fandomtrumpshate | FTH 2019 Signups are Officially Open!

fthmods posting in

And we're off! The third -- and, we hope, the biggest and best yet -- year of the Fandom Trumps Hate auction is officially open for signups.

Even if you've participated in FTH in prior years, please read our FAQ. We're always trying to learn from past experiences and oversights, so some things have changed from the first (and even the second) year.

A few notable changes from last year:

1) We are hosting the auction on Dreamwidth this year. Hello!

2) Our whole calendar has been pushed back by about a month, relative to the past two years. You can check out this year's full calendar here.

3) We have changed the list of non-profit organizations we are supporting, as well as the way that creators can identify organizations to support. Please read about it here.

Because this year's organizations are all small operations, at least a few of them are likely to be unfamiliar to you. To help everyone get to know these amazing groups a little better, we will be posting about each of them in turn. So watch this space for those introduction posts over the next week or so.

Click here to sign up as a creator for FTH 2019!

If you have any questions not answered in our posts, or would like to update us on the state of your 2018 auction either as a bidder or creator, please contact us directly via email at [email protected].

We look forward to seeing your signups!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

nachodiablo

Hi! This is my first year participating, and I'm not sure about what to write for minimum bid, what sort of things to note in will/will nots, etc. Is there a way for us to review last year's offerings to get a feel for what bidders are looking for?

From:

fthmods

Sure thing! We posted all of last year's offerings on a dedicated offerings blog on tumblr. You can see a ton of different examples there, if you're willing to scroll down a lot (we used the same blog to share completed fanworks) but you can look at three examples here:
example one
example two
example three

you can also search tags for different fandoms, using the tags list at the top, which will take you to all the offerings for one particular fandom. (It will also show you completed fanworks, but there will be a lot less to scroll through to get to the offering posts.)

ETA: the default minimum bid is $5 -- if you don't mark anything, that's what your post will say. You can leave that part blank, or set a higher (or lower) minimum for yourself--it's totally up to you and what you're willing to do.

Edited Date: 2019-01-07 02:14 pm (UTC)

From:

spikedluv

the default minimum bid is $5 -- if you don't mark anything, that's what your post will say.

Hi mods! I just submitted a sign-up but I didn't see a place to select a bid amount.

From:

fthmods

Ruh roh! We will look into that ASAP. thanks for the tip.

From:

kalloway

It's on Page 8 of the signup form, however Page 8 only seems to display if you select the scaled bid option.

From:

fthmods

Kalloway is correct; the option to submit an alternative minimum bid only appears if you specified on the previous page that the scope of your project depends on the amount donated (i.e. 1min of video for every $20, $1 = 500 words, etc.)

Sorry for any confusion! If you'd like to make changes to your creator entry, please feel free to contact us directly. =]

From:

spikedluv

So that means that whether you're planning to write a 1,000 word fic or a 50,000 word fic there's no way (on the form) to change the minimum bid from $5?

From:

fthmods

There is indeed a way; two ways, in fact!

There is a place on the form to specify the max length of the work you are willing to provide, or, if you'd like to be more specific about the scope, you can select "Yes" when asked if the scope of your project depends on the amount bid.

Let us know if you are not coming across either of those questions during signup, and we can make sure everything is in order on our end. Or, if you've already submitted your signup form, feel free to contact us directly with your issue and we'll work to fix your entry. =]

From:

iwantthatcoat

Still confused. So if my bid amount does not vary with the length of the fic (I am doing 5-10K), can I set a minimum bid at, say, $20?

From:

fthmods

At the immediate moment, if you do not plan to vary the length of your fic, the minimum bid would stay at $5.

Remember that this is just a *minimum*. Last year we had very few (if any? I'd have to check) that actually went for only $5.

There are a few reasons for this setup.
1) We want to maximize the number of auctions our bidders can bid on. Since we don't (and can't) know the financial backgrounds of all our bidders, we choose to keep the $5 minimum in place so that bidders with less money do not feel excluded from certain creators' work.

2) Translating fandom talents into a monetary value is...subjective, to say the least. We've found that a blanket $5 minimum (except in the case of scaled projects) helps prevent situations where there are hurt feelings because bidders do not agree with some creator's minimum bid amount.

3) Book-keeping/error checking on our part. During auction form creation, after signups close, things inevitably get lost or fall through the cracks. Keeping things uniform wherever possible lessens the number of cracks for things to fall through.

Hope that helps!

Edited Date: 2019-01-07 09:23 pm (UTC)

From:

spikedluv

I did see that question, but I wasn't clear on the fact that this was where we were supposed to change the $5 min bid. The two options, choosing the length of the fic (which I did) or the scope of the project depending on the amount bid (like your previous examples of $1 for 500 words) didn't appear to have anything to do with setting the minimum bid. Would that have been an option if I chose the other?

From:

fthmods

Yep. If you checked "Yes" for the project scope question, you would have been taken to the screen that allows you to enter an alternative minimum bid. If you checked "No," your minimum bid will remain at $5.

From:

spikedluv

I just went through the posts and profile but there's no e-mail or contact information. How should I contact you directly? Thanks!

*head desk* Is a PM the way to go?

Edited Date: 2019-01-07 06:50 pm (UTC)

From:

fthmods

Sorry for the confusion! You can send a DM to this mod account, or you can email us at fandomtrumpshate at gmail dot com.

We’ve said this in a bunch of other comments, but we clearly need to put it in all of the main posts, as well.

From:

nachodiablo

This is perfect, thank you!

From:

cookiegirl

Hi, it looks from those examples that our email addresses will be public, is that right? If so I'll have to make a new one for this challenge :)

From:

fthmods

they were last year, but they won't be this year. (the year before we'd only asked for tumblr handles, which turned out to be a terrible idea, and last year we swung maybe too far in the other direction.)

From:

chantress

Would you consider having it be opt-in for future auctions, maybe? It seems like it'd be useful for potential bidders to have a platform-agnostic way of getting in touch with creators privately for, say, clarification on if they'd be willing to handle certain subject matter that's not covered in their interested in/do not want lists. Obviously not everyone's comfortable with sharing their email address publicly though, so having a (required) question on the sign-up sheet to specify whether or not that's cool might work?

From:

kalloway

Do you have a sample completed offer or screenshots of the entire sign-up form available?

From:

fthmods

We don't... but the above reply gives a couple of examples of what a completed offerings post will look like (or fairly similar, anyhow -- our past examples are all from tumblr, and we'll be on DW this year.) Are those examples enough?

From:

kalloway

Those are good, thank you! I managed to get through some of the form on mobile and took screenshots for my own reference as well.

From:

nonymos

Hi! I'm offering three auctions and have therefore filled the form three times, as mentioned in the FAQ. I haven't received any confirmation email, is that normal? I don't mean to rush anyone or anything - just wondering!

From:

porcupinegirl

Google forms does not, unfortunately, send confirmations when you submit the form. But I can confirm that we do have 3 signups for Nonymos!

(Note for others reading this: Generally, if the Google form submits and gives you the page telling you it submitted, there is little to no chance that it didn't go through. So unless there is a weird situation (someone accidentally hit submit twice and isn't sure if it submitted once or twice, etc), we don't recommend everyone ask for confirmation, since we would not have time to track every single one down.)

From:

nonymos

I believe it does, though! https://www.labnol.org/internet/auto-confirmation-emails/28386/
It might save you the hassle of worrywarts such as myself getting antsy about confirmations. :) Thank you so much for taking the time to check my signups!

From:

olivermoss

Hi! Are you going to have a clickable banner for people to promote the events on their blogs? Also, have you considered posting the event to

fandom_on_dw ?

From:

porcupinegirl

Thanks for the ideas! We (the FTH mods) are actually all new to DW. FTH was held entirely on Tumblr the past two years, but with all the fuckery happening here we suddenly found ourself in need of a more reliable home, and DW seemed to be the best choice even though none of us have used it before! Some of us used LJ back in the day, but it's clear the DW has evolved beyond its LJ-branch origins, so we still don't know all the tricks.

So if a banner is a common way to do such things around here, we can definitely do that! And we definitely don't know all the places we should be advertising, so thanks for mentioning that comm.

Each creator will also have their own post (on a blog separate from this community, so we don't spam everyone's feeds), and can link people to that post however they see fit, from here or elsewhere.

From:

olivermoss

Welcome! I hoped I was being helpful and not a nudge. Clickable banners are a pretty standard way of doing promo on DW. If you look at my profile page for

photographyon you can see that I've used Textareas to put the code for both a large and a small banner so people can just grab the code. You can grab that code and just replace it with the proper links and image ref.

From:

innie_darling

I just signed up (with two different fandoms) and did not see a place to include the scope of what I'd be willing to write (pairings, themes, etc.) for each. Also, even though I did not check the "fandom labor" button, I still had to answer how long a fic I would beta/translate/etc., which appears to have also (inaccurately) been made into my answer about how long a fic I would write?

Sorry, I swear I'm not usually this confused!

From:

porcupinegirl

The question is "What is the length of fic are you willing to write/record/offer fan labor services for?" so it is where you would list the length of fic you would write.

The questions on the next page are where you would put the other information you mention - it asks about what subjects/themes/pairings you would and would not be willing to write, along with a space for any other notes you'd like to include.

It looks like you did answer the first two of these, though you did not say anything about pairings. You would put all the info for all fandoms you're offering in your answer to each of these (the answer box does allow carriage returns if you want to split your answer into multiple paragraphs for different fandoms).

If you'd like, we can delete your current entry and you can start over.

From:

innie_darling

Yes, please. I'll try again tomorrow!

From:

innie_darling

Okay, redid - thank you!

From:

liliaeth

Just wondering, I'm sure I'm probably just overlooking it, but... where do you browse the offerings?

From:

porcupinegirl

That will be announced when it's time to start browsing! Since it takes a few days for us to make all the auction posts, we find it works best to get all the posts up and then make it public all at once. Otherwise, we have creators constantly asking why their post isn't up yet while we are still working on it.

From:

liliaeth

I guess I must have misunderstood the dates then, cause I thought browsing was this week.

From:

porcupinegirl

Nope, we're still taking signups til Feb 1! Browsing starts the 18th.

From:

healyg

Hey, I wanted to offer an unconventional service (basically the creation of a tiny, i.e., about 1-5 minutes long, video game). Do I list that as fanart or under fan labor?

From:

porcupinegirl

Ooh, that sounds so cool! I would say list it as fanart, if only because (as I realized when I listed my own unconventional auction - a guest spot on a podcast) we for some reason set up the fan labor such that you have to specify the length of fic you're willing to do the fan labor on, as a required question. Which obviously doesn't apply to this! (I'm thinking next year we need to have an "other" section.)

From:

healyg

Alright, then, that's what I'll do! Thank you!

From:

hyperfocused

First time signing up, fic writer, but also poet. Am I allowed to offer poetry as well as fic?

From:

porcupinegirl

Absolutely! Just sign up as fic, and put in the notes section of your signup that you're offering poetry instead of prose, and any specifications on what kind, etc.

From:

fhionnuisce

Hi! This is my first time signing up, but I did Sweet Charity back in the day. I hope that my offering (which is pretty specific due to issues I've run into in challenges over the years) is not too specific? I didn't really get contacted by the mods saying anything was wrong with it. I did read the FAQ and stuff, but it was a few weeks before I signed up and I have a horrible memory. I guess my question is, I just hope it wasn't too specific. I'm even okay with no one bidding on me--I have been gone for a while. My main request was basically for people to look at what I already like to write and respect my DNWs.

I don't know. I hope this makes sense. I guess I am just a bit nervous. :)

From:

porcupinegirl

I took a look at your signup, it looks fine to me! We would definitely rather creators be extremely specific than not mention things that are important and have to back out when they can't give their bidder what they want.

From:

fhionnuisce

Cool! That is kinda what I figured, especially after a few things that happened in challenges and auctions. I'm glad that it works! Still a bit nervous but I'm just an anxious person--I think it'll be okay. :)