The Coalies Are Back In Town

[coalcube]

Friday night they'll be dressed to kill
Down at Coaltide Bar'n'Grill
The receipts will flow and wank will spill
And if the coalies wanna fight, you better let 'em
That jukebox in the corner blastin' out my favorite song
The nights are getting longer, it won't be long
Won't be long 'til Yuletide comes
Now that the coalies are here again

Nominations: Mon 20 Sept to Thurs 30 Sept
Sign-ups: Fri 15 Oct to Sat 23 Oct
Assignments out by: Mon 25 Oct
Default deadline: Sat 11 Dec
Assignment deadline: Sat 18 Dec
Reveals: Sat 25 Dec

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Comments

Re: to letter or not to letter

[(Anonymous)]

This might be the first year that I don't write a letter. I just...don't really feel like it. Would it be a dick move to leave a blank signup as an experiment? I'm just curious to see what I would get with a completely blank slate. I don't want to potentially ruin a writer's experience, though, so I'll probably add DNWs and maybe some favorite tropes at a minimum.

Re: to letter or not to letter

[(Anonymous)]

97% chance of 1k of bland canon rehash

Re: to letter or not to letter

[(Anonymous)]

+ 1 based on my fandoms*

* Fandoms where I remember the request being blank and then I read the fic that was posted and it sucks

Maybe use the app to find the blank sign-ups in your fandom from years past and see if requests in general and your fandoms specifically treat blank requests well or not? IME it's like throwing away your sign up but that could just be my fandoms/bias.

Re: to letter or not to letter

[(Anonymous)]

It's not a dick move. I've gotten blank signups and had a ton of fun writing stuff I think my recips really liked. But as somebody who's had that experience, it'd be nice to at least say either in the signup or your most findable social media that you did it on purpose so they aren't left wondering if you just don't know how to yuletide and aren't going to drop a letter in three weeks or something.

Re: to letter or not to letter

[(Anonymous)]

SA: making it clear you meant to do blank signup with no dnws will reduce your chance of bland canon rehash too, since a lot of times that's due to feeling like you have to navigate invisible dnws.

Re: to letter or not to letter

[(Anonymous)]

I would much rather get a blank signup than only DNWs. Only DNWs: you're getting a bland canon rehash. Blank signup: I'm going to write what made me sign up for the fandom in the first place, which will at least have more enthusiasm in it.

Re: to letter or not to letter

[(Anonymous)]

Why wouldn't you write the same fic for the DNWs-only signup that you would for the blank signup? Assuming the thing you wanted to write didn't violate the DNWs, obviously.

Re: to letter or not to letter

[(Anonymous)]

Not the person you're asking, but I find DNWs with nothing to offset them to be off-putting, even if I had zero intention to write any of them (which is usually the case). I think it's just because DNWs feel negative and then there's no positive counterbalance, I'm not inspired with ideas by a list of things you hate, and now I've been "prompted" by all the things you hate (just the way brains work, like pink elephants) so I'm struggling to think of more normal ideas...

This is also why I wish the prompts in ap3 displayed DNWs second and the prompt first, so that they lead with the positive. You know,you read it,you get excited for the idea, and then you quickly check it doesn't hit any problems, rather than a lot of prompts starting off with "no animal abuse or rape or slowly torturing people to death from malnutrition". That is an unpleasant list to read! It does not fill me with ficcy ideas.

Re: to letter or not to letter

[(Anonymous)]

+1 so hard

And your detailed DNW list is either stuff we both hate - so now I'm going into reading your prompts feeling icky all over - or stuff you hate but I love, so now I"m going into your prompts feeling vaguely frustrated at you - or stuff I've never considered before, so now I'm more interested in that than the prompts. None is ideal!

Re: to letter or not to letter

[(Anonymous)]

Another new anon - tbh if I get only DNWs my brain laatches on to the only info I have, i get bunnied real hard by one even if I'd never wanted to write it before, that's the only thing I'm passionate about now so you get bland rehash instead.

Totally blank signup much safer.

Re: to letter or not to letter

[(Anonymous)]

Would including something like a shortlist of tropes they like be enough to offset the DNWs?

Re: to letter or not to letter

[(Anonymous)]

DA: for me, yes (although the longer and more elaborate the DNWs, the more likes I'd rather see.) But like a couple lines of DNWs + one or two really general likes or even a one-word prompt would be a lot better than only DNWs.

The other thing with only DNWs and no likes is that not having likes can make it really hard to interpret the less specific DNWs. i.e., if you DNW darkfic but mention you like h/c, I at least have a vague idea that you don't mind a few painful things happening to the characters as long as they get a happy ending. If all I have is the DNW darkfic I will probably just write you the boringest of fluff.

Re: to letter or not to letter

[(Anonymous)]

Blank sign-ups on purpose are sort of mean, but I'd be fine with only getting characters, DNWs, and favorite tropes. I've certainly written assignments with less information to go on than that.

I'm also leaning toward no letter this year, though not as a social experiment. My plan was to be pretty descriptive in the sign-up itself. I don't even use the letter post for treats anymore, since all of the sign-ups are released into the wild after assignments are out and I've never been one of those people who writes treats before my assignment is done.

Re: to letter or not to letter

[(Anonymous)]

As long as you don't request four characters that are difficult to get into one fic, I think a blank sign-up is fine. I'd just write whatever I felt like writing, which is more fun than some of the long, involved sign-ups I've had where all the likes were things I couldn't write and the DNWs DNWed basically everything else.