Challenges, challenges, challenges
Sat, Oct. 24th, 2009 12:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaz posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
access_fandomHere is one thing that I find frustrating about fandom: ficathons of the challenge variety.
It seems as if they're a very popular form of fandom participation; Yuletide is probably the best-known example, but I run into them absolutely everywhere. You know the format: person A signs up, receives a prompt and is asked to write a fic for it. Variations exist (e.g. A often writes a prompt they'd like to see filled of their own) but that's the general gist.
Now don't get me wrong, I find these pretty awesome ideas, and I imagine it could be very fun to participate! There is, however, just one eensy problem for me:
I really, honestly, cannot commit to things. I have autistic interest patterns, meaning I can't know when I will suddenly become possessed with the urge to play Morrowind, make jewellery or read Minesweeper fanfic 24/7 for three months straight. (Other people seem capable of still keeping up with their previous interests when a new one catches their attention. I am not.) I also have spoons to think of, and a) writing fiction is pretty spoon-consumptive for me, b) fandom *has* to be my last priority when it comes to spoon allocation. Because, you see, the spoons I spend on filling out a challenge fic might be the ones I needed to make it to university tomorrow. And then there's the awful soul-sucking guilt of not being able to follow through on things I promised, which may easily set off a downwards spiral for me. Fandom is something I do to *relax*, but fic challenges and the like actually contribute so much pain and angst for me that I wind up fleeing back to my day job.
"But if you can't fill your prompt, you should just e-mail the people running the challenge and explain!"
Er, a few problems with that.
Number one. Some people will probably be quite happy to accept "work is killing me" or "my dog died" or "my computer ate my fic nom nom nom" as reasons for dropping out, but may look askance at "so my interests have switched to this mind-numbing Flash game" or "I just don't have the spoons for it" or "I don't know why, I just start crying every time I think about the challenge" or, you know, "my fibromyalgia has flared up again" or other disability-related issues because I am not the only person who has these problems. Some people will demand reasons. I don't know whether the organisers fall into the "some" category ahead of time, and I don't like being forced to explain my disability to a possibly unsympathetic audience.
Number two. I have pretty massive social anxiety related to e-mail; LJ messages are somewhat better but not much. Somehow the act of sitting down and composing a formal message - not an LJ comment - to another person makes me panic about accidentally violating some to-me-unknown social norm and being massively rude without knowing and making the other person hate me. Furthermore, as this is also true for RL my letter and e-mail spoons go to RL things that I desperately have to do or else I'll be kicked out of uni/thrown out of my accommodation/have my bank account closed on me/etc. For me, there is no "just" in "just e-mail..."
Number three. If you have written anything of the "we will be kind of unhappy if you drop out without a good reason >(" variety, in fact if you haven't explicitly made it clear that dropping out is acceptable, I have probably worked myself up into such a state about this that I cannot, actually, think about the challenge without starting to cry. Attempting to communicate that I am dropping out to you, in a format I'm not very comfortable with, will probably end with me huddled in a ball in a corner somewhere before I even reach "Dear XYZ". Hell, I *still* feel miserable whenever I think about![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
femgenficathon and that was over a year ago.
So. Yeah. This is the reason I am probably never going to participate in a fic challenge again, despite the fact that it seems as if it could be really fun and I'd like to try my hand at some of those prompts and everyone is talking about Yuletide and I would sooo like to participate and it makes me a very sad Kaz. :(
I am not going to demand that people change the format of things entirely just to accommodate me, but. Here are some suggestions of things you could do to make things possible for me, and other disabled people who might have these kinds of problems.
- Allow for people to drop out, even drop out without being able to tell you, and make clear that this is not ZOMG the end of the world in the rules.
- Communicate that you will accept any reason for dropping out and specifically that you are sympathetic to the difficulties people with disabilities might have.
- Have a page specifically on what to do if you feel like you can't continue! Something that would be *very* helpful for me specifically would be to have a post that people can comment on if they feel like they can't continue, with an example comment that you can c&p if you can't manage to say in your own words that you can't make it. If you insist on having it be via e-mail, provide a form e-mail people can simply c&p.
- In addition to the actual challenge, have a group of prompts that people can simply try filling out, or have some prompts you assign to people with no obligation to finish them.
- Have flexible deadlines; this one's less useful for me (because it's filling the prompt *at all* that's the problem) but probably very useful for other disabled people. Have similar clear guidelines and "it's okay if this happens" and pre-formatted e-mails for asking for a deadline extension, or just say that posting late is fine.
- Don't immediately ban someone who doesn't finish and doesn't tell you beforehand.
I have never run a ficathon so I don't know how realistic these are, but if a challenge did all of these I might actually be able to participate.
ETA because this is not clear: I totally understand that not all of these are reasonable for every challenge, that in fact some of them are very unrealistic for strictly exchange-based challenges, and that changing *existing* challenges is a rather different beast from making new challenges more accessible. I suppose this post is partially "I would like you to keep this in mind if you are thinking of creating a challenge" (e.g. either getting away from strict exchange-based format entirely or adding in options for people who probably can't commit to that) and partially "If you are currently running any kind of challenge, it would be really really cool if you'd do this" (form letters for drop-outs. This is actually the #1 thing I'd like to see, because I honestly have trouble describing just how difficult writing a simple e-mail can be.) Sorry for any confusion!
It seems as if they're a very popular form of fandom participation; Yuletide is probably the best-known example, but I run into them absolutely everywhere. You know the format: person A signs up, receives a prompt and is asked to write a fic for it. Variations exist (e.g. A often writes a prompt they'd like to see filled of their own) but that's the general gist.
Now don't get me wrong, I find these pretty awesome ideas, and I imagine it could be very fun to participate! There is, however, just one eensy problem for me:
I really, honestly, cannot commit to things. I have autistic interest patterns, meaning I can't know when I will suddenly become possessed with the urge to play Morrowind, make jewellery or read Minesweeper fanfic 24/7 for three months straight. (Other people seem capable of still keeping up with their previous interests when a new one catches their attention. I am not.) I also have spoons to think of, and a) writing fiction is pretty spoon-consumptive for me, b) fandom *has* to be my last priority when it comes to spoon allocation. Because, you see, the spoons I spend on filling out a challenge fic might be the ones I needed to make it to university tomorrow. And then there's the awful soul-sucking guilt of not being able to follow through on things I promised, which may easily set off a downwards spiral for me. Fandom is something I do to *relax*, but fic challenges and the like actually contribute so much pain and angst for me that I wind up fleeing back to my day job.
"But if you can't fill your prompt, you should just e-mail the people running the challenge and explain!"
Er, a few problems with that.
Number one. Some people will probably be quite happy to accept "work is killing me" or "my dog died" or "my computer ate my fic nom nom nom" as reasons for dropping out, but may look askance at "so my interests have switched to this mind-numbing Flash game" or "I just don't have the spoons for it" or "I don't know why, I just start crying every time I think about the challenge" or, you know, "my fibromyalgia has flared up again" or other disability-related issues because I am not the only person who has these problems. Some people will demand reasons. I don't know whether the organisers fall into the "some" category ahead of time, and I don't like being forced to explain my disability to a possibly unsympathetic audience.
Number two. I have pretty massive social anxiety related to e-mail; LJ messages are somewhat better but not much. Somehow the act of sitting down and composing a formal message - not an LJ comment - to another person makes me panic about accidentally violating some to-me-unknown social norm and being massively rude without knowing and making the other person hate me. Furthermore, as this is also true for RL my letter and e-mail spoons go to RL things that I desperately have to do or else I'll be kicked out of uni/thrown out of my accommodation/have my bank account closed on me/etc. For me, there is no "just" in "just e-mail..."
Number three. If you have written anything of the "we will be kind of unhappy if you drop out without a good reason >(" variety, in fact if you haven't explicitly made it clear that dropping out is acceptable, I have probably worked myself up into such a state about this that I cannot, actually, think about the challenge without starting to cry. Attempting to communicate that I am dropping out to you, in a format I'm not very comfortable with, will probably end with me huddled in a ball in a corner somewhere before I even reach "Dear XYZ". Hell, I *still* feel miserable whenever I think about
femgenficathon and that was over a year ago.So. Yeah. This is the reason I am probably never going to participate in a fic challenge again, despite the fact that it seems as if it could be really fun and I'd like to try my hand at some of those prompts and everyone is talking about Yuletide and I would sooo like to participate and it makes me a very sad Kaz. :(
I am not going to demand that people change the format of things entirely just to accommodate me, but. Here are some suggestions of things you could do to make things possible for me, and other disabled people who might have these kinds of problems.
- Allow for people to drop out, even drop out without being able to tell you, and make clear that this is not ZOMG the end of the world in the rules.
- Communicate that you will accept any reason for dropping out and specifically that you are sympathetic to the difficulties people with disabilities might have.
- Have a page specifically on what to do if you feel like you can't continue! Something that would be *very* helpful for me specifically would be to have a post that people can comment on if they feel like they can't continue, with an example comment that you can c&p if you can't manage to say in your own words that you can't make it. If you insist on having it be via e-mail, provide a form e-mail people can simply c&p.
- In addition to the actual challenge, have a group of prompts that people can simply try filling out, or have some prompts you assign to people with no obligation to finish them.
- Have flexible deadlines; this one's less useful for me (because it's filling the prompt *at all* that's the problem) but probably very useful for other disabled people. Have similar clear guidelines and "it's okay if this happens" and pre-formatted e-mails for asking for a deadline extension, or just say that posting late is fine.
- Don't immediately ban someone who doesn't finish and doesn't tell you beforehand.
I have never run a ficathon so I don't know how realistic these are, but if a challenge did all of these I might actually be able to participate.
ETA because this is not clear: I totally understand that not all of these are reasonable for every challenge, that in fact some of them are very unrealistic for strictly exchange-based challenges, and that changing *existing* challenges is a rather different beast from making new challenges more accessible. I suppose this post is partially "I would like you to keep this in mind if you are thinking of creating a challenge" (e.g. either getting away from strict exchange-based format entirely or adding in options for people who probably can't commit to that) and partially "If you are currently running any kind of challenge, it would be really really cool if you'd do this" (form letters for drop-outs. This is actually the #1 thing I'd like to see, because I honestly have trouble describing just how difficult writing a simple e-mail can be.) Sorry for any confusion!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-26 09:59 am (UTC)This this this!! I mean, in the end of the day it doesn't matter whether I can't participate in something because of a diagnosed disability (or a *non*diagnosed disability), or whether Sarah McFiccer can't because she's completely overloaded with work, or whether Rachel Writerson can't because her muse just doesn't work that way - what matters is that there are people who'd like to participate in something but can't in the format it's given. And this ties in so well with things I have been reading about the medical vs. social models and how the second means you should stop getting away from seeing disability as *individual*, about "this person cannot do X because of Y", but as "some people who want to do Y have barriers others don't".
Also, re: booking from mid-October to end of December... yyeeah that's another consideration for me. I have wanted to do NaNo for *ages*, because I think it would really help me in terms of not thinking for so long about what I'm writing and being able to just sit down and bash out fic (I mean, I haven't written anything since *May*, this state of affairs is ridiculous) but honestly, November? End of term? NOT A GOOD TIME. And it just now occurs to me that the official NaNo response to this - "everyone can find time if they try!" is really fucking ableist. Among other things.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-26 11:21 am (UTC)I mean, in the end of the day it doesn't matter whether I can't participate in something because of a diagnosed disability (or a *non*diagnosed disability), or whether Sarah McFiccer can't because she's completely overloaded with work, or whether Rachel Writerson can't because her muse just doesn't work that way - what matters is that there are people who'd like to participate in something but can't in the format it's given.
I think there is a difference there that matters, though. I mean, if Sarah *knows* that her work schedule precludes a large time commitment to some other project, then she shouldn't sign up for, say, a Big Bang challenge or Nanowrimo-- but there are lots of commentfic challenges or ficathons with 1000-word limits. If Rachel's muse isn't inspired by getting assigned one specific person's prompt, she should skip Yuletide or similarly assignment-based ficathons, and instead do challenges like kink_bingo or lgbtfest where there are huge long lists of prompts and you can pick whatever suits you. Etc.
Kaz has provided a lot of really interesting ideas for that most (if not all) challenges could be vastly improved, accessibility-wise, but as a mod, when it involves letting other people down, I think potential challenge participants have a responsibility to honestly gauge their own capacity to participate, and commit themselves accordingly. Obviously there are always things that people can't control-- illness, unexpected emergency, computer problems, and obviously the kind of autistic interest patterns and social anxiety that kaz is describing fall into this category.
But someone who's run fic challenges, I don't really have a lot of sympathy for people who would sign up for any kind of *exchange based* ficathon knowing ahead of time that something like their work schedule won't let them follow through. IMO, that's completely different than getting sick or having a family emergency or something like what kaz describes, that's totally unexpected and not under that person's control at all.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-26 03:04 pm (UTC)But if all the fic challenges Sarah is interested in participating in are such that she will not be able to complete them on account of her work, then she's just as effectively barred from participating as I am because of my various disability issues. In that case, we can go "hey, wouldn't it be cool if there were more challenges of an entirely different format, specifically geared at the Sarahs and Kazzes of this world?" (And, you know, striking the balance between not committing to things I probably can't do and still somehow managing to participate in things so that I'm not constantly stuck on the outskirts making sad faces is actually one of the main issues I face in my online life.)
So there are things people might consider when making a new challenge where they don't have a reason to have it in the same strict-exchange format, which are really quite different from the things someone who is currently running a challenge or who really wants theirs to adhere to the exchange format could implement. E.g. I totally understand that "let people drop out without notice" is completely unrealistic for a running exchange, and more something to ponder one when one is thinking of creating a challenge with the specific goal that people who wouldn't normally be able to participate could, but OTOH I don't see any reason why the form e-mail thing shouldn't be possible for all challenges. I should have probably divided that list up a bit better. >>
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-27 10:11 pm (UTC)In that case, we can go "hey, wouldn't it be cool if there were more challenges of an entirely different format, specifically geared at the Sarahs and Kazzes of this world?"
I think.... hm. I do like the idea of running a dual-track challenge, where one track is strictly exchange-based (and has deadlines, penalties, length limits, etc.) and one track is non-exchange-based, with less restrictions and therefore more accessibility. It makes the same amount of sense as, for instance, allowing people to volunteer to either write or do fanart & request either fic or fanart-- it just lets more people play *and* it ends up contributing to the amount of fanworks dedicated to whatever you're running the ficathon for.
But, speaking as someone who's run challenges specifically as a means to *create* new fic about a certain genre/pairing/etc., I don't think really casual, completely non-exchange-based forms of ficathon are ever going to be all that popular, just because modding a challenge is really, really hard-- I mean, it's weeks if not months of work, constantly dealing with people who don't read the FAQ, constantly worrying that people won't turn in their stories, etc., etc. (Even on things like kink_meme I imagine you have to worry about modding flamewars, making sure trolls don't run amuck, etc.)
Given the choice, most mods would probably rather choose to run the type of ficathon where they *know* that all the hard work is going to be worth it in the end because X amount of stories are going to be created, no matter what... Then again, on the other hand, kink memes are rapidly becoming super popular (even White Collar, which just premiered, has a kink meme!) and comment_fic on lj still seems to be going strong, so who knows, maybe there *is* going to be a shift towards super-casual fic-fest type things with no deadlines or restrictions on length/genre/pairing/etc?
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-07 10:21 pm (UTC)At the end of
I hope this isn't off topic now. Also, I want to say to Kaz that I think the form email/comment-on-a-specific-post for extensions and withdrawing is an awesome idea.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-27 12:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-27 09:46 pm (UTC)And that's why I said, "Obviously there are always things that people can't control-- illness, unexpected emergency, computer problems," etc.
Unexpected things always come up. I don't blame people for dropping out when something comes totally out of the blue and surprises them. However, I didn't get the sense that that's the kind of situation kaz was talking about in her original comment-- she was talking about someone who *wants* to participate in a particular challenge but *already* knows she can't because she's overloaded with work.