#hobtalks

let me set the stage: the date is april 15th, and initial creator match-ups have just been revealed. mine is a bit of a mystery: it doesn't have any actual prompts, when the rules state there need to be at least two. additionally, the request is tagged "fluff", "roommates", and "slow burn", among other things. i put fluff in my will not do, so i am—to say the least—kind of confused. so i reach out to quillifer, the host:

that "it doesn't really spark joy" bit is me trying very hard not to say "there's kind of nothing here, which i thought was against the rules", because i'm trying to embody the spirit of an exchange here and create something not for me, but for my giftee. quillifer gives me the list of potential rematches anyway, and i see something in there i like and can really work with, so i switch

time passes. i spend weeks working on my gift and it turns into this huge monster i don't think i'm going to finish in time. during this time i talk to a few friends about their match-ups, and they mention how much they dislike their prompts and are struggling to come up with something that fits the bill. one of them even mentions their friends are also upset about their match-ups, and i begin to have a terrible thought: what if my gift fucking sucks?

i know, i know. mean, right? but i have an anxiety disorder that, while well-managed, tends to creep in when i least expect it. so now i'm worried about two things: finishing my assignment on time and the gift i'm going to get

the first point turns out to be a non-issue. life is busy—i have a job, a volunteer job (where during this time i applied and got accepted for a position with more responsibility! yay!), my social life, and on top of that i'm modding tarot project. i've also been possessed by the need to rework one of my old uni essays and post that online, so whenever i'm not doing any of the aforementioned stuff or writing for exchange, i'm working on that. anyway, i manage to finish everything, so by the time quillifer checks in with me on june 8th i can tell them i'm finished, i just need to edit

so i put my fic online on june 11th and i think, fuck it, i made a whole list of other prompts that sparked joy to write a treat for if time allowed, and i still have six days before the deadline (eleven days before my works get revealed), so why not write a treat? so i do that. and because i'm insane i manage to get it done in two days, so by the 13th i have two pieces uploaded to the collection, waiting to be revealed. awesome! now i can work on an unrelated gift for a friend, because i told them i'd do that a while ago and i'm a person of my word

cut to june 17th, the deadline of the exchange. quillifer dm's me, saying my gift is running late and the eta is june 25th. i'm disappointed, and the anxiety of "what if my gift sucks" uses that disappointment to sneak inside. so as gifts get revealed, my anxiety spikes. i spiral. i get so, so irrationally worried my gift is going to be low-effort or bad or contain stuff in my do not wants. so i'm freaking out in a groupchat with some friends to the extent where one of them admits in dms that they know who has me and asks if they want me to tell them

the anxiety wins, so i say yes. and i immediately snoop. my findings:

- this person was late last year too

- they posted their artfight profile on june 18th

- going off their request for the exchange, our tastes are extremely incompatible

- they're australian

so, obviously i spiral further. i get convinced my gift is going to be something i won't enjoy at all, which feels incredibly unfair when i spent so much time and effort on my gift and even managed to write a treat. but, i think, at least they're in australia, so utc+8 at the earliest. i'm utc+2, so i don't run the risk i do with the majority of the people in this exchange (americans) that i will receive my gift in the middle of the night on june 26th for me

cut to the 25th. europe is heating up, and i'm going a little crazy. i wake up at 6:30 am to go to work to no gift. fine, fair enough, my gifter probably has work, too, and they won't be able to upload it until after. so i wait. and time passes. and it passes. eventually it reaches about one thirty (seven thirty pm at the earliest in australia) and i'm feeling so anxious i can't really breathe well. so i think, ok, i'll reach out to quillfer and see what's up. i ask what time zone the deadline adheres to and they tell me utc-4.

ok. well, that sucks, but at least i know i (1) don't have to keep stressing about when i get my gift that day and (2) know i'll wake up to a gift on the 26th

come the morning of the 26th. i check my phone. no gift, but i do have a message from quillifer:

some additional context: there's a super heatwave going on in europe. where i'm at it's going to reach 37 degrees celcius, an unprecedented temperature. there's a red alert for heat for the first time in recorded history. so i'm maybe not at my absolute best here, but i'm trying very hard to be polite (especially because i know dutch people as a whole are very blunt in a way that tends to be read as rude to usamericans and i'm trying to be mindful of that)

my update comes when i'm already asleep. already evening for quillifer, too, so well into the 27th for anybody in australia:

i see this when i wake up at four thirty am, because in spite of the ac keeping the room somewhat cool it's still hot as all hell, and i think "yo, what the fuck?" the event is 16+, so even the people who don't have work have school. we're all busy—but me and 74 other people still managed to put time aside to create something for an event we committed to. because, truly, nobody is so busy that they can't shoot a message that takes all of 5 seconds to type to say "hey, i'm not going to make it, can you get a pinch hitter?" so, i get a little mad, but i'm doing my best to be polite about it still. and then 2 hours later i get mad again, and also really sad, something i've been this entire time:

i get a bit of a nothingburger response from quillifer, the most important of which is this:

two things stand out to me here: them pointing out a lot of us are full-time working adults, like i'm not also that, and saying it's a for-fun project. that last bit especially is a sticking point for me, because it relates directly to three things:

(1) quillifer is also doing this for fun, meaning voluntarily. so if they didn't feel like putting in the effort to run this well, they could have just not

(2) same goes for my gifter. there's an official last date to drop out, but if you're not enjoying making it or are going through personal stuff that make it impossible to finish your gift, don't. nobody is forcing you. but be mindful that there is a human person on the other side of that computer screen waiting for you. a person with thoughts and feelings, which will be affected by your actions

(3) i am not having fun

truly, i'm miserable. it's been months at least since i was this anxious and sad. i'm feeling alone and unheard, and i'm trying to explain that to quillifer as best i can without losing my shit. quillifer responds to me saying i don't understand how this happened and that i feel like they're not actually being very emphatic towards me at all, just telling me to suck it up, with this:

now quillifer doesn't know that i know my gifter was late last year too, but i do know that, so this answer is kind of unacceptable to me. this is about the time when i start playing with the idea of pulling my gifts from my collection. i mean, i'm hot, i'm sad, i'm angry, i'm getting these empty platitudes that don't actually fix the situation at all and i'm thinking, "yeah, there's no fucking way this gift is ever going to see the light of day". so why have my fics associated with this event at all? the point of an exchange is, you know, an exchange, and if i'm not getting anything in return, why bother?

so we end the conversation with this:

and i decide i'll give them at least twenty minutes to get back to me and let me know what they've decided to do, and if they don't, i'm going to pull my fics from the exchange

almost exactly twenty minutes after i send that message, which received no reply, a friend (who i've been talking to about how shitty this is making me feel this entire time) tells me they've been asked to pinch hit. deadline? july 12th. nearly a full twenty days after the last official posting date. quillifer still hasn't told me anything, and now it's pretty much been confirmed i'm not getting a gift, so i go ahead and pull my fics from the exchange. with my treat it's easy: just remove it from the collection and click update. with my assignment it's a bit more tricky, because deselecting my assignment means it's open again. so, if i want to remove the assignment from my profile, i'll have to default.

i do. i get a pop-up saying the host of the collection will be notified and think "ok, whatever." then i post about my fics on socials and mention i pulled them early because the event made me miserable, which is true. i didn't mention specifics because i felt that wouldn't be fair to quillifer

i no longer feel that way, because about fifteen minutes later, my friend dms me again to show me quillifer sent them this:

and my immediate reaction is wow? you're pissed? you're angry? i wonder how that feels. gee, i wonder

in a way i get it, because i assume they got the notification that i defaulted my assignment and didn't bother to check what happened with the fic, so they assume i deleted it. i wouldn't do that, because that would be a supremely shitty thing to do. but quillifer thinks that so, whatever, they're mad

but what gets me even in that scenario is calling me entitled. it's an exchange. the point is exchanging things. wanting a gift in an exchange isn't entitlement. it's not me rolling up to a store demanding i get a €3 coke for free. it's me rolling up to the store with €6 (because i wrote a treat, don't forget) and asking if i can get that €3 coke, keep the change, and them going lmao you are so entitled i'm sick of it.