Creator Reveals!

[pumpkinkingmod]

Creators have been revealed! Thank you everyone for a great round, you all did amazing work.

Community Challenge Results
At last count, the community treated 234 people—85% of participants. Congratulations! The prize badges for Tiers 1 and 2 can be found at this post.

Thank you again to the anonymous artist for the custom badges, and thank you to shadowsapiens for running the treating spreadsheet.

2021 Feedback
I would love to get feedback on how the exchange went for participants this year, including:

- In general, is there anything that could be better clarified in the FAQ for next year?
- How was your experience with the community challenge?
- Did the addition of relationship matching negatively or positively impact your matchability, finding people to treat, etc?

Note: I won't be replying to every comment here but will get to questions as I can. If you'd prefer to give feedback privately, my email is halloweenmod@gmx.com.

I'll confirm whether TOT 2022 will include the option of relationship matching by the end of this month, so everyone has time to plan their 2022 exchange calendars.

Comments

[ungefug]

I participated for the first time. I offered and requested both ships and individual characters, usually mixed. I received a ship and a character focused gift. I wrote 4 ship and 2 character based works.

For me the ship option just made it easier to specify what I wanted and offer to the right people. I would often request both the character that interested me and one or two ships with them. To me this is the equivalent of requesting a character and writing "If you feel so inclined, I ship them with X and Y" in my prompt/letter - except easier to process.

I don't know if (as many people have said) the relationship option is really sending the wrong messages and the event got more shippy than before?

Edit:

As for finding people to treat with character based fics and that being muddled by ships..
https://autoao3app.firebaseapp.com allows to specifically look only for character requests if you type in !Ship: in the Character field you get 1184 requests out of 1633. Those are all requests with at least one non-ship character.

And about reveals, for Europeans who have to get up early in the morning, the reveals were too late. I understand you can't make everyone happy and Australians might complain too.

[muccamukk]

I also sat this round out because of the sudden changes and adding ship matching. Please go back to character matching only. It's what made this fest unique. I can do ship matching on any of a hundred other fests.

[narya_flame]

Exactly this. It felt like what made ToT unique and special has been removed.

[(Anonymous)]

I really enjoyed being able to match on character or relationship, because it helped me request exactly what I wanted! Only one of my requests was a ship, and I got a mix of ship and character fic that made me happy. I also had options with ship and character matches. For me, net positive.

I agree with others that an earlier opening time would be helpful, and the goals felt manageable.

[rubick]

I prefer having shipping as an option. If Shipoween runs next year, I will probably do that exchange over that one, as I prefer to read/write shipping. (I don't dislike gen, and I did offer/request/write both this year, but when given the option...) But if it does not, then I'm fine with having both shipping/character in ToT.

I LOVED the community challenge. The only reason I didn't do more treats was because I was signed up for multiple other exchanges at the same time, so I didn't have the bandwidth. I'll probably plan better next year so I can treat more, if the community challenge is still ongoing.

[volpish]

In general, is there anything that could be better clarified in the FAQ for next year?

I haven't participated in this exchange, but I was wondering: people have mentioned that they don't like the ship matching because character matching allowed them to be free with their ship ideas, rather than needing to nominate all the ships they wanted individually. Is requesting a single character and saying you would also like shipfic for that character if the creator was so inclined still allowed? Would a shipfic with a requested character be considered filling the request, provided that it didn't violate a DNW?

[iwasanartist]

I don't recall anything unusual or hard to understand about the FAQ (or if I even looked at it, honestly), and I didn't pay any attention to the community challenge.

Adding relationships to the exchange honestly just made more work for me. Because there are some pairings where I like the ship as & and / (and within those pairings, some characters that I just have solo wants for) and to cast the widest net for potential matches, I had to fill 2-4 slots with what could have been two characters with potential combination likes/prompts mentioned.

Also, I feel concerned that with ships being on the table, the number of people offering or asking for solo characters will start to fall. Obviously time will have to tell on that.

Basically, I feel like, yeah, if we go back to the old way, someone might have to come up for a solo character prompt or 300 word fic for a solo character that they would prefer as a ship. But a lot of people include character combos in their prompts (for other Kimmel characters and not), anyway, so it's not like the likelihood of getting a shippy prompt is zero. I get it; it's disappointing if someome only want ships but matches with someone who doesn't. But with a minimum requirement this low, I don't think it's asking to much to put on some grownup boots and make a 300-word effort before moving on. Moreover, there are A LOT of exchanges. Maybe not every single one has to try to be everything to everybody. Solo matching made ToT unique, and while I don't think it's some great travesty to lose that, I prefer the old way.

[(Anonymous)]

*For other solo characters; I have no idea why my autocorrect decided Kimmel would be the appropriate fix to whatever typo I made.

[(Anonymous)]

*Other NOMMED, man I suck at everything today.

[desertvixen]

However it worked this year on the tech side seemed good. I apologize, I've done several signups since then and they all sort of flow together.

I didn't mind the relationship matching but I also deliberately did not nominate or offer any non-gen relationships because I do like the character-based option.

[pumpkinkingmod]

Thanks for asking! Yes, logistically speaking, character matching hasn't changed in that regard. Character requests can still include relationship prompts, and they can still be filled with shipfic (or fic focused on gen relationships) as in past years.

[volpish]

Thanks! I read the FAQ a few times to make sure I hadn't missed it, and it would be nice to have for newbies who aren't familiar with character matching. (I also assumed that single characters were equivalent to gen.)

And thank you so much for keeping the exchange going. It looked like a lot of fun, and resulted in a lot of great works.

[gayporwave]

Thank you running this year PK! I greatly enjoyed the addition of shipping matching so I would personally be able to delineate my shipping requests for a character vs my character specific requests and the ability for my writer to better make sure what they wanted to write was in line with what I wanted. I very much enjoyed the fest this year and hope shipmatching continues!

[everysecondtuesday]

I didn't participate this year thanks to the change in matching, so if you're interested in the opinions of past recipients as well as recipients from this year when making your decision, I'd like to reiterate my earlier comment that I would strongly prefer a return to character matching. While I previously thought I'd probably be back either way once the disappointment had a chance to fade, at this point I'm honestly not sure I will if the change is permanent.

[vialethe]

Love the ship matching in addition to character matching, it makes it so much easier to find people who are interested in receiving what I want to write!

[eggsbenedict]

Thanks for running this! I chose not to request ships this time around, but I offered a mix of characters and ships. I don't really mind having the mixture of character/ship matching, though I'd still lean towards character matching given the choice (especially as an artist).

An earlier reveal time would be great, too. The 31st won't always fall on a Sunday, and at least one group of timezones is always going to suffer, but reveals being 6-12 hours earlier would make enough of a difference.

[laughingpineapple]

Loved the community challenge - simple and aimed where it matters. Much appreciated, thank you.

The timing of the collection reveal didn't impact me personally but I agree with others that it could probably benefit from some tweaking.

However, the single character matching was the main draw of the exchange for me and it has made things less fun for me, so if relationship matching persists I'll probably drop this.

[(Anonymous)]

If you're going to keep ship matching then I really hope you stress in the rules that requests for characters aren't limited to only gen. That was the major draw for me and many others. TOT always had a sweet grab bag sort of allure where you could request characters and gave a list of / and & ships you enjoyed, and you didn't know what you were getting, much in the spirit of trick or treating. While I do see the usefulness of ship matching for anyone wishing to avoid requests for their NOTP, I do worry it created the mindset that anyone who requested characters will only receive gen regardless of their prompts. I have seen a few reports from those who had all character requests with ship ODs only received gen.

[(Anonymous)]

As a gen writer I was worried about adding ship matching, but it worked for me! In previous years I often wrote for people who wanted shippy fic: not a good match for them or me, but it was hard to avoid these mismatches. This year I could offer characters and & relationships and match to people who were interested in the same things as me.

My vote would therefore be to keep this combination of relationship and character matching. Then everybody has options to request what they want.

[stefanyeah]

I didn't treat as much as I had hoped, but that was life being life.

As for ship adding, I matched on solo and treated solo and a gen ship. Thanks to the new and sparkling app, looking for treats was easier than ever, so no increase of work involved either. If Shipoween doesn't return, I'm fine with having ships on board.
If Shipoween runs again, I'd say return to character matching as Tot's "unique selling point".

[(Anonymous)]

Is Shipoween coming back?

Am I correct in thinking if Shipoween comes back, ToT will return to character matching only?

[eclipsemidnight]

Thanks for running this exchange! It was great fun as usual--I'm sort of neutral about ship matching, I didn't request or offer it and ended up with something fun to write just fine, but I hope you definitely keep character matching.

[(Anonymous)]

Another vote for going back to character matching only and opening earlier.

[(Anonymous)]

I came here to write my own comment but instead I’d just like to co-sign this one. While I know the mod clarified that single character requesters should feel free to list all their ships, the number of people who mentioned that they decided who to treat based on ship-based searches makes me feel it didn’t and won’t work out this way.

[(Anonymous)]

Receiving gen was always an option with character matching, though. If you requested a character, you were also signing up to receive gen about them, whether or not you had ship ODs. So I think it's hard to tell whether people received gen this year because of ship matching or simply because they matched with someone who wanted to write gen, which could happen in previous years as well.

/requested characters, received ships I mentioned in my ODs