yuletide_coal | The Dirty Energy Source

The Dirty Energy Source

Do you want to make a spreadsheet about spreadsheets?
Do you still need to figure out what two other fandoms you should request beside the only one you really want fic for?
Or are you trolling ALL the letter posts for placeholders, just so you can write those people some nice, dry coal?

We want to know all about it.

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What advice would you give to first time (or even experienced) Yuletide participants?

Have low expectations and try to think about something else the last two days before the fic reveal. That way you won't be too heartbroken if your gift isn't all that great, but you'll be even more delighted if your gift is great.

Don't expect your recipient to comment immediately. A lot of people are busy over Christmas. Starting to panic that your recipient hates your fic if they don't reply in the first two days is just silly.

Don't stress out so damn hard about doing it right. As long as you make requests for nominated characters, write a 1000 word fic about the characters you were given, and say thank you on whatever fics you get, you're golden. The culture of worrying and perfectionism is not a necessary part of participation.

(Can't take credit for this, but) You only have to write a fic for the fandom, not the fic.

Unless you're writing fic for a fandom that has no fic for it. In that case you are writing the fic. (No pressure, though.)

shhhhhhhhhhh

Don't play Yuletide Roulette.

What I mean by that is don't add requests or offers for the sake of being more surprised with what you actually get. It's fun to be surprised and it makes the anticipation period more exciting, but it's a recipe for disappointment.

I'm glad you said that. I've been waffling all night about whether to get rid of my big this year request or roll the dice and see whether I'd get matched on it. Then I went back and looked at the signup summaries for all the years I've participated and I've always been matched and the larger fandom. I'm thinking it's gotta go.

1. Think through what you might be matched on. If you offer A and B because you ship A/B, you could end up with someone who wants B gen, but asks for please no A/B - would you be okay writing that? Or, especially, be careful offering A and B and C and D because you ship A/B and C/D, and hey, so does the rest of the fandom! Except you might get matched to the person for whom B/D is their absolute favorite rarepair - could you write that, or at least write a gen version?

I don't mean you have to be paranoid and overthink everything, but be careful making assumptions about what people will request because it can bite you in the ass.

2. Only offer things you feel comfortable writing. Don't offer that movie you saw once, or that book you liked as a kid, etc. just because you technically know the canon. Yuletide can certainly be a good time to broaden your horizons! But think about whether it's something you're enthusiastic about before you sign up, rather than regret it after you've been assigned.

Oh yeah, one more:

3. Optional details ARE optional, and the best and most unassailable time to put that into practice is if you're assigned to someone who's misusing "Any." I know most of us want to make our recipient happy, but if you've got an Any prompt full of characters you can't write, well, fuck that shit and write the characters you offered. It's their bad, not yours.

1. Yuletide does not have to be stressful or a big deal.

2. People who talk about the Old Days mostly weren't there. People who whine about the Old Guard are mostly complaining about people who weren't there (but act like they were).

3. Yuletide has been many things to many people including a heavily gen exchange where you can get your canon compliant goodfic and a SLASH SLASH NOTHING BUT SLASH exchange where you get your dirtybadwrong porn. (When you see someone denying this, refer back to #2.)

4. Yuletide is great. Please sign up and have fun. But, if Yuletide is not fun for you, there are other Christmas exchanges and other multifandom exchanges with rare fandoms at other times of year. Yuletide is not the only game in town. You might well get that dream fic somewhere else. You can just walk away. Promise.

Don't pay too much attention to _coal. Though we've been much better this year compared to last, but a lot of that was because of the new mods.

Learn to enjoy the process. You may or may not get the fic of your heart; it's a crapshoot whether (A) you get matched with a good writer and (B) you get matched with a writer whose wheelhouse is the sort of thing you like to read.

But if you go into it for the party -- for the excitement of seeing your match, for the agony of doing a good job, for the joy of reveals, for reading all the other cool fic on Yuletide morning, you'll have a good time.

-- Little Mary Sunshine

+1. I've been lucky enough to get mostly great fic, but one of the biggest joys is checking out amazing fic for fandoms I overlooked in the tag set or just didn't have room to request myself. I loved that Lost in Translation fic from last year, for example, but wouldn't have requested the fandom.

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The Dirty Energy Source

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