Before posting begins, The Mods are here to give you a brief run-down of how to post, what to expect, and how to ensure that your recipient actually receives their gift.
Remember that everyone was assigned posting dates - your contribution may not be due the same day that your gift is, and that’s okay. If you post your creation and don’t see your gift, please be patient - your creator may have requested a later date. Similarly, if your gift appears early and yours isn’t done, that’s okay too, as long as you post on your assigned date. By December 31st, everyone should have a gift posted and a gift received.
1. Please make sure that all works end up on AO3 in THIS YEAR’S collection: Winterhawk Wonderland 2023. It is open and unmoderated, so if you just add your work to it, it will instantly appear! If you’re having trouble adding to the collection, email us with a link to the work ([email protected]), and we’ll take care of it! Not everyone participating in the exchange is on Tumblr, so if you don’t put it in the collection, your recipient may not see it. If you have forgotten your recipient’s AO3 username, please message the blog or email us so that we can remind you of what it is. You must have an AO3 account to participate in the exchange and your gift must be posted to the AO3 Collection in order to be included in the Masterpost at the end of the event.
1b. If you are making visual art for the exchange and unsure of how to add it to AO3 here is a quick guide on how to embed images and how to add alt text to your image description for accessibility!
1c. If you create your work as a draft on AO3 before your posting date, please make sure to change the date of the work when you post it. Otherwise it will appear on whatever date you created the draft and might be missed!
2. If you choose to post your creation on Tumblr, please feel free to tag us! We love to see your work! There will be a Masterpost at the end of the event with every gift and its recipient! This year we will not be reblogging individual posts. In previous years some of the tagging didn’t work correctly and some works were missed by the Mods because of Tumblr glitching, which led to some hurt feelings and confusion. Additionally, both Mods lead very full lives, making constant monitoring of the tags during the busy posting season nearly impossible. In order avoid confusion, stress, and disappointment, we will collate all Gifts into one Masterpost after the event ends so that everyone can see who created what.
2b. Accessibility: If you are creating visual media, we are highly encouraging all participants to make this as accessible as possible by adding alt text or image descriptions. The Cooper Hewitt guidelines are a good resource for this, and here is a more step-by-step guide to formatting a description. This site is excellent for helping you decide how to describe your work! We know it might be a little intimidating to add this kind of information to artwork, especially if you have never done it before, but image descriptions make your work accessible to many fans who would otherwise be unable to enjoy it.
3. Again, if you’re having trouble meeting your deadline, please let us know so we can work with you as much as possible! Posting dates can be more flexible if you run into trouble or are having difficulties (we know the holidays can be tough!) Just message the blog or shoot us an email and we’ll do our best to help you out. If nothing else, we can let your recipient know their gift is temporarily lost in the post.
4. Finally, if you need to drop out for any reason - we won’t ask why! - please let us know as soon as possible. We do have pinch hitters, but everyone works best with the most lead time they can manage. We promise we won’t be mad, but we do want to make sure everyone who participates receives a gift, so it’s best for all of us if you reach out and let us know you just can’t participate.
Thanks again everyone, you’ve made this event an absolute blast, it has been so fun and easy to run and we really appreciate you all! We can’t wait to see all the great things that you create for this exchange, and thank you for sharing in the giving spirit! Happy Holidays if you celebrate any of them, and stay warm and/or cool and/or comfortably breezy if you don’t!
