Trick or Treat 2021 Welcome and Update

[pumpkinkingmod]

Hello, ghosts and goblins! It's time for another spooky season of Trick or Treat. I'd like to briefly introduce myself as the new Pumpkin King—Hello, I'm the new Pumpkin King! Thank you very much to the previous rulers who have made this event so much fun over the years.

The 2021 rules and FAQ post is here. The schedule remains as usual:

Sept 1 – Nominations Open
Sept 8 – Nominations Close
Sept 11 – Sign-Ups Open
Sept 18 – Sign-Ups Close
October 24 – Assignments Due
October 31 – Gift Reveals
November 7 – Creator Reveals

There is one significant update for the 2021 round of Trick or Treat; I've decided to add relationship nominations and matching as an option. If you love the traditional Trick or Treat character matching set-up, you can continue to nominate, request, and offer characters as usual! Relationship tags will just be an extra option for participants interested in that.

Due to these changes, I won’t be using an eternal tag set this year.

Let me know if you have any questions, and I'm excited for the tricks and treats to come!

Edit: Just a note that I'm slowing down on comment replies here but will get to questions as I can. The above changes are confirmed for the 2021 round. No decisions have been made about the 2022 round.

Comments

[philstar22]

Welcome! Super excited. I had a lot of fun last year, my first year as participant. Really hope I end up having the time to sign up this year as well (new job, so kind of busy). Thank you for running this.

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thank you! And congratulations on the new job :)

[sheliak]

I'm honestly really disappointed by the changes this year. I liked TOT's idiosyncratic matching! It was the only character or-matching exchange out there, as far as I know, and so this change really feels like a loss.

And I was fond of the eternal tagset idea too. I'll really miss that.

And frankly—Trick or Treat with ships already exists in shipoween! I think it'd be better to let ToT keep on being its old self and let Shipoween fill the ship-matching niche.

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thanks for the feedback, and I'm sorry for the disappointment! These changes are set for this year, though I know it won't work for everyone.

Re: the last bit, I'm not sure if you've seen already, but Shipoween won't be running this year.

[fiachairecht]

Oh ... wow. I have to agree with sheliak, I'm really disappointed by the addition of ship matching. Even though I could request/offer only single characters, it makes the whole event feel very different, as someone who's here for character-based horror.

Would you at least consider upping the nominations limit to ten fandoms/ten (or 20) ships-or-characters, for the people who may have been counting on the eternal tagset to have already taken care of a lot of their nominations?

[pumpkinkingmod]

I appreciate the feedback, and my apologies for the disappointment!

I can definitely increase the nominations to 10 fandoms instead of 6, thank you for that suggestion.

[(Anonymous)]

May I make a suggestion? Keep the eternal tagset. Have it open for new character nominations. Use the new tagset for ship nominations. That way if TOT changes in the future, we’ll still have the character eternal tagset.

Personally I’m not a fan of having ship nominations because we already have Shipoween. But if you insist on doing it this way, consider having two tagsets.

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thank you for the suggestion! Unfortunately, the eternal tag set has just gotten too big. I may have needed to replace it even if I hadn't added ship matching. Having a single new tag set will be simpler.

I've increased the number of fandoms you can nominate based on feedback above -- hopefully that will help a bit.

[theladyscribe]

I have to throw my hat in with the other commenters here and say I'm not a fan of this change. The character-only matching for this event has always been a big sell for me, and adding ships - and doing it so abruptly - feels like a fundamental shift for this event.

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thank you for the feedback! The change is set for this year, but I'm sorry it doesn't work for you.

[klutzygirl]

Chiming in to agree with the disappointment about this abrupt change (just days before nominations open) to an exchange that's worked just fine as is - on character matching - for years. Plus, as others have said, we already have Shipoween to fill the ship-based needs of a Halloween exchange. The two exchanges have co-existed for several years without any issues, and it's fun participating in both.

I've had my nominations set for months on the basis that we were still using the eternal tagset, which is supposed to be used year after year. That's why we keep adding to it, and it's also worked just fine. Please reconsider!

I agree with using both the eternal tagset, keeping it open for new character nominations, and the 2021 tagset, if you do want to try this experiment out. Or maybe consider upping the number of character/ship nominations from six to ten!

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thank you for the feedback! I'm sorry for the short notice. I let everyone know as soon as I was able to finalize things, but I know that doesn't change how abrupt it might feel for everyone.

Re: Shipoween, I'm unsure if you've seen their announcement in the meantime, but Shipoween mod won't be running that exchange this year.

Re: the eternal tag set, unfortunately it's just too big. It's larger than each of the past two Chocolate Box tag sets, which regularly break on the admin side. The addition of ships makes it a definite nonstarter this year, but even just adding new characters would be an administrative risk. Moving forward with a new, single tag set for this year will be simpler and safer.

I've increased the nominations limit to 10 fandoms, and I hope that's helpful!

[muccamukk]

I don't understand why this change is happening. I loved that the fest was character/or matching, and the amount of ambiguity that allowed in my requests, and how that pushed the fest in a slightly more gen direction. This is really going to change the feel of the whole thing. Please reconsider.

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thank you for chiming in, I appreciate the feedback! The addition of ships is set for this year, but participants will still be able to nominate, request, and offer single characters like before. As in past years, participants requesting single characters will still be able to prompt for a variety of gen and shippy ideas focused on those characters.

[ozqueen]

Oh, I'm kind of disappointed by this :( All of my fandoms are ridiculously tiny and character matching opened up offers and requests so much more for me! Matching on one individual character is a lot easier than matching to ships when your fandoms have a lot of characters but not many fellow participants. This is a dumb problem specific to very few people, I know, but I just wanted to add my voice to the others here to explain why this change is a bit of a disappointment.

Too late now I guess, but I wish there had been a poll or something about this beforehand.

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thank you for the feedback, and I'm sorry for the disappointment! I know the tiny fandom pain, and I hope matching goes smoothly if you decide to sign up.

[laughingpineapple]

I am also a little disappointed and a little taken aback by this. The disappointment is for the addition of ships, same sentiment as the replies above, I liked ToT's uniqueness in this respect. Taken aback by the removal of the eternal tagset - no eternal tagset works great for me tbh but the announcement comes after I'd spent a lot of time combing through it to ponder noms, I wish we'd been told at least a month earlier.

[pumpkinkingmod]

I'm sorry about the disappointment, and thank you for letting me know! The change is going forward for this year, but hopefully participants interested in character matching will still feel comfortable nominating, requesting, and offering single characters as usual.

And I'm also sorry about the late notice about the tag set! I made the announcement as soon as I could finalize everything, but I know that doesn't change how abrupt it feels.

[morbane]

Good luck with running this exchange! And thank you to the previous mods for handing it over to ensure its continuity - it's a large event that many enjoy and I'm glad it still has its place in the calendar.

The eternal tag set was obviously an experiment, and if it isn't one that suits you, fair enough. However, depending on your reason for not keeping it, I wonder if you'd be interested in a compromise: keeping last year's tag set, but allowing further nominations (both character and relationship - using the Character field, probably with "G:" or similar at the start of the relationship tags) to a new tag set at the same time. Then link both to the sign-up form. [edit: I'm echoing two commenters above me, sorry for duplicating! Hopefully being more specific is still helpful.]

The benefits I see are:
-you don't have to do much messing with the previous tag set (which is of a large enough size to be a pain to edit), but you don't lose the nominations, which people have made plans around
-the large quantities of tags in that tag set may keep a slight gen weighting to this year's requests, which some people have mentioned as a plus; many exchanges that match on ships are heavily weighted TOWARDS ships
-if you like that, you could keep up a rolling tag set system in future: 2021 uses 2021's new tag set + the eternal tag set; 2022 uses 2022's new tag set plus 2021's tag set. That possibly solves one problem with the eternal tag set, which is a set that grows bigger and bigger and bigger - and locks fandom groupings into place in certain ways - while bloating with things that may represent the interests of people who have long lost interest in the exchange.

Again, this is all based on speculation about what your goals are here, so I apologize if this is not helpful. I also rarely sign up to ToT so of course I would not expect it to run to suit me.

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thank you for the well-wishes, and for the suggestions! I appreciate how much thought you've put into this. However, I'm sticking with the simpler solution of running a normal round of nominations in a single tag set. Hopefully the increased nomination limits will help participants get the fandoms they want to request in.

You're correct that the size of the eternal tag set is a concern. I looked up some numbers while I was making this decision, and if anyone else is curious:

Eternal Tag Set: 2263 fandoms; 16708 characters
Chocobox Round 6: 1928 fandoms; 14367 ships
Chocobox Round 5: 1657 fandoms; 12693 ships

[shadaras]

+1 to sheliak and fiachairecht's comments. ToT was consistently one of my favorite exchanges because it was character-only OR matching. Even if ship matching isn't required, it'll give a different tone and and make writing extra tricks/treats more complicated. People could already use optional details to suggest ships they were interested in, and my sense of the exchange was that people liked leaning into the optional details enough that people who wanted ships could usually receive them even without any ship matching.

I also love morbane's suggestion of rolling/overlapping tagsets.

[pumpkinkingmod]

I appreciate the feedback, thank you! (I probably sound like a broken record at this point in the comment list, but I mean it every time.) The change is set for this year, and I'm hopeful it will open up more options for participants rather than fewer, but I understand the change is still disappointing for some.

[zdenka]

I'm really disappointed to hear of this change. Trick or Treat has a unique niche as a low-pressure character matching exchange, and it's one of the things I really enjoy about it. I like ship-matching exchanges too, but that's how the majority of exchanges are run these days and I love having the different emphasis in ToT. Adding ship matching, even if you keep character matching, would greatly change the feeling of the exchange. And as others have mentioned, Shipoween already exists as a ship-based Halloween exchange. I hope there might be some way you could reconsider!

[pumpkinkingmod]

The change is set for this year, but I'm sorry for the disappointment, and thank you for letting me know!

Per the last point, I don't know if you saw, but the Shipoween mod announced they aren't running it this year.

[snickfic]

I'm glad to hear the exchange is going forward this year! It's always been of my favorites, and I've done it almost every year since it began.

However, I'm commenting to ask if you might reconsider opening the exchange up to ship noms. ToT is one of the few exchanges that matched only on characters, and IMO that lends it a whole different vibe than the many exchanges that allow both ships and characters to be nominated. It makes it easier for us multishippers who enjoy just throwing a bunch of possible ship ideas at the wall without coming up with ideas for all of them, and it's also really fun as a writer to get to choose between different ship options for a character without getting locked into one. It changes my whole signup strategy, in a fun way, and is part of the reason I've done ToT for so long. It was one of the things that made ToT unique, as opposed to just being another exchange that matches on both ships and characters, and previous mods have been really committed to keeping it that way.

I know there've been requests in the past for ToT to match on ships, but these days we have Shipoween, which does exactly that. It feels a little weird for ToT to add ships now, after Shipoween has already been established for several years and purposefully runs on the exact same schedule as ToT.

This is also the kind of change that I think is nice to broach with the community beforehand. At this point, Trick or Treat is one of the longest-running exchanges besides Yuletide, and it has a lot of people who've done it a long time and are invested. (Like me!) So it feels kind of alarming to have this announced just a few days before noms, by someone new that we don't know or have experience with. You may not be aware, but there's been some pretty big drama recently over exchange modding, and I think people are going to feel warier than usual about big new changes made by mods they don't know yet or have any experience with.

Thank you for being willing to help keep ToT going. It's a fairly active exchange and a lot of work, and it's great of you to step up and put in that time! Please reconsider this big new change, especially since you haven't run the exchange through a full cycle yet. Thanks. :)

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thanks so much for the detailed thoughts! I'm not reconsidering the addition for this year, but the input is appreciated.

While I know this answer won't satisfy everyone, I hope multishippers who like character matching will feel comfortable signing up as usual. I definitely have fandoms where I prefer the ambiguity of character OR matching too.

I'll set aside the notes on Shipoween filling the shipfic niche, since Shipoween mod is retiring -- I know the timing of this comment section is a little awkward, since I posted before Shipoween mod.

Regarding recent drama and the question of trust... I know I'm new as PK and coming in with a couple of big changes, and "just trust me!" would be a hell of an ask right here. All I can say is that I have longtime investment in Trick or Treat as a participant too, and I intend to do my best by other participants as the exchange moves forward.

Thank you again!

[grayswandir]

Just wanted to add a comment to agree with the others -- I really liked that ToT was character-matching, unlike most other exchanges. Last year I did both ToT and Shipoween, and although I enjoyed both a great deal, I had a much harder time finding offers I could make for Shipoween, so I was planning to do only ToT this year. (I'm very happy to write shipfic! I even wrote shipfic for ToT last year, but it was really nice that there was no pressure in it; I could include just as much shippiness as felt appropriate for the story, rather than agonizing over whether my story was technically shippy enough to fulfill a ship-based request. Matching on ships feels like more pressure to me, even if the ship is one that I like and enjoy writing.)

I realize you may already have things planned out, and may not want to change your plan, and that's fine! I just wanted to add my thoughts, in case you're still open to considering changes. I only have time to do a few exchanges each year, and the reason I was planning for ToT to be one of them was because of the matching system.

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thank you for chiming in! I'm keeping the ship options for this year, but the feedback is welcome. I hope you find enough fun matches if you decide to participate this year regardless.

[siver]

I am also a bit taken aback and disappointed not just at the changes, but at how suddenly they've been made with so little advance notice. While I've never been completely sold on the eternal tagset--it doesn't seem very sustainable and I noticed an awful lot of initial pinch hits last year--it would have been nice to have far more warning of its removal, so we could plan accordingly.

I don't have much more to add about the ships possibility that hasn't already been said by others here. I always appreciated the simplicity and flexibility of single characters and prompts cover shipping possibilities while being open enough for authors/artists to use or ignore as they please.

On a slightly different note I couldn't find anything about how matching works in the FAQ. I assume it's still done on an OR basis? But that should be clarified for newcomers.

That all said, thank you for taking over and keeping this lovely exchange going. I can only imagine how much work modding these things takes, so thank you for stepping up.

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thank you for the kind words, despite the disappointment! I'm aware my timing wasn't ideal here.

Matching will still be OR, yes, great question -- I'll add an explanation of that to the FAQ :)

[(Anonymous)]

Excellent! I'm really happy that we get both character and ship matching this year. :D

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thank you, hope you have a great time!

[(Anonymous)]

I'm very happy to hear this! I've been disappointed by the lack of ship matching for this exchange since it started. I did both this and Shipoween in the past, but being able to request both ships and solo characters without two simultaneous exchange commitments is a huge improvement. I understand why other people are disappointed, but please don't think everyone is.

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thank you for chiming in! The disappointment and excitement are indeed both helpful to me :)

[tally]

Welcome new PK, and thanks for taking up the spoopy reins!

With Shipoween not running, I'm glad to see ship matching for sure.

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thank you for the kind words! :)

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for adding ship matching! I'm excited for this. I'm looking forward to being able to request and offer both.

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thank you!

[kore]

I'm just adding some feedback to register my own disappointment. People have already pointed out eloquently how ToT is unique in exchanges, and how off-putting it is to have that more or less taken away without warning, or knowing whether or not this change is permanent (is it just going to be while Shipoween is on hiatus?). I do hope you'll reconsider in light of all these comments.

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thank you for the input!

No decisions have been made about 2022. From my conversations with Shipoween mod, I'm under the impression they intended to retire the exchange rather than go on hiatus. But of course I can't speak definitively for them, and things can always change over the course of a year.

[fiachairecht]

Gonna get out of your comments after this because, while I do hate this choice I know it probably can't be fun for you for your post to be the Dreamwidth equivalent of the [Everyone Disliked That] meme, but I just want to add my explicit request for you to reconsider this next year. If you've been invested in this as a participant for years you probably also know that, generally, people who have wanted to write and request shipfic have not had a problem doing so. I'd guess that the number of people who sat it out because it wasn't Guaranteed(tm) is about the same as the number of people you're going to lose because of this change, and while I'm aware you can't please everyone, I just don't see the point of flipping this around, especially since it sounds like you reached out to the shipoween mods about adding ships before they decided not to run it this year.

I know that in exchange circles we can get very 'so make your own!' about things, but ... people did. They made Shipoween. And it kinda feels like the people who don't want ship matching are now being told 'nothing's different [which isn't true] and if you don't like it you can make your own' and like ... we already had that, you just took it away. It feels ... not great.

(Also, speaking of feelings and re: something you said upthread - how abrupt this is. It feels abrupt because it is, when you're making this decision 2-3 days before noms open. I genuinely cannot fathom why you needed to change this this round, rather than running something that worked well both with and without Shipoween running in parallel, and asked for input if the Shipoween mods decided to permanently end that.)

[pumpkinkingmod]

I'm not sure "fun" is the right framing, but everyone's commenting out of love for the exchange and has been super civil, which is appreciated.

I'll take your feedback into consideration before next round, and again thank you for chiming in.

Re: Shipoween, I was aware of Shipoween mod's current schedule and situation before I reached out to discuss the idea with them, but yes I'd prefer to take responsibility for the TOT decision.

[moetushie]

I'm very much looking forward to this! I've stepped away from ToT in the last few years because it's a busy time of the year for me, but it's always been one of my favorite exchanges. I'm really excited to offer/request ships!

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thank you, and welcome back!

[(Anonymous)]

Please consider this vote-casting, not dog-piling, but if removing ship based matching is not possible this halloween I hope you'll consider returning to the old format next year.

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thank you for the feedback!

[(Anonymous)]

Will the tagset come back next year?

Is this a permanent change, or will shipoween run next year and ToT return to character matching?

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thanks for asking! I can't speak for Shipoween mod, and I've made no decisions about TOT 2022 yet.

[verecunda]

Thank you for stepping in to run this exchange! It's become one of the highlights of my Hallowe'en these last few years. :)

I'm glad you decided to do away with the eternal tagset - it always seemed a bit unwieldy to me, and made it hard to gauge what the "current" nominations were, if that makes sense. Increasing the nomination slots to 10 seems like a good compromise, though, so thank you for that.

I have no strong opinion either way about the addition of ship-matching (the draw of this exchange for me has always been in the Trick/Treat option), but given the amount of pushback you've received, I agree it would probably have been better to give some advance notice of your intention, so that the community could offer their feedback then. There has, too, been some recent conflict on the exchange circuit (I'm thinking particularly of the most recent round of Multifandom Drabble), and I think it's made a lot of people quite gun-shy of mods making snap decisions like this.

If you're committed to the changes for this round at least, might I suggest opening the floor after it's over, to see whether the community want them to carry over into future rounds? I would also suggest that in future, broaching such major changes with participants beforehand also seems like the best idea.

With all that said, thank you for taking the time to run this exchange, and I'm looking forward to taking part again!

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thanks, I'm glad the tag set change works for you!

I'll definitely be happy to get feedback from participants during and after this round.