coaltide | Demure

mmm, new post smell

new post! new post!

thank u, coalcube

i miss captchas

You can type some numbers or words at the bottom of your comments if it makes you happier, coalie.

There! Are! Four! Colors!

no!!!!! there’s three

Tell us your process, coalies.

I start by thinking about the themes, and how each character can be tied to the theme, and then I try to give each of them a question to answer, so the character arc of the story can be them answering or not answering it, and then I try to tie all this into a wider story, where their question drives them to drive the plot and vice versa, and then, with that outline complete, I try to divide it into acts and acts into scenes and scenes into moments that we get in to as late as possible and out of as fast as possible, to keep the pacing up, and then, about two days before the deadline, I panic like fuck, throw this all away, and hack out 3K words by the seat of my pants, which I then edit over and over between the deadline and the collection going live.

10/10 perfect process, no notes.

Read prompt. Get idea. Write idea from beginning to end. Post.

I enjoy editing about five times more than I do writing, so most of my first drafts are written in TheMostDangerousWritingApp (website that forces you to keep typing continuously for X minutes or it deletes all your work) to force me to put actual words down on the page, after which I can play with them to my heart’s content.

I would get distracted and accidentally lose so much work so often doing that. :(

Lol yeah it’s definitely not for everyone! I am just a mega procrastinator so it’s the lesser of two evils for me. I usually stick to 5 minute bursts so that it’s less likely I’ll get interrupted mid-session, and so that if I do lose my work I remember the ~200 words I’ll wrote well enough to recreate them afterwards.

i think about the prompt/characters/likes idly until i get an image of a scene or sometimes just one moment in my mind, start there, and then figure out what it means and what else i need once i'm done.

Come up with a general idea for the fic before or during canon reviewing and taking copious notes. Start by writing some of the most emotional/shippy scenes to get me hyped. Think about it while walking and in the shower until I get the idea of the themes I’m going for, then bounce around writing parts out of order. When I have enough to start tying things together and I’m stuck on less exciting bits, print it out and edit by hand (which usually gets past some blocks). Type up my edits and repeat a few more times. I usually post a bus pass with boring but coherent connective tissue between the scenes that really work for me, then punch it up before reveals.

I get in the shower.

claimed for butts

Needs must! Share the brain cell.

I’ve got a slice of life canon that’s a comedy and I love the original but I want a plot of some sort for this Yuletide fic and I’m coming up with nothing at the moment.

Anyone have some suggestions? At this point my brain is just like do a cosmic horror or something and while that would be hilarious it might be a bit much.

SA

Both characters can be any age from high school to midlife crisis adults and are best friends. The f/f is easy enough for me to add in just I need some plot framework.

Does it have to be an actual cosmic horror? Would something that seems like a cosmic horror that results in investigation and being accidentally locked in a cupboard for enforced proximity sexy times and then turns out to just have been stray cats or a janitor making moonshine work?

It would be a lot funnier if it was actually cosmic horror but like the red sheep pacifist of the horror family. Spooky try hard. So embarrassing for everyone involved.

Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep and Wee Dave, wearing a sheet over his tentacles and going "wooooo".

Far be it from me to ever discourage anyone from doing a cosmic horror, but for other plots, maybe something like a mild family issue that requires the ship to help out in an unconventional way, go on a weird road trip, something like that? Caring for an annoying pet? Solving a little mystery?

One character gets a temporary job and it's a bad fit but in a low-stakes we-will-laugh-about-this-later kind of way.

Long-lost relative causes shenanigans.

Going out for some UFO watching/investigating a haunting/other strange shenanigans. Whether or not anything supernatural is actually going on is up to you, or you can keep it vague. Have them jump to conclusions, spook them a little bit, keep them on their toes.

Just give them a moment where the absurdity of their current situation (i.e. sitting in the middle of the forest at night trying to interpret whether the lights in the sky are UFOs or northern lights) leads to one of them saying "you realize I wouldn't do this for anyone except you, right" and they can have a Moment.

What sort of inane stuff would a random internet forum argue about? Say, a forum for members of a backpacking association (through Asia) or something similar. Bylaws, moderators, ... ?

What counts as essential items to bring in your pack. Tipping. Anything related to hygiene. Gear wank (what brand/item is best).

+1
Also, whether it's okay to promote things for sale, or give away things.

Any rule you can think of: there's a popular person or someone who dominates the conversation, and they keep edging the line of the rule. Are they being moderated fairly, compared to this newbie? Wank ensues.

Someone starts up a social challenge to post pictures of locations, or send postcards to each other. People have different ideas for how to do it.

Wank about how to travel with children.

Wank about what counts as affordable.

Someone maintains a list of useful resources. Another person suggests changes to the list. The original maintainer is offended. Sides are taken.

Things to argue about:

- Which gear is the best
- How often should you clean your gear (as often as possible or it’s gross, but also is build up good actually)
- what counts as a true backpacker versus Simone just it to say they’ve done it
- required trips
- best trips
- stupid ways to die
- backpacking traditions
- cultural appropriation vs tourism porn vs mutual respect

SA

Simone???? That should be someone.

dc

I want Simone arguing in all the comments and in person.

(new anon)

Now I need this to be a The Good Place fic. Simone Garnett goes to the Bad Place for Someone Is Wrong on the Internet-ing

I like the idea that there is a specific Simone that everyone in the forum both knows of and hates.

Same honestly. Except some people say actually she's been unjustly accused! Justice for Simone!

That is a pretty standard thing for forums to wank about too tbh

Fuck Simone! All my homies hate Simone!

Not sure if this is relevant for your needs, but:

- internet groups for moms have the most brutal arguments about baby vaccines, breastfeedings vs. formula, co-sleeping, whether every person you meet in public is trying to kidnap your child or not

- internet groups for academics will have very heated debates about tone-policing, inclusive language, how woke is too woke, and whether college students are too sheltered, too lazy, or just really depressed and lost.

- internet groups for things like boating, fishing, guns, and war history are full of weird libertarians and "living off the grid" people so the nerdy conversations about the merits of different fishing hooks will be interspersed with arguments about whether it's okay to shoot tresspassers on your property, when your kids are old enough to learn how to slaughter chicken, and how to best prepare for power outages or snowstorms.

They all have in common that there will by repeated debates about the basic rules of the group, whether mods are justified in deleting certain posts or whether that qualifies as censorship, or whether mods should ban certain group members or not.

this is the definition of irony

Go on FFA and search it for your topic e.g. backpacking.

If this is a forum for foreigners backpacking through Asia then there would definitely be a discussion/accusations about seedy Passport Bro culture, and probably a follow up discussion where the Passport Bros are butthurt that they're considered LBH's (Losers Back Home) by the locals.

What is Passport Bro culture?

Sex tourism/human trafficking, but for men trying to rebrand it into something aspirational and cool to MGTOW dunk on the western femoids who have rejected them

A and B work together in an office setting. A has a crush on B and doesn't know it's requited. What fluffy contrivances of plot could occur to get A and B together (potentially involving their coworker C who ships it)?

coworker c locks them in the copy room together

A wakes up on their birthday and can hear people's thoughts if they come into physical contact.

NC

Fyi in case OP doesn't know this is cherry magic au, for tagging discoverability if they go with this.

Read some old Ask A Manager and see if anything sparks an idea?

They get put on some kind of special project together (whether it's high-stress "make the million dollar customer happy" or low stress "organize the other co-worker's baby shower" it's still a lot of time alone together in the conference room)?

Hilarious misunderstanding means ceo thinks they're already dating and coworker C makes it worse on purpose?

Work trip, hotel mixup, only one bed?

Really poorly thought through team building activity?

Trapped in the elevator together?

for those opting into it, how often have you got smut written for you in yuletide? if you give both smutty and non-smutty prompts, how often does your writer opt for the non-smut?

i'm always happy to receive smut and include smutty likes. but most exchange authors tend to err on the side of caution with g or t rated fic. i think unless it's a smut-focused exchange, there's always a risk in writing something smutty that might not land or even offend the recip.

Just the gifts from the last 10 years, 14 have been smutty, 9 weren't.

I've received smut almost every year I've asked for it. My writers have always stuck to my prompts, which doesn't happen nearly as often for non-smutty prompts, so I choose to interpret this as me having a real knack for coming up with sexy ideas!

I almost always have smut in my requests (not the only thing, but I'll prompt for it) but the only times I've gotten it was from Monsterfucking fandoms. God bless you, Monsterfuckers.

1. never, 2. I usually include "smut" in my general likes and write some shippy prompts that could easily go either smutty or non-smutty along with other prompts; 3. always

Based on the similar thread in the last post, I kind of suspect the key is to put in very specific smut likes, like specific acts and kinks, rather than just an opt-in and prompts with openings for porn scenarios. Unfortunately, my favorite specific sex things are "whatever the characters find hottest in the moment" and my least favorite porn is when I can tell it shoehorns in specific acts/kinks to meet a prompt, but you can't include 'in character' in your smut prompts either. And also I just don't have the cojones to put a list of very specific sex things that get me off on my journal linked to my main many-decades pseud that can be seen by God and everybody and half my family knows about at this point. Also I tend to request like childhood-favorite fandoms of the kind where porn is a pretty serious swerve from canon. So I will probably continue to not get porn.

I've gotten smut once out of six YT gifts. I only opt into smut in... call it half the fandoms I request, typically? So that seems like a pretty reasonable proportion. (I always offer some non-smutty prompts, regardless of whether I'd also appreciate porn.)

There's no way Morbane & co. aren't aware of FakeCirilla9's deal, right? Like, they're definitely knowingly allowing someone like that to participate, huh?

Like what?

The Chechnya nomination was in bad taste. There's no reason to suppose anything else is wrong. What kind of rule about participants do you think yuletide should have?

assign them to lolmeme like they did with ars_belli

lol meme gamed their offers to take that bullet for yuletide and write plausibly deniable spite fic.

No, they didn't, they offered that fandom as normal.

But when matched to ars_belli, they rose beautifully to the occasion and I for one salute them.

This is bordering on purity test nonsense. Sometimes exchanges will have some shitty people in them who like gross shit they probably haven't thought through at all beyond the surface level of two hot people doing a trope they like. And that sucks, but they get mocked/ignored/terrible fic, and eventually they go away by themselves, like that nazi-fucker.

they don't always go away, though, and until they do, normal people have to put up with them. banning people from exchanges for being racist creeps is fine.

for real

This is true. Mods can always show participants the door.

Is FakeCirilla9 racist?

racism: the only ism that matters

I was responding to a comment that talked about racism, wanker.

i was talking about the nazi but you can also ban people for being homophobic fascist fetishizing creeps. it's fine!

which nazi are we talking about? do we have a new one?

no, the comment i was replying to references ars_belli, who stank up yuletide until 2018. that situation went on way too long and it's entirely because mods are too cowardly to just ban people and own their reasoning why.

it's entirely because mods are too cowardly to just ban people and own their reasoning why.

Aurae, too.

No. Aurae is a completely different kettle of (cuttle)fish to random racists. She put a lot of effort into a large ring of socks and it took a long time to amass enough evidence that they were all her. It is fine, actually, that mods had hesitation about banning, say, this new account that just happened to like this corner of Star Wars + one other thing.

Seriously, since when is “banning a known bad actor” a “”purity test””?

+1

this isn't "shipping a problematic fictional pairing" here, this is being an outright asshole.

apologists love appealing to "purity tests" when the answer to every bad faith "ohhh but what if" is "that's what mods using their judgement is for"

I think part of the issue is that this person’s demonstrated poor judgment regarding what is appropriate to nominate and request suggests a higher likelihood of equally poor judgment in what is appropriate to gift a recipient.

There are recurrent YT participants who have demonstrated definitive, not hypothetical, lack of judgement about what is appropriate to gift a recipient. They haven't been banned either...

Utherius should also be banned

+1

And they should be.

lsdkfjsldkfjld

eventually they go away by themselves, like that nazi-fucker.

That did not happen.

Did ars_belli get banned from somewhere before leaving?

They left because the mods knew they had a bad gift (like Aurae), they didn't just "go away" like that says. Mods were too chicken to ban them.

We do not know if the mods banned them or not.

"They left because the mods knew they had a bad gift (like Aurae)"

Sorry, what?

Are you suggesting some kind of global moral litmus test for participants?

yes

I suggest you start your own exchange where you can personally vet every participant for moral purity, then! For Yuletide, the amount of work that would go into setting standards, researching reported standards violations, and determining if they are sufficient for a ban would be prohibitive. Just setting the standards would likely take years, involve an endless amount of wank, and in the end make absolutely no one happy.

you're always welcome to go write for them if you feel that strongly about it

Coalie, do you really want to encourage a forum of obstinate assholes to give gifts to someone you hate?

I’m not one to tell you what to do but you’re stacking the deck against yourself here.

"against yourself"

it's nothing to do with me, i couldn't give a shit personally. dunno why you're making this about me. fake cirhossis or whatever their name is - they're the asshole.

sure jan

my name isn't jan, fuckwad.

blew your load too soon, troll.

no u. i just don't want to write for a wanker and would rather not have them in any exchange i sign up for. i'm not trolling.

convincing

“I couldn’t give a shit,” screams the turnip as they post multiple times while shitting into a toilet of lies.

what

fart

do turnips fart?

if you eat one

if they farted when you ate one wouldnt it make you burp though

could go either way

looks like james is back. nora not doing it for ya these days?

dc

This is ridiculous. The mods can nut up and simply say "I don't want this creep in my exchange." That's it. They don't have to be ~fair~ to someone requesting that kind of garbage. Your repetition of "moral purity" suggests an advanced case of anti-anti brainrot.

+1

This.

There is a core of truth in this, which is that if the mods ban someone, they should be clear in their own minds why they're banning them, what the evidence is for the person's misbehavior or likely disruption, and what goal it's meant to achieve. There should be no "the reason for the ban is the reason for the ban" nonsense. It shouldn't be a kneejerk reaction. But "I don't want you in my exchange, please leave" is a complete sentence and mods can use it.

+2

it's the mod's exchange and they can decide who they do and don't want in there.

-1

This isn't "anti-anti brainrot", people just operate under the assumption that rules should be enforced consistently. Yes, "mods should just ban this one person and not think too much about it" sounds great, but in practice it's not necessarily a great idea to support bans based on what mods find to be crossing a "bad taste" line because, and this will shock you, mods aren't always reasonable people with perfect moral compasses either.

Come on, we’re talking about a recreational fanfiction exchange. Being able to participate is not a life or death matter. This is a situation where “because you’ve acted in a way reasonable people find abhorrent and no one wants to hang out with you” is a perfectly acceptable reason to kick someone out. It’s not like they’re ever going to be able to make rules to cover every situation—should mods just sit on their hands if a situation arises they’ve never considered?

Is that the reason you would give them?

"you’ve acted in a way reasonable people find abhorrent and no one wants to hang out with you"

who's "no one"? Which specific actions do you mean?

nc

everyone who was in ead that day with them, for starters, wtf even was that behavior.

look, they're an asshole. nobody wanted ars_belli in exchanges and nobody wants them either.

I bet that Prim_The_Amazing would have liked the FIAB mods to tell their target "you’ve acted in a way reasonable people find abhorrent and no one wants to hang out with you" and instead their wanky mob-stirring ass got banned. Correctly.

this isn't the same thing and you know it.

Agreed. So if it isn't the same thing, then it should be possible to give a clear statement of what makes their behavior cross a line.

Shut up, Aurae.

Who? The what mods? What behavior?

Context please?

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/446300.html?thread=2662633308#cmt2662633308 seems to be this

reasonable people

*stares into camera*

There probably is a way to make a rule that says if your war criminal rpf nomination is rejected because of Yuletide rules about no serial killer and no war criminal rpf, and you come right back with fictionalized war criminals in a very real war crimes setting, you get banned because it's obvious you're trying to get around that rule.

Mods cannot see who submitted what nominations.

I think it is likely that this person nominated last year's (or was it 2022?) Putin rpf, but we can't go beyond "likely" unless getting AO3 to match up IPs.

There’s also the fact that cirilla9 requested the current war criminal rpf via a sock that they haven’t actually publically linked to their pseud. And yes, any exchange mod can ban anyone on whatever strength of suspicion they want, or make whatever rules they want, but it’s also reasonable for mods to feel that it’s not their job to spend their time vetting participants based on their probable socks or on comments they’ve made on discord (or even on offensive requests they’ve made or fic they’ve written in past exchanges, for that matter. Gheyn wasn’t banned either).

but it’s also reasonable for mods to feel that it’s not their job to spend their time vetting participants based on their probable socks or on comments they’ve made on discord (or even on offensive requests they’ve made or fic they’ve written in past exchanges, for that matter

What do you think mods should do, exactly? Nothing?

DC

I think they should deal with problems in their exchanges, problems that are brought to them, and, at their discretion, potential problems in their exchanges that they become personally aware of.

None of which requires "Mods are obligated to ban User X because they learn through the grapevine that User X made a creepy comment on their gift, made a creepy comment in a separate Discord, and is probably a user who has requested appalling RPF."

CYRT

At a minimum, organize the exchange and set out the deadlines, rules and requirements clearly; manage nominations, matching, assignments; make sure pinch hits are claimed and that everyone gets a gift that adheres to their requests and does not violate DNWs; field questions and problems during the exchange in accordance with the rules they’ve set out.

If the mods of an exchange want to vet participants, or vet requests/prompts, or vet posted fics, for things beyond that, they can. Mod your exchange however you want! And people are also free to sign up only for exchanges where the mods ban participants whom they believe to have made offensive requests or comments elsewhere! But I don’t think it’s an *inherent* obligation of an exchange mod to keep someone out because they ship irl war criminals.

it is an inherent obligation of an exchange mod to moderate behavior as it relates to the exchange, though.

it's right there in the job title!

+1000

Again, if a mod wants to ban people from their exchange on the grounds of creepy comments their sock left on a gift fic in different exchange, they can! If they want to ban people who submit nominations for RPF that is specifically against the rules (rather than just delete their nominations), they can! But it doesn’t break the exchange if they don’t.

you're tilting at windmills here. yes, some exchanges can be broken by user behavior that is bad enough. i don't care about the specific scenario you've invented in your head and decided justifies arguing against the general concept of moderation on the whole. ars_belli should have been banned. it made yuletide worse when she wasn't. that is the sum total of my argument: some people suck enough that they should be banned!

OK.

DC

yes, some exchanges can be broken by user behavior that is bad enough.

But not my someone requesting war criminal / Nazi RPF. That's awful behavior but it doesn't break the exchange because a) the nomination shouldn't be accepted in the first place and b) it's easy enough to avoid having to write war criminal RPF by not offering war criminals.

Banning someone shouldn't be about whether they're a decent person or not. It should be whether their in-exchange behavior negatively affects others and the exchange as a whole.

People whose bad behavior breaks exchanges (e.g.):
- participants who constantly give bad faith gifts like Untherius and Aurae
- participants who delete gifts before reveals
- participants who target others in the exchange and create a toxic atmosphere

some might say that whether someone's in-exchange behavior negatively affects others can be an indication of a decent person vs not

But not the other way around.

yes the other way around wtf are you talking about

The other way around means that being a decent person or not affects whether your in-exchange behavior negatively affects others. That's bullshit, and you know it. There are tons of very much not decent people out there who can be perfectly pleasant in social contexts. There are also a lot of good people whose exchange behavior negatively affects others.

i said an indication not a 1:1 exact formula for determining decency you pedantic fuck

nah, bullshit. people who are openly huge, creepy racists break the exchange by ruining the vibe and forcing everyone to game away from them (and forcing someone to deal with them because they don't know this and/or aren't willing to game).

you're arguing against dealing with missing stairs. i am saying missing stairs should be dealt with. a polite nazi is still a nazi, and should be banned.

This.

nah, I'm arguing that if mods don't want to fix the stairs, and have no stair-fixing policy in their exchange rules, that's fine. I understand that in an exchange with an anon period, I don't have complete control over who writes for me, and that if I comment or kudos on a fic during the anon period, it might turn out to have been written by a known bad actor.

okay i also understand a bunch of stuff totally unrelated to the conversation at hand, which is that it's good to ban malicious people and if mods refuse to, they are doing a bad job.

I mean, yuletide seems to work pretty well, and people do keep signing up, so...

sure, you should never consider if things could be better. that's why you become a mod, to never ever solve problems or fix stuff. glad we cleared that one up!

Yeah, someone who follows the rules of the exchange; changes their behavior if the rules change; does not behave in disruptive or offensive ways in exchange - moderated spaces; and does not directly force their offensive behavior on other participants in outside spaces; is not doing anything to disrupt the exchange.

It's perfectly valid for a mod to say they don't like someone and ban them, but it's also not bad modding to say that if someone has shown they are willing to abide by the norms of a space they are allowed in it, and there's valid, non-geek-fallacy reasons to think that's better for the community as a whole. And doing offensive things in a separate space where people have to actively go looking for them is not any of those things.

Nazi RPF should have been banned; it was; it probably should have been banned sooner, and there's the bad modding if you want some; but afaik that ban solved the problem of people asking for Nazi RPF, because those people followed the new rules and didn't cause any new problems once the new norm was clearly stated.

it's also not bad modding to say that if someone has shown they are willing to abide by the norms of a space they are allowed in it, and there's valid, non-geek-fallacy reasons to think that's better for the community as a whole

bullshit. fandom is a community. ars_belli was posting her nazi thirst on the same platform she posted her yuletide letter on. it is completely reasonable to ban her on those grounds. requiring everyone else to attend to their requests with vigilance if they have an objection to matching with a nazi is ridiculous. the solution is to ban the nazi.

dc

Is this specific to Nazis or are we also banning everyone else who posts creepy and tasteless stuff on the same platform where they post their Yuletide letter? Like, we should definitely also ban MAGAs and TERFs and homophobes, but what about people with a fannish history of bullying? No one wants those in their community or share exchange spaces with them either, right? And why is that only when it's the same platform as the letter? Just because the letter is on DW, the fact that they tell fellow fans to kill themselves on Tumblr isn't irrelevant.

you see, there's a thing called a "judgement call"

Yes, and I would like to know where a person who'd ban Nazis would make that judgement call and draw the line. Because some of that other bigotry will affect me (and probably a lot of other exchange participants) dramatically more than some rando asshole jerking off to war criminals, and I want to see if their "but we're a ~community" is just empty bullshit or not.

it's genuinely very funny that you think grandstanding like this about hypotheticals on an anon meme is doing anything. it's even funnier that you think summarizing ars_belli's shit as "jerking off to war criminals" doesn't betray your own janky thinking.

CYRT

I'm talking specifically about drowned_in_wine / FakeCirila9, and that's precisely what they're doing. But the way you refuse to entertain that banning other RL bigotry might be more pressing and dismiss it as "hypothetical" tells me everything I need to know about you.

no you fucking moron, it's just literally hypothetical. name a name. what matters is the bigotry + the behavior. i'm not aware of any maga people participating in yuletide, if they are, they should be banned. but your specific hypothetical was about "bullying", a term so broad it could mean literally anything. in general, yes, if a notorious harasser is doing yuletide, they should be banned. you will note that this is hypothetical, based on your own excruciatingly vague criteria.

you are soapboxing anonymously about another anonymous person's motivations based on criteria you invented: you are being stupid

i'm arguing ars_belli should have been banned and pointing out that in this case (unlike the other creep people keep bringing up) there was no difference in platform to even consider. again, i don't care about this invented scenario. it's a judgement call for the mods to make. in yuletide's case, the mods long ago should have made such calls for people who exhibit malicious exchange behavior or are straight up fucking nazis.

Is this specific to Nazis or are we also banning everyone else who posts creepy and tasteless stuff on the same platform where they post their Yuletide letter?

Not this slippery slope bullshit again.

It's not a slippery slope to point out that the two or three Nazis aren't the only dangerous bigots and creeps in the exchange scene.

Not just Nazis but dangerous bigots and creeps in our precious Yuletide?

I’m waiting with bated breath for more info on what’s worse then people with a Nazi fetish and bad taste, on this hill we’re about to roll down that is absolutely not a slope.

I’m waiting with bated breath for more info on what’s worse then people with a Nazi fetish and bad taste

Seriously? You're asking "What's worse than bad taste?"????? Thanks for showing your hand, I guess.

And even "What's worse than a Nazi fetish?" is just a blatant taunt in an exchange where there's been casual discussion of how this or that wanker was clearly a bigot but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ what can you do?! for as long as I've been on coal. Just for one widely known example: Untherius used to talk about how m/m fic "makes his skin crawl", FFS. And it's not like he's the only one on record with homophobia, racism or transphobia.

But I guess run-of-the-mill bigotry can be excused, as long as the person is not also a Nazi fetishist.

Dangerous! Bigots! Creeps!

You think homophobia is... not dangerous, bigoted and creepy?

Wow.

LOL this is some fucking precious pearl clutching.

Someone viscerally hating m/m fic is not automatically dangerous, no.

+ 100

+1

you're actually stupid huh

They should mod the exchange.

Delete offensive nominations. Throw fics that they deem inacceptable out of the exchange. Interfere when participants make offensive comments and target others. Ban participants who repeatedly and/or maliciously break the rules of the exchange.

None of them involves banning people for out-of-exchange behaviour, morals or attitudes.

???

"just because John Q Public flung logs of poop at every OTHER birthday party he attended this year, doesn't mean I should preemptively ban him from my party. after all, I'm only in charge of my party, not everyone else's."

No one is making you attend the poop-flinging party.

Yes, the point is that if the poop flinger wants to attend MY party, I am not morally obligated to allow him to fling a log before saying no.

cyrt

If there's a risk of John Q Public flinging logs of poop at your party, by all means ban them. That's just not relevant here because the chance of this person requesting OW expires of their real life war criminal faves is zero.

The chance of them asking for non-OW expies of rl war criminals is not zero, though. Not to hop Johns here but this is why the desert peach person slipped people's radar so long.

Luckily, you as another exchange participant can avoid interacting with them at all!

How do you suggest I as another exchange mod avoid interacting with them at all short of preemptively banning them, which is what this subthread is about.

What?

This thread's talking about the exchange experience for other participants, not the mods. If you're going to be precious about potentially interacting with participants and their dodgy nominations, don't become an exchange mod.

No it isn't.

No one is stopping you from banning whomever you want! But I thought we were talking about yuletide, where the mods have not banned them.

How do you know the mods haven't banned them? It looks like the last Yuletide they participated in was 2018.

In terms of actual fandoms, people who know the fandom know what it's about, and they're the ones potentially writing for it.

Not equivalent to writing an OW archetype nom.

CYRT

The solution for that is not to offer fandoms with expies of RL war criminals. Presumably, if you offer that fandom, you would know what you're offering. No one was being tricked into writing Desert Peach's semi-fictional (?) Nazis.

no, the solution is to ban that shit and the people pushing it so your exchange doesn't get a reputation as a place where nazis can hang out unimpeded

When requests are hidden you can absolutely offer a fandom with expies of RL war criminals without expecting to be slammed with "actually, this request is for the RL version of Hitler lol"

That's what the default button is for.

jesus fucking christ that's also what banning is for. what is your reasoning for going so hard for actual nazis?

DC

your weird unhinged comment responses

and that's also what banning people is for! yayyyyy

Sure, Jan. You'll probably have non-Nazi-fetishist reasons to offer the actual Hitler expies and were evilly TRICKED by the Nazi fetishist.

it's a little known fact that schindler's list only won an oscar because everyone on the board was a nazi fetishist

Oh have we reached the ‘if you don’t agree with me 100% you’re a nazi’ part of this argument.

Not what I said. Being a Nazi fetishist doesn't make you a Nazi. But "the person requesting a Hitler expi is a Nazi and tricks me, who innocently offered a Hitler expi, into writing their Nazi fetish" is surely a take.

????

You have it backwards

imagine offering charlie chaplin movies and your recipient just wants to fuck the great dictator

Guess that Jojo Rabbit imaginary unicorn noncons Hitler idea is off the table.

ok so you think no one can ever write about nazis without making it a fetish act then. cast spielberg into the same hell as aquatics

Hate to tell you, coalie, but your Yuletide fic isn't Oscar bait prestige cinema.

it is though

no, if someone's notorious for their shitty exchange behavior in other exchanges OR notorious for being a nazi creep, it's fine to ban them.

there are lines to this. i once had a very awkward convo with a friend because they wanted me to ban this entire clique of people from discord because they'd behaved poorly in a wank with one of the friend's friends. i drew a line there and said that i expected them to behave in my server but wasn't going to preemptively mod. these are the decisions you have to make when modding anything. but, in an exchange, where you are definitionally going to be interacting with others, it's fine to ban people who are known, specifically, for poor exchange behavior.

this. and it's also fine to do things case by case and use context to decide? trying to come up with some universal rule is never going to work

anonymous rule lawyers HATE this one weird trick...!

they really do. note how they're ignoring this comment to be like BUT WHAT ABOUT THIS OTHER MADE UP SCENARIO

+100

It's fine to, but it's not necessary to. (And since cirilla9 has done yuletide for many years without problems, and the creepy exchange behavior was under a sock in another exchange, it's not hard to see why the mods would consider them a "wait and see" case rather than a preemptive ban.)

i don't care about that person given there are examples of more extreme behavior and the yuletide mods failed to deal with them then, too. the yuletide mods don't ban people as a rule: that policy is bad, and sucks.

Nah.

Was it ever even confirmed (real confirmed, not coal confirmed) that the sock and FakeCirilla are the same person?

Where are you expecting confirmation to be published?

look at their art, it is the same

I don't doubt that they're the same person. But if I was a Yuletide mod, I'd probably want something stronger to go on.

You can make whatever modding choices you want. If you decided to ban that "clique of people" in your exchange or on your server, that's also your right. Your space, your rules, and people who don't like them will react accordingly.

It's when you demand that other mods make the same choices that you do that you're crossing a line.

no, i don't agree it crosses a line to have opinions about modding of an exchange which i participate in. ars_belli should have been banned and it sucks that they weren't.

there are lines to this. i once had a very awkward convo with a friend because they wanted me to ban this entire clique of people from discord because they'd behaved poorly in a wank

We're talking about NAZI RPF. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

Are we talking about Nazi RPF?

Nazi RPF probably should have been banned in 2013. It was banned in 2014. So that's the end of conversation: it happened.

well then i suppose you are illiterate because i am responding to someone attempting to troll via slippery slope bullshit with a comment saying "idk it depends but you should definitely ban bigots who are killing the vibe for everyone"

lmao idiot, the conversation is about what crosses the line in exchanges and coalie gave an example of a complicated situation. for fuck's sake you all can't be this dumb.

"No RPF about 20th century war criminals," boom done.

cyrt

Okay? The mods are still voluntarily running hobby-related things, created by them, in their leisure time. Exchanges aren't public services requiring universal access. If you don't like a mod's "moral compass," don't participate in their exchange~~, Aurae~~.

I mean, the same thing goes in cases where mods *don't* ban known nazi-fetishists from their exchanges. You can always not sign up for any exchange where xyz person has also been allowed to sign up.

sc

or: sign up, and then organize a mass-default event to protest the mods' policies!

**nazis, you mean

+1

I am so sick of people playing devil's advocate because something something it's a slippery slope if we ban the blatant Nazi loving racists. We in fact don't have to protect their right to doing Yuletide.

+10000000000000000000000000000000

look. no one is coming for your precious m/m. you can even request war criminals and serial killers if they're fucking well fictional. we just don't want ppl trying to get the real life stuff in by stealth.

what?

No OW in Yuletide, so I don't think you have to worry about that.

c cyrt rt

Why are you getting snotty about m/m? This has nothing to do with m/m as a category. It's about ships in seriously bad taste.

nc

i think it means a) the original ship is m/m and b) some ppl get precious about "if we ban this one thing, where will the bans ever stop"?

THIS THIS THIS.

+1

"if you're a weird asshole killing the vibe you get two warnings to shape up and then we will ban you" ta da

i'd be fine with that, would catch any socktopus-wannabes also,

Personally, I think the dial has some room to move over towards free and frequent bannings. Maybe mods are too timid: too keen to be seen as nice rather than being willing to make firm decisions that maintain a good atmosphere for those remaining people who put effort into not being creeps.

However, don't you dare pretend to yourself that "if you're a weird asshole killing the vibe you get two warnings to shape up and then we will ban you" ta da fixes the problem just like that, because it is very easy for a group of bullies in authority to decide that anyone they don't like (for example: anyone who disagrees with them or even asks for clarification of unclear rules) is killing the vibe.

don't you dare pretend to yourself

Hilarious phrasing. I will do what I want, thanks, you don't know me like that.

Beyond that, your comment seems to imply you see a causative link between a more permissive banning culture in Yuletide (meaning: any banning at all?) and mod bullying. I disagree.

+100

If we banned all the weird assholes ruining exchanges for others people I'll have a list for you that's a mile long.

love that you say this like it's a bad thing. is exchange culture broken?? no, it's the people who don't want to swap fic with nazis who are wrong

The problem is that your definition of Nazis seems to include "people who fetishize Nazi/someone oppressed by Nazis" which is a dynamic that crops up fairly often in fiction set under Nazi occupation. This can be tasteless, but it doesn't make the audience all Nazis.

what an argument. no, it's fine to ban anyone who posts in their dw about how bad they wanna fuck nazis. i know you're desperate to point out holocaust survivors were a huge market for nazi porn, but i don't care because there aren't any holocaust survivors posting that shit on dw while signing up for yuletide. this is not a complicated or difficult modding question if you haven't let your brain be broken by bad faith rules lawyers, bless up.

Ayrt

95% of all the assholes I would like to ban probably aren't Nazis. Every Nazi is an asshole, but not every asshole is a Nazi.

and? unless you're a yuletide mod I don't see how that's relevant.

Mods with banhammer are unlikely to be maintaining a good atmosphere for everyone else.

disagree, heavily modded spaces are often good

And yet you're here, not FFA.

anon memes and exchanges are different

Geek Social Fallacies ahoy!

not really, no

Oh fuck off

I'm sure they know. They're probably going to check whatever gift gets written in either direction.

Who knows if they directly discussed it with the EAD moderator.

who is FakeCirilla9 and why do we care?

got b& or flounced from EAD for requesting modern atrocity rpf, snuck same atrocity rpf into an original work exchange as an OW expy, then told her writer in her comment that it was an expy of an atrocity

this is inaccurate but there are other summaries last post. search drowned_in_wine

no it isn't

misinformation sucks.

the expy RPF and the banned RPF were completely different pairings

she didn't flounce from the discord after the banned RPF was banned, she flounced much later when she made an inappropriate remark about Chechnya that was then connected to her sock's banned rpf

Thanks!

Unrelated to the veracity of this comment, I can't believe how long it took me to figure out what b& meant.

Ah, the perennial division between the "If you have a nazi in your exchange and you aren't kicking out the nazi, you are in a nazi exchange." people and the "There was nazi? Openly?? For years?! I missed that completely!!!" people.

weird how so many people who know about the nazi and think the nazi should have been kicked out keep coming back to the nazi exchange.

the what

Yuletide mods never banned ars_belli, a known Nazi. Ergo, they run a Nazi-friendly exchange, ergo, a Nazi exchange.

And yet you're here.

shazam! everyone who has ever done yuletide is now a nazi. you can pick up your paste-on mustache at the door

Along with your Hugo Award.

We do not know why ars_belli left.

There's also no reason to call FakeCirilla9 a Nazi.

lol that is on me I was thinking of the other one

mmm new butt smell

First time for me as an (initial) pinch hit. Surprised me a bit, because 2/3 of my requested fandoms had multiple offers. Now I'm just glad I'm not one of the lingering ones. Do you guys feel like you get a better or worse gift (on average) if you're a pinch hit? Or is there no real difference?

depends on the exchange and the fandom. usually in yuletide, pinch hits are in high demand and i've often got a better gift and occasionally treats.

smaller exchanges, where there's a higher chance of lingering (most of my fandoms are yuletide eligible) i've often gotten kittyfic or worse.

Yeah, the best exchange gift I’ve ever gotten was when I was a yuletide pinch hit and the worst was when I was a lingering pinch hit for another exchange.

One of my worst gifts was as a YT pinch hit. I was so excited to go out for PHs because YT means I could have gotten anything and it was going to be written by someone excited to pick me up. Instead I got 1001 words of original character fic with my requested characters as barely there cameos. It was a five minute fandom. Anyone else could have picked that up and would have done a better job.

I'm sorry, coalie. I've been in an extremely similar situation and know exactly how you feel.

(It was a five hour fandom, not a five minute fandom, but honestly the principle still applies. It wasn't exactly prohibitive to get into...)

Was it a Kittyfic?

I don't think there's a difference. And, being a pinch hit means that someone wanted your prompts.

+1

If you get picked up as a pinch hit, your author looked at your letter and went HECK YEAH I want to write this!!!

Assignments are based on least writers, so you can have lots of people who could write for you but if there are enough people that can only be written for by one out of that group, they'll use them up before you are reached. I've never found any real difference between being a pinch hit and not, quality wise, except it seems to slightly increase your chances of getting treats.

In Yuletide, being a pinch hit means a better chance of a high quality story. In other exchanges, being a pinch hit does not ime do much to affect quality one way or the other.

DC

I was going to say "wait, why?" and then I thought about it and decided you are right.

However, the reason is unfortunately that a lot of really unskilled writers do Yuletide. The subset that takes pinch hits are generally more confident than average. So it's not that the pinch hitters are excellent so much that the non-pinch hitters are less so. On average. There are brilliant writers and awful writers among those who don't take pinch hits and those who do.

This is all true, but there's another reason: people who take pinch hits generally read the prompt first. There's much less chance of a severe id mismatch or a completely different view of the canon. So even with the less good of the pinch hit writers, you've at least got someone who has opted in and presumably is picking up what you're putting down.

Man, I really wish this were true. It should be, it's logical, but... sadly not always true from my experiences.

It's "generally", not every time. Though condolences for having experienced the counterfactual!

Half of the initial pinch hits will be people who had no possible offer. The other half will be people who had the most possible authors, and all those authors' other recipients "needed" them more.

I was an initial pinch hit too, but I expected it lols. I was only ever a Yuletide pinch hit once before, and it was much closer to the deadline - I got a treat that year, perhaps as a result; I think it's the only year I've gotten a treat at Yuletide. Both my gift and my treat (no idea which was which) were for the same fandom and both were quite nice, for a ship I was really into.

"Now I'm just glad I'm not one of the lingering ones."

As one of them: wow, thanks a lot.

?? They're glad they're picked up. There's only an insult here if you're determined to read one in. "I am glad I'm claimed" is not injurious to you.

Except they didn't actually say "I'm glad I'm claimed", they said what was originally quoted. Which was, I must agree, unnecessary for the people still on the list.

What they said was fine.

sensitive baby alert

Asshole alert, but you're already well aware of that fact.

eh, I think it's ruder to jump on a random phrasing and tell people off for it when you can clearly tell it wasn't intended badly.

...A obviously hurt "thanks a lot" somehow qualifies as rudely telling people off? LOL, what even.

This does: "Except they didn't actually say "I'm glad I'm claimed", they said what was originally quoted. Which was, I must agree, unnecessary for the people still on the list."

I can't hear this except in exaggerated British RP, lol

That's a different subthread though, not the one that was replied to. Parent up.

Yes. Lol it's crazy that you don't know this (but you do).

dc

Not rudely telling people off in that comment, at least, but ridiculously sensitive over phrasing.

An asshole?? On the asshole meme????

lol

I got one of the best fics I've ever read (short, but amazingly funny) on my first Yuletide, on which I ended up being a pinch hit. Though I overall was fortunate enough to always get pretty good gifts in Yuletide, so there's really no huge difference for me.

Apparently, having multiple possible offers can make you more likely to be a IPH. Every IPH is either someone who had no possible offers, or only had offerers who individually were the only possible match for another participant, so you get rolled out into the initial batch at the end.

I've been a pinch hit twice. Both times I got better than average fic, but that's probably because fandom friends claimed me both times. I've gotten plenty of better than average fic from the general pool, but those obviously have greater hit-or-miss odds.

Every IPH is either someone who had no possible offers, or only had offerers who individually were the only possible match for another participant, so you get rolled out into the initial batch at the end.

Where are you getting this? If two writers are both only matchable to the same three recips, one of those recips is going to be the odd man out.

You're saying the same thing as the text you quoted.

*Every IPH is either someone who had no possible offers, or only had offerers who individually were the only possible match for another participant*

The offerers don't have to be the only possible match. If you have 6 potential recipients for 5 writers, all offering and requesting exactly the same, still 1 recipient must be left over.

no difference on average and i have been a pinch hit a Lot (not in yuletide though)

Of my favorite Yuletide gifts, 2/3 were from being a pinch hit. The other one was from a friend gaming for me.

Eh, I got one my worst gifts ever being a Yuletide PH, so YMMV. It really depends on the fandom.

My top three worst gifts were:
1) I was a flash exchange PH
2) I was a Yuletide PH twice in the same year (I'll admit that this might have been a skill issue on my part in requesting the wrong type of unpopular fandoms)
3) Socktopus

I got a lot of other great gifts from being a PH though so I keep playing anyway.

I've only been a pinch-hit once, to my knowledge, and never in Yuletide, but the gift I received that time was awesome. Close to minimum word count, because the pinch-hitter only had like a week to write, but great characterization and exactly what I wanted.

I've had good luck with exchanges, though, and always gotten gifts I was happy with. So YMMV.

Better, for me. Apart from one time (out of 30 or so), every PH I received was amazing. My non-PH gifts have been more of a mixed bag.

I got an assignment that only included character name(s) with no prompts or dnws. Which would be fine, some ppl are not picky. But there's also a link to a placeholder letter that says it will be finished by the assignment date but clearly hasn't been.

I know optional details are optional and only dnws in the assignment itself MUST be honored but I don't start planning something that turns out to hit a dnw. If you're gonna sign up and complete the letter later, at least say 'any of these characters are ok, no dnws' (or list dnws) in the signup so I can know if I'm supposed to interpret this as 'anything goes' or if you actually plan to fill specifications in.

Obviously too late for this person but...for future reference!

I'm sorry, coalie, but there will always be procrastinators in this world.

Have you tried looking up their username here:

https://autoao3app.fandom.tools/#/everything

for past prompts? That may give you an idea of their recurring DNWs.

I actually found their past letters and their general DNWs make no sense in the context of the characters we matched on. So not that useful unfortunately!

What information do they give you? Is it usually a long DNW list or a short one? Etc

I'd just start writing.

OP:

The past dnws wwre pretty extensive.

It's fine, I'll figure it out! Just wanted ppl to think about the implications of including absolutely nothing in the signup.

Do you think you are reaching the people who need this reminder and have never considered it before?

don't the mod posts tell people that have like another five days to finish their letters? this is kind of on them

Yeah, they usually do.

The problem isn't the letter it's the signup. I think DNWs should be in the signup itself as a courtesy to the writer.

Of course they should be. The rules say it, and there is a practical reason. Some people never will and say "it's fine, I don't need the mods to enforce them". Some people sign up last minute and don't get them in, some people sign up early and then never get to come back and update. So shall it always be.

I mean, you can also just wait until the 25th and then ask the mods to contact them, so you can at least confirmation about whether there is still a letter coming and when, or if you can just write whatever you want.

OP

yeah but that basically cuts 5 days out of my process you know?

lmao

But if you end up wasting the next few days agonizing about that empty sign-up the writing is not going to go any faster.

I mean, don't get me wrong, it's super annoying. But since you won't get a different recipient, I'd focus on figuring out what strategy will serve you best in the long run.

Surely there was something you were going to do after the next five days that you can do now instead?

Or you can do canon review.

We've found them, coalies, we've found the anti-procrastinator

This is the perfect excuse!

Would it help to browse through the currently visible request letters to see if there are any potential treats you want to brainstorm? It might help take your mind off your assignment until the 25 and will also help with getting you writing and feeling productive, even if it isn’t your actual assignment you’re working on.

O

D

A

O

Six left! Are you one? Are you eyeing one?

https://yuletide-pinch-hits.dreamwidth.org/1450.html

I looked up #51's historical YA novel Maiden Crown, but the scan they link in their promo post is Open Library, which is down maybe permanently, and I can't find a digital copy anywhere. It's a used hardback from Alibris or nothing.

If your local library has a robust interlibrary loan system, you might be able to get a hold of the book that way. According to Worldcat, a number of libraries have a copy, so maybe one of those libraries might be near you.

https://annas-archive.org/md5/ea533dabc2f5557c687a214d1477e86f

DC Amazing, thank you, coalie!

The hero we need!! Thanks, coalie.

#31 is sort of interesting to me because I've never heard of this genre of youtube slop before. From what I can tell their requests are all channels with english voice dubs over videos of a cast of manga characters who portray the various people in (what I assume are) AI generated / fake Reddit revenge stories. I guess the cast of characters have their own plot lines too, but with daily uploads and thousands of videos on just one of those channels... I'm not going to be picking it up.

I'm not going to be picking it up.

I mean, given that you call it slop, the recipient may be glad of that, haha

Aw, I didn't mean to sound harsh, I generally love to roll around in fandom slop! Maybe "genre of youtube content farm" would be more accurate though.

I'm a bit surprised that #15 is still lingering, it seems like it's just three standalone movies that would be relatively quick to consume, plus a pretty detailed and helpful letter. I don't have the energy needed to pick it up myself, but it definitely looks easiest out of all the remaining ones.

They're a nice recipient, too.

+1 I don't have time to pick up a PH this year, but they are a lovely recip.

I like action movies but I don't read or write m/m. I would be interested if they wanted het, gen, or even f/f.

Four left now: #15 #20 #31 #46

with da new post

and da clickable links

Gheyn, ars_belli, Untherius, etc. Tell me more about them?

Of the three, Untherius is the least bad.

Disagree, that's divided between Gheyn and Untherius.

I'm white so I don't know how someone with relevant heritage or life experience rates them. They're a very common kind of nice racist that you probably find if you scratch the surface of many other participants.

They read about historical figures, got invested in their lives, decided to write them in a lighthearted way in a different setting, didn't think about whether this was appropriate, and then got offended and defensive and fed the fire, falling back on "this is no worse than kinks you don't like" arguments when coal and ffa voiced negative feedback. On the other hand, they seem unlikely to write RPF in Yuletide again. They seem to care about being a good participant, but they refuse to see why people might have had a problem with the Sioux RPF and have dismissed backlash as pearlclutching.

Untherius has been contacted directly by the mods to say "please actually write a gift your recipient will like" and continues to not really give a fuck. He is likely to continue to give weird and idiosyncratic content, although he probably won't write graphic content about killing animals and consuming their meat raw again because then the mods probably will ban him. IDK if there is racism in his gifts because frankly I'm not reading all that tedious nonsense. Coal has said before that he can be misogynist or homophobic. I don't have the details of that. He will write more people more shitty gifts.

Depends on how you define bad. As a person, maybe. As a Yuletide participant, he's the most likely to give a random, unsuspecting recipient a gift that scars them for life.

Gheyn is the most likely to write you a decent fic in a fandom that is not about nazis, if that helps

also the most likely to write you a fic where a native woman fucks her irl rapist where high school football is used as a metaphor for genocide tho

Only if you request that, so maybe try not to

she doesn't fuck him in the story. he flirts with her and she's all "lol no" but in a romcom way where it isn't 100% off the table in future.

That fic is disgusting but she wrote it for her husband, who specifically requested it. It is pretty unlikely you'll get something THAT bad from her if you don't request it.

yeah that doesn't really make it better

I didn't say it made anything better, I said you're unlikely to get a fic like that from her if you don't request it.

and yet, most people wouldn't write that shit even if you requested it, so i'm not sure what the point of this caping is

SC

I’m interested in ars_belli because I’ve seen a lot about the other two but not them.

Not sure why you asked about the other two then.

https://autoao3app.fandom.tools/#/everything/username/ars_belli

used to sign up to Yuletide. Asked for WWII RPF including notorious Nazis in 2013. No wank? Asked for it again in 2014 and was told "no" by mods. There was more visibility and outrage and people looked at their journal which was full of icons of Heydrich and comments like "ovaries go boom".

Hung around for a few years. lol_meme got them as a recipient in 2016 and wrote them a story in which Queen Victoria travelled through time to fight Nazis. "oh that's really funny" they said. Last year of participation was 2018, in which they requested Conspiracy (2001) with their blorbo Heydrich.

Oh so they didn't just go away.

It's unclear why they left from visible evidence.

But if you're making the point that you can't expect assholes to just go away of their own accord every time, I agree with you.

Yes, that was the point.

Has a Nazi and Nazi RPF fetish and is very open about it, giving everyone else the creeps

Totally fine with either trans-masc or non-binary, but with a slight preference towards agender.

This is an earnest question. I'm used to non-binary being an umbrella category that includes agender. Would it be correct to read this as "you can make explore this character as non-binary in a variety of ways; no obligation, but if you want to know which way I'd most prefer, it's agender"? Or do they mean non-binary in a different way?

I would say the former.

I read that request and have no idea what it means. God I'm old.

This sounds to me like they mean non-binary in what other people would possibly refer to as genderfluid or bigender (depending on the person), someone who moves between genders or inhabits two genders, rather than reject gender as a category for themselves completely.

I mean obviously none of these are clear-cut definitions in the sense that it's clear where the lines are between them, people will choose to identify with the term that they find most fitting.

this seems like a weirdly specific interpretation with nothing to support it

I'm basing it on the fact that the sentence structure in the request indicates that they consider "agender" a different category from "non-binary," rather than a sub-category of it.

nc

I see what you mean, but I don’t read the sentence structure that way; I think the first part of the sentence is the set of character genders they would be happy with (transmasc + nonbinary) and the second part is the subset within that set they would be most happy with (agender, which is a subset of nonbinary).

if you're wanting to write it i'd ask them since it's unclear

If your recip's signup had like, one sentence for one fandom, then empty optional details for the rest, would you assume that they meant to put optional details for the other fandoms? There aren't even DNWs and I'm unclear on if they would want shipfic or not...

No, I'd assume they're generally minimalist. Have they ever signed up before?

You could ask the mods to check about shipfic or general likes.

No. If they wanted to put optional details for the others they could have just done that. Unless you're asking if they intended the same optional details to apply to all their requests? That's a harder question and probably depends on what those optional details are.

If they're anything like me, they got tired of maintaining a DNW list that went on for a mile and are just like 'whatever' now.

Might as well have a story about the giver's fave kink; at least they'll actually put some enthusiasm into that!

Does anyone know when the requests summary page usually gets posted or is that probably going to be on the 25th?

After the initial pinch hits are gone.

thank you!

When all IPHs have been claimed.

It used to be revealed all the way in late November!

thank you! Yeah I never paid attention before, but I'm actually on a really good pace for my gift so I wanted to see what other things I could treat for aside from what we can only see in the letters app

but you wish they had been!

I have a few, but having seen it last night: the new Road House movie

Very surprised there's no Addams Family this year!

omg I just noticed that. Wow... I'm surprised too, didn't someone ask a person who nominated it to add some characters too? Maybe they forgot to sign-up until it was too late?

The God-Eaters.

Kraken and the Iskryne series books. I bought both of those this year specifically for Yuletide, lol. Maybe they'll get requested for Sufficiently Advanced?

Finnegan's Wake nominator needs to come back and explain what kind of fic they wanted >:(

+1 I also need to know this.

ooh, is that written by the fart-loving dude?

Minnesota State Fair (I'm not exactly sure what the nominator had in mind but any version would have been interesting!)

Polar Explorer RPF, too. Cherry-Garrard all alone in the tagset :(

A Short Hike!

This is my fault, I nominated but then I had other things I wanted more... I sort of hoped someone would pick it up. Maybe in a future year.

The Uglies movie was nominated with a set of characters that would have been good for f/f.

I wanted to see Robocop requests.

Wait, nobody requested OFF? :(

A couple of songs that would be great 5 minute fandoms dropped right after nominations closed, so I've already added them to my list for next year.

The Flintstones. :(

The Brothers Sinister - Courtney Milan
Turner Series - Courtney Milan
Casson Family - Hilary McKay

One of my requests was nominated by another person but not requested by them! I wish it had been so I could treat them

I feel threatened by the existence of my ideological enemies in yuletide

That probably makes them very happy.

Once I ate a bug

Sometimes I like to cover myself in vaseline and pretend I'm a slug

I found James Joyce's fartbox and gave it a hug

Afterwards, I poured coffee into a mug.

When the coffee was cool I gave it a chug.

And gave the rest (this was a mistake) to my pet pug.

So... will we see a resurgence of wankers past? Or will somebody new arise to get coal buzzing?

dread it… run from it… AI fic wank still arrives.

(even with how monolithically anti-AI the usual exchange crowd is - yuletide is more mainstream. even if there isn’t a blatantly AI-generated fic this year to wank about, i give it a month until someone in the discord mentions using AI to brainstorm or to reword a line in their fic or something and World War 3 begins)

I vote somebody is going to start something by going through FakeCirilla9's gift.

Whether it's objectionable or not, someone will try to poke the wank bear.

This is kind of incoherent

so is fakecirilla9 to be honest
ppl are just looking for an excuse to wank about them

people are looking for an excuse to wank and fakecirilla9 has done specific disruptive things and it makes no sense to apply the label "incoherent" to fakecirilla9

Have we had writing while drunk/high wank before? Could be a decent low stakes fight.

that was part of fishspeaker's mo, so kind of?

huh. is there really discourse about that?

cyrt

I feel like I've seen it, at least about admitting as much in an author's note

i think it's gonna be someone we've never heard of getting wanked about. or something boring like pinch hits or time management wank.

+1

How dare you, time management wank is gold.

When are the requests going to become available in the collection?

Why? Write your assignment.

no u

alternately, go to

yuletide_admin and read a few sentences of the sticky post

go read a sticky butt

Never

oh no those pinch hits have been lingering so long oh noes

looking at a request gave me a new notp

hints on fandom?

i don't think the requester is doing anything wrong so i'd rather not hint. i just never thought of these two together and now i wish i never had

relatable LOL

Looking at a request gave me a new ship! Not an OTP, but a ship I had never considered before, and now I've got several fucked up headcanons for it.

Write me a treat for it, please?

Ha! I am actually starting a treat for it! (Young adult fantasy series, if that rings your chimes.)

Alas, that's not one of mine, but I'm a big proponent of all obscure/crack/otherwise rare ships, so I commend your efforts and am happy for whoever is getting treated <3

NA

Ooh, I think I know which one you're talking about... or maybe I just hope I do LOL

That's happened to me before XD

Fortunately they also had gen prompts and I wrote them and they seemed happy. But I would never have considered that someone wanted shipfic for *those* characters.

I hate when that happens >__

Pretty impressive.

is it? They used to be claimed in an hour

Is it? They used to be claimed before they were even advertised.

^ like the coalies have said above. i’m surprised there are still some lingering. usually it’s hard to claim an iph

I think everyone's burnt out/crazy busy/sick, plus there are a bunch of other exchanges right now that all have overlapping creation periods/deadlines. There are still multiple open/lingering pinch hits for Trick or Treat, Fic in a Box, and Multifandom Trope Fest, and those are just the ones I'm actively watching.

Yeah, the pinch hit scene across exchanges is very different now than it was, say, five years ago.

The first batch always lingers because it includes everyone who had no possible offers. You can't claim something if you don't know it. The other comments are being silly because this is at least the fifth year where this has been the case. The rolling ones later go fast.

I had no offers and mine went quickly. (Yes, I know about buckets, but I do not think my fandoms were in a bucket.)

Sometimes no-offers fandoms are actually, "I would offer that if I was guaranteed to match that one currently visible request, but I ain't rolling the dice on all the other potential nightmare requests for it that could appear at the last minute," fandoms.

Or alternately some no matches are "I would offer that if I could see the prompt, but I'm not rolling the dice on them wanting me to explore This One Thing I Hate"

+1

+1 There's a lot of fandoms I could write in theory given the right prompts, but I'm not confident enough to throw myself at the mercy of writing for someone that really wants some niche aspect of the canon I have no clue how to write unlike my rock solid fandoms that I know I could write virtually anything for.

+1 to both of the comments above. Sometimes the hidden requests are the reason you don't offer a fandom, not because you don't know it or can't write it at all.

+ 1

I'm not offering any fandom where not every single request has an accessible letter during sign-up's.

Wow. I don't have enough fandoms to get away with that - of all the fandoms I bookmarked on the app (nearly 100), only 2 have letters for all of their requests.

Same! I'm a minimalist offerer and just choose the things I'm most interested in writing and where I know I could come up with a fun idea even if nobody prompts anything at all. I occasionally add an offer on the strength of a fun prompt in a letter and seeing requests has in the past made me offer characters I wouldn't have otherwise, but for the most part, they don't play a huge role in my decision making.

CYRT

I mean, it's enough when it's just one fandom (and that letter / those letters appeal to you).

If you have 100 fandoms bookmarked, it's crazy that you also comment "I don't have enough fandoms" for anything.

I mean, you're right, and I usually don't feel that way! But considering I still couldn't game the way the coalie I replied to does, it seemed one of the few situations where I was lacking!

zero things I offered had any letters at all

two wolves

There's no way I could ever do that. I had one visible letter total across all my fandoms during signups.

I do the same. Sometimes it means I have to game for one single recipient because all my other fandoms have requests without letters.

Every batch usually has one or two that linger - it's just the highly desirable/easy to pick up canon ones that tend to get snapped up. If you just want *any* pinch hit at all it's not hard. I'm not shocked those three are lingering, none of those are the kind of canons that the regular pinch hitters go for and they don't look particularly easy to grab/review either.

(If y'all want to get them grabbed feel free to do the "here's where to get canon for free, here's what you need to review for the prompt” research and post it here - it worked for that fantasy novel yesterday)

Ahhhhhhh! Still three left and I want the requests NOW! /bratbratbrat

srsly what is with /brat just complain like an adult without having to add an uwu

They're trying to pre-emptively avoid the people who will tell them to fuck off for being desperate for requests instead of writing their actual fucking assignments.

It's call self-awareness.

self awareness for the unbearably twee, maybe

get over yourself honestly who cares if people like twee or cheugy shit, cringe is dead

i care bc it's fucking annoying

ok grandma

saying this when in fandom is extremely funny. you're definitely cringe.

cringe for everyone

Brat coalie

Lol, so terribly sorry you had to see something you find annoying on *checks notes* an anon comm dedicated to a fanfictiction exchange, a notable annoying-free zone.

aw your poor baby feelings are hurt huh

i'm sorry coal isn't a safe space for you from the vomit of sunshine and rainbows elswhere on the internet

Only 31 and 46 left.

OK so what are the canons? like in terms of length and type

anyone know anything about them or have links?

The requester of 31 is pretty much the only person in their fandoms on AO3 - only one of their requests has had anything at all that was written by anyone else.

What are we meant to understand from this? /confused

I’d guess coalie is saying that is why they are lingering —- obscure even by Yuletide standard?

Let us crown them with the crown of rarity!

Tvtropes has a bit more about these fandoms. At least two of them have pages (and subpages) there:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WebAnimation/EtraChanSawIt
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WebAnimation/AttackOnMika

looking at the requester’s AO3 they’ve written 20 fics for each of these fandoms - might be helpful for their author in writing for them.

Do we think that people are waiting on #46 to update their placeholder before claiming them? Because the Smiling Friends cartoon seems relatively easy to pick up, even if the others seem like longer and more complex canons.

Maybe. What is it?

"Smiling Friends follows the employees of a small company dedicated to bringing happiness to a bizarre yet colorful world. The company consists of cynical Charlie and star employee Pim, each tasked with out-calls to cheer people up. There's also meticulous Allan who keeps things in order, mysterious Glep, and the unpredictable billionaire Boss who founded the company."

Links (Not all seem to have the second season)
Adult Swim: https://www.adultswim.com/videos/smiling-friends
Channel 4: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/smiling-friends
Prime Video: https://www.primevideo.com/detail/Smiling-Friends/0T15POCS24RUOZC6022B90VQF9
Apple TV: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/smiling-friends/umc.cmc.qf772cmp3lg33iym2b834ab5
Hulu: https://www.hulu.com/series/smiling-friends-8df2bc91-af81-4ed4-afa3-0858ac6c05da

Reading their letter, it seems like someone could do Famicom Wars entirely from the profiles linked without knowing anything else which might be even easier.

Looks like they’ve updated their letter! And they seem pretty easy to please.

I'm honestly thinking about picking up #46. I like smiling friends, but I've only seen the first season, and I'm not sure how to get my hands on the second season.

Same coalie here, just saw #46 got picked up so never mind.

Quick, say you're going pick up the last pinch hit!

not CYRT but I just picked it up :)

our hero!

+10000!

You rock, coalie! I hope it's a fun assignment to write.

After going on Reddit to try and figure out what Etra-Chan Saw It is, it seems like the requester for #31 posts a lot on there about it.

Here’s a Reddit thread where they’ve posted a list of links to episodes they like:
https://www.reddit.com/r/EtraChanSawIt/s/rKdXM6DjgZ

And here’s a Reddit thread where they link to episodes about the ship they like (Tsutsuji/Yuzuriha):
https://www.reddit.com/r/EtraChanSawIt/s/dhrTVhGRo4

I feel like a stalker but I’m bored and it’s for a good cause LOL

I still do not understand this fandom at all. It's a manga but it's on youtube and it's also somehow weirdly like those channels that read reddit posts using TTS-engines but they have possibly real voice actors and better production values?

Yeah pretty much. It’s episodic but the characters seem to have personality traits/types of roles they typically assume that cross over between episodes. Like a TTS sitcom, almost. (The other two fandoms seem to be the same sort of thing.)

I'm not the same person as above, but it goes like this:

1. People submit their stories.
2. A writer assigns the stories "actors" using a limited set of characters. (Probably to keep anonymity AND so an artist doesn't have to make new character designs every time.)
3. An artist draws the stories based on the writer's script.
4. A few amateur VAs dub the script.
5. Someone puts it all together and uploads to youtube.
6. Profit. Maybe.

I don't think any of the English-language channels are official. They're just translating and redubbing the Japanese videos. (The Japanese VAs are obviously not professionals, but I find the English versions to be unwatchable. Fake old voice granny makes me want to stab my own eardrums.)

wenus

beanus

The wenus is a dance

Anyone wanna continue the fandom letters review game?

Probably more fun if we wait for request reveals, where we'll see what gems (and 'gems') are hiding from us?

lol fair enough

How about now 👀

Go for it, coalie

I'll start us off Daria

https://skytintedwater.dreamwidth.org/69728.html

https://callmesandyk.dreamwidth.org/2039606.html

https://limulus.dreamwidth.org/767.html

https://violent-as-flowers.tumblr.com/

I'll play, but I agree with other coalie that it'll work very well when the requests go live.

.

I got a letter in my assignment but it appears to either not be working (or they have not put any information in their letter). Should I ask the mods to tell the recipient? Do I wait a week or two?

"Please don't ask us to poke your recipient to update a locked or placeholder letter until at least October 25."
Just until Friday, then bother away.

Any other unusual offer strategies?

When I see people talking about offering freely vs only offering for requests with letters, I can't relate because all of my offers are for canons that have come up as lingering pinch hits over the years, and I slooooooowly consume them. I know what I'm getting. I'm getting a request someone has made the same way 5 times already where they are the only requester, ever.

What do you meant by unusual?

I often offer only a limited number of characters, and I feel like that's extremely common but coal doesn't really talk about their character-offering strategies much. I tend to do it mostly to try to limit what parts of canon I might be asked to write - if A is the main character, C & D are the sidekicks in the first book and E & F are the sidekicks in the second book, I'll offer just C & D so there's not much chance I'll be matched on someone who wants something related to the second book, even if I'm happy to write basically anyone in book 1.

I don't know if it works though, I think the main thing it does is keep me from matching on those fandoms at all.

My take on specifying characters is that it works better if you specify for every fandom with more than two or three characters, in that if you offer 8 fandoms with specified characters and 1 with any and there's nine characters in that any, you'll get assigned the one. Or at least I always do.

I only offer fandoms and character combinations I'm completely confident I can handle any type of request* for, so I rarely have much picking and choosing to even do, because it's a good year when I actually have more than four to choose between where I'm either recently brushed-up on canon or already know it backwards and also that confident about making a blind offer for anything requesters might throw at me.

(*Within reason. I'm gonna be prepped for, say, writing anywhere on the fluffy comedy to angsty drama to darkfic torturefest spectrum, any setting pre/post/during canon, and also be equally happy to write gen or the nominated characters shipped in any permutation. If they have their hearts set on a superhero high school chatfic soulmates AU where they're all llamas and DNW important parts of the canon relationship and characterisation I might admittedly have more trouble.)

i offer things i would be excited to write

I'm getting a request someone has made the same way 5 times already where they are the only requester, ever

As someone who has received a few different gift fics after just that sort of situation, I thank you for your service.

+1 I hope CYRT writes for me someday, if they haven't already.

I will get to you in 300 years! But I am facing in your direction

As someone that requests the same fandoms with similar (or exactly) the same prompts from previous years, it's because I really want my little guys in situations as many times as people are willing to write them. Did I get a treat with a coffee shop au last year and that's what you want to write this year? Yes please, give me it to me -- I'll take fifty more just like it.

Demure

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Brainstorm fic ideas

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Re: Brainstorm fic ideas - office romance

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smut

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