This is Yuletide, everybody make a scene

[coalcube]

I am the sock with the tear-away face

Low-effort with your gift and gone without a trace

I am the "who" when you call, "Who does an exchange without acknowledging their gift?"
I am the wanker blowing through your fics comments
I am the coalie dragging your letter at night
Filling your exchange to the brim with fright!

This is Coaltide!

Nominations: Tuesday 22 September to Thursday 1 October

Sign-ups: Friday 16 October to Monday 26 October

Assignments out: between 26 & 28 October

Default deadline: Friday 11 December

Assignment Deadline: Friday 18 December

Yuletide Discord for Hippos. Google Group for PHs. F_F wiki for history.

NYR Info | 2020 NYR Collection | yuletide_admin | yuletide

 

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Comments

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

I'm pretty ambivalent about it, but I have the corresponding question- why are people so het up about dropping FFN? Is it more than just the convenience of not having to check?

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

For me, yes. And also that it just doesn’t make sense. If they were still counting single archives or ever counted LJ I would think different. Just because FF.net is easy to filter doesn’t mean anything to me. The minute they did their first purge (thus banning E fic) and put up its first ad it shouldn’t’ve been trusted as a fandom site. It also isn’t fair because it doesn’t allow RPF.

If you’re going to count FF.net then count AdultFF too since they go hand in hand with the FF.net crowd.

It’s all just legacy rules for legacy’s sake and I don’t see the point. This Ao3 where they moved to. Base it on Ao3 or keep up with all the new sites instead of acting like FF.net matters.


/has no fandoms active on FF.net, all my fandoms are so small I don’t even bother checking there, and would gain nothing from having it removed. I’m an immigrant in America who is anti-2nd amendment too. Sometime old rules that made sense a while back just need to fucking go. The mods look stupid for keeping it up because that’s how it’s been when they have a history of changing shit willy nilly anyway!

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

For me it's having some fandoms that aren't easy to locate on FFN. To use an ineligible example, Critical Role appears as a "world" in the Dungeons and Dragons category in the Games section, rather than in the Web Shows category in Misc, but some people don't realize that and post in the Web Shows category anyway. Because CR is classified as a "world," I can't further filter down to other "worlds" that may be eligible (like the various one-shots/standalone spin-offs, other unrelated series from the CR team's programming, etc). It makes writing eligibility posts for non-straightforward fandoms a huge pain.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

Frankly, I think ff.net and AO3 are much of a muchness if you're trying to figure out numbers for Yuletide. They've both got their pros and cons. I have do admit I prefer ff.net's search, but the fact they quarentine off the crossovers and having to remember to make sure you've included the mature rated fics is a pain. AO3 lumping everything together is good, but dear lord the tags (and why does almost every section have at least one 100 crossover?!)

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

Unrelated but does anyone remember The 100 wank? I’m trying to remember what it was. Did they nominate Clexa as a character, or was it they were trying to push some fanon ship as canon, or that they were arguing eligibility based on queer baiting or something? Linkfairy, help me out.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

One of the actresses who played either Lexa or Clarke went to Fear the Walking Dead, and fandom created an OC based on the other actress and started writing a ton of fic for their ship in FtWD, iirc. And then I think they tried to nominate their OC along with canon characters for Yuletide?

I was going to let someone else be linkfairy but I'm bored so I dug it up:

https://yuletide-coal.dreamwidth.org/5643.html?thread=21162763#cmt21162763

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

That was it. I remembered someone being like “they should let the OC in for representation!!!” when the show literally had a gay (bi?) black man right there. Clexa fandom is so wild lmao

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

1) A general desire for fairness. There are a lot more places where fanfic is posted than just AO3 and FFN. AO3 is the archive where Yuletide is run, so it should obviously be used to determine eligibility. FFN is an unrelated archive and should be treated like other non-AO3 archives, i.e. ignored for the purposes of Yuletide.

2) Participants often screw up when counting fic in their fandoms. The most common screw ups when counting fic on AO3 are to forget to select Complete or 1000+ words or in English, all mistakes which would make the fandom seem bigger than it really is. Accordingly, it's most likely that a nominator who screwed up their AO3 counting would nonetheless nominate an eligible fandom.

The most common screw ups when counting fic on FFN include the AO3 common mistakes as well as forgetting to check crossovers and forgetting to include Mature works, both mistakes which would make the fandom seem smaller than it really is. Accordingly, a nominator who screws up their FFN counting is much more likely to nominate an ineligible fandom and hence to waste their nomination slot.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

I don't see how that would make it fairer in the slightest. A fandom that's big on FF.net and nonexistent in AO3 isn't a rare fandom.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

What about a fandom that’s big on Tumblr or Wattpad? FF.net isn’t the place that it was 20 years ago. FF.net isn’t what it was when all the porn moved to AFF. Sure it’ll keep out old big fandoms but new big ones benefit from the mods arbitrarily using it and not Wattpad. Either use the most popular fic site (which isn’t FF.net) to be fair or only count AO3.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

Look, if greeting the numbers on whattpad and tumblr were as straightforward as getting them on FF.net, I'd be all for including them too. It's a matter of logistics.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

DC Exactly.

Wattpad and Tumblr are missing the ability to accurately search and filter works by fandom, and have no way at all to sort/filter by word count, completion status (Tumblr), and language (Tumblr, plus Wattpad's native language browser setting fuckery). If it requires Jane Average Fan to write a scraper to evaluate eligibility, it's too complicated to require in Yuletide.

Love it or hate it -- FF.net makes it easy to search and filter by the parameters required by Yuletide.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

If it's big on Wattpad or tumblr but not AO3, is that crowd participating in Yuletide in large numbers? The fandoms that actually get written for in large numbers are all AO3 popular fandoms.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

DC was wondering that too. What are these "big on Wattpad" fandoms that are getting requested in Yuletide? All the ones I know about have a healthy presence on AO3 or ff.net as well.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

The most fair method would be to only allow rare fandoms into Yuletide. Just an absolute ban on fandoms that are big on FFN, Wattpad, Tumblr, LJ, single fandom archives, etc., etc. That would require a tremendous amount of time and energy each year, however, and I fully support the Yuletide mods in their decision to not do that.

Any other method means that big fandoms will unavoidably be eligible for Yuletide. Given that fact, the second most fair way to determine eligibility is to treat all non-AO3 archives/social media platforms equally (which the current method of singling out FFN as somehow different from Wattpad, Tumblr, LJ, etc. does not do).

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

It's been treated as a given for years, but I honestly have to ask - what exactly are some of these canons that are big on FF.net and nonexistent on AO3? People always bring up the dread specter of anime megafandoms sneaking into Yuletide, but I don't see much risk of that. Most anime megafandoms are big on AO3, too, even if not as big. Even when you go to series that were more popular in FF.net's heyday than they were when AO3 rolled around, there's enough on AO3 alone to disqualify them. The only exception I see to that is Ranma 1/2 (~11k qualifying works on FF.net, 458 on AO3) and I don't really foresee Ranma breaking Yuletide in this day and age.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

There's nothing, these sad bastards just enjoy whining.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

My first guess was DN Angel and I was right. I would bet basically all my slash anime fandoms from childhood would get it. However I don’t think anyone (including me lol) WANTS them anymore so I still think them being eligible doesn’t matter/wouldn’t ruin Yuletide.

https://archiveofourown.org/tags/D*d*N*d*%20Angel/works
https://www.fanfiction.net/anime/D-N-Angel/

This was my first time back on FFnet in ages and holy shit the ads are bad.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

The Alex Rider books come to mind. ~4000 fics on FFN, and 800 on AO3 (without filters for either.)

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

I would be fine with dropping FFN, let's just get that out of the way first. Now I'll do some digging to see if we can answer your question. I don't know anything about anime, so I started digging through the TV category.

After comparing the top TV fandoms on FFN to their AO3 counterparts, these are the ones at a glance that would make it in were FFN not counted:

>10K fics on FFN
Degrassi
Big Time Rush
Victorious
One Tree Hill
iCarly
Hannah Montana
CSI: NY

<10K but >5K on FFN
Austin & Ally
Sonny with a Chance
CSI: Miami
The OC
House of Anubis
Friends
ER
JAG

Some of FFN's other top TV category performers might eek in but I wasn't wiling to filter every one that looked close on AO3 (I did for Victorious then decided it was going to take more time than I wanted to invest). I am sure that if I had kept going through those with less than 5K on FFN that I would have found even more that have a smaller presence on AO3.

I've listed 15 TV shows, there are undoubtedly more, and who knows how many in other categories. The combined power of all of these might dilute the rare/small aspect of Yuletide? But it would depend on how many of these once big older canons were asked for each year.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

Video games are another big one where AO3 vs. FFnet can change eligibility a lot. Just at a glance, and only bothering with the most rudimentary filtering, here's some obvious ones that are eligible on AO3 but big on FF.net:

Halo (approx 9k FFnet, 900 AO3)
Tales of Symphonia (approx 6k FFnet,700 AO3)
Spyro series (approx 3k FFnet, 100 AO3)
Tekken (approx 3k FFnet, 300 AO3)
Star Fox series (approx 3k FFnet, 400 AO3)
Final Fantasy IX (approx 3k FFnet, 500 AO3)
Left 4 Dead (approx 3k FFnet, 700 AO3)
Golden Sun (approx 2k FFnet, 200 AO3)

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

I think the group of participants that make mistakes when checking eligibility is way smaller than the group that just don't check at all, either because they're new and assume their fandom is eligible or because it just ticked over into ineligible.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, but there's not much to be done for participants who don't bother to check their fandoms' eligibility other than to give them reminders that they really ought to be checking that (as the Yuletide mods in fact do). Whereas getting rid of FFN in determining eligibility would automatically help the participants who have trouble using FFN's search options.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think the mods should make rule decisions based on handholding participants through checking eligibility. If the participants either can't use the browser tool or manage to do it manually, it's not the mods' problem imo.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

I don't actually check the eligibility of the fandoms I nominate. Mostly because I looked at the tag once months ago and it either didn't exist, had 1 fic (not in English) or I could count the number of fics using my fingers. I just checked, and the biggest fandom I'm requesting this year has <40 fics total on the AO3. Checking eligibility really isn't necessary for most fandoms.