coaltide | Coalway to Hell

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2020

Coalway to Hell

Yuletide Weather Forecast:

Temperatures are estimated to fluctuate between active panic and total apathy into the next weekend. Main assignments will have a minimum temperature of regret and a complete climate change once editing is complete. Expect treat writing to continue at all free hours unless the dangerous front of procrastination cropping up in the Northeast successful moves into the area, effectively killing the treat storm conditions for the season.

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

yulefairy for treats you can't find a recip for.

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I dont care if you publish different genres under different pseuds, or move your assignment from one account to another during the anon period.

I do judge people who sign up twice knowing they can complete 2+ gifts and wanting to be guaranteed 2+ gifts. Because of the nature of matching algorithms, defaults, etc, hundreds of people are going to have at least one more assignment than they're "owed" gifts. So socking during signups leads to some "what if everyone thought that way" implications that aren't really fair to PHers (and/or treaters).

And yet, the last time we didn't have enough PHers was before YT got big.

+ 1

Also how many single-account participants wouldn’t have anyone to match to without someone socking to ask for all 50 fandoms of their heart or whatever.

I mean, it depends. If someone socks up 3 times that’s 3 assignments and 3 gifts, but someone who socks up 3 times is more likely to be a PHer and treater than a NovaMist. So really with treating odds it’s 3 gifts (maybe 5, if we assume one of their accounts gets lucky) and something like 10 fics written. Since the whole fandom benefits from the 3-5 gifts they get, it isn’t exactly selfish* since their gift is public.

* if all they want is babyfucking vore that us intentionally OOC and idk written in Italian then yes, at that point their gifts are likely only relevant to their interests and the socking making more of that pop up is worse than them only signing up once.

someone who socks up 3 times is more likely to be a PHer and treater than a NovaMist. So really with treating odds it’s 3 gifts (maybe 5, if we assume one of their accounts gets lucky) and something like 10 fics written.

That has not been my experience. Most people who write lots of treats only sign up on one account and people who have been caught socking like NovaMist or the socktopus only write their assignments, if that.

I think you're vastly underestimating how well people with socks operate.

Source: I show up on the good egg list for commenting/being 3+ fic prolific every year. I usually sign up with at least one sock, sometimes two. I just don't feel a need to make my sock be obvious. It seems like a perfectly average one and done participant, while my main identity is out there cranking out treats and commenting everywhere. I really doubt I'm the only one.

Full Disclosure: I ran two socks for... 3 years, I believe. I'm habitually on the 3+ story lists; I write PHs and treats. I had never gotten a treat, and was feeling a little salty, and created my first sock. My sock got 4 stories. It was an embarrassment of riches.

The next year I used them for nominations, too. I did it all right: detailed letters, good comments, wrote treats. I even took PHs with them, so I could get 2 from the same batch.

In the end, I stopped using them, because I wanted all the stories I wrote to be on my main, and didn't want my socks to look like serial defaulters. On average, I probably wrote slightly more the years I had socks, but I also had more time those years, which is why I knew I'd be able to sock without defaulting.

What makes you assume this?

I sock up because my main has a consistent brand in terms.of the kind of pairings I like and I don't want to bore or put off my subscribers with my less characteristic offers. I use my sock less, but so put just as much effort into requests, assignments and comments when I do use it.

I started the sock for non exchange reasons because I was curious if people actually did like my work or if they commented for social purposes. (A bit of both, it seems.)

People have so many reasons.

There's like three main reasons for good-faith socking:

1. You have way more than the maximum number of fandoms that you want. Or you have some fandoms that are AAA+ and the rest fall elsewhere on the rating scale that you want a little less, but still are willing to go through the effort of requesting. You sign up with however many accounts you know you can commit to and that fulfill your multifannish request needs. These people will either move all the fics they wrote to their main or only leave the assignment on their sock so that the sock doesn't seem like a defaulter - or a blatant sock. They look like someone who wrote 15 fics and only got one. They will probably show up in the comments of their sock's gifts to leave another comment under their main identity. (AYRT)

2. You're someone that likes to have Branding on your accounts, so anime or noncon or RPF or whatever goes to different socks. Depending on how many brands you have, that'll be how many socks you use and for what. Not all of them need to sign up, and you will post whatever fic fits the accounts brand and care equally about the Brand of each account, so even if one is obviously a porn sock, it's still well maintained. You will never see the main identity interact with the gifts the socks received. (You)

3. You're someone that wants a lot of gifts or the guaranteed pressure of a lot of assignments. There is enough care put into the accounts that they don't all seem to be your sock, but there is probably some fandom overlap because the goal is to get more fics in a limited number of fandoms, both writing and receiving. If there were something nefarious going on, keen minds would probably expose you as a sock and puppetmaster situation, but the fact that you always turn in a gift and comment saves you from wank. The fics probably get moved to one person, but they aren't writing treats so it's possible they just look like 2+ accounts that wrote one fic and got one fic without anything special going on.

There are lots of less common good (and bad) reasons for socking, but those are the top three "good egg" ones, as far as I've seen.

I do judge people who sign up twice knowing they can complete 2+ gifts and wanting to be guaranteed 2+ gifts. Because of the nature of matching algorithms, defaults, etc, hundreds of people are going to have at least one more assignment than they're "owed" gifts. So socking during signups leads to some "what if everyone thought that way" implications that aren't really fair to PHers (and/or treaters).

I don't understand how this isn't fair, or rather, how this is any more unfair than it would be if no one socked up. Because treaters and pinch hitters would still not get a guaranteed (extra)b gift, so "hundreds of people are going to have at least one more assignment than they're "owed" gifts" would still be true.

I think your assumption is 'if all people who know they can complete 2+ gifts absolutely weren't allowed to sign up twice, they would treat or pinch hit instead' and that's just not true. If only one sign-up was possible, a lot of them would simply post only a single fic.

Yeah, I have absolutely no idea where they get the "people who sock get more gifts than they're entitled to"

like ... no? it's not cake?

Because treaters and pinch hitters would still not get a guaranteed (extra)b gift, so "hundreds of people are going to have at least one more assignment than they're "owed" gifts" would still be true. Yes, that's true, sorry for misleading phrasing.

A better way of describing my assumption is that, if socking were explicitly allowed and welcomed, i think there would be a lot more people who sign up several times but write the same amount they would have written otherwise. When some of those accounts go out to ph, that would potentially create a larger load on the ph pool and cause problems (but that scale load/problems doesnt currently exist).

+1

Most of my assignments don't end up being "fics I would've come up with spontaneously and finished by deadline anyway." Maybe they take extra research, maybe they need a bunch of canon review, maybe the idea only came together because I had to really sit with the letter instead of just browsing past it while looking for treat inspiration, maybe I wouldn't have made the writing a priority without the sense of obligation to put the pressure on...

I'm always happy with the results! (Recip comments are always positive, too.) And sometimes treats happen on top of the assignments. Still doesn't mean the assignment fics themselves would've happened as treats.

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Coalway to Hell

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