Hikago Rare Pair Exchange signups are open!

[mmmdraco]

I'm going ahead and opening up the sign-ups for this a day early since there have been no nominations for days.

Running until the 31st of May, signups are now open. You can check the available pairings here. You can request and offer 3-5 pairings, or select “any” for your options. You have the option of linking to a page of your tumblr/LJ/DW that details your desires, or of just jotting those down with your request.

You can send me asks here on tumblr with questions, or email me at mmmdraco @ gmail . com, or just ask them here.

SIGN UP HERE!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Is it possible to up the number of possible offers. I'm not comfortable offering all, but I'd be happy to offer more than five especially if it helped with matching. Maybe something like 10 offers max if you didn't want it to be ridiculously long?

[mmmdraco]

Done, and done! The sign-up form tends to give you 3 or so and then allows you to click a button in order to give another sign-up slot. (Also, thank you, dear anon, for caring about the difficulty of matchups here.)

[caminante]

I guess I'll ask here, in public, rather than emailing you in case other people have similar questions. So, should I make a post on my blog describing what I'd like/what I'd be willing to write and then link to that in the "prompt url" on this form?

And if I do that, do I still need to fill out the "description" box for each pairing on this form? How much description are you looking for? Sorry if these are really basic questions, I've never done an exchange before.

[qem_chibati]

Not the mod of the exchange; but I love exchanges so I'll just add my 2 cents on the writing your prompts bit. :3

With a lot of these exchanges what some writers like to do is "treat" that is, find additional prompts that tickle their fancy - it's a rare pairing fest so taking the opportunity to celebrate as many as possible is a good thing! So this is why I recommend making a blog post as well!



But in order to find your letter, your writer's often going to be going to their assignments page in Ao3 rather than to your blog directly, so to make it easier for them to have a quick reference it's a good idea to have something there as well.


What I usually do is leave a couple of quick prompts in the Ao3 form, and then repeat those prompts in my letter + give meta background as to why I like that fandom (for multifandom fests when I have time - my writer may know only one fandom but this gives them incentive to check out other fandoms of mine too!) or pairing/character, and also provide a link to my more or less masterlist of general likes/dislikes which may not be appropriate / something I think of for a specific pairing/character prompt but can give my writer an overall idea of my tastes. (I am lazy though, many writers do a brand new letter each time and copy paste their likes/dislikes).


As for the what your willing to write it's going to be dependent on how mmmdraco decides to mod, but to be honest I wouldn't put that in your blog I'd put it on the Ao3 posts as the only person it's going to be relevant to is mmmdraco - your recipient isn't going to see it and I'm pretty sure she's not going to have time checking each blog post individually, only looking at the overall sign ups and there aren't any specific disasters like someone having no one willing to write for their pairings or you being assigned a pairing you didn't volunteer for. ^.^;;

[mmmdraco]

Basically? What Qem said. ^_^ You can just put a link if you want. (I often just make a placeholder post in my journal so I have the link there for signups, and then I can go back later to talk about what I actually would like to get.) Things might get interesting when it actually comes time to match people up, but I'll deal with that when we get there.

[caminante]

Thank you both so much! This is really helpful. Okay, so my "offers" will only be visible to mmmdraco? And my "requests" are all sent to whomever is assigned to write a gift for me? Or do they only receive the one that matches up with one of their offers? I'm just wondering whether I need to repeat general stuff (like "I prefer G- or T-rated fic") in each prompt.

Ahh, a placeholder post! That's a wonderful idea, thank you!

[qem_chibati]

Yup that's how these exchanges work - you're only guaranteed one match out if your recipients request - but you can choose to write any of them - the prompts don't go to multiple people. E.g for parallels 2012 - my recipient had four requests in four fandoms. I only matched for one fandom (oresama sensei) but I ended up writing for another fandom Kimi to Boku as I thought I could do a better job - it didn't matter which request as long as I could fill one. (When there's so many people it's difficult to guarantee perfect matches so idea is to make sure everyone get's at least one option.)

So yes you're assignee will get all three prompts - but they only have to write one of them.



Although, another thing to keep in mind with some of these exchanges the prompts become public in the last week (to encourage people who have finished to find things to treat if they want) - that's why I put all my general stuff in my letter and link the letter for each prompt rather than repeat myself.) as treaters might not see all of the prompts which get separated. (There's no guarantee that someone will treat, but making it easier certainly won't hurt your chances. :3) I don't know if that's what Kimmie is planning though.


Examples - last years parallels requests
http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Parallels_2013/requests


(You don't have to write a letter and you can just say see my letter in the ao3 requests, this is just what I prefer and why.)

[caminante]

Thanks so much for all these thoughtful, helpful replies! <3