Battleship 2024 Recap
Jan. 4th, 2025 06:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darkrosaleenI said in my summer in fandom wrap-up that Battleship was too girthy to be contained in a quarterly fandom update, so here it is on its own, six months after Battleship (oops).
I wrote 8 fics for Battleship this year, which is the most I've ever posted to AO3 for a single round of an event (I wrote 7 fics for Bandom Bingo 2017, and 6 for We Die Like Fen: Time Loop in 2021). I knew I was in a productive writing period when I signed up, which is why I decided to break my yearly goal of not signing up for Battleship. It was not as stressful as my previous Battleship experiences, for reasons I accurately predicted at the end of this post: there weren't any super frustrating game mechanics, my teammates weren't too annoying, I had an excess of creative juice and kept all my fics (relatively) short, and I got to use my favorite Battleship team discord nickname (darkrosalava for Volcano Team, second only to Forest Team's darkrosaleaf).
Fics I Wrote
Cat Mom - E, Original Works, Catboy/Human Girlfriend, Age Play
A Gun for a Mouth - E, Dune (Villeneuve), Paul Atreides/Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, The Voice + Dark Paul + Sadomasochism
Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night - M, Stranger Things, Billy Hargrove/Max Mayfield, Came Back Wrong + Caretaking + Bird Kink + Dubcon
She Wanted Him, He Wanted Me - E, Challengers, Tashi Duncan/Patrick Zweig + Patrick Zweig/Original Character(s), Phone Sex + Open Relationships + Art Haunts the Narrative
Material Girl - T, Challengers, Art Donaldson/Patrick Zweig, Jewish Character + Crossdressing + Purim Parties
Point of Performance - G, Challengers, Art Donaldson/Tashi Duncan/Patrick Zweig, ADHD Character + Moving In Together
My Love Lies Over the Ocean - E, Original Work, Teen Sailor/Middle Aged Sailor + Teen Sailor/Volcano Mermaid, Fuck Water (Hot Springs + Sex Pollen)
Real Gangsters Run Red Lights - E, Challengers, Tashi Duncan/Patrick Zweig, Period Sex
Gifts Received
I received ten gifts this round - I tend to receive a lot of Battleship gifts due to minimal DNWs/generous opt-ins, open-ended Creator's Choice of Fandom prompts, and a willingness to volunteer for gifts in team chat (and partly due to requesting popular fandoms). This year, I received gifts in the following fandoms:
Original Works
Dune Movies (Villeneuve)
The Untamed
Men's Hockey RPF
Challengers
Thoughts
The big drama of Battleship 2024 is that signups almost literally doubled over the previous year (263 signups in 2024 vs 133 in 2023), allegedly due to a very popular writer in Minecraft fandom signing up and advertising the event in huge Minecraft fandom spaces. This resulted in the last-minute creation of two additional teams and promotion of tag mods to team captains, making this the first Battleship round with four teams instead of two. This made team sizes about equal to last year, but brought in a huge influx of newbies who were completely unfamiliar with AO3 multifandom exchange culture, let alone the idiosyncratic quirks of Battleship itself.
Despite the huge newbie influx, this year was pretty chill and low stress, and my most fun Battleship round yet. Team Volcano had a great team captain and teammates I knew and liked from other exchanges, plus newbies who were excited to jump in and try new things and didn't freak out about the complicated rules and etiquette. Battleship is extremely chaotic and fast-paced, and newbies who are willing to dive headfirst into the chaos with minimal anxiety and handholding make much better teammates (even when they stress out over Volcano team having to create twenty whole noncon works to defeat the second board).
I was insanely productive this year due to the uncontrollable whims of ADHD brain chemistry: I was in the middle of Challengers hyperfixation when I started the game this year, and half of my works are for that fandom. That's the secret sauce that explains Bandom Bingo 2017 and WDLF 2021, and it's completely unpredictable and uncontrollable. I probably won't sign up for Battleship again unless I know I'm in a similar headspace, because it's impossible for me to summon that kind of productivity on demand.
I'm pretty happy with everything I wrote, but this year I really felt the strain of having to write to a particular person's request (personally, I think Battleship would run smoother if gifts were eliminated and everyone created whatever works helped the board, but I doubt the Battleship mods will go in that direction). There were multiple story elements I had to cut out or dramatically rework because the only person requesting that fandom/ship/tag had conflicting DNWs, and one story I abandoned entirely because it took place during covid lockdown and I felt uncomfortable giving such an upsetting topic to someone who hadn't asked for it (and of course no one had asked for it).
Doing looser, more chaotic exchanges like Battleship, Kink Lucky Dip/Bulletproof, and classic flash exchanges reminds me how much I enjoy the freedom of writing what I want without worrying about breaking complicated exchange etiquette. I love doing exchanges and I never set out to give someone a bad or upsetting gift, but I've known for a long time that my idea of a good or bad gift doesn't always map onto exchange community norms. I don't want to quit exchanges forever, but I think I should take a long break and write some things just for myself.
I've lost every round of Battleship I've played, and this round was no different: Volcano came third out of four, and the mods combined the two losing teams into Team Magmaid. My Mermaid teammates were also very cool and chill, and there was a lot of great volcano mermaid content created for the final board (including my Original Works underage magmaid story). My favorite part of Battleship is combining totally unrelated tags into a single strategic work, and all the lava mermaids were a great example of that spirit.
I wrote 8 fics for Battleship this year, which is the most I've ever posted to AO3 for a single round of an event (I wrote 7 fics for Bandom Bingo 2017, and 6 for We Die Like Fen: Time Loop in 2021). I knew I was in a productive writing period when I signed up, which is why I decided to break my yearly goal of not signing up for Battleship. It was not as stressful as my previous Battleship experiences, for reasons I accurately predicted at the end of this post: there weren't any super frustrating game mechanics, my teammates weren't too annoying, I had an excess of creative juice and kept all my fics (relatively) short, and I got to use my favorite Battleship team discord nickname (darkrosalava for Volcano Team, second only to Forest Team's darkrosaleaf).
Fics I Wrote
Cat Mom - E, Original Works, Catboy/Human Girlfriend, Age Play
A Gun for a Mouth - E, Dune (Villeneuve), Paul Atreides/Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, The Voice + Dark Paul + Sadomasochism
Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night - M, Stranger Things, Billy Hargrove/Max Mayfield, Came Back Wrong + Caretaking + Bird Kink + Dubcon
She Wanted Him, He Wanted Me - E, Challengers, Tashi Duncan/Patrick Zweig + Patrick Zweig/Original Character(s), Phone Sex + Open Relationships + Art Haunts the Narrative
Material Girl - T, Challengers, Art Donaldson/Patrick Zweig, Jewish Character + Crossdressing + Purim Parties
Point of Performance - G, Challengers, Art Donaldson/Tashi Duncan/Patrick Zweig, ADHD Character + Moving In Together
My Love Lies Over the Ocean - E, Original Work, Teen Sailor/Middle Aged Sailor + Teen Sailor/Volcano Mermaid, Fuck Water (Hot Springs + Sex Pollen)
Real Gangsters Run Red Lights - E, Challengers, Tashi Duncan/Patrick Zweig, Period Sex
Gifts Received
I received ten gifts this round - I tend to receive a lot of Battleship gifts due to minimal DNWs/generous opt-ins, open-ended Creator's Choice of Fandom prompts, and a willingness to volunteer for gifts in team chat (and partly due to requesting popular fandoms). This year, I received gifts in the following fandoms:
Original Works
Dune Movies (Villeneuve)
The Untamed
Men's Hockey RPF
Challengers
Thoughts
The big drama of Battleship 2024 is that signups almost literally doubled over the previous year (263 signups in 2024 vs 133 in 2023), allegedly due to a very popular writer in Minecraft fandom signing up and advertising the event in huge Minecraft fandom spaces. This resulted in the last-minute creation of two additional teams and promotion of tag mods to team captains, making this the first Battleship round with four teams instead of two. This made team sizes about equal to last year, but brought in a huge influx of newbies who were completely unfamiliar with AO3 multifandom exchange culture, let alone the idiosyncratic quirks of Battleship itself.
Despite the huge newbie influx, this year was pretty chill and low stress, and my most fun Battleship round yet. Team Volcano had a great team captain and teammates I knew and liked from other exchanges, plus newbies who were excited to jump in and try new things and didn't freak out about the complicated rules and etiquette. Battleship is extremely chaotic and fast-paced, and newbies who are willing to dive headfirst into the chaos with minimal anxiety and handholding make much better teammates (even when they stress out over Volcano team having to create twenty whole noncon works to defeat the second board).
I was insanely productive this year due to the uncontrollable whims of ADHD brain chemistry: I was in the middle of Challengers hyperfixation when I started the game this year, and half of my works are for that fandom. That's the secret sauce that explains Bandom Bingo 2017 and WDLF 2021, and it's completely unpredictable and uncontrollable. I probably won't sign up for Battleship again unless I know I'm in a similar headspace, because it's impossible for me to summon that kind of productivity on demand.
I'm pretty happy with everything I wrote, but this year I really felt the strain of having to write to a particular person's request (personally, I think Battleship would run smoother if gifts were eliminated and everyone created whatever works helped the board, but I doubt the Battleship mods will go in that direction). There were multiple story elements I had to cut out or dramatically rework because the only person requesting that fandom/ship/tag had conflicting DNWs, and one story I abandoned entirely because it took place during covid lockdown and I felt uncomfortable giving such an upsetting topic to someone who hadn't asked for it (and of course no one had asked for it).
Doing looser, more chaotic exchanges like Battleship, Kink Lucky Dip/Bulletproof, and classic flash exchanges reminds me how much I enjoy the freedom of writing what I want without worrying about breaking complicated exchange etiquette. I love doing exchanges and I never set out to give someone a bad or upsetting gift, but I've known for a long time that my idea of a good or bad gift doesn't always map onto exchange community norms. I don't want to quit exchanges forever, but I think I should take a long break and write some things just for myself.
I've lost every round of Battleship I've played, and this round was no different: Volcano came third out of four, and the mods combined the two losing teams into Team Magmaid. My Mermaid teammates were also very cool and chill, and there was a lot of great volcano mermaid content created for the final board (including my Original Works underage magmaid story). My favorite part of Battleship is combining totally unrelated tags into a single strategic work, and all the lava mermaids were a great example of that spirit.
