Coal All The Way

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It's coal-bo time.

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Comments

Re: Assumptions You Make

[(Anonymous)]

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.

Re: Assumptions You Make

[(Anonymous)]

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.

Re: Assumptions You Make

[(Anonymous)]

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.)

Re: Assumptions You Make

[(Anonymous)]

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.

Re: Assumptions You Make

[(Anonymous)]

This

Re: Assumptions You Make

[(Anonymous)]

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.

Re: Assumptions You Make

[(Anonymous)]

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.