yuletide_coal | It's always coalest before the dawn

It's always coalest before the dawn

Posting deadline: 18th December at 9am UTC - may be the 17th in your time zone
Story reveal: 25th December
Author reveal: 1st January

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Since there's been all this talk about the Spirit of Coal, let's bring this one back.

http://sevensneakyfoxes.tumblr.com/post/179258262319/yuletide-bitches

"Ehh, please don’t: REALLY hateful hate sex with no affection, using the word penis and vagina in sex scenes (not that I have a problem with it, only that it’s jarring as it reminds me grade 9 sex ed), super saccharine fluffy fic. Using the word erotic. yams. I hate yams."

Why even bother have two different lists for DNWs?? Just a big wtf with this one.

There goes all my plans to write about erotic penis yams

Wow, you weren't kidding about the different lists of DNWs. The letter's written in a way that's a progression from likes to dislikes instead of just giving likes and DNWs so it's not even clear where they draw the line at what they'd like. I mean, "no go land" and "ehh please don't" sound like DNWs but "sure why not" is ambiguous...

The whole "have separate lists for DNWs and things you 'just' don't like" thing some people do bugs the hell out of me. Use a single list, FFS. Every reasonable author will treat the things just don't like as DNWs anyway. (Though I gotta admit, I'm always hoping someone will write them a fic consisting just of those things and be all 'well, you didn't DNW them', just to teach them a lesson to use a single list for all of them in the future.)

I keep them seperate because they're not DNWs. I don't usually like them, but sometimes I do. They're not actually things that will make me immediately click out of a fic, or trigger me, or make me unable to read it. I just usually don't like them. But maybe I will this time, who knows? I have occasionally in the past. From me it's much more "please tread carefully" than "please don't include this".

I only use DNWs for things that are actually fuck no, not in a million years will I touch anything containing that.

AYRT

I totally get that there are degrees to which you dislike something. I think that's true for everyone. There's stuff that will absolutely ruin a fic for you and stuff you don't like but will read anyway, sure. My problem is: what use is this information to your author. With DNWs, the message is clear: don't, under no circumstances, write it.

But what's the point of a 'I don't usually like' list? You say it's 'please tread carefully', but unless you explicitly say how this careful treading should occur, as a writer, I have no idea what you want there. Are there any special circumstances under which you will like it (and if so, what are they), or do you just mean 'the majority of fic that contains this sucks, but if you write good fic with it, I'll be happy'?

I get why you're tempted to do this, but it really is unhelpful. If you are willing to roll the dice on those things and let an author "convince" you they can write a fic with them that you like, then just don't mention them at all. If you don't want to risk it, put them in your DNWs. But don't make a list that essentially amounts to "I'm giving you free reign to write them but if you fuck up, I'll reserve the right to say 'I told you so'".

ayrt

I get what you're saying, but conflating my actual trigger with things like my general POV preferences feels incredibly reductive and I'd really rather not, thank you. They are not at the same level of "do not want" and I refuse to act like they are.

Understandable, I just don't get the point of listing them at all unless you actually enjoy stressing out your writer. But hey, you do you.

DA I'm sure you're stressed out by this, but not all writers are? I prefer getting a short list of DNWs and "please don't" in the letter, personally.

If you're getting stressed then don't even think about it, just treat it all like a single long list of hard DNWs and move on.

That's what I do, but I still find it immensely frustrating because the DNW list is the first thing I read and I build my story from there, so to find more DNWs further into the letter is irritating.

You can phrase your POV preferences in a positive instead of a negative way. 'Likes: 3rd person POV, present tense´ is a lot clearer than 'I generally don't enjoy 1st person POV and past tense but I'm not completely opposed to it, just tread carefully´.

+100

I would find this less confusing than different lists of things to avoid.

Heh. I’m the exact opposite - I like lumping my trigger in with POV preference so because I don’t want anyone to know what triggers me.

+1

Same.

I think it'd work better if you just leave them out, or only mention them if you can think of any prompt that includes them.

eg. I DNW mundane AU, but clarified "except in this one fandom for this one prompt".

+1

I’m not going to write someone things they don’t like, and separating them out into 2 lists like I might is just annoying.

https://blue-spruce.dreamwidth.org/5641.html

Not a great letter overall - imo it's too short, and it also doesn't mention chosen characters or the leter writer's ao3 handle - but what I want to complain about is the Crooked Media RPF request.

They basically say "I'm barely in this fandom that the characters are nominated under but I'm a 'religiously' huge fan of the one character that people offering to write this fandom would be the least likely to know a lot about, and I want a 'true-to-life' fic". If I was their writer I would not feel confident.

Isn't Ronan Farrow in the tag set, though? It's not on the recip to confine themselves to characters people would know more about. If they're in the tag set, they're fair game.

Yeah, in Yuletide you should always assume someone requesting a character is a superfan. You don’t need to know everything about space and hard science, but you should know about Han Solo if you offer Han Solo. Don’t offer Ronan or Any if you aren’t prepared to write in-character* fic about him.

* subjective, I know, but you get what I mean. Have your facts straight even if the voice/actions are off.

I'm the coalie who complained about the letter, and I'm not complaining about someone requesting Ronan or wanting him to be in character. If they'd been like "I love Podsa and I also read everything Ronan writes religiously" that would have been a different thing - I'd still be happy I didn't match to them, but I wouldn't think their letter was in bad taste. It's starting the section about a fandom with "I am a casual fan of [this fandom]" that really bothers me.

Maybe I'd be more with you if it was PSA RPF? Crooked Media RPF is already so wide and in RPF the character is more of the fandom than the fandom is, and it's not as if they requested Any or Ronan with someone closer to PSA. If someone matched to Christopher Lee in WWII RPF I wouldn't be bothered if they said they didn't care much about cooking just because Julia Child is in the tagset.

Comes down to YMMV I guess.

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