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)

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.

yuletide | yuletide_admin | yuletide_pinch_hits | App

2025 Collection | 2025 Madness | Tagset | Letters

Flat / Recent | Top-Level (Last) | FAQ | Search

 

Comments

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

A lot of coalies agreeing about railroady requests are probably complaining about their current assignment. They're not going to be spilling more info on that for obvious reasons. Sure, maybe!


Just to make sure we are on the same page:

The cited examples are:

-Aurae/Aariel/I think it was actually MiriamKenneath or Blue_Ringed_Octopus, throwing a hissy fit over getting a mention of Padme when asking for a Vader/Leia fic
-An unspecified person who takes "no previous relationships" to an unusual degree, not named
-BardicRaven

And further back in coal:
-DNW italics/other emphasis
-DNW incest/rape for Black Jewels

And I think there was another one on last post but someone else will have to dig that up?


I'm not sure why you're dismissing the cited examples just because you disagree. That's just, like, your opinion, man. I've written for one of those people and yes it felt exactly like writing a commission. Maybe you just feel differently because your tastes align with the recip's tastes.

If the assertion is "some people are railroading", then I think it is reasonable to look at specific examples and opine on whether they are railroady. The assertion was not "some people's long and complicated DNW lists are restrictive to me." I certainly can't disagree that different people will find different DNW lists easier or harder to work with! But that isn't railroading.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

"If the assertion is "some people are railroading", then I think it is reasonable to look at specific examples and opine on whether they are railroady. The assertion was not "some people's long and complicated DNW lists are restrictive to me."

Interesting distinction. On one hand I think it's pretty clear that it it's subjective: it's unlikely but possible for someone to sign up with the most railroady, even blatantly unenforceable request imaginable and match to the one other person in the world who is giddy to write it, and obviously they would not find it restrictive, but that doesn't mean it's not restrictive.

OTOH there's definitely a sense of appeal to majority in which DNWs are considered reasonable and which aren't, which makes sense, because unless you make sure your niche requests are visible in advance (and possibly even then), you're more likely to match to a writer who has common tastes, not uncommon ones.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

Yeah, I think you're right about the appeal to the majority.

I think this conversation is partly guided by: well of course some DNWs are more difficult and restrictive than others, we can all agree on this, everyone go home - that is, if that's the only thing being asserted, what's the conversation?

But people seem to also be claiming that there is

-a trend for more people to have more (excessively?) complicated DNWs lists
-a trend for people to have DNW lists that impose outrageous/unreasonable limits on their writers, to the point that this can actually be DESCRIBED as a thing people, generally, do, rather than rare one-off occurrences

And the conversation has even gone into tangents about how DNWs may be a mistake and we need to overcorrect in the other direction. Some interesting suggestions but I can't see that working nor can I personally agree with the goal.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

Some interesting suggestions but I can't see that working nor can I personally agree with the goal.

~Ironically you are being really railroady in discussing this.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

Whereas you've come along hours later to snipe "no u" rather than making interesting points.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

If you think that's railroady, I can see where your stance on dnws is coming from

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

I think there's something to the claim that requests in general have grown more detailed and specific, not less, but it's not something that can be objectively evaluated even if we agreed on the criteria (unless someone were REALLY bored). And I actually think detailed and specific DNW lists work just fine in normal exchanges... but then, I can't remember the last non-YT exchange where I didn't basically handpick my recipient.

FWIW I don't even think "treating your request like a commission" is automatically a bad thing, but it's definitely different and only really works if everyone is on the same page, and being on the same page and having consistent expectations is exactly what Yuletide does not allow, due to how it's set up. You match on character, not ship, and DNW: Gen is unenforceable. A ton of people do blank sign-ups or bucket list offers, you're encouraged to go ODAO by the mods if you have to, and requests (for the most part) aren't visible during sign-ups.

At the same time, Yuletide matching also means it's possible to offer characters A, B, C and D, because you're comfortable writing all of them and also like their group dynamics so you figure you should have no trouble getting an assignment for a solo character or multiple of them. But you offer that, and you might still get assigned to someone who only wants shipfic of B and D, who never interact in canon, and has a lot of very specific ideas about what they want to see in their gift.

IDK, there are some weird structural issues in how requests and matching work in Yuletide that seem primed to increase the chance that a participant hoping to get a lot of creative freedom might get matched to a participant who only wants one thing. I also have enough fandoms so rare that there's no point requesting them anywhere outside of Yuletide (I still do, I get nada), so it's not like I'm unsympathetic to wanting to make sure your magical fill for Someday My Fic Will Come won't contain some random trivial thing that won't ruin your enjoyment of it.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

dc

I also have enough fandoms so rare that there's no point requesting them anywhere outside of Yuletide (I still do, I get nada)

That's just not true. As someone who's requesting their Yuletide-size fandoms in exchanges all year round, the only way you get nada is when you request them alongside popular fandoms. If you repeat your Yuletide request in Candy Hearts, Trick or Treat, S4S or Consent Issues, you will get fic for them.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

This is an incredibly funny thing to act so sure about.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

SC

Sorry, I know what you're TRYING to say. "Keep requesting your rare fandoms, you never know!"

But come on, coalie, some fandoms simply are that rare.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

They're not, it's impossible. It's a function of how exchanges work. If you request 3 non-existent fandoms that no one has ever heard of but you, you will go to IPH and linger until PDPH but eventually someone is going to sack up and read Winterblumensaat in order to open the exchange.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

+100

It might be kittyfic (never happened to me, to my knowledge, but of course it's a possibility), but I've never heard of a regular, non-wanky exchange opening without all participants who complete their assignment getting a gift.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

There still has to be someone offering one of your fandoms initially, and if there isn't then the mods ask that person to add another fandom to their signup. You don't just immediately go out to PH.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

Sorry, I know what you're TRYING to say. "Keep requesting your rare fandoms, you never know!"

No, that's not what I'm trying to say. I'm saying "request rare fandoms and nothing else and you WILL get a gift in those fandoms". There's no vague "you never know" about it.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

But it's literally how exchanges work. If you request only fandom-of-one #1, fandom-of-one #2 and fandom-of-one #3 in any given exchange that guarantees a gift and don't default, you WILL get a gift in a fandom-of-one.

For a few years, every single one of my fandoms was "that rare". And sure, I was a lingering PH a... lot, but at the end of the day, of course I got a gift in one of those fandoms.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

I think you might have leapt to assuming I don't know how gift-guarantee exchanges work instead of just... stopping to take me literally at my word. I'm not saying it's not possible to get rare fandoms (general) outside of Yuletide. I am saying that I have specific fandoms which are functionally impossible to get outside of Yuletide. Even if I requested nothing but rare fandoms and someone had to consume them to pick up my PH, it's vanishingly unlikely that it would be that one. (Typically because in addition to being a fandom-of-one, it's also old, or dated, or extremely long, or inaccessible in some other way.)

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, the problem with being exclusively into Yuletide-sized fandoms in other exchanges is not if you want to receive them, it's if you only want to write them. You can absolutely guarantee you receive a gift in one of your tiny fandoms, but what you can't do is force other people to request them.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

cyrt

Yeah, exactly. I solved that by offering a lot of OW during that time when all my fandoms were super tiny, but if you really only want to write your fandoms-of-one, that's not really going to work. But then, it's also not necessarily going to work in Yuletide. I'm usually the only one requesting my fandoms in Yuletide, so I'm not going to be able to write them (and I also can't write OW, which makes it even trickier than non-Yuletide exchanges).

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, the writing angle can only be solved by incepting friends into also liking your tiny fandoms.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

I prefer not to be on the pinch hit list till someone writes kittyfic or I use a sock to pinch hit for myself to get at least something from someone who actually is interested in the canon.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

I don't see how this is relevant in a discussion of "there is just no way to get fic for my rare fandoms in exchanges outside of Yuletide".

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

DC

IMO this is a lot of coalies being a bit too literal-minded and getting hung up on binaries and yes/no divides.

"No way to get fic for this fandom outside of Yuletide", "no good way that produces satisfying results", "no way that doesn't involve extra costs I'd rather not deal with", or "maybe not impossible but only happened once in five years" all mean the same thing here.

Like, if you refuse to see that Yuletide, where PHs spend days at most lingering, has a special appeal to those of us who sometimes spend the entirety of a creation period and the deadline period lingering as an IPH, then this is just you getting hung up on technicalities instead of trying to understand the intended meaning.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

I went out to pinch hit for the first time this year and I'm trying to remember why anyone wants that to happen. I just feel bad that my writer either disliked my requests or is having a bad time irl.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

I always thought I would be happy to show up on the pinch hits list - more exposure for my requests and chance for my zero-offers fandoms to get picked up, plus I don't think there's anything wrong with my requests so it would just have to be an unlucky mismatch or issue on the writer's end - and then last year when I actually did I was weirdly irrationally anxious about it and Did Not Like It at all. I was genuinely surprised how much it bugged me because it's not like I judge other people's requests for showing up there no matter how long they linger, but when mine were up there, argh, no, take them away.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

I'm trying to remember why anyone wants that to happen

More eyes on your request. Statistically, I've been getting more treats when I went out to PH vs. when I didn't.

I just feel bad that my writer either disliked my requests or is having a bad time irl.

As someone who just defaulted (not in Yuletide but a different exchange), don't. Unless there was something wrong with your request, it's not your fault and I wouldn't want my recip to feel bad. (For me, I defaulted because I had a big id mismatch with the recip. What they liked and what I liked was a venn diagram with almost no overlap, but that's not their fault or mine. It just happens.)