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

[(Anonymous)]

DC

In practice it's more like... I wasn't allowed to gift my recip a medium (that was in the tagset, but not in their request) that represented a blend of two other mediums that they did request. Not only will the mods say that's not allowed, they will refuse to ask the recip.

[(Anonymous)]

You could put it in the late treat fest, I guess?

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I'm still okay with that, TBH. If it's in the tagset, then they had the option to request it but didn't, for whatever reason. Maaaybe it was an oversight but surely default assumption should be that they intentionally chose not to request it because they actively do not want it, even if it does seem to have aspects in common with other mediums they did request.

[(Anonymous)]

DC

Frankly, I can't make sense of a lot of the opt-in mediums. I'm sure there are a bunch I'd love to receive, but I look at the tag set, and more than half of it isn't self explanatory, so I'm ending up barely requesting any.

[(Anonymous)]

+1

I do a fine-toothed comb of the tagset and have slightly different opt-in lists for each fandom (because I hate having medium opt-ins that feel completely wrong for the fandom, and I also have major FOMO). It's an OCD thing and my preferred way to do FIAB but it's so exhausting that I can pretty safely assume most people aren't doing that. They're picking a few mediums that stick out to them and maybe picking an Any X Medium or two if they're feeling adventurous. They probably won't be doing research on the difference between "A Softer World Style Art" and "A Softer World Style Panels", especially when that info isn't on the Dreamwidth.

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

I think that would hold water if the tagset were 1% of its size. But in practice it looks like this: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dHzQ2QSNywKZ__5PK37CQ8KgKvfcPF9d_8NIPLFJHYQ/edit?gid=0#gid=0

The two times I had this happen with recips I was friendly enough with to ask (because I was taken with the idea and wanted to know if they'd be okay with that kind of treat outside of the collection), it was oversight - not even noticing that thing was in the tagset.

[(Anonymous)]

DC

I think you might be assuming it's something like "Someone requested art but not podfic, so it's probably not an oversight that they don't want podfic". In reality it's a lot more granular and the medium freeforms clash with requested ships in weird ways. If someone requests Alien fanart with WB: The Nostromo, they'd probably enjoy art of a ship schematic, right? But ship schematic is its own medium separate from fanart, so you can't gift them that if they didn't opt into that specific art tag.

[(Anonymous)]

No, I'm also assuming that just because someone wants, say, worldbuilding fanart of a spaceship does not necessarily mean they're also going to want a ship schematic, which is a different kind of thing that they didn't opt into. (Good example, actually, because while I can see how you would get there I would also argue that, say, an atmospheric painting of a ship's engine room scratches a very different itch than a set of blueprints and there's still no reason to assume it's an oversight that someone might want one but not opt into the other.)

[(Anonymous)]

DC

I'm the nonnie who said above that the tags don't make sense to me, and this is exactly the thing I meant. I don't get how a ship schematic is NOT fanart. It would never in a million years have occurred to me that I need to request that separately. I feel like I have to read a 50 page documentary to make sense of all the categories and what they include and don't include, often they're phrased misleadingly, and sometimes there's no agreement on what they mean, and that just takes the fun out of the exchange for me.

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like I have to read a 50 page documentary to make sense of all the categories and what they include and don't include, often they're phrased misleadingly, and sometimes there's no agreement on what they mean, and that just takes the fun out of the exchange for me.

+1 million

[(Anonymous)]

DC

TBH I have this problem with freeform-based exchanges in general, never mind just for mediums. Too many zillion niche subcategories to comb through that aren't always super clear how they're being defined, and that whole "pick a very specific narrow subset of thing to make first, then come up with an idea that will fit it for this canon and characters" approach is just not the way around I think in terms of creating fanworks.

[(Anonymous)]

C CYRT RT

It works for me with tropes, because the difference between stuff like "Omegaverse - Nesting" and "Omegaverse - Alpha knots alpha to dominate him" is obvious to me and important in terms of what I want. But with the mediums, I just don't understand the differences in many cases, and there's no easy way to find explanations. Maybe that just means FIAB is not for me, at least in terms of its optional mediums.

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

I think I'm basically too flexible in what I'm willing to read for that kind of trope-led approach, because I'd just want to be like "write whatever variation of omegaverse you think makes most sense for these characters and the specific story you're telling, I care a lot more about vibes than the details of specific subtropes" and I feel like even going through checking off every possible variation as options doesn't really hit the same energy because I know my writer still has to pick one specific one and be bound by it. It just feels very restrictive as both a writer and recipient.

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

Yeah, that makes sense. I often only prefer specific versions of the trope, so requesting them in non-freeform exchanges is risky, because I can say "if you write omegaverse, please write me alpha/alpha", but the risk of an id mismatch is too big and I might be matched to someone who doesn't enjoy that.

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

Same here. And every year when someone adds some cool new prompt to the mediums list - because a prompt is basically what it is - it weirdly feels like there are fewer things you can create now, not more.

[(Anonymous)]

I get how someone could want one but not the other, but in the same way someone wanting fluffy shipfic might not want a detailed explanation of how to repair an engine breakdown. It's a question of not filling the prompts, not a mismatch of medium.

Unless they also have 500 different subtypes of prose pulled out as different "media" it really isn't equivalent.

[(Anonymous)]

Coalie, have you participated in FIAB? Just for reference.