coaltide | It was the Coal of Times

Entry tags:

2019

It was the Coal of Times

It was the best of assignments, it was the worst of assignments, it was the age of gaming your offers, it was the age of forgetting to remove that one fandom from your offers, it was the epoch of treat writing, it was the epoch of apocapinch-hits, it was the season of fics of your dreams, it was the season of explicit DNW spitefic, it was the spring of hope that the anon in the comment above is writing for you, it was the winter of ars_belli is your author.

Prompts revealed and Madness opens: Approx 9 November
Default deadline: 11 December, 9am UTC
Assignment deadline: 18 December, 9am UTC
Main Collection Reveals: 25 December (time tba)

Yuletide Discord for Hippos. Google Group for PHs. Fail_fandom wiki for wank history.

yuletide |

2019 Collection | 2019 App | Letter Post (LJ)

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She had a shitty year. Join the club.

She sounds like a shitty person all together, though. There's a way to say "DNW cancer fic because it hits home personally" without a paragraph about how your writer ruined your whole life.

Jeez, can we please find a nice place in the middle? One unpleasant letter does not a shitty person make.

Unrelatedly, since you imply your year has been shitty, I hope it gets better from this point.

Did you write for her last year? Her situation last year sucked and _coal was generally sympathetic to not wanting to get completely unrequested cancer fic foisted off on you. It's understandable to go a little over the top when it's not something you even imagined someone would write you.

I'm sorry that you had a bad year too, and I hope it gets better. I do think it's ok to complain about bad things happening to you in public and doing that doesn't make you a shitty person.

+1 on the "were you her writer?" question. Either that or one of the other dicks who wrote DNWs and shit for their recips, and refuse to realize that YOU were the bad guy in the scenario.

different coalie

I had a shitty year last year too, but I didn't change my letter over it.

Would changing the letter potentially prevent you from having a shitty year this year, though? If not, not changing the letter was the right move. If you could have put something in your letter to prevent a repeat of last year and didn't... I don't know what to tell you.

Unknown. But expounding at length about how x is a squick in a letter so goddamnit DNW and I don't care how precious your headcanons are is likely to generate wank about me, and going to the mods and getting an EPH in the event that this year's writer crosses the same DNW is sure to generate wank about me too.

tl;dr Can't win. Cutting and pasting last year's letter is less effort, so that's what I'm going with.

As a mental exercise - you needn't post them - name off the top of your head the recipients who went to emergency PH in Yuletide last year, or, if you like any who were EPHs in other exchanges.

DC actually can name several, but it's because I generally try to treat those people when we share fandoms.

So, passive and afraid of others then. Got it.

AYRT

I mean, it's up to you. No amount of potential wank would stop me from going to the mods and get a EPH if I got a DNW. If you don't feel the same way, that's fair, but I side-eye your judgmental attitude to people who take a different approach.

Do you think that makes you a self-martyring hero taking the high road, or do you think that makes you passive about changes you could make to make your experience more positive?

DC

Speaking as someone who did not write for her last year and thought that unrequested cancer fic was appalling and shitty, it can nevertheless be the case that while it's ok to complain about bad things happening to you in public your Yuletide letter is not the appropriate venue in which to do so.

I don't think her letter is as OTT as some coalies in this thread are claiming, but that was an ill-judged opening paragraph.

It honestly to me sounds less like anger and more like fear. Like last year spooked them, and they're so scared of the possibility of a repeat that they're reiterating how much they don't want any terminal disease fic over and over again in different words, which comes across as aggressive.

If I knew any of their fandoms, I'd write them a treat.

They're on my potential treating list, and at least one other coalie said they were as well. Just need to figure out how to write Murder She Wrote without murder, haha. (For the record, it is totally doable. Perhaps there will be lost jewels, or a town legend about a jinxed chocolate fountain.)

I vote jinxed chocolate fountain!

Exactly! This also struck me when looking at their long DNW list.

This reads to me like someone who had a fairly generic DNW list in the past, got unexpected cancer fic, and now is trying to cover every DNW that any crazy writer could think of. That's why their letter focuses more on the DNW than the wants.

I saw this more as "damn, they're trying to protect themselves", not as "man, they're crazy."

DA

This is precisely why my DNW list is long too. Back in the day under a different name and in a differnt exchange, I got a fic with a thing I didn't think to DNW because it didn't occur to me that someone would write it unrequested. I'm covering all my bases now.

Ill-judged =! "fucking crazy."

Oh noes, heaven forbid someone isn't ~appropriate~ in their Yuletide letter.

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It was the Coal of Times

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