New Year New Round Questions

[pumpkinkingmod]

Questions for everyone.  I want to hear opinions and feedback.  This is not a vote.

 

 

Dates

 

In the past we have run from May to June, mirroring the schedule for Trick or Treat.  I would like to have a longer gap between the end of Every Woman and the beginning of Trick or Treat.  What about having reveals on International Women’s Day (March 8^th)?  It does fit my MO better as a holiday mod.  If the dates are moved what would you like the schedule to be like?  Alternatively, would you like to keep the same schedule for this year and move it next year?

 

Relationships

 

This is a topic that I ask about every year because I get at least one person that asks me about it either through comments or through a private message.  Do you want relationships?  If I allow relationships that would include any platonic or romantic in which at least half the individuals are women (I will make an exception to M/F/M threesomes).

 

Rule 63

 

Would you like Rule 63 female characters either as solo characters or in groups/relationships with canon female characters?  Rule 63 characters are currently allowed to appear in works alongside a requested canon female character but can’t be nominated for.  

 

Canon Helpers

 

I didn’t do the best job of explaining them next year, but they made things a lot easier for me on the mod end.  With the issues that have been plaguing AO3 tagsets lately I’m going to be keeping them.  Any suggestions on how to better explain them since they are unique to Every Woman?

 

Mod Excitement

 

As a mod, I keep excited about my exchanges by changing things up.  In Trick or Treat I do that by coming up with the Community Challenges.  If you don’t like either allowing Relationships or Rule 63 this year what are some suggestions you have for changing things up?  Maybe I could figure out another way to match on fic/art and we could try using tags this year?  Part of me just wants to let loose, go crazy and let everything in.  Rule 63, relationships, tags, canon helpers, and medium.  Or maybe alternate everything rounds with strictly canon women rounds?  

 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I would definitely prefer not including rule 63 characters.

[rubylily]

1. I've been pretty happy with the dates of previous years. Reveals happening on March 8th would be cool too, but then I'd worry about overlapping with other exchanges like World Building or Age Gap Exchange.

2. I think allowing both & and / relationships would be great.

3. Honestly, I'd prefer no Rule 63'ed characters.

4. My canons last year didn't have much need of them, but I thought the canon helpers were a neat idea.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes for the Dates, for Relationships, and Canon Helpers.

No for nominating Rule 63 characters.

But as the mod, do what you have to do to keep things interesting, please!

[burglebezzlemen]

Dates

I'd rather have less of an overlap with Chocolate Box than the March 8 reveals date would mean. That being said, it's not like there's any date on the calendar these days that doesn't overlap with something (usually more than one something). I think you should do what works best for you!

Relationships

I prefer single-character nominations for this exchange on a personal level, but I also think the exchange would have a wider audience with mixed single-character and relationship nominations. If it were a vote, I'd vote for going to mixed character and relationship nominations to widen the audience.

Rule 63

I probably wouldn't request them personally, but I enjoy them, and as with the relationship nominations, I think it'd widen the audience. I'd be for this.

Canon Helpers

These were tough... maybe a diagram showing the relationship between the umbrella canon, the various canon helpers, and the characters?

Also, more of an explanation about what to do with characters who are in one version of a canon but not another. EG: What do you write about if someone requests Ghostbusters (2016) with Janine? Janine exists in Ghostbusters (1984) and in The Real Ghostbusters, but she's not in Ghostbusters (2016). Does that mean the author writes about Janine as if she did exist in that canon? Or is requesting a character with a helper for a canon in which they do not appear even allowed? I could see someone using something like that to narrow what they could potentially match on as a recip.

[mlravenwrites]

Dates:
Does having reveals on March 8th mean that we should have already started nominations for this year? I looked at last year's schedule and it seemed like, from nominations opening to fic reveals was almost 2 calendar months exactly. But please feel free to correct me if I'm misunderstanding!

Otherwise, I like the idea of having it earlier, though it does somewhat overlap with Chocobox. I have fewer exchanges in the spring (she says, without looking at her list), so I'd be down for this change!

If I'm right that we're late on noms if we switch the schedule for this year, then maybe switch it for next year? Unless you're proposing it with a collapsed timeframe for this year, since we're late on noms?

Relationships:
I like the idea of relationships! Especially if they replaced the "Group: A & B & C" format.

Would you be switching to /only/ relationships, or would you allow both individual characters and relationships? Personally, I'd prefer having the option for both.

Rule 63:
I have no particular feelings about rule 63 characters being allowed/barred.

Canon Helpers:
I don't remember exactly how they worked last year, but looking at the explanation in the 2017 FAQ, if they were only so that people could specify which part of a huge canon they were interested in (ie Sequel Trilogy for Star Wars) then maybe explaining them that way?

IIRC some of them weren't that clear cut; they were more like "worldbuilding" or something? I feel like I requested something like "Independent Atlantis" for Stargate Atlantis? Those were harder to understand, and I'm not sure how to explain them better. :/

Mod Excitement:
I'd love a community challenge for Everywoman!

[(Anonymous)]

No strong feelings about dates.

No strong feelings about relationships being allowed or not, but if they are allowed I'd prefer relationships (& or /) involving female characters only, rather than the 50% rule which seems like it could become difficult to enforce.

I'm okay with Rule 63 characters being allowed. Maybe treat it as a test run this year and see if it creates any problems, then decide whether to continue allowing them.

I like the idea of everything rounds alternating with strictly canon women rounds.

[trobadora]

Dates: reveals in early March would mean too early a start for me. I preferred the previous schedule.

Relationships: I'd rather keep characters instead. There are a lot of exchanges out there that work with relationships; EveryWoman is one of the few that has character matching, and I like that.

Rule 63: I'm not in favour.

Canon Helpers: I thought those were fine!

[deathsblood]

I would prefer to shift to March! I think having reveals on International Working Women's Day would work very well.

I would be very keen to have rule 63 available! There was some talk of a rule 63 exchange on FFA, but I don't know if anything is to come of that, and otherwise there isn't anywhere to request them except as one request in additional details. It would be nice to have an option of matching on them too. One thing that might be a potential problem is that technically both always a different sex AUs and AUs that make the male characters trans women might qualify as rule 63. But many people, including me, are only interested in one type or the other. So that might be a potential matching issue involved, but since requests were IIRC available to be seen throughout sign-ups and one could say DNW trans A if one wanted the former, perhaps it wouldn't be an issue at all. Alternating the rounds on making this possible sounds fine too.

Having tag matching beyond the characters/relationships sounds like it might make matching more difficult? I'm assuming by tag matching you mean something a little like Darkest Night or Smut Swap do with scenarios. I'd prefer to leave scenarios up to the additional details with prompts and ODAO possibilities. A bingo card like in ToT might be a fun challenge.

I have a question too: I signed up last year but unexpectedly had to default. Am I eligible to participate this year?

[pumpkinkingmod]

As long as you didn't upload a placeholder then you are good to go.

[(Anonymous)]

I think the current system of solo characters and 'Group: A & B' works fine and easy when signing up. But I wouldn't mind making it solo characters and relationships nominations like someone above suggested.

No to Rule 63 characters being nominated, please.

I like the tags matching as they give me ideas for things I never thought of, but i also like the community challenges you make for ToT.

[(Anonymous)]

Dates
I can go either way. Having it run alongside an international woman's holiday is great, but as others pointed out, would this mean we should start nominations now (and would that be too much stress on you?) The schedule as it is isn't too bad.

Relationships
Yes, please, but only if we can still do single characters as well. I feel that exchanges that allow for single characters and relationships (& and /) tend to draw in a wider audience. I'm all for it.

Canon Helpers
How I see it: when it's during the nominations stage, it's to avoid the headache of migrating tags and to make disambiguations a lot easier. When it comes to sign ups and matching, it functions similarly to matching on freeform. Example of a character from a huge canon is Natasha Romanoff. A canon helper will help specify if you want Natasha from MCU or 616 or Avengers Academy (or 2/3/all of them), and so forth.

Mod Excitement
A Community Challenge would be sweet! I can think of several themes that could go into a bingo card if you're thinking of going that route: femslash, female friendships, female family members, villains, heroes, anti heroes, female OCs, older female characters, female child characters (either character in her childhood or a canon very young character), female character(s) from a sci-fi, fantasy, horror (genre-based) or media-based such as video games, anime/manga, literature, and so on.

[acequeenking]

1. Dates don't matter to me, but I do think it will conflict slightly with Chocolate box. I can't say it would stop me from signing up but it could stop others.

2. Relationships are nice! I would vote yay on relationships.

3. Neutral on Rule 63; tend to think it should be an alternate rather than something nominated every year but I'm fine with it being included. I come here for the girls but I have nothing against 63'ed boys. *shrug*

4. Detailed nomination post with examples of how the different canon helpers should be used would be very helpful!

5. Variety is the spice of life I say! Do what makes ye modself happy!

[(Anonymous)]

I'd like for relationships to be allowed, please? Shippy fic is my favorite kind of fic, so in the past it was always a risk for me to match to people who were requesting or offering just gen.

I don't see why disallow M/F/M relationships, as long as the focus is on the F character I wouldn't see the problem, however the configuration of characters. Anyone participating in bad faith would do that with any kind of ship, and sadly we can't do a thing about it. Well, aside from sending you a note about the entry violating the purpose of the exchange, I suppose. Still, this decision is up to you, of course, I'll abide.

While I have no problem with rule!63 characters to be allowed to be nominated, I don't really think they should be the focus of the entries because it would enable the chance to request and offer M characters and M/M ships as the main or only focus. If it were stated that sexswapped characters are allowed as long as canon F are still to be the focus, it would make more sense in my opinion. But again, it's ultimately up to you and I'll abide to your decision.

[(Anonymous)]

- I don't think I'd have a problem with March 8 for future years, but it feels like short notice this year. If we go ahead with it anyway, maybe the minimum word count could be brought down to Chocolate Box/ToT levels to compensate?

- I'm okay experimenting with relationships, though I'd still like for individual characters to be an option. Probably not going to bother with Rule 63 personally, so don't have an opinion either way.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm new to this exchange so don't have any experience from previous years! But my opinions:

Dates: No opinions on the date. I like the thematic idea of reveals being on Women's Day, but I don't particularly care one way or the other.

Relationships: I love shipping, so as long as the ships have women involved and stay focused on them, I'm in favor.

Rule 63: I really don't want this. My rationale is that if I'm participating in an exchange centered on women, I am not interested in female versions of male characters from canon. (I realize this is stickier for canons where there ARE canon female versions of originally male characters, but I am not active in any of those.) I think that generally, male characters in canon get more attention than the female characters in their canon anyways, and I would rather focus on the female characters who are already underrepresented or sidelined rather than continue giving attention to the male characters, even in Rule 63 versions of themselves.

I admit that since I am not going to offer or request any Rule 63 though, this would not affect my own sign-ups.

Canon helpers: I think whatever helps make it easier for you as a mod works :)

[bonstrosity]

Dates: Keep the schedule this year, start the new schedule next year.

Relationships: As long as single character noms remain, I'm okay with &/ as well

Rule 63: I think if they are in relationships with canon female characters, a-okay.

Mod Excitement: Resist your anarchy feels xD And freeform tags I wouldn't want this year, but would be down with next year.

[doranwen]

I wouldn't switch the schedule this year. And I'd rather not overlap with Chocolate Box if possible - it would honestly work better to make International Women's Day the *start* of Everywoman (or the start of signups or something like that). Then you maybe have some overlap with NoFM but not as much as the overlap with Chocolate Box would be, I think? I don't know, I would have to sit down with schedules and calendars, lol. I just know I definitely like participating in both Chocolate Box and Everywoman and prefer less overlap when possible (and I'm less likely to participate in NoFM due to the difficulty in finding something I can write, so overlap there doesn't bother me much). But it won't scare me away if there IS overlap, I would still participate in both.

I'd prefer to stick with characters only, but would be OK with adding & and / as long as the characters are not removed. (Adding & would certainly make the Group stuff a lot less clunky, so…) I write/request gen nearly always (romantic friendship being the main exception), and the characters themselves interest me as much as relationships do, so as long as there's a way to request and offer gen, I'm happy.

I have no interest in Rule 63 characters so my opinion probably doesn't mean much - I'm not much of a fan of the idea, but since it won't really affect me, I can't see that it's an issue for me to get bothered about.

Don't go wild trying to mix everything up. I like consistency and stability! But a little variety is good, so maybe pick *one* small change to make at most. Honestly, I think keeping the "this is how things work" the same is best, but having *optional* challenges for participants to participate in would be great. Then those who want the spice can have it and those who just want to write their assignment can do that.

[shopfront]

Dates: I could work with the new schedule this year, because I would be waiting until after Chocolate Box to start anyway just out of time constraints. But I can see how it might be short notice for some, depending on their other commitments, in which case next year might be a better year to start a new schedule for. I think moving it earlier works well though as June-Dec is pretty hectic for me exchange wise so anything that edges dates away from that period works well for me, and I love the IWD match up.

Relationships: I quite like the single character matching and think allowing up to half a group to be male would dilute the purpose of the exchange a fair bit for me. If you did allow relationships, I would prefer all female noms only.

Rule 63: No. Obviously, those of us who dislike the idea can avoid it by just not offering or requesting those tags, so it won't be the end of the world if you include it. But it feels like this would seriously shift the focus. If the choice was allowing relationships (even with males-allowed-in-groups which I dislike) or allowing rule 63, I'd far prefer relationships.

Excitement: I don't know how feasible this would be here (I suspect ToT is much bigger?) but I really loved the community challenge at ToT! Or would expanding the mediums allowed be an option? I'd love to be able to request vids.

[mlravenwrites]

Hey, do you know if you'll be running Everywoman this year? I hope everything's okay with you!

edit:
SORRY I am terrible at reading and memory-- I thought noms were supposed to start in March, not May. >< Please disregard this message! Hope all is well with you regardless!