Challenges, challenges, challenges

[kaz]

Here 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 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!

Comments

[kaz]

Just to clarify, I'm aware that "allow for people to drop out without telling you" isn't really feasible for exchange-based fics for precisely the reason you mention. That point is more related to *non*-exchange based ficathon, and some of the others are suggestions for exchange-based ficathons. For example, some people on this post have mentioned that because for them the main thing is writing they don't really mind if their prompt is fulfilled or not, and for me as well - sure, it'd be cool if I could request a fic, but the main thing I want to do is give answering a prompt a go, you know? So it doesn't *have* to be "X person must write fic, request a prompt and have that request fulfilled". Again, I've never modded one of these things so I don't know whether it would be possible/how much extra work it would be to, say, have an extra post with the various prompts so that people who haven't signed up can give it a shot anyway or match up people who say "I can't guarantee I'll be able to write fic" with people who say "I don't mind if my prompt isn't fulfilled" although I and some others are having Thinky Thoughts about a disability-themed ficathon that tries to be as accessible as possible, so we can test how this all works out in practice. None of these are ZOMG YOU MUST DO THIS IF YOU DON'T YOU SUCK FOREVER things, they are really just suggestions, but I did want to frame the discussion in such a way that people realise these are actually accessibility issues for various PWD; I can trace pretty much all of the issues I have with ficathons back to either autistic issues or depression.

And re: e-mail - the thing is that this really isn't something specific to e-mailing zomg mods zomg!! (although I admit that can be a bit intimidating in and of itself. >>) I have this issue wrt pretty much any form of e-mail beyond very informal with people I know. I really appreciate the thought, and it does really help to know that you are not going to kill me and eat me for dropping out, but it's not going to solve the issue for me. Chances are nothing will (because a lot of my social anxiety is disproportionate but is still grounded in reality - "what if I mess up some social norm that is obscure to me but where violating it will make the other person think I am deliberately incredibly rude?!" is something that has a reasonable chance of actually happening if I'm not very very careful due to autism-related issues), so I have to find ways to work around it. Hence I suggested form e-mails in the post, because really, for something like dropping out - especially if you don't want reasons - there's no *need* for the person to formulate the e-mail all on their own.

Speaking about reasons - it is awesome that you don't need any for dropping out! Do people know that beforehand? I'm asking because all of my e-mail issues will grow even worse if I'm worried about needing to explain why I'm dropping out, and if there's nothing like "we don't need to know why, we just need to know that you won't be completing this" in the rules I'll probably assume worst case scenario. :(

[kaz]

Also, wrt the reasons for dropping out - I do want to point out here that that is actually a serious consideration for me. Because if people want to know why, and the issue is something related to autism... this is more related to another post I'm thinking of writing, but have you ever looked at the way people talk about Asperger's in fandom? It. Is. Awful. (It is so awful that I have been careful to only say "autism" instead of "AS" up until this point in time, because although AS is a variety of autism and it is therefore completely accurate, autism is not quite as red-flag-worthy as AS to various people online and I have to protect myself somehow.) If I need to say "hai I can't complete this challenge because of X AS issues" there is the very real possibility that I will be mocked and attacked and people will tell me I am just using it as an excuse.

[midnitemarauder]

No, I can't say that I do know, or at least they haven't said anything where I've seen it personally. One of my best friends has an autistic son, I have an autistic cousin, and my 8 1/2 year old niece has mild Aspergers, so I do understand to a point. Not suffering from it myself, of course I will never understand what it feels like or how it affects you personally. However, those people who mock (or would mock) are ignorant and asinine. Not that that helps, but it's still true.

It puts me in mind of the recent "trigger" discussion - not that it's the same thing, but rather that they're similar in aspect. People with triggers were explaining why certain fic warnings were necessary for them, and why a lack of them was a problem. Some people mocked and felt...I don't know - as if adding warnings to their fic and art oppressed them or whatnot. I'm not going to speak for them. But the large majority of people were sympathetic and many never realized the extent of the problem. (I've always warned for things in my own fics, and required warnings on all fic and art in the fests I ran anyway.)

But where that related to you - I think your post was very enlightening and I'm glad you made it.

No, as someone pointed out in reply to my comment - I certainly can't speak for ALL mods, but like with anything else, if someone is rude or unaccommodating, you try to limit your involvement with them.

I don't need excuses/reasons because I don't feel that my status as mod requires anyone to tell me anything personal, especially if that might make them uncomfortable. It's not that I don't care if they're having a problem - I do. And if people want to explain, that's fine, too. But I don't need them to tell me anything other than, "Sorry, I'm not going to be able to complete my assignment." Being a mod doesn't entitle me to more than that, period.

If someone needs an extension, I'm more than happy to give them as much time as I feasibly can - like I said, I'm always happy to work with participants and help them in any way I possibly can. I've had people email that they couldn't come up with an idea for a story to match their assignment, and I've helped them brainstorm, in some cases we found another participant to switch assignments, and in others I've found someone else (a PH) to write the assignment, and then the original person wrote a new story for the PH instead. I want people to be happy with their assignments and want them to want to write it, you know? That's rather the whole point.

You explained that you have trouble emailing in general because of the anxieties you experience. Other than a form letter, do you have a friend you would feel comfortable asking to email a mod for you? Because that might be another solution for you and others in your position. Would having a friend to act as contact person/go-between help?

My point there is that I don't (and I think most mods wouldn't) care who was doing the corresponding. What's most important from my perspective is knowing whether I'm going to receive the assignment on time, or if an extension is required - just knowing the state of things in general. I always want to give the participant the benefit of the doubt, but if I need a pinch hitter, then I want to give the PH as much time to write/draw as possible as well. As you get closer to the first posting date/the scheduled end of the fest, time is important to me in my position. I don't care who tells me or how - it's the information itself that matters.

Everybody writes differently. Some people like or even need the pressure of a deadline to complete something. Some people prefer specific prompts, and others don't want more than a list of preferred pairings, kinks (likes) and squicks (dislikes), and prefer to come up with an idea of their own. For me, a no-pressure fest isn't good for me because without that deadline, I have less incentive to write. For you, that looming deadline can trigger your anxiety.

From my perspective, I don't mod for any kind of self-glory or the like; I want the fest to be a good experience and fun for the participants and the readers/watchers, and I personally want to help contribute more fic and art of the type produced by the fest to fandom. That's why I mod, and why I participate in other fests. Some fests, like Yuletide or RemixRedux have more risks involved, but participants are aware of that from the outset - in particular with Remix, the mod emphasizes that participants are matched on fandom, not pairings or characters, so there is a very real chance you might get assigned to someone whose character and pairing preferences within that fandom don't match, and that's something we, as participants, have to consider before we commit to sign up. I know a number of people who don't participate in Remix for that reason alone, and there's nothing wrong with that. Not every fest suits everyone.

Recently, a friend ran a fest in HP called ownficfest where people submitted prompts for fics they'd been working on, or always planned to write but never did, and someone chose from that list which fic they'd like to see completed. Some people did drop, but it was a fest designed for the writers to "finally finish a story that had been languishing in obscurity" more than for someone to receive something. And for those whose "gifters" dropped out, the mod posted a list of pairings and prompts submitted by them for anyone to pic up and write something (drabbles, ficlets, fics, etc.) afterward. There was no penalty for dropping out. I thought it was a brilliant idea, and maybe people in other fandoms will pick up and run with it. This also seems like a type of low-pressure exchange-type fest that would suit you and your needs as well.

But generally, like I said above, as a mod, I'm not entitled to explanations/reasons/excuses. I'm really not. And you should never feel obligated to explain if you don't want to. It's none of our business. Mods aren't judges or arbiters or any of that nonsense, even if they think they are. What is our business is knowing yes or no with regard to a participant being able to complete an assignment in the time allotted. A qualifier like "I'm sorry, but..." does go a long way in terms of courtesy and politeness, but anyone who demands a reason or excuse or other personal information, in my opinion and experience, is overstepping. It's none of our business unless you voluntarily choose to explain.

[midnitemarauder]

Also, as to your question about whether people knew beforehand about my "no explanation necessary" policy, when I send out emails to participants, I do state that, but no, it wasn't stated outright in the rules itself. So I went and added this to our fest rules to (hopefully) make this more clear for people in the future, so thank you for pointing that out. :)

[sqbr]

although I and some others are having Thinky Thoughts about a disability-themed ficathon that tries to be as accessible as possible, so we can test how this all works out in practice.

OOOooooh. I might actually do that! With actual fic! (Though it would be awesome if art could be included too. But I realise that might be too much hassle)

Also I can't speak for anyone else but I for one appreciated the maths :)