Treats & Treatless FAQ

What are treats?

Treats are fancreations that you receive in addition to the one which was assigned to be created for you. They are extra gifts! Treats are still required to be focused on a character or ship you've asked for and to follow your DNWs, but they can be much shorter or may only be sketches instead of complete clean line art.

Treats can be gifted to more than one person; for example, if four people have requested Varric Tethras/Female Lavellan, and you've drawn fanart which doesn't violate any of their DNWs, you can treat that to all four participants.

You could receive one treat, multiple treats, or no treats.

Treats may also be given to the exchange as a whole by placing them in the collection, and NOT completing the "Gift to" section. You can treat the collection with characters or ships which are on the nominations list but didn't make it to the requests, creations which don't quite fit a single prompt (maybe the ships were requested but there are DNWs in your creation), or treats which fit so many prompts to gift it directly to so many participants would be cumbersome.

For more information on how to give a treat, please see How do I give a Treat?

tip

To make sure you can receive treats, please double check your Gift settings, especially if your AO3 account was created after 04 Feb 2022 by going to My Preferences → Collections, Challenges, and Gifts and make sure Allow anyone to gift me works is checked.

Gift Settings: click to enlarge

I only want specific treats for specific prompts.

During sign-ups you can indicate what type of treats (if any) you want for each group of pairings you request. In the Additional Tags box, please select what types of treats you'd be open to receiving for each prompt. You could, for example, select Fanfic and Treats - Fanart; this would indicate that you'd rather have fanfic for a main gift, but would accept a fanart treat.

Treats - Other indicates you would be willing to receive other fan creations like fanmixes, podfic (of a new or existing story), moodboards, etc.

Additional Treat Tags: click to enlarge

For more information on sign-ups please see Tutorials: How to Sign-up.

This is cool and all, but... I don't want treats.

We understand. We ask that you do three things in order to help make sure you don't receive treats:

• during Sign-Ups please make sure to click No Treats Please in the Additional Tags section of your sign-up on your prompts

• To be explicit, please list "Treats" as part of your Do Not Wants.

• Finally, check your AO3 settings to make sure treats cannot be given outside of assignments. To do this, go to My Preferences → Collections, Challenges, and Gifts and make sure Allow anyone to gift me works is not checked.

Gift Settings: click to enlarge

What does "Treatless" mean?

Treatless participants are ones who haven't been gifted at least one treat. Many exchange participants like to make sure everyone gets a treat, so they work hard to clear the Treatless List, by writing or drawing more than one piece during the creation period. "Treatless" is our way of identifying those who haven't gotten an extra gift yet.

Where is the Treatless List?

This exchange will have two treatless lists:

1. The AutoAO3 app which we're using for our requests spreadsheet allows a lot of cool sorting and filtering tricks. Once someone has received a treat, the mods will add an Additional Tag which says Treat Received.

   To find Treatless participants you only have to filter the request list for those people who do NOT have that tag by using !"Treat Received"in the Freeforms: box as shown below:

Treatless Filtering: click to enlarge

2. Because filtering can sometimes be hit or miss, we will also be posting a separate treatless list. The link will be added to the website and shared to our tumblr!

How do I give a Treat?

To give a treat to specific recipients:

1. Go to this year's Collection and click the Post to Collection button

   or go to New Work.

2. In the Associations section of the New Work make sure:

   1. This year's collection is listed in the Post to Collections / Challenges box.
   2. You list all the recipients who you'd like to receive the work as a treat in the Gift this work to box.

How to Post a Treat: click to enlarge

tip

You can use copy & paste to make sure you're gifting to the correct person in the correct exchange!

To give a treat to the whole exchange:

1. Go to this year's Collection and click the Post to Collection button or go to New Work.
2. In the Associations section of the New Work make sure this year's collection is listed in the Post to Collections / Challenges box.

note

There is no need to list anything in the Gift this work to box.