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2019

Coal All The Way

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All the 'this year blows, all the fic sucks' comments I assume are from people who

1) only like gen
2) are only in about 10 fandoms maximum
3) don't like anything but extremely canon-compliant non-divergence/AU plots
4) fall on the 'I'll take anything as long as it is expertly written' side of that one debate

It's the only way I can see missing all the gems in Yuletide this year and why they didn't get a fic they liked either?

I think you're overthinking it. The "all the fic sucked" coalies are trolls and know that's going to get a reaction.

(and for the record, there is some AMAZING gen in this year's collection)

If it were just 'drop the bomb' and run type reactions I'd agree with you, but here and on FFA there have been people clearly upset(/sad) that there isn't anything they would like to read in the collection and they wonder if Yuletide isn't for them. I don't think they're trolls.

(and for the record, there is some AMAZING gen in this year's collection)

Definitely. That's why I think it's the specific group for whom all 4 of those items are true. If you only like gen but have a lot of fandoms/are open to the full spectrum of fic/don't need your author to be Leo Tolstoy or whatever, you are likely having a great time this year!

I assume it's maybe 2/4 of those things, but not necessarily all.

That one debate?

The "would you prefer your prompts but not well written, or odoa that's well written?" debate

I'm new around here and I would very much like to read people's takes on this you have a link to some discussion somewhere.

DC

There are various spins on the question in the Would You Rather thread from an earlier post here:
https://coaltide.dreamwidth.org/1449.html?thread=3010473#cmt3010473

Thanks!

"Would you rather get an ODAO fic that's extremely well-written or a poorly-written one that sticks to the letter of your requests?"

I'd prefer average written that gets the spirit of my letter.

I'd prefer a well-written ODAO fic. I'm always looking for good writing, which is why I read outside my fandoms quite often if the fics in them get recced or look interesting. Actually, a lot of the time good writing comes before anything else for me. If I can believe in the world the writer is creating, I will read their crack AUs, characterizations that disagree with my interpretations of the characters, weird sexual kinks I'm not into - and I will probably be excited about it. I have done that numerous times in the past.

Of course, if someone's just an okay writer, my prompts are there for a reason. It's difficult yo be objective about the quality of the writing, especially your own writing, so sticking to my letter is definitely the safe way to go.

Poor written one that sticks to the letter of my requests. If I don't care for a type of content, whether or not it's well-written won't make a difference to me.

Oh god no we did this already, coalie don't

I assume they're in fandoms where all the fics written for them do suck. That happens. So from their POV, the year does indeed suck if/when/because all the fics they were potentially interested in are bad.

+1. I read pretty widely on any canon that I can remember/that sounds interesting, and some of the ones are hit-and-miss, some are uniformly great, and some of them are like walking into a flaming garbage fire. So I could see people with bad enough selection of fandoms mostly coming across bad or meh works.

Yeah. It doesn't even have to be that you only read a tiny subsection of fandoms or absolutely everything you read is total coal, but if all your most beloved fandoms get the worst coal or nothing at all, while the fandoms you'll read but aren't very invested in get fic that's decent but nothing special, you can still end up having a much more blah Yuletide than someone who really loves those fandoms with the decent fic and also finds a few other gems in fandoms you didn't look at.

And don't we all read only a small subsection of the collection anyway? There's 2000 fandoms in the collection. Even if you read fic for 100 fandoms, you're still only reading a small subsection. And not everyone's subsection will include the ten or so biggest fandoms that "everyone reads". How things seem to you will depend a lot on what your corner looks like.

I also agree that fandom investment makes up for a lot when it comes to your impression of things, as do things like how good your own fic is doing and how your real life is going. If you're in a bad mood already, you're less likely to look at things more charitably than you are if you're happy.

If you're in a bad mood already, you're less likely to look at things more charitably than you are if you're happy.

Yep, and if you check out the fandoms you were most looking forward to first and find nothing but coal, that can skew the tone from the start and make you much more uncharitable towards all the more average fic as you're going through the rest of the collection. It's a fine line between, "Woohoo, some decent, readable fic in a tiny fandom that doesn't get much!" and, "Gah, more bland forgettable crap, I haven't read a single fic that really stands out yet."

This made me wonder how many fandoms I will at least check to see if any of the fic sounds interesting. I read what I consider to be very broadly, but even then, I only have 300 fandoms to check this year. There's so much variety!

Sometimes I wonder if these peeps should just go back and consume their favorite canons again. The point of fic is that it's a hobby, done for fun and for free by individuals of varying skill levels. It's not meant to be great literature. I personally have loved not technically perfect fic which has plenty of emotion and lots of what I like in there, and have given a hard pass to flawlessly written stuff that just doesn't grab me emotionally or contains nothing of what I like. Perhaps as coalies have said before, fic exchanges, and maybe fanfiction itself, isn't for everyone.

Or perhaps different people get different things out of fanfiction and fanfic exchanges.

(I have no problem with not technically perfect fic. But that doesn't mean that some exchanges don't give me "well, this time everything sucks" vibe, like when there's nothing about my favorite ships or tropes. Everyone has different standards and different things they enjoy about fandom and fanfic. Your (or my, or anyone's) standards aren't universal or superior.)

> 10 fandoms maximum
> only

The only one that's true for me is 2, but it was enough on its own.

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