the trick is to keep breathing

HEY Y'ALL! DOINK! Final Fantasy Exchange 2013 is open!

It's been a hell of a couple weeks getting everything to this point (especially because I have excellent timing - sure, ACCIDENTALLY A HOUSE right as we are frantically getting all of our cats in a row to launch, clearly I am a professional!), but here we are! And this will mark the first round in years where all three mods are able and excited to participate -- that's awesome.

I pretty much welcome everybody who can to participate -- there are some new rules we're using on a trial period this year, just FYI -- DOINK time is one of my favorite fannish times of the year and I'd love for as many people to play as possible.

If you can't do the exchange bits - schedule, demand, etc - I also beg you to consider joining our pinch hit team. I honestly don't have the language to tell you how important our pinch hitters are to us every year -- so if exchanges aren't your thing, but you want to do something, that's an awesome way to help us out.

 


 


Every year I want to talk about the exchange more than I do; I'm a mod, and that means there's a weird line between stuff that I can talk about publicly and stuff I can't. This year has been no different; it turns out no matter how much discussion and communication and work you put into a thing, no matter how much effort you spend trying to be fair and decent to everyone involved, there will be people who think you are doing it wrong: strongly, vocally, happily. There will be people who blatantly disregard the spirit of the exchange so that they can do things the way that they want to, to get what they want. There are people who aren't malicious, but just lazy; there are people who don't care as much as we might think they should.

There were many years of this exchange where the mod team worked incredibly hard to make things fair for our participants -- forgetting (or not really forgetting; deliberately overlooking, maybe; making the choice to not prioritize) that we, too, are involved in this exchange, and the policies we choose need to be fair not only to our participants, but to us as well. There were many years of 3am email chains and desperate chats; years we endangered our sleep and health and our jobs to get things going because we had failed to consider ourselves as parts of our own exchange. "Fair and decent to everyone involved" has to also include the mod team - or the exchange becomes a miserable exhausting experience, and that means we fall short of our responsibilities to the fandom for offering it in the first place. Everyone loses!

But this is our exchange: I won't say we 'own' it, because we're doing it for fandom, not for us; but finally after years and years of doing this we're managing to strike a balance between making it awesome for others and decent for us as mods. I'm very proud of us for doing so; running an exchange this expansive, this diverse, with the amount of by-hand care that we take with everything - our matching is all done by hand with the help of some spreadsheet wizardry; all our assignments and communications and comment replies are done by us - is a lot of work, and I'm so very proud (and, selfishly, relieved) that we've come to a point where we can balance our own strengths and schedules and limitations with the way the exchange runs. Because every year when we gave it our all, there were still people who weren't happy -- this way we can make just as many people happy (if not happier!) and still save a little for ourselves.

This long rambling note isn't to call out any participants, though, or to complain about everyone. My point here is really to just re-announce, pretty blatantly, how much I absolutely adore my co-mods renay and justira and how much I love running DOINK!. It's hard as hell to get this started every year - I am not sure I could name two other friends with whom I would have as absolutely opposite of schedule/availability as I do with them *g* - but I am really glad we're all still working together and I'm excited as fireworks for this year. ♥

Anyway. Go play!

So! In the upcoming year of 2013, lassarina and I will be playing through each Final Fantasy game, in order! One game every month! Moving on at the end of every month! And we'll be blogging our thoughts, our meta, our deconstructions and fannish feels - and once a month I will, apparently, be drunk!live!blogging something horrible - and recording everything here: moogle_university, as a public record of our gamer cred (for Rina) / shame (for me).

I've posted an intro here, if you want to know a little bit about my reasons for doing this project and how excited I am to have had this awesome idea. I invite anybody who wants to watch/join the comm -- part of what I love about Final Fantasy is the community built out of its fannish love, so everybody's welcome. It would be awesome if people helped to spur us on or even asked questions as we got the project rolling.

So, yeah. That's a thing.

COME PLAY COME PLAY COME PLAY

edit: If you can't come play, please at least take a second and give us a shout-out -- with ff_press still down, the only way we have to advertise is word-of-mouth (or journal, in this case). There's easy code - with ~banners!~ in so many colors! - you can just copy-paste here. Even if you can't participate, helping to spread the word over the next week or so would be awesome.

That's right. It's time!

Please make sure you check out this guy (ff_exchange) or this guy (ff_exchange) before signing up - there's all your schedule information, links to the rules, signup directions, and whatnot.

I'd like to send a very grand thank-you (and a non-creepershark hug, if you're up for it) to everybody who helped us get this year's round off - whether you're helping, supporting, listening to us vent, challenging us to be better, sending kitten photos, or just letting us know that you're excited about the round - and especially to my wonderful co-mods renay and justira. I'm already excited about this round! Spread the word: DOINK! 2011 is open and coming for you.