One Wank After Another

[coalcube]

A blank assignment is a funny thing, isn't it? When you have it, you don't appreciate it, and when you miss it, it's gone.

Wednesday 10 December: Default deadline (9pm UTC)
Wednesday 17 December: Assignment deadline (9pm UTC)
Wednesday 24 December: Main collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 25 December: Madness collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 1 January: Author reveals, end of event (9pm UTC)

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Comments

Re: Some letters stats

[(Anonymous)]

SC

Don't get me wrong, I like that people post early letters... but it definitely feels like a weird half-measure when it comes to requests visibility. It's great for generating hype and giving you something to talk about during the sign-ups phase, but I doubt it does much for actually helping people find assignments they like. It might help exclude fandoms, but that's it. (And that's only if you have enough possible offers. Personally, if I dropped my offer for every fandom with unknown requests, I wouldn't have enough to sign up.)

As I said, I am genuinely curious to hear from coalies how many times they 1) gamed for a specific request based on a visible letter, 2) what gaming looked like for them, 3) if they actually got the assignment.

Re: Some letters stats

[(Anonymous)]

I always have a long list of “maybes” that I only offer if the visible letters are good/inspiring. This year there was a letter that I liked and I adjusted my offer accordingly (they had 3 characters, two of which I wouldn’t have offered, and a “one or more” request) so I added those two characters to make sure we matched, since there weren’t any other requests in the fandom. That’s probably the most I’ve ever gamed (and I got the match).

I’m also always a last day signup person so yes I am still refreshing a few hours before deadline to see what letters are out there.

Re: Some letters stats

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think of it as gaming but when I'm compiling my final list of offers (usually on the last day) if there's some "maybes" where I'm excited by the idea of offering them and they're showing as needy in the signup summary, but I am not certain I could write absolutely anything for that fandom, I will check the letters post, and if the letters that are up make it seem like most people are more or less in line with what I can do, I will add it. And if there's no letters or the letters that are up aren't what I was hoping, I will not.

(It's usually for stuff like this is a five minute fandom, are people interpreting it in the same broad strokes? or this is a canon with a lot of breadth, are people going to expect me to have read all of the tie-in comics? that kind of thing, not so much "are they all requesting my otp" or making sure I like they're DNWs. and they're probably going in the bucket offer so I want to make sure the 'any' isn't going to bite me in the butt.)

Re: Some letters stats

[(Anonymous)]

There's some fandoms I won't offer if I can't see the requests. Big casts (because I never manage to anticipate all possible pairings), fandoms that often have incest requests (which usually isn't in my wheelhouse so I game away), and canons I'd struggle with if I got a blank signup, for example.

However if I see a great letter I will absolutely game for it if there's a way. I had one I wanted with an available character set of 10, and the letter wanted one specific character. I offered that character and another character who'd be very unlikely to show up in anyone's request with the other (think offering for Leia and putting in Jar Jar as the second offer.) I'm still vulnerable to Any requests but there's no getting around those no matter what you do.

I didn't get it, but requests show if I'd gotten that fandom it would have been the letter I wanted. And I still might treat it. This is pretty typically how I do Yuletide, I've been doing it too long and been burned too many different ways by offering too widely not to!