Schedule/Event Info/Festival of Very Short Canons

[aat_mod]

Schedule, Event Overview, and Rules

Are you ready for the Auctions, As Threatened?

Unlike some other, weaker events where participants are handed an assignment just because they signed up, AAT is different! This event is all auctions, all the time.

To participate in the event you can:

• Request gifts in 1-20 fandom(s)!
• Join us on Discord to bid on the recipient(s) you'd like to create for!
• Win big!! Or maybe lose everything!!!

Posting a gift without winning an auction for your recipient is illegal, though we haven't found any way to stop it from happening again and again.

Other info:

• Because submitting requests isn't directly linked to receiving an assignment, you're not obligated to do both. Participants who only want to request or only want to create are very welcome!
• Requests and fills will be on AO3; auctions will take place on an event-specific discord server
• Format requests for this event like you would a regular exchange, with likes, prompts, and DNWs.
• To receive an assignment, bid on and win a recipient! Otherwise, you will be forced to resort to crimes(tm).
• Auctioned requests will be public, and winners will be public. There is no anonymity/anon period for this event.
• The Event Overview section below outlines the basic stages of AAT.
• The Rules section below explains the specific requirements and expectations for participation in AAT. Please read this section carefully even if you participate in a lot of multifandom events and/or participated in the 2020 We Die Like Fen auction round.

Links

• Main AO3 Collection
• Request Overflow Collection
• Tagset
• Discord

Schedule

• Now-March 28th: Reccing very short canons
• April 1st-April 30th: Festival of Very Short Canons
• April 27th-May 9th: Nominations
• May 1st-10th: Requesting
• May 15th-24th: Auctions
• June 8th-June 14th: Penny Auctions
• June 28th: Assignments due
• June 29th-July 5th: Pinch hit period
• July 6th: Reveals

(schedule times for sign ups closing, auctions beginning/ending, due dates, and reveals are TBD)

Event Overview

Nominations

Participants will submit (nominate!) fandom. relationship, character, and freeform tags to the tagset. Participants will also have the opportunity to request additional mediums, but we're for sure have fic, art/comics, podfic, and playlists.

Requesting

Participants will submit requests to the AO3 collection, using tags from the tagset.

Auctions

Each requester will be put up for auction on Discord over the course of a week — auctions are done by username, not by individual request. Creators will bid via wordcount (or equivalent) using a bot. Auctions will last most of a day. Bids and winners will be public. Minimum and maximum bids are TBD.

Creation Period

The collection will open as soon as auctions start. Creators are not required to be anonymous and can directly ask their recipient(s) questions.

Penny Auctions

A second round of auctions in which the minimum bid is 1 word. These auctions will be a mixture of defaults, partial defaults, and second-chance auctions for anyone who wasn't bid on in the first round of auctions.

Pinch Hits

Conventional pinch hits will be posted for anyone who meet the following requirements: 1) requested at least 3 fandoms, 2) had at least one bid on their requests, 3) turned in gift(s) of at least 500 words total (or equivalent), and 4) does not have gift(s) totalling 500 words. Pinch hits will be 500 words (or equivalent) minimum.

Reveals

Works and creators will reveal at the same time! We will not reveal if all pinch hits have not been filled.

Rules

Requirements for participation:

• Must be 18+
• Must have an AO3 account*
• Must be not banned from Fic In A Box**
• If you're going to request: Must have an AO3 account which is open to receiving gifts***
• if you're going to bid: Must have a Discord account you are willing to link to your AO3 account

* If you don't have an AO3 account, contact the mods or ask around the Discord for an invite—we'll find one for you!

** People banned from Fic In A Box receive an email directly telling them about the ban and why. If for some reason you're unsure (email account cursed by an evil witch or something??) you can email ficinaboxmod@gmail.com to check. (Extension bans and the like aren't relevant here, only bans for bad behavior.)

*** We aren't using AO3 assignments, so if you're not open to receiving gifts you aren't getting anything. :( You can confirm this on AO3 by going to Preferences > Collections, Challenges and Gifts, then making sure "Allow anyone to gift me works." is checked.

Communication

• Do not direct message mods on Discord. This isn't because I hate you but because I will lose 99% of all DMs sent to me, which would make it really hard for the event to run smoothly.
• We'll have an email and we're looking at a Discord ticketing system but this is TBD.
• As creators aren't required to be anonymous, creators are allowed to directly contact their recipients with clarifying questions. Please communicate extremely clearly with each other because no replacement gift will be provided based on misunderstandings during private communication.

General Participant Conduct

• We're probably going to get a little silly, because this is a silly event format. However, Auctions, As Threatened is not an event for producing deliberate badfic/badart/etc.
  
  Works produced for AAT should be gifts prepared in good faith, to the best of the creator’s ability, in an attempt to make something the recipient will like. (Optional details are optional, though! Creators are not expected to follow prompts/freeforms to the letter, although they are expected to avoid items listed as Do Not Wants.)
• Works produced for AAT should be your own work, never before posted anywhere (even in part), and complete.
• Works may not be wholly or partially created by generative text or art programs (AI) such as chatGPT or OpenArt.ai.
• AAT is a Choose Not To Warn space for adults where you will likely run into discussion, prompts, and fanworks involving sensitive, dark, or potentially upsetting topics. You will likely also find people who have listed things you love as Do Not Want(s) for their gifts. Everyone likes and dislikes different things; participants are expected to curate their own online experience and avoid making value judgements over differences of opinion.
• You're going to see statements that indicate you "need" to win an auction, and that it's "illegal" to post gifts without winning an auction bid for an assignment. These are goofy lore statements for our shared amusement. Giving treats (extra gifts given without an assignment) isn't against the rules, even though it is against the (fictional) law.
• You can request without bidding or treating. It's advantageous for us to have more requests than bidders!
• You can request with one or several socks but A) your requests must be different between accounts and B) you can only bid with one account and only one account can be considered a "participant" who we might end up owing a pinch hit. (If you go out to pinch hit and have socks signed up, we can combine all your requests for the pinch hit, though!)

Participant Conduct: Special Auction Edition

Because we're doing live auctions, AAT is basically a PvP-enabled fandom event—you're expected to attempt to win, which means some people are going to lose. However, please keep the following in mind:

• It's possible no one will bid for you. We really want you to get at least one bid; ideally more than one. But it can't be guaranteed. If no one bidding for you would be really upsetting, maybe stick to only creating instead of requesting.
• You should refrain from trash talking, even friendly/joking trash talking. You're going to be talking to and observed by a lot of strangers, so not everyone has context for what you say and how you act, including the mods. If things get heated during an auction, it might not be clear to your opponents or to the mods how much you are or aren't joking.
• The auctions are just for fun! We're not trading actual money, and there are ways to participate that don't involve winning auctions. Be gracious in both victory and defeat.
• Don't approach your creator(s) with additional request information unless they ask. You're going to know who's creating for you and they're going to be right there on the server! But auction requests aren't commissions and you should let whatever you submitted to AO3 stand on its own unless your creators approach you with questions.
• Asshole behavior will result in a ban. Harassment (including over the contents of someone's requests, DNWs, and/or works) and other disruptive behavior isn't allowed.
• Please help us foster a positive environment. Do not vent about the event on the server. If you're frustrated that you haven't won an auction, or that someone hasn't bid on you, this is not the space to deal with heavy negative emotions. For this reason, we do not have a venting channel in the auction discord.

Festival of Very Short Canons

Worried you won't have enough fandoms in common with other participants? Because the only way to legally post a work to the AAT collection is to win an auction, we'll all have an easier time if we have more fandoms in common—more people to bid on! more people to bid on us! To facilitate this, we're going to have a little festival for very short (under 45 minutes) canons in April. Every day in April, I'll share two very short canons recommended by AAT participants!

View short canon recs here.

Other Info

• Closer to the event there will be more information provided about event logistics (nominations, requesting, bidding, crimes, etc) but that's still a work in progress at this point. I thought people would appreciate being able to see what's in this post ASAP so they can decide if they want to participate, lure in friends, and possibly schedule around things.
• If you have questions you can ask them in a reply to this post; anonymous commenting is on so you don't need a Dreamwidth account. (You can try asking on Discord, but your question might get lost or might not have an answer yet, so commenting here is the best choice!)
• Reminder to consider joining the Discord server which we will be using for auctions!