Final Fantasy Exchange, Round 1: Let the Fun Begin!
Final Fantasy Exchange
Round 1: Gift Week!
It's Showtime at FFEX!
Ladies and Gentlemen, beloved members of the community, the fandom love-fest is almost upon us! (Can you tell that four straight weeks of panic have turned your mods melodramatic?)
FFEX Round 1 Gift Week has officially begun!
From RIGHT NOW until Sunday, April 8th, ff_exchange will be open for member posting. We hope to be flooded with wonderful, beautiful fanworks and lots of good happy feelings. To make sure this happens, we want to go over some very important things to keep in mind about Gift Week before the fandom love free-for-all starts tomorrow!
I. Headers
Our suggested header format is shown below. Anything with an asterisk is required in FFEX. Posts that do not meet the header requirement will be bombarded with comments from your mods asking you to edit. Your post can't be archived unless we have the required information, and it also won't be picked up by ff_press without the headers - so really, it's in your best interest. They're not hard!
If you don't want your gift to be listed in ff_press, just put in a little note to that effect -- but you still have to use the header.
Title*:
For*: - the recipient of your gift
Medium*: Fic / Art / Earwax
Request(s)*: Please give the prompt that your fic fulfilled.
Fandom(s)*: FF Canon. Be sure to specify carefully for multi-canon FFs!
Characters/Pairings*:
Rating/Warnings*: MPAA (PG-13, R, etc.) or fictionratings (T, M, etc.) ratings, please
Feedback: "Concrit welcome" or "No concrit, please" - an indicator of whether or not you'd like feedback
Spoilers: Especially for small-fandoms or new fandoms.
Word Count: for fic
Summary:
*LJ-CUT FOR THE GIFT* (Please go HERE to learn about lj-cuts if you do not know how to do one! All FFEX gifts should be behind an LJ-cut.
Notes: Anything else you wanted to add!
We've included the form here for you to copy/paste for your own use!
Title:
For:
Medium:
Request(s):
Fandom(s):
Characters/Pairings:
Rating/Warnings:
Feedback:
Spoilers:
Word Count:
Summary:
Notes:
Again, we encourage you to use the entire suggested header; it makes everybody's lives just a little bit easier. Thank you in advance for following the header policy!
II. Posting the Gift
There are only three important things to mention here.
(1) All gifts must be posted directly into the community. We do not allow fake-cuts! We need you to post your gift in its entirety, into ff_exchange directly for the sake of our memories and archive system. You are free to cross-post elsewhere, as long as you post to FFEX first. This means that all written works need to be posted here in their entirety. Artwork needs to be posted in a permanent archive, but we've provided space for you (this is addressed below).
(2) One gift per post. Again, this is for memories and archiving. If your gift is too long (it exceeds LJ's character/byte limit for a single post), then make multiple posts to this community, clearly marking them as parts of a whole. For example, you can put something like "Title (Part 1 of 3)".
(3) All gifts must be behind an lj-cut. This is for the convenience of our members - to avoid spoilers, rating / NWS issues, and also to save everyone's Friends List!
Any gifts that do not follow these rules will, again, be bombarded with comments from the mods asking you to change your post. If your post does not meet these requirements, we will not include you in our Memories and Archives - it'll be like your gift never happened! So please, please, follow these simple guidelines.
III. Posting Art
Posting artwork is a little different than fiction, since the artwork needs to be hosted somewhere separate! Luckily, we've provided a permanent space for you to upload your piece of artwork. Simply head over to the FFEX Gallery: http://www.seventhe.net/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=FFEX, which has been set up for exclusive use by FFEX.
The login / password to the Gallery: FFEX / ff3xchange. Once logged in, you can upload your image into the Gallery, and also edit the user information to provide details about your gift. Uploading should be fairly straightforward, but please feel free to mail Sev if something isn't working. Note that the FFEX Gallery account does not have Delete permission, so if you make a mistake, you will have to contact the mods.
Once your picture has been uploaded, you can find the permalink in this folder: http://seventhe.net/albums/FFEX/ , under whatever name you used to upload it. You'll see several versions of your gift in there, including a thumbnail - make sure you've chosen the original, full-sized version. That's the URL you will use in your LJ entry (under the LJ-cut!) to link to your image. So if the picture you uploaded was called "FFEX_gift_by_Seventhe.jpg", your final img url will be http://seventhe.net/albums/FFEX/FFEX_gift_by_Seventhe.jpg. Use this in an
tag in your entry.
We've made this space available to you guys for permanent storage of your gifts, so feel free to use it! You can post the artwork anywhere else that you want, but we'd like to keep an FFEX permanent copy in that particular Gallery.
If you want to post your art at DeviantArt and then link to it here, we'd prefer to have a copy of you image in the post itself, still. There's two ways to work that with DA: embedding and swiping the file. Embedding is very easy -- there's a little box right in your deviation's page, to the right of your description, under the image details. Just copy and paste that code, and that will embed a thumbnail of your art into a Flash object in the entry. The downside here, of course, is that it's Flash and a thumbnail. The other option is to right-click the full-size image and see its url, and then make an
tag in your entry using that URL. The downside here is that this is probably not very nice to DA.
We also feel the need to reiterate our "Fandom Love" policy. Remember that this exchange is supposed to create lots of good feelings, and no bad ones! The following is copied directly from our Crash Course and Rules. We're listing it for you - again - because we feel it's that important.
The Receiving Of Gifts!
You are expected to comment on your gift. This is just politeness. Heap lavish praise on your gifter and tell them how much you appreciate them! Share fandom love!
You are welcome to comment on other gifts as well. Don't feel like you can't comment on something because it wasn't made for you! Share fandom love!
If, for some reason, you do not like your gift:
- DO NOT COMMENT SAYING AS SUCH. Your comment should say simply, "Thanks for making this for me!" or something like.
- Do not complain about your gift in public. This is just bad manners, and is also a warnable offense in this community.
Expected Behaviour
There are certain basic standards of behavior for this community which, sadly, must be discussed.
- BE MATURE. Discuss things like grown-ups.
- BE GRACIOUS. This is a community centered on giving - treat it as such.
- DON'T BE AN ASSHAT. This should be obvious. Don't wank.
- THIS IS LJ. This means - if you play nice here, but then go to fanficrants to mockity-mock about your gift ...chances are, someone will see it. You will still receive a warning. If you absolutely MUST complain, it MUST be done behind a secure f-lock so that the gifter never hears about it.
If you have any questions about the rules, please contact the mods! Hopefully these things don't need to be said - but understand that we will crack down on any behaviour that we think is harmful to the FFEX atmosphere.
That should be all you guys need to know before you start posting your gifts! We're looking forward to this, and we hope you all are too.
Cheers!
