coaltide | Coal All The Way

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2019

Coal All The Way

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NC:

https://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2019/works/21719728
(The Binding, Lucian/Emmett, for yujacheong)

It's not literally "thank you for writing for me" but the recipient's comment is distinctly lukewarm - their comments on past gifts are still short but notably more enthusiastic. I honestly can't see what's wrong with the fic itself, which follows both prompts the recipient left, namely smut and what happens post-canon. I enjoyed it, and at least one other reader left a detailed and enthused comment. So it's probably not what OP wrote, but if you were just interested in underwhelmed recips, here's an example.

Really obvious too since the recip didn’t kudos the gifts they don’t like, eek, at least make your favouritism less blatant.

Why? To make things less clear to the authors who did it right?

Encouraging authors that don’t work for you doesn’t really help you. They still commented and didn’t wank in namespace/obviously in anon, they have done everything right and followed coals advice on how to handle a fic you didn’t like.

Lying and false equivalency helps no one.

It would just feel terrible to be on the receiving end of this, that’s all.

Sure, but it sucks to get something you don’t like and then have to twist yourself into knots to find things you like that aren’t there.

So many people angst over not trusting 300+ word comments as being sincere. If you want to know that your recip honestly liked their fic, this is someone to engage with. If the thought of a recip not treating all of their gifts the same regardless of their content would hurt your feelings, seek out people who write 300 words on 10k masterpieces and 1k DNW fic.

You can control who you write for (defaulting exists!) but no recip can guarantee a fic they will be happy with. This recip did nothing wrong and neither did the author. It was a bad match. At least the author had other people that liked it. I’m too lazy to check but if that is the only gift the recip got, they’re the one that “lost” this round.

They got another fic which they are more excited about.

Good to hear!

Author got a great comment from someone else, recip got a different fic they adored: both parties have a happy ending.

Don't go looking at your recips' other gifts, then.

They were still polite and said something nice about the fic, kind of... Maybe the lack of kudos was accidental.

I mean, sometimes I just forget. I didn't bother kudosing at all if I commented until a big wank on coal 3-4 years ago made me realize that my authors assumed I hated the fic if I didn't kudos it, too. /exaggeration

sa

I'm not the recip of the fic in question, to be clear. Just offering my perspective.

Cyrt

Thanks! You're right, I only skimmed the fic but can't see any obvious problems when compared with the letter. I don't know the fandom though so it's possible it's hugely OOC and I just can't tell!

It's got a bit more to the comment than TFWFM and given that they only use short comments anyway it could be that they were just feeling down when they commented. It's hard to be 100% sure but I certainly wouldn't be thrilled to get this comment. I'm happy for the writer that they got a really great comment underneath though!

NC I have the book in my to-read pile and I just flipped through it for voice. I’m not detecting any problems whatsoever? Idk the recipient’s other comments are barely more tepid than this one.

CYRT - I do know the fandom, and I would have been happy to get this! The characters are IC, the smut is brief but nice, and there are touches of worldbuilding (an item from both the recip's likes and mine.) That's part of why I linked it - it's a well-meant, perfectly good fic with a recip who clearly wasn't feeling it for whatever reason.

I mean, for a much more gracious response to a much worse fic:
https://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2019/works/21810610

neither recip had to comment at all. policing who went above and beyond on a subjective thing like fic quality is very CoN.

we have had two wanks this year over technically perfect but not what you want = coal vs technically mediocre/bad but has the soul of everything you love = coal. just because you think one is better than the other doesn’t mean the recips did.

besides they said thanks. take people at their word and move on.

CYRT - The CIRT was interested in examples. I linked some. I'm not policing anything, but as neurotic as people here can be about only writing for good commenters, noting the caliber of the comments seems perfectly reasonable to me.

+1, perfectly reasonable

they asked for a “thank you for writing for me” comment, which neither of these comments is. the short one is perfectly fine/average and not what the op/subsequent coalie were asking for at all. it seems like you just wanted an excuse to shame a recip that didn’t puff up a fic like another completely different person did.

good commenter threads dont go “yeah x is great, especially when compared to [link to short comment]”.

There was an entire second link here, coalie. Did you check it? The second fic has another comment that may not be literally "thank you for writing for me" but is likewise short and sounds very "it's the thought that counts." That was the gracious comment I was talking about. I couldn't have been as sweet as kultiras if I got a fic like the Pantene fic.

Yujacheong goes here, just fyi.

ncyrt

Then a) they already know that a lot of people like longer comments or more enthusiastic so shouldn't be surprised and b) can feel free to say it's a perfectly acceptable comment (which it is!), or whatever else they want to in response

You (and they) should know that coals de-facto advice for gifts you dislike is “mention whatever few things you do like, say thank you AND DO NOT FAKE EFFUSIVE PRAISE”.

People like long comments, yes. People want their work to land, yes. I don’t see why you think anycoalie expects a long comment on a fic that didn’t land. The recip isn’t even a long commenter on their fav fics so I don’t get what else you would expect any short commenters lukewarm comments to look like.

/good egg long commenter who genuinely sees nothing wrong with their actions. As an author it would make me feel bad but I’d rather know than treat them again if my best effort fic isn’t their cuppa.

I didn't say they should have left a longer comment. I said their comment was perfectly acceptable but that obviously some people would prefer longer ones so they shouldn't be surprised if people say so. If they didn't like the fic, I think they did the right thing.

NA

The coalie that brought up a longer comment as ““gracious”” personally rose my eyebrows. Longer comments being more gracious is a take I hadn’t seen before. Long comments are usually framed in the positive and not you-may-as-well-treat-aurilly-since-she’ll-give-you-a-full-commentbox-worth-of-gracious-spin-even-if-its-DNW-coalfic.

Anyway this looks like this is veering towards long v. short comments wank which I don’t care for so I’ll butt back out now.

Re: Your Yuletide So Far

(Anonymous) - 2019-12-30 17:15 (UTC) - Expand

It's still more enthused than the comment the same recip left on this work: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21405121?show_comments=true#comments

My guess in the case you linked is something like "wrong half of ship bottoms" or whatever.

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