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: 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)]

No, that's wrong. You will go to PH and no one will ask you to add another fandom to your requests (sometimes they will ask if you've been lingering in PDPH, but mostly you can say no).

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

What about the other two fandoms in your typically 3-fandom request that are not Winterblumensaat?

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

Stop using Winterblumensaat wrong! The point of Winterblumensaat is that it literally does not exist.

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

...Coalie, this is a really weird supposed rebuttal of "There are some fandoms so rare that you can only hope to get them in Yuletide".

It is possible to be guaranteed a gift in one of your (typically three) requested fandoms and still have fandoms which never see gifts outside of Yuletide. Come on now. Use your imagination.

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)]

DC

I think the fact you stated you have "enough fandoms so rare that there's no point requesting them anywhere outside of Yuletide" probably led people to assume you had at least three and therefore could in fact make up a request slate solely of those fandoms and get one of them.

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)]

cyrt

I think it's perfectly understandable to say "getting fic for my ultra rare canons in non-Yuletide exchanges is stressful because I have to make sure I don't request anything more popular and it means I linger for a long time as a PH".

But it's silly to argue that "I have enough fandoms so rare that there's no point requesting them anywhere outside of Yuletide (I still do, I get nada)" means the same thing. Especially in a thread where people earnestly argue that if no one offers your fandoms in exchanges, you won't go out as an IPH until you add fandoms someone offered, which is a pretty massive failure to understand how exchanges work.

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.)

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

Treats would be nice... actually I'm surprised I went out to PH because I already have one. Do treats only get promoted to gifts if the default is too late to get a PH?