Offseason #1

[coalcube]

Use this post for any exchanges running from January onwards into the first quarter of the year. Try to keep final Yuletide thoughts in the last coal post of 2019 for ease of conversation.

Coal Friending Meme
2020 NYR Collection + 2019 App
Yuletide, Exchanges After Dark, & FFA Discords.

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Chocolate Box

[(Anonymous)]

https://chocolateboxcomm.dreamwidth.org/

https://archiveofourown.org/collections/chocolatebox2020/profile

Re: Chocolate Box

[(Anonymous)]

Still not sure if I will sign up or just treat. Although the likelihood of me treating will drop significantly if I don't sign up. OTOH not sure if I have the willpower currently to put together a sign up... the yuletide burn out is real.

[(Anonymous)]

butt season

[(Anonymous)]

every season is butt season ain't it

[(Anonymous)]

Are Aquatics and K_Popsicle the same person? They share some odd stylistic quirks in their writing.

Serious question, and I hope this doesn't devolve into Aquatics wank although this is probably a vain hope.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, I've never them in the same room together, but I would be extremely surprised if they were.

Questions thread

[(Anonymous)]

because I have a question

Re: Questions thread

[(Anonymous)]

In a request letter for book fandoms, is it clear what I mean if I DNW "sex scenes more explicit than canon", or is that ambiguous/wanky? For the books I'm thinking of, all the sex is either fade-to-black or a paragraph or two of vague description.

In A Peartree

[(Anonymous)]

https://in-a-peartree.dreamwidth.org/
https://in-a-peartree.dreamwidth.org/2019/12/

Three days left to put pears on trees. How are people enjoying it? Did you get anything good?

Re: In A Peartree

[(Anonymous)]

There seems to be a lot of variation in amount of pears! I guess that's inevitable when a mod isn't going to do a 'needy' list.

[(Anonymous)]

What's a good way to word an unrequested ships DNW when you are fine with like mentioning the existence of someone's parents or whatever. Or an OC couple who briefly show up for necessary plot reasons. You just super dnw minor character A and minor character B surprise!paired up. Or any kind of focus on other ships, canon or otherwise, in general.

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe: Unrequested non-canon ships between canon characters

[(Anonymous)]

I’ve never seen people requesting fic only, but adding "art treats welcome" before. Is that a thing?

[(Anonymous)]

Yes. Mostly because artists kept complaining that no one wanted art when, when the choice was between an art and a fic main gift, people did indeed choose fic.

[(Anonymous)]

draw me like your French butts

[(Anonymous)]

le ass (_|_)

purimgifts

[(Anonymous)]

Anybody else doing this one?

Re: purimgifts

[(Anonymous)]

Yup!

[(Anonymous)]

whens the butt exchange

Reusing letter content

[(Anonymous)]

Is there any problem with re-using previous letter content from the same or different challenges? It seems like a waste of time not to copy and paste info if my likes and fandoms remain the same.

Re: Reusing letter content

[(Anonymous)]

Of course not. Basically every exchange regular who writes letters does this to some extent.

Worldbuildingex

[(Anonymous)]

worldbuildingex

Nominations open tomorrow! Anyone else thinking about doing this one?

Re: Worldbuildingex

[(Anonymous)]

Definitely! Just have to pin down which fandoms...

Venting

[(Anonymous)]

Vent here.

Re: Venting

[(Anonymous)]

Don't care if I'm practically unanon, sometimes a coalie just needs to scream in anonspace.

AO3 PLZ FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GIVE US AN API SO THAT WE DON'T LOOK LIKE CRAZY SPAMMERS; ALL I WANT IS TO HELP PEOPLE'S EYES NOT BURN OUT AND IT'S A LITTLE CRAZY THAT I'M BUMPING UP AGAINST RATE LIMITS ON SOMETHING AS THEORETICALLY SMALL AS 100+ PAGES BECAUSE I HAVE TO DO TERRIBLE HEADLESS CALLS JUST TO MAKE AN APP. HELP US HELP YOU NOT BE HIT BY SPAM TRAFFIC!!!

I know it's not an easy ask, and comes with 10000 things y'all need to do first, so in the interests of being a good citizen I'm going to slow everything down to HUMAN SPEED just like you want me to, but AO3, baby, please... I know I did you wrong that one time when your ES servers went down and I accidentally way too many requests but I've got safeguards in now, I promise not to retry you more than 5 times on the first dud page I get, I will be good this time...... ): ): ):

Past Imperfect, Future Unknown

[(Anonymous)]

Travelling back in time to start writing this fic earlier!

Re: Past Imperfect, Future Unknown

[(Anonymous)]

Haha. You can get it done, coalie!

AO3 Recommendation App?

[(Anonymous)]

There used to be an ao3 recommendation app that someone had created where after installation, a button would appear at the end of ao3 stories and recommend other stories that you might like based of the kudos patterns from people who had kudosed the story.

Does anyone else remember this? Am I making it up from a fever dream hallucination? Is it still out there and if so, does it work?

Re: AO3 Recommendation App?

[(Anonymous)]

Does this mean there’s a way to track all the kudos an individual user has given?

LAMENTATION

[(Anonymous)]

I’ve wanted to treat someone for a while now and they added more DNWs to their most recent version of the prompt I have been working on, so now I don’t know if I should give it to them at all because my cool idea to get both their ships in this fandom in one fic is no longer kosher. :( On the one hand I am glad I did not accidentally gift them a thing they wouldn’t be able to enjoy but at the same time I WANTED TO MAKE THEM HAPPY AND I WAS TRYING TO MAKE THIS THING WITH LOVE now what do I DO with it??

Re: LAMENTATION

[(Anonymous)]

You could gift it to the collection, or post it generally with a "This was inspired by X's prompt" note?

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, if someone commissioned me to write them fic and then whined in namespace that I wasn't doing it fast enough, I would absolutely quit.

[(Anonymous)]

Don't leave us all hanging...deetails.

Chocolate Box Assignments

[(Anonymous)]

How do you feel about yours?

Mine wants me to make everyone ****** which I find a little odd, but oh well...

Re: Chocolate Box Assignments

[(Anonymous)]

I matched to a blank sign up. I was hoping to have at least something to work with beyond the pairing, but I guess not.

OCTOPODES ITT

[(Anonymous)]

“I’ve got 8 arms to hold you with,” said Captain Octopus to Winter Cephalopod.
“We all have eight arms though,” Iron Octopus said from the sandbar.
Winter Cephalopod went rigid.
“Awkward,” said Spider-pus, shifting uncomfortably as Iron Octopus joined the group, carrying bottles of booze in each of his tentacles.
Octo-Thor reached for a bottle, but Iron Octopus drew back. “These are my drinks! Back off, sparky!!”

Re: OCTOPODES ITT

[(Anonymous)]

"Come here," whispered Wunderpus, gathering Grimpella close.

"We shouldn't" Grimpella said, the tips of her arms twitching, but wriggled herself nearer anyway. Wunderpus pulled them tight against each over with roving suction cups pressing hickeys and bites all over Grimpella, before gently pushing her arms free and clicking their beaks together.

"I'm going to mate you silly," Wunderpus bubbled, "and live to mate you silly for the rest of your life."

Grimpella inked herself.

Commenting Wank

[(Anonymous)]

ITT.

Re: Commenting Wank

[(Anonymous)]

Own up if you've ever denied someone the gift of your comments because you noticed that they don't reply to comments and are therefore an ungrateful git.

[(Anonymous)]

Hey coal, can we please stop arguing with the terf/s.

I get the desire to push back against their hateful ideas, but we are not going to argue them into being not a terf. All that is happening now is giving them more openings to continue spewing their horrible, hurtful shit all over the place.

[(Anonymous)]

I really enjoyed the YouTube anon’s music links!

And honestly, old coal was worse when nobody spoke back to the bigots IMO so I’m glad that it’s clearer here how many of us disagree. If only the octopus thread had gotten so many comments, sigh.

Commenting Positivity

[(Anonymous)]

Who's good commenting rep is deserved? Who should get more credit? Who's comment made your day one time. Etc.

Re: Commenting Positivity

[(Anonymous)]

Too lazy to cross-reference with the previous good commentors list, but here are people who made me happy with comments in 2019:

wednesday
keerawa
escritoireazul
thedevilchicken
missy - short comments, but numerous, I think she commented on every exchange fic I wrote last year
lualan
captainellie
silex - I know I've seen some wank about her recently either here or on FFA, but her comments last year were good

DNW Clinic

[(Anonymous)]

Help with phrasing or interpreting.

Re: DNW Clinic

[(Anonymous)]

Um, what would you consider to hit a DNW of "Christian themes" for a letter of all secondary-world canons?

Sundial Exchange (Guardian etc)

[(Anonymous)]

https://sundial-exchange.dreamwidth.org/

This ... doesn't seem like an especially well-run exchange to me. They've got an AO3 collection, but people had to sign up with Google Forms. They posted their first pinch hit as a "claim it if you want" thing, but then midway through they decided participants had to sign up for a pinch hit mailing list.

Also, this kind of bugs me.
https://sundial-exchange.dreamwidth.org/1737.html

I get that it's not a big exchange, but IMO participants should have the right to specify whether they want fic, art, podfic, video, etc.

Re: Sundial Exchange (Guardian etc)

[(Anonymous)]

Urgh, this reminds me of that supreme asshole spikedluv so much. There was a recent Venom exchange that did the same thing too, and I really hate to see this style of modding get more popular.

[(Anonymous)]

🌈🌈🌈TIME TO TURN THIS BACK INTO A PARTY 🎉🎉🎉

POST ABOUT YOUR 🔥💦🍑🍑🍆🍆🍑🥚🍑🦴🍌🌽🛸🐉🦑🐍🐒 FIC HERE BABES

[(Anonymous)]

I am writing h/c femslash. Possibly with bonus xeno.