it, which is a pretty good one though I think no one has taken them up on it yet. In general anything that's stylistic or effects-based or to do with a specific minor part of the canon content is easily enough avoided if the vidder knows about it, so I'd hope people didn't feel discouraged from making requests.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not necessarily advocating for this, but you could make crossovers slightly easier to deal with if the generic "Crossover Fandom" was reserved for inter-franchise crossovers, and intra-franchise things like Elsa/Merida, Jyn Erso/Rey, Beverly Crusher/Kathryn Janeway, etc. had their own crossover fandoms (eg for those examples, something like "Disney Crossovers", "Star Wars Crossovers", "Star Trek Crossovers" ...). It seems to me that those types of "crossover" are one of the main reasons that that section of the tag set gets so big. The main disadvantage would be that they would end up in the Uncategorized Fandoms section, where not everyone thinks to look.

There'd be nothing to stop that running in parallel with a spreadsheet, obviously.

[shopfront]

The way femslashex has historically combined fandoms in the tagset thankfully eliminates that issue for us so that in-franchise crossovers stay in the umbrella fandom with the other pairings and reduces some of the crossover clutter, but it's definitely an idea we'll be considering if we change the wrangling process in future rounds. Thank you though!

[luzula]

Have you considered having podfic as a medium as well? Other exchanges I've participated in have had the same minimum wordcount for the podfic as for the fic, and it's up to the podficcer to make sure before they offer a fandom/pairing that there's enough fic out there to offer a reasonable choice for what to record.

[shopfront]

It's not on our radar for this round. Off the top of my head the only exchange I can think of where I remember seeing podfic in the mediums is space_swap (though you're welcome to point me at others, and I may be forgetting some) and podficcers there are required to write a (shorter) new fic for them to read which would eliminate eligibility/wrangling issues, but then I'm aware that not everyone who does podfic also writes so we'd need to weigh up a few different things before deciding anything. If there's a reasonable level of interest, we may be able to plan for adding it in the future the same way we did with vids.

[luzula]

The due South Seekrit Santa Exchange has included podfic for many years with no problems. The podficcer chooses an already-existing story and creates a podfic of it, and it's up to the podficcer to only offer fandoms/pairings where they're sure there are enough stories around to choose from (if they're not willing to write their own, of course).