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)]

I remain fascinated at how exchanges, which are supposed to give you a gift you want, so often wind up about people forcing themselves to read a gift they don't really like to say something nice about it because otherwise you're being mean.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

dc

I only ever hear this on meme and coal.

Yes, sure, occasionally you get a bad gift, but it should be the exception not the rule. "Most of my gifts are bad and have stuff in it that annoys me" is completely unfeasible to me. I wouldn't do exchanges if I felt like that.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

DC

Speaking as that coalie, you misread me and I think you misread me in a very telling way.

What I said: "if I backclicked out of every gift fic with something I find annoying or not quite up my alley, I'd have more rejected gifts than accepted ones".

Nowhere did I say that every gift that contains something I find annoying/ not quite up my alley is a bad gift! In fact I've been weirdly lucky this year even with wildcards like OW. But in several thousand of otherwise enjoyable prose, it's still quite possible for something to crop up that makes me go 'Eh, not feeling this bit but let's keep reading'.

Annoyance!=bad gift.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

I'm not entirely sure if the difference between us is purely semantical or something more fundamental. Because I do think annoying = bad gift (which does point to a fundamental difference) but on the other hand, "Eh, not feeling this bit" (which happens a lot but doesn't really affect my enjoyment of the gift overall) isn't something I would consider something that annoys me. Annoyance is a stronger feeling to me - so maybe it's just semantics after all

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

You only ever hear this on meme and coal because nobody wants to say "most of my gifts are kinda mid" in namespace. That's the kind of thing the anon spaces exist for.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

+1

My gifts are very often godawful in new and exciting ways, but no one hears that from me in namespace except my best fandom friend.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

Serious question: Why do you keep doing exchanges, then? I don't get it.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

DC

Presumably for the sake of the non-godawful gifts. Or they're in it for the structured creation process and a guaranteed audience of one and the rare great gift is a just a nice bonus. There are all sorts of reasons.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

I have plenty of friends in the exchange scene - we haven't had fandom overlap for over a decade, so no need to lie to each other about whether we like our gifts, and we do talk about bad gifts, but it's a once-in-a-blue-moon situation rather than a common occurrence. None of us would continue doing exchanges if we felt like that because what's the point if you just put in effort and get bad gifts out of it. Like, I have masochistic tendencies, but not like that.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like some people either get a gift they loved or one they hated? But most people don't. Like on my birthday, most of my gifts are kinda mid. It's nice to get a gift, it was fun to see what they did with my prompt and characters, new fic for my small fandoms is always a win, being part of the event and sharing the excitement on reveals is great, I had a good time
reading it and it's nice to read stuff I might skip on a normal day, expand my horizons. Also there's about a 55% chance the writing is kinda mid and I'll never feel the need to reread because there's lots of better stuff to read. This makes sense because most fic is mid, that's what mid means.

That's not at all the same as I always get a bad fic.

(10% of the time it's just bad. The other 35% of the time it rocks my socks off and becomes a favorite, so it's not like I never get something I adore.)

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

(Also a lot of people enjoy giving and prompting and taking part in an event for its own sake. If I was only in it for the personal gift and found everything else unpleasant, yeah, I would quit!)

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

DC

Yeah, I'm not really even in it for my personal gift at all; that's just an extra bonus that gets thrown in on top of the part I most enjoy, which is writing for other people's prompts. So if my gift sucks, eh, whatever, if it's mid that's nice enough, and if it's great that's an unexpected lottery win. Often I don't even sign up at all and just treat, so the years that I do sign up are ones where my fandoms are so tiny or so beloved to me that just generating any new fic for the fandom that's not actively terrible feels like a win. (Plus I always have the hope that people just seeing my requests or that there's a fic for X fandom in the collection will be reminded it exists and that might generate a tiny bit more future interest in the fandom.) The quality of my personal gift is of course nice when it's great, but it's not a major dealbreaker when it's not.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

DC

Lol, coalie. That's like saying "I can't believe first dates, which are supposed to let you meet someone you like, so often wind up with having to force yourself to say 'You seem nice, but I'm not interested in a second date', otherwise you're being rude".

The ideal outcome and the statistical outcome have very little to do with each other!

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

It's very....revealing of the upper-middle-class white female professional class hobbyist circle exchanges began in, let's say.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

Thanking someone for giving you a gift is not in fact a upper-middle-class white female exclusive norm, wtf.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

Honestly if there's a behavior unique to that group I'd say it's the opposite: throwing a shitfit because you *gave* them a *list*, how *dare* they get you a gift that wasn't *exactly* what you asked for, this is model *52a* and you asked for *52a-x*.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed.