Poll: What if Seasonal Spuffy always ran at the same time?

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Hey, friends. :) One last mod post before I leave you in peace to catch up or enjoy other fandom events* or whatever strikes your fancy, promise

Comments

[slaymesoftly]

It also occurred to me that we could even settle on ONE season (I'm thinking summer) for the regular round. Perhaps making it a bit longer that usual, so as to adapt to everyone's summer plans. We could do short little 1-2 day things for the two equinoxes and for winter holiday. Just a thought.

[double_dutchess]

I like the summer because that is when I have most time, besides the winter holidays. But it would be a pity to have only one round.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Hmm! :) It's not outside the realm of possibility. A couple of our regular participants do tend to have summer plans that include Summer of Giles. That's typically July, I think, but can sometimes run for all of June and July iirc. Personally, I'm not comfortable having SS significantly overlap with the schedule of another regular Buffy fandom event, and I feel like switching from two rounds to one round and to a completely different time of year would be a bigger change in any case and might have to be discussed separately. But maybe that's just me.

[slaymesoftly]

It was just a though. Something for everyone to think about when thinking about keeping it active, but less work. I'm not sure there's any way to not overlap with something Buffy or Spuffy. That's why I suggested giving it a longer window, so people could avoid dates that were bad for them. But, it would be a pretty big change, for sure. I went back to look at the archives because I was thinking we used to do more than just Fall and Spring, but I guess not? Maybe the rounds used to be longer? And there was a Christmas one - or was that a fall that extended into December?

LJ and Seasonal Spuffy aren't quite the big deal that they were at one time, so I guess it makes sense to try to avoid conflicts with other communities. I don't know if that was something anyone worried about back when the fandom was stronger. I wasn't a mod back then, so I don't know.

[stuffnonsense]

I'd be sad to lose the free-for all equinox days. Although I don't think I have ever posted on one, it's nice to know they're there. (Perhaps that's not the best vote to keep them, though!)

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Thanks for your input -- do you mean solstices or equinoxes? As far as I'm aware, we only ever had one set of spring/fall equinox free-for-alls - in Fall 2018 and Spring 2019. The summer/winter solstice free-for-alls are still a thing regardless of how we schedule the main rounds, I'm pretty sure.

[stuffnonsense]

Ah! You're quite right, I was conflating the two terms in that way people do when you think 'it's a name like Dave but not Dave' when really you mean Gerald.

[slaymesoftly]

I'm not sure we would need to eliminate those short "rounds". I'd like to see us maintain some sort of year-round presence.

[the_wiggins]

I'm clearly outvoted here, but I'm not a big fan of November as the month for Seasonal Spuffy. That's just for purely selfish reasons: I'm usually very busy writing for Nanowrimo and so can't spend as much time writing Spuffy fic or enjoying others' works as I'd like to.

I'd personally prefer pretty much any other fall month: including December (which is technically still fall till the equinox). September seems like a nice month, fall has just begun, there are no major holidays so people aren't quite so busy, etc.

But also I'm willing to accept that Fall Seasonal Spuffy may just not be a time when I can participate as fully as I'd ideally like to.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

I'm glad you commented! I see that, for the past couple of years, we've opened sign-up for the fall rounds in early/mid-September. Would it make any difference writing-wise if the theme of the round was announced even earlier than that? (I mean, assuming the round itself was in November.)

[justwriter2]

Voting on the theme 2 to 3 months in advance would be helpful, so we have more time to write and have the option not to be bogged down by a time crunch.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Thanks for the suggestion! :) I'll talk to the other mods, but I think this sounds like something we can do.

[myrabeth_fanfic]

Just throwing in my two cents, even though I'm an irregular participant: I love the idea of setting up (theme and dates) in September and posting in November (with a similar set up for the Spring round, of course).