coaltide | One Wank After Another

Entry tags:

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)

Mini-Challenges:

Crueltide | Femslash Festivus | Yulebuilding | Three Turtle Doves | Two for One | Yuleporn
Family Matters | Queering the Tide | Yuletide Madness Drabble Invitational | TransTide
Chromatic Yuletide | Unconventionyule | Wrapping Paper | Babytide | MultiLingYule

Yuletide Discord for Hippos & Exchanges After Dark for namespace ~~drama~~ 18+ discussion.

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If your assignment is the only gift your recip receives (or the only one posted before the deadline, assuming no redating), and they don't default, then yes, they'll be able to tell it was your assignment.

But really there's nothing wrong with writing a treat longer and meatier than your assignment—especially when short and bland is genuinely what your assigned recip wants.

If your assignment is the only gift your recip receives (or the only one posted before the deadline, assuming no redating), and they don't default, then yes, they'll be able to tell it was your assignment.

It might also be a treat that became elevated to a main gift when their actual author defaulted at deadline.

Yeah, that's happened to me more than once. I didn't go out to PH because someone had written me a treat before the deadline.

How did you know?

Sorry nonnie, that sucks, especially if it happened more than once.

This is why I always try to wait at least until the recip has another gift before uploading a treat.

It doesn't suck. They gave a gift and got a gift, and the gift they got was something someone chose to make for them out of being inspired.

CYRT

It sucks when you know you could have had two gifts and you only got one because Yuletide has this stupid policy.

In other exchanges, if someone wrote you a treat and you go out to pinch hits, the person who wrote you a treat can claim you and use their treat as their pinch hit, no?

Cyrt

If the treat is already posted, I don't think so. Possibly depends on the exchange, though.

But either way, in every other exchange except Yuletide, it's only ever done if the treater agrees.

Re: Can anyone tell which was the assignment and which was the treat?

(Anonymous) - 2025-11-07 01:15 (UTC) - Expand

Yuletide should just not open until everyone has five gifts.

CYRT

Yes, "treats that have already been posted as treats should not be repurposed as a main gift" and "Yuletide shouldn't open until everyone has 5 gifts" are clearly exactly the same thing, you're right!

I suspect this "stupid policy" helps keep Yuletide able to open on time. There are always a lot of post-deadline PHs, and then later ones drift in as (presumably) those pinch hitters default, or the mods find placeholders, or whatever. Big exchange, rare fandoms, and a hard deadline for when to open mean that mods are going to do whatever they can to make sure everyone who has written a gift has a gift, including counting treats.

It would be interesting to know how often it really happens. And then it's interesting but unknowable how many pinch hits go out where someone wrote a treat and waited to post it until after the deadline.

I have some sympathy with people to whom that missing gift feels really real because their only gift is marked treat, so "if only" is very tangible, but also idk the whole social contract of pinch hitting rests on the idea that pinch hits are needed. So I think it's fine to not mess with that.

It also sucks when that treat doesn't actually meet the minimum requirements but the mods turn it into your main gift anyway rather than send you out for pinch hits. Now you have one thing, it's labeled as a treat, and your treat writer assumed you'd be getting something else so they weren't worried. Either you turn them in, and risk getting someone else in hot water for posting something that should have gone to Madness in the main collection, all for wanting to give you what they thought was an extra little fun treat, or you suck it up and say thanks and basically go without a gift that fills your request.

Mods could solve a lot of problems by emailing the treat writers and asking like they do in other exchanges.

Or people could put treats that don’t meet the minimum requirements for a main gift in the Madness collection, like they’re supposed to. If you don’t want your treat to become a main gift, and also don’t want to wait to post it until the recipient already has a main gift, there’s a specific place for you to post it so it will definitely stay a treat!

Coalie, you can't email someone if their only interaction with your collection is posting a work. You don't have their email address.

Re: Can anyone tell which was the assignment and which was the treat?

(Anonymous) - 2025-11-07 02:42 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Can anyone tell which was the assignment and which was the treat?

(Anonymous) - 2025-11-07 03:09 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Can anyone tell which was the assignment and which was the treat?

(Anonymous) - 2025-11-07 03:12 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Can anyone tell which was the assignment and which was the treat?

(Anonymous) - 2025-11-07 04:18 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Can anyone tell which was the assignment and which was the treat?

(Anonymous) - 2025-11-07 04:37 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Can anyone tell which was the assignment and which was the treat?

(Anonymous) - 2025-11-07 05:07 (UTC) - Expand

You were only guaranteed one to begin with. I get it, the FOMO stings (or more like Awareness of Missing Out, so AOMO?), but this is the definition of brattiness.

I think there's a massive difference between "only guaranteed one gift" (not getting a treat is totally normal) and "knew someone wrote you an extra treat but you ended up only getting one gift anyway". Of course the latter one is a shitty feeling.

Re: Can anyone tell which was the assignment and which was the treat?

(Anonymous) - 2025-11-07 20:23 (UTC) - Expand

Would you rather be a lingering pinch hit because someone is waiting to post a treat instead of picking up your pinch hit?

Asking because I've never picked up a pinch hit for this reason. I want my treats to stay treats. But is that bad for taking up a pinch hitter's time or making extra work for the mods?

Re: Can anyone tell which was the assignment and which was the treat?

(Anonymous) - 2025-11-07 13:55 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Can anyone tell which was the assignment and which was the treat?

(Anonymous) - 2025-11-07 14:11 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Can anyone tell which was the assignment and which was the treat?

(Anonymous) - 2025-11-07 20:34 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Can anyone tell which was the assignment and which was the treat?

(Anonymous) - 2025-11-07 20:47 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Can anyone tell which was the assignment and which was the treat?

(Anonymous) - 2025-11-07 21:51 (UTC) - Expand

But really there's nothing wrong with writing a treat longer and meatier than your assignment

Yes there is? Jesus, this is why exchanges suck now.

DC

This has always been true, in every multifandom exchange I participated in in the last 20 years.

There's not, eat a dick

That's right. Exchanges were better places when if you had a miserable time writing your assignment and it came out short despite your best efforts, you weren't allowed to write anyone else a treat of any greater length of complexity.

Why is there something wrong with that? Are you assuming that the author half-asses their assignment?

Jesus, this is why exchanges suck now.

Lol at you trying this exact same weak-ass trolling on two separate memes today.

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