coaltide | C.R.E.A.M

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2021

C.R.E.A.M

Coal ruins exchanges around me - spitey spitey fic y'all.

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Genuinely, why?

It’s just as self congratulatory and a lot of them have some varying dig at the recip to some degree. They’re usually done by authors who wrote fics that weren’t a one to one match with that the recip wanted too.

As for the PH thing, there has been a lot of whining on here and FFA about getting PHers more recognition and having their prompt posts up earlier. The idea that saying it upfront like that is gauche but adding your prompts to the post is kosher is disingenuous to me. Either PHers are a inherently doing a valuable service full-stop and deserve to mention they are open to fics too or PHing is something being done voluntarily, can be done shittily, and you shouldn’t inherently be entitled to a reward or pat on the back regardless of wuality.

tl;dr this is unfun for the specific recip in this case but it’s not new and to me it has always been cringe and this person probably thought what they’re doing is fine because in namespace people do all these things too.

CYRT

Hm, I know what you mean about some of them. Some people phrase 'I completed a writing achievement that challenged me' (pleasant, neutral) more like 'My recipient's prompts were a challenge' and the rest of their attitude suggests that kind of awkward opposition between author and recipient as well.

I've read a lot of writing dissections that I enjoyed, though. I like reading up about people's research notes that didn't make it into a story, or when they wrote themselves into a corner and then rescued themselves.

this person probably thought what they’re doing is fine because in namespace people do all these things too.

I'm not sure I buy that. It seems unlikely to me that this person would have got the idea of author's notes in the fic from current AO3 exchanges or from the same tradition in Yuletide - it's been dying out in Yuletide for years, no other exchanges seem to have this kind of wrap-up tradition, and if they got it from Yuletide, what an incredibly specific thing to pick up when they missed some other more obvious points of etiquette.

SC

Oh, and about the pinch hit thing, I don't see the issue with the ToT 1st century BCE person mentioning it was a pinch hit. "I've done six pinch hits in the last month" only seems a bit weird to me because why does someone reading that specific fic need to know that? (And is there another fic in the collection that says "this is the fifth pinch hit I've written in the last month? Because if so, lol.)

I don't really care because I rarely put my prompts on pinch hitters' prompts lists but I feel like I haven't seen any whining about recognition for them. So I guess personally I don't think either an earlier post for them OR saying "I wrote this as a pinch hit" is gauche.

It happens on Discord now which it seems like the place where they’re finding these PHs.

I would understand if they were flocked posts but the pageantry of sharing with the general public is part of what makes it so cringe. I understand that you appreciate it but the pretentiousness of assuming anyone cares about what research you did for a fanfiction (and in some cases what isn’t even in the final product) is getting high on your own supply. Everything this person said, even mentioning it was a scrambled PH, is in line with those commentary posts. This is the AO3 fandom version of that, where your a/n functions as the journal post you may once have made since they are literally titled authors notes and that’s what these kind of mea culpas are.

Obviously I have never liked them and never will, but if you do, this is what they’ll look like with tumblr dead and dw/lj never having been a home for these people.

the pretentiousness of assuming anyone cares about what research you did for a fanfiction (and in some cases what isn’t even in the final product) is getting high on your own supply

I don't know why "this is my hobby process" is particularly cringe when it comes to fanfiction. Do you also find people talking about woodworking projects or learning to edit better videos to be unbearably embarrassing? It's a thing people had fun doing, they maybe learned something in the process, they challenged themselves and felt good about it, and they want to capture that.

Those would be tutorial videos, which are fine. If you think those posts are tutorials then that explains a lot and makes them even more cringey for me. I see them as an example of a work not standing on its own and/or the author needing to give a commentary because they need to have their face out there, which is deeply embarrassing to me. I love DVD commentaries but I know that all the best directors have to be dragged into the booth because actual good directors with things to say want their work to do the talking to them. Someone that produces their own DVD commentary track not only has nothing useful to add, they’re going to be embarrassing as hell in doing it. It’s one thing to privately tell your friends, it’s another to make it an open letter and then go to the main community and link as if everyone had been waiting for it to drop.

Well ... I have been waiting for it to drop. Because I like reading them. So they're not wrong.

Ok.

People attended Tumblrcon and got into the ballpit. People fell for Fyre Fest. The existence of an audience for someone’s scam or ego trip doesn’t make make it less pathetic or less unneeded.

excuse you, you mean dAshCoN

My apologies, I skipped the mea culpas.

No, nonnie. Cringe or otherwise, interesting or otherwise, there is a huge difference between a tutorial video on how to carve wood or write a story and a process video about what you did on a specific project.

You can see the difference clearly in all those costubers' youtube videos where they show a timelapse of making some impressive project and discuss the tedious or funny process of trying to find primary sources this time around. There are plenty of sewing tutorials on youtube, but they are very much not the same thing.

+1

Process video and tutorial video are very different!!

Dude, "posting to your dreamwidth or tumblr" is not "the pageantry of sharing it with the general public". Posting about their writing process is... what people do on dreamwidth? Do you whine about how pretentiously attention-seeking people are for posting on their dreamwidth that they were late to work because the dog peed in their shoe? And yeah they've done that in author notes too, since the freakin' mailing list days (they probably did it in letterzines.)

I mean with the yuletide ones anyway it generally reads like "I couldn't post about my writing process while it was in progress like I usually do because anon, so I will barf it all out in one go", so they tend to be more elaborate because it's two months of flailing saved up? But they're not, like, doing it at you, I promise.

Having it for their friends or themselves is fine/one thing, like I said. It’s the making it public (in the notes, by linking to it in the main Yuletide comm or on Discord, etc) that is deeply pathetic to me.

Because you think they're making wildly inaccurate assumptions about how interesting it is for others?

I get that you don't find it interesting at all, but other people do. They aren't necessarily failing to read the room.

So you’re fine with this a/n.

NC

Make up your mind. Are we talking about author's notes or are we talking about posting to our DW about what we did? Those are different platforms, and what's appropriate depends a lot on which platform you're on. That's what everyone in this particular subthread is saying.

I like reading people's wrap-ups for Yuletide and other exchanges. I mostly dgaf about author's notes as long as they're not talking about how hard a giftfic was to write, how bad the recip's taste is, or how terrible this trope usually is but it's good this time they promise.

Make up your mind.

CYRT

I don't know if you actually want this over-earnest answer but you did at least ask for AN answer, so.

I thought the ToT author's note was weird when I first read it and then I was all "but why tho" and I think it's this: this is a gift fic, it's supposedly written foremost for the recipient, but the first thing the recipient sees is something that isn't written for them at all. They know that they asked for that Hungarian Shakespeare production. They know this is a gift in an exchange. So it has the feeling to me of someone calling someone over to give them a gift and then, while still holding it, turning around and saying "Yo, so, this is what's going on here" while the person expecting the gift stands there in polite bafflement, waiting for the gift but not actually involved in what's going on. THEN they get the gift. So it's like saying "I wrote this for a person but what I'm really thinking about is my subscribers and how I need to explain to them why I'm writing this fic."

Of course, those subscribers are the person's community, and it's not the weirdest thing ever to have them in mind. Maybe it would be better to add that note *after* reveals? Or would that be weirder to the recipient to come back and find it added? I do not know. So I'm not sure I care that much.

DC

What do you think of this fic since I just found it on the reveals post https://archiveofourown.org/works/28074726

Or any of the other fics like it in Yuletide that have all that kind of information in it (minus the PH begging). It's common in Yuletide to mention something was a PH, to out the prompt, and so forth, especially in lit and adjacent fandoms ime.

CYRT

I think it's totally fine. Am I missing something?

Oh, it was in beginning author's notes, not endnotes? Yeah that kinda changes how it hits for me. If you have to do this, do it in endnotes!

This might not be exactly what you mean, but in terms of research, I often will put the sources I used in the end notes (or a link to a bibliography post on my Dreamwidth, if there are a lot of them) if I think it might be interesting to readers. For example, if I'm writing a fic set in a historical canon and I did research on certain topics, I'll often list the books and/or articles I used – both because readers might be interested and, frankly, to show that I'm not just pulling it all out of thin air if someone disagrees with me, especially when it's a topic without a long-established scholarly consensus.

I absolutely would not put it in the notes at the start of a fic, though!

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C.R.E.A.M

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