Round One: Non-Anon Works Revealed + Post-Fest Discussion ♥

[crystalball_mod]

And with that, Round One of Fortune Favors comes to a close~
Thank you to everyone who helped brainstorm and everyone who participated (or tried to)! Modding this fest has been a real bright spot for the backend of this year.

With the conclusion of everything, I'd like to request feedback. Any feedback is welcome and please feel free to offer criticism (because the aim is to improve the fest in-line with the wishes of the community).

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    ☆ Regarding Sign-Ups: How easy did you find it to sign-up? Did the method used to send out the assignments work well? If not, why? Is there anything you would change about the way signups are handled?

    ☆ I've had a number of people tell me how they couldn't finish their assignments by the deadline. And in particular, I've had a few people inquire about an amnesty period. An amnesty period is definitely something I've been considering. Currently, I'm thinking of having all past collections open with the current round's for people who would still like to submit their fills with previous prompts. They would open in an unmoderated capacity and people would be welcome to add as they like. Of course, the requirements of completion still would apply. I'd love to hear any thoughts regarding this.

    ☆ How well did the anon/non-anon split work? Should the anon option and reveals period be culled to streamline the fest?

    ☆ Were the resources helpful? How can they be improved?

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I will use the responses to structure Round Two, which is planned to start in April 2020 (the next deck to be used will be decided then)! Happy Holidays, everyone! ♥

*There will be no Works Round-Up because no one posted outside of the AO3 Collection, and so I've deemed it unnecessary.

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♥ Collection ♥

Comments

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

First of all, thank you very much for modding this. I thought it was a great challenge. I will be looking forward to participating in another rounds and seeing what the cards hold for me then. I really appreciated all the resources provided to help guide someone like me who is unfamiliar with tarot.

I did not need/use the anon period. I think an amnesty period would be a nice feature. The assignment system was good; I liked having a photograph of my spread to help me.

[crystalball_mod]

I'm really happy that you had such a great experience! I hope to do even better in Round Two~

Thank you for your feedback. It's very helpful!

[kore]

Thank you so much for doing this, even though I washed out of it!

I agree that the anon/non-anon period didn't really seem necessary, and an amnesty period would be GREAT. I also really appreciated the reference photo of the cards. And all the resources!

I did notice one problem people (including me) had was that it was difficult to get going without a prompt or set fandom. Maybe there could be more of an emphasis on card meanings (from different versions) as prompts? Or people could be required to sign up with a couple of ideas, like in some other fests? As in, someone could write any one of those ideas as their assignment, or come up with something brand new, but having something to start with might help?

[crystalball_mod]

The important thing is that you tried ;)

Thank you for your feedback on this!

I, too, noticed that people were having a lot of trouble with that. I feel like I will definitely do more to help people on the onset in that regard.

[crystalball_mod]

I just feel like it's more fun when things are collaborative! It was a joy to mod for you all <3
I hope to do even better with resources in Round Two!

I will be doing more to help people jumpstart ideas next time around. I also think that the minimums should be relaxed some, but I haven't decided on how much yet. It'll probably be crowd-decided once I open the survey in March.

Commentfest? That's a brilliant idea. I'll definitely be putting a bookmark on that and implementing it in some way (because prompts are indeed hard).

In regards to the community aspect, I've been kicking around the idea of starting a Discord for this.

Of course~

[commoncomitatus]

Thank you so much for running this fest, and for all your work in making it accessible! I went from knowing absolutely nothing about Tarot to getting some decks of my own and learning how to use them, thanks to the resources shared here. <3

A few thoughts (though I do want to disclaim by saying this fest was a wonderful experience exactly as it was):

1) I agree with some of the previous commenters that you could probably get rid of the anon period, especially if it would make less work for you! Anon periods tend to be for exchanges rather than fests anyway, as I understand it, so I don’t think we’d lose anything by having participants known from the get-go.

2) Possibly related to the above... I’m not sure if you’d unscreen sign-ups and assignments if you did choose to go completely non-anon with the fest, but making them visible could give participants more freedom to discuss their spreads or ask for advice, ideas, prompts, etc. This might also help some of the people who mentioned wanting more specific prompts, while still giving those who prefer the more vague assignments freedom to draw inspiration from the cards alone.

3) Amnesty is a great idea! I'd also suggest a longer running time in general, especially since there’s so much room for inspiration! If the fest ran for, say, 2-3 months instead of just one, it might encourage people to request more than one spread, or produce more than one fill. It’d also give plenty of time for discussion in the community, which has seemed to be a really good and welcoming place. :)

4) A random thought about works – might it be worth adding meta to the list of allowable works? One of the things I’ve been doing in learning Tarot this last month is producing long meta posts for some of my fandoms / characters (how they relate to certain cards, their associations, etc). If you feel those sorts of posts count as fanworks (no worries if you don’t, of course – YMMV!), it might be worth allowing them as an alternative / addition to fanfic?

I think that’s all that immediately leaps out at me. Just to stress again, though, this fest was such a great and enlightening experience, exactly as it was, and if you decide it’s easier to just keep running things the same way I’ll still be an eager and enthusiastic participant.

Thank you again, so much, for all your hard work.

[crystalball_mod]

It was a joy to run it. Thank YOU for participating <3
Oh man, inspiring people into the Tarot gives me so much joy~

Thank you so much for your feedback!
I am pretty much on the not unscreening sign-ups part of the scale. I feel like it's easier for participants to contact me that way (Emailing/DMing mods can be stressful). Plus, I really don't want people to feel pressured to create something just because they signed up/pressured for dropping out. But I have been thinking about making a Discord to make it easier to collaborate as a community!
I have thought about making the fest stretch out longer, but the length is not something that's going to change just yet (as in, Round Two will be the same length as One).

That's actually planned to be added already! (I love meta and reading about meta so).

Of course <3

[fucktheg0ds]

Sign ups worked well enough for me. Although I agree with commoncomitatus's suggestion that for future rounds, assignments could be visible so we could invite other participants to help us brainstorm. I also agree with kore about finding it hard to start, so maybe it should be required that we sign up with several fandoms or characters that we think we might write about.

I don't think having an anonymous period is worthwhile, but I do like the timing of just one month for the fest (I need the pressure!). Some sort of amnesty would be great though - perhaps an extra AO3 collection that is permanently open would work? IDK, just an idea.

The resources worked fine for me. A few websites from the resource post gave me some good keywords and concepts that my cards symbolised, and I was able to work them into my fic.

This was an awesome fest, thank you so much for running it. I look forward to future rounds!

[crystalball_mod]

So people would really like more detailed sign-ups? That's good. I feel like they can be improved and coming up with some paths in advance is helpful!

I've been thinking about asking people to use the AO3 tag Tarot Challenge when the Collections aren't open, so the works that aren't completed in time can still be searchable. Of course, I'd include links to this tag and maybe track it?

I'm so glad you had a good time! I'm looking forward to running it for you all again! <3

[raise_the_knife]

The reason I didn't finish mine was that I got confused with the prompt email, and I had trouble getting the pictures to display on my end - I just got a vertical line in my email, and wasn't able to print it. I also didn't know which prompt matched what I'd given in response to the question about keeping something in mind - maybe if I'd given my pairings when asking for 2 assignments it would have been clearer, or easier to demarcate which was which.

I think other people's suggestions of having the assignments visible would help because that would have meant I'd have been able to jump on the page from another device without logging in and hopefully been able to grab the prompts from the default layout.

I'd still like to finish someday but if the amnesty doesn't eventuate I can still credit the comm so not so much a big deal, I guess.

[crystalball_mod]

Oh dear. I really wished you had contacted me about that. I would've given you the direct links for the images! I still have your prompts on file if you'd like to do the amnesty period during Round Two? (The differentiation was on the images so you didn't see them sadly).

I hope you can have a better experience with the fest in the future! <3

[raise_the_knife]

I'll certainly think about doing the amnesty period; part of the issue was also me being away during the writing period (and thus not able to log in and get the comment that way, which I assume would have shown the images properly!!) which also got in my way but isn't really something you can look at circumventing for me.

[fucktheg0ds]

Hi mod, hope you're okay! Will a round 2 be happening at all?

[(Anonymous)]

+1 !