Five Figure Fanwork Exchange

Creator names are now revealing at the FFFX 2024 collection. You're welcome to share what you drew or wrote widely. Congratulations, everyone who took part!

I especially want to thank the co-mods who helped me sort tags and check letters at the start of the round - there would not have been a round 5 without their help. Then there are so many other people who deserve thanks: pinch hitters, beta readers, treat creators, commenters, prompters, nominators, and anyone who said anything cheerful anywhere about this exchange. (Or pointed out an error.)

Thank you, all of you!!

I hope to run another round on a similar schedule, and will again reach out for help with tag sorting.


General feedback; letter completion; check-in period
Before next round, I will review the rules for recursive fandoms (ie, what can be nominated, is it okay for recursive fandoms to be your whole sign-up). These questions arose last round and while a case-by-case approach has worked okay so far, clarity is useful.

I will also put up a franchise post for discussing how we split/merge some fandoms where this is often a question (Marvel TV/cinema, DCU, etc).


Letter completion
FFFX has a rule that if you link an external document ("letter") to supplement your prompts, that letter MUST be available and complete by a set date after sign-ups close. The idea is to make sure creators can get started with confidence and are not wondering indefinitely if a letter will appear or gain content.

While I think the overall principle is sound, implementation is a problem. I have been really grateful for help checking letter completion in the past, but it's a lot of work and can be hard to get right. Then there's the question of what to do if a letter misses the deadline. I can remove the link - but that feels more like a punishment than a constructive result, and I'm not sure it actually helps a creator. Sure, your recipient didn't complete their letter, but now if you want to refer to their half-finished thoughts or check for previous letters, you have to do a lot more work.

Because of that, I have two proposals:

1. Requiring FFFX participants to put either a date at the top of their letter to say when it was completed, OR a statement that this is a general likes list. This would make letter checking much easier, but might be burdensome for participants. What do you think?

2. FFFX allows creators to swap their assignments nearly-at-will for a short period after assignments go out, and then at any later time before the deadline as long as you're swapping to a pinch hit. Instead of checking letters and imposing a penalty, maybe I should offer creators an option: you can swap to another assignment of your choice all throughout the creator period if your recipient's letter is incomplete. This seems like it might give creators more flexibility (if an incomplete letter is causing difficulty) and be more constructive overall. What do you think?


Check-in period
FFFX has a very long creation period, and so creators are required to check in roughly halfway in, during a week-long period that is set at the start of the exchange. This helps me seek pinch hitters "early" for recipients whose creators withdraw at that time or appear not to be involved at the exchange. It's fun for me to see (voluntary! optional) snippets from people who share those at the time. But you aren't required to give a progress update - this is the equivalent of me saying Marco and you saying Polo.

However, every year there are people who forget that this was a thing, and turn up months later, which is nice (extra gift!) but awkward - it can mean I recruited a pinch hitter when one wasn't necessary, and technically, the first person defaulted, but they may not realize they aren't getting a gift. Additionally, some people are unavoidably away from the period during check-in week, so checking in is burdensome - and not being able to check in in November doesn't mean you're unable to post a work in January.

I don't feel as strongly about changing the check-in period because I think it does work for many people. But I'd be interested to know how you feel about it. Maybe I should make the check-in completely optional, send an email at the same time, and keep the default deadline, so instead of "if you don't check in, you're defaulted", it becomes "here are several warnings, but I assume you're still participating unless you default".


Thanks for your thoughts! If you have feedback on other topics, that's welcome too! You don't have to be logged in to comment.

Creators are now revealed at the collection. Please feel free to share your work under your own name; you may also want to re-date your fic or art so that it appears at the top of the fandom tag on ao3.

The collection remains open for late treats or make-up works, as does last year's collection.

Next-round and procedural thoughts!

Schedule
I would like to run fffx r3 on a similar schedule. For round 2, we experimented with 5 weeks between deadline and reveal. That worked well for me - and, along with pinch hitters' efforts, I think that helped us open on time - but the large number of extensions meant the deadline was functionally as much of a second check-in as it was a deadline.

I'd prefer to keep the 5-week gap between deadline and reveals. But I'm open to adjustment, based on how well it worked for all of you. I also wonder if - while keeping the deadline gap - I should drop the check-in period altogether. I know check-in periods aren't popular.

It is worth noting that the check-in period is useful for producing alternative assignments that people can swap to. Also, this year, I got far less late contact from people who missed the check-in and wanted their assignment back - so the check-in period helped ensure pinch hitters had longer to work, and pinch hits were staggered, rather than most of the pinch hits coming at deadline.


Letters and prompts
FFFX has rules that a) letters must be completed by a certain date or their links will be removed from the sign-up, and b) sign-ups must contain likes, prompts, or some other indication of what you would like in a gift. Both rules have downsides. Checking letters is labor-intensive and requires me to send people negative communications; I wasn't able to do it in the time I'd allotted in this round, and I'm sorry about that. Rules with no enforcement are not particularly effective, but if I keep that practice, I may adjust it so that instead of removing the link, I may do something else - for example, contact creator & recipient at the letter-completion deadline with a record of what the letter says at that time.

Similarly, there's something a bit awkward about telling people who have full and expansive letters that some of that positive content must be in their sign-up. Would people prefer more freedom to put prompts in their sign-up or not, or do you find that on balance, having a guarantee of some direction, however small, in your assignment, is worth fussier-than-average requirements for the optional details box?


Art minimum
In round 1, in response to questions, I stressed that the 10 page/40 panel minimum worked the following way: if an artwork was 10 pages, it needed to also be 36 panels, and if it was 9 pages, it needed to also be at least 40 panels. I don't think I made that particularly clear for round 2; sorry about that. I would like to return to that requirement for round 3, or some other determination suggested by others. I would prefer to avoid going on page count alone, because I don't feel I can adequately rule on what's "enough" that way. I acknowledge that this is more about what's easiest for me to mod than what necessarily avoids artists and art-recipients' unhappiness - I have not received any complaints about art not being "enough" because it fulfils page requirements but not panel requirements. But, not being an artist, I need a criterion I can rely on. Thank you for understanding.


Misc
I know it was a very long time ago but... any improvements to suggest on nominations? Other things? Should I encourage betas who have completed a fffx beta job to also put prompts of their own on the (currently just) pinch hitters' prompts post?

Triple Crown

If you want to offer a prize for Triple Crown Round 2, the deadline is March 14. Soon after that... prize claims and raffle entries!