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Coal All The Way

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A good percentage of the people disappointed with their gifts actually have their letters/sign-ups to blame.

This. Authors aren't mind readers, and so many letters are low-effort (or non-existent). If you can't write a detailed, squee-filled letter, don't be surprised if you don't motivate your author to write you a gen

Blank signups would lead to gen, though.

Also, obligatory note that letters aren't compulsory and if one has to do what basically amounts to an extra signup to be allowed to expect a gift that works, then it's time something in the exchange structure needs looking at.

I think it’s less that and more that being like “I’m okay with anything”/“I cba to write a letter, whatever my author writes will probably be okay as long as they try their best” and then, once you see the fic, being like “well this is shit” is a something you bring on yourself. Most writers are trying their best, but they can’t read minds and aren’t pros. If you have something specific in mind, say something. Add more details/prompts to your letter, whatever. If you don’t really care/are open to anything, then you’re going to get anything and you gotta make peace with that. The odds that a random person will arrive at your perfect ideal of a gift with minimum details (that they didn’t already write elsewhere during the year) is very rare. If you aren’t happy with anything, meet the average writer halfway.

There’s nothing wrong with the exchange system not having compulsory letters, its people wanting their author to put in n-times minimum effort on the fic when they didn’t put in n-times effort on explaining what they want. This is a 1k for 1k exchange open to the general public, what are you expecting?

+1

I think part of it is also that yes, sure, a really good writer can probably turn out something good based on a sparse sign up, because the quality of their writing is good across the board.

But lots of Yuletide writers aren't really good. They're okay to pretty good. Good enough that if they are giving you a story full of things you like, you'll probably enjoy it, or at least parts of it. But if your sign up/letter doesn't actually include information about your likes, then all you're left with is an only okay story that isn't even of particular interest.

DC +2 to all of this.

You say that but there are also a significant percentage of Yuletide writers who don't bother to incorporate any of those likes into a fic, or who write stuff that should be opt-in. Even the ones who do write more or less what I asked for aren't necessarily good writers and I spend the entirety of my short gift trying to figure out what's happening. I have prompts, DNWs, and likes. They're useful for treat writers, since the treats I get always hew much closer to what I asked for even when filling the same prompt as my assigned writer did. The exception seems to be femslash. My main femslash gifts have uniformly been good. It's not the signup. It's who you're matched with, and as you said, most Yuletide writers aren't really good. They're okay. They're working with something they didn't want to write on their own and the story suffers no matter how detailed a letter they're working with.

AYRT

This is fair, and I do think it's probably hard to parse what percentage of people disappointed with their gifts just got unlucky vs. what percent could have helped their cause with a more detailed sign up.

I've just been lucky, I guess -- across all exchanges, including Yuletide, I've only gotten ~3 fics that either completely ignored my letter or were so bad that even including some likes couldn't save them, and in all cases I also got great treats, so the exchange wasn't ruined for me at all.

DC "there are also a significant percentage of Yuletide writers who don't bother to incorporate any of those likes into a fic, or who write stuff that should be opt-in."

If you matched to one of those people, your letter won't do anything, true. But nothing you could do was going to do anything.

This is more about the median Yuletiders, who are OK to decent writers but might not have a lot of ideas. Those people will generally give you better gifts/more tailored gifts if you give them more to work with. And yes, your treats will also be better/more likely to exist with a better letter.

(Femslash -- I've had good luck as well, but even there -- the All About Eve author who wrote untagged M/F endgame is a good example of someone who was never going to write a good story for that particular recip. So even with F/F, it happens.)

Whereas I have found that the femslash writers in my fandoms are the ones most likely to give me blatant DNWs or to do other shit that pisses me off.

This

CYRT

I consider the All About Eve fic het written for a femslash prompt, much like the Last Leaf fic was gen written for a femslash prompt. Despite what those recipients clearly asked for, their writers went in a different direction. You can't control that by writing a more detailed letter, and in Yuletide, the likelihood of treats is too low to hope for a good treat writer. To the original point that people who are disappointed in their gifts should have written better letters, it's a demonstrably false assumption coalie is making to justify not feeling bad for recips who got disappointing gifts. I do feel bad for those recips. I don't blame them for not writing letters up to OP's standards. I've received enough bad YT gifts (and good gifts for the same prompts) to know how little a letter affects the final result when your assignment is handed to someone who isn't a good writer or who doesn't care what their recipient wants.

I consider the All About Eve fic het written for a femslash prompt, much like the Last Leaf fic was gen written for a femslash prompt. Despite what those recipients clearly asked for, their writers went in a different direction. You can't control that by writing a more detailed letter,

While I do think some people would get better stories if they wrote better letters that were more clear about what they did and did not want, your All About Eve example is correct. The best letters in the world aren't going to keep assholes from being assholes.

I think most of them just spend too much time in spaces where the majority opinion is that you should tailor a fic as closely to the recip's prompts as humanly possible and forget that most exchange participants aren't actually going to sweat over it that much.

Agreed.

My last 3 Yuletides it's like my assigned writer didn't even look at my letter at all.

(At least I got a great treat last year so it's not like all was lost.)

I vote for it to be the other way round, most exchange participants should spend MORE time in spaces where the majority opinion is that you should tailor a fic! Dang I wish so many of them didn't miss this point.

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Coal All The Way

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