coaltide | One Wank After Another

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2025

One Wank After Another

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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And here I am, not done with canon review

I just finished my canon review literally five minutes ago, so fistbump.

Me either, and I've been working on since before signups closed. At least I'm having fun?

And there’s already one work in Madness!

Sometimes you just want to have a bad assignment out of the way quickly

That sucks, because it usually means someone has had a fic ready to go and they're dumping it off on someone's possibly unrelated request so they can get more eyeballs on it.

Source: happened to me more than once

Could also mean a five-minute canon. If it's something like Snake Fight Thesis Defense it could perfectly well be legit. If it's some really long involved canon I'd be less sure

When I post fics early it's because I was so stoked by the prompts that I started writing before signups closed, and either gamed successfully or just posted it as a treat anyway.

Some people just start writing early.

Some people also don't need to do canon review. I haven't posted my assignment yet (I want to do it early and then switch to treats) but I matched on the same fandom I sometimes match to in other exchanges so writing yet another 1k fic for it on the fly isn't exactly a huge ask.

I wrote my assignment from scratch on the first day after I got my assignment. I had a few free hours, so I got it out of the way.

Trust me, it's nothing I could possibly have pre-written - or predicted when I signed up.

Ah, anecdata.

Also "more eyeballs" is not really a strong motivator.

I can't help feeling you would also chime in if you got a gift posted on the deadline to say "that sucks, they must have left it to the very last minute and dashed it off!"

Not really? It really doesn't have to take that long to write a 1k fic.

Or they started a treat as soon as someone’s letter was posted. Or they had an unfinished gift fic for someone from a previous exchange who signed up with the same requests/prompts in Yuletide. Or they got their assignment and were really inspired and sat down and wrote it immediately.

Damn I’m one of them and I was pretty excited about it (it’s in a fandom I was really excited to receive!) until I read the rest of the comments in this thread :’)

I finished my canon on the same day sign ups closed and when I got my assignment, they had very clear prompts which were fun to write and didn't require huge amounts of extra research. So it's not always 'bad assignment out the way' or 'had this fic on standby and it vaguely fits', sometimes things just align.

Plus sometimes it genuinely is 'had this mostly completed fic on standby and it really does 100% fit', especially in the kind of fandoms where nearly all requesters want the same fairly obvious thing, like a fix-it for the main pairing that changes their canon ending.

Eh, don't trust coalies for anything but the most pessimistic possible interpretations. Just as likely early uploaders are people who matched on exactly what they hoped to write and had a really clear idea for, were assigned a request they'd already begun writing a treat for, or even gamed for a repeat request because they had a half-finished fic underway that they didn't manage to get done last year.

I'm sure most of the fics that have been posted written so fast because the writer was excited.

(I'm the coalie who mentioned getting a bad assignment out of the way, but this was an exception rather than the rule for me. And unless you requested any and then made it clear that you only want very specific things, it's not you.)

+1

Also, just because the assignment was bad (or, in my case, simply uninspiring and a clear mismatch of interests) doesn't mean the fic will be bad.

Compare and contrast to assignments I was so hyped about that I nearly defaulted on them because they got out of control.

You should be excited about it!!!! Coal was literally walking about italics for 40 comments so someone is clearly just cranky and trolling this year

Agreed, though we are cranky every year.

True, but italics wank is a new low

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One Wank After Another

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