Rudolph the red-nosed dentist

[heavensqueen]

Writing post : http://yuletide-coal.dreamwidth.org/6728.html

Other useful links:
2016 Timeline : https://yuletide-admin.dreamwidth.org/28822.html
Collection: http://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2016

 

Letters post: http://yuletide.livejournal.com/1274815.html
Letters DB: http://www.dennis-sellers.com/yuletide/index.html
Treat spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10Bv9vJXykH9BUgn6q5DIBliBgMWzlVpXiB9d1lNoub4/edit?usp=sharing

Yuleporn: http://yuletide.livejournal.com/1276881.html
Crueltide: http://yuletide.livejournal.com/1274987.html
Two for One: http://yuletide.livejournal.com/1278973.html

Comments

Re: my author sent me a message

[(Anonymous)]

Aw :(

Re: my author sent me a message

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

I'm sorry if that comes across as harsh, but I think YOU are being harsh here, and doing yourself a disservice to boot. "It's okay. Don't worry about it." Just copy-and-paste that and bam, you've done the decent thing. They probably won't reply after that, or if they do it'll just be to say "Thanks!", which doesn't need a response.

Re: my author sent me a message

[(Anonymous)]

"Then, hopefully your writer will realize that your a dick and spend their time on a gifting someone else a treat. Someone who might actually deserve it, unlike you."

... "I'm sorry if that comes across as harsh."

Come on, man.

Re: my author sent me a message

[(Anonymous)]

How is not engaging with an oversharing stranger and doing the emotional labor of reassuring them doing a disservice to the OP?

Re: my author sent me a message

[(Anonymous)]

da

As stated, because they will probably not finish the treat. I don't think saying something super quick like that to get it over with it can be referred to as ~emotional labor, but whatever.

Re: my author sent me a message

[(Anonymous)]

Saying "no worries," may not be super heavy emotional labor, but having to field 490349034 more self-flagellating messages certainly is. Most people who send a total stranger such a note out of the blue aren't going to stop there. My author didn't a few years ago. (They felt bad that they didn't write anything based on my specific prompts, and included a self-flagellating author's note. I said that was fine and I loved their story anyway, especially as it did include many of the likes I had listed. They responded with more self-flagellation, at which point I stopped responding. You can't break someone's dumb shame spiral for them. All you can do is get sucked down with. I don't do that anymore, and OP shouldn't either.)

Re: my author sent me a message

[(Anonymous)]

Emotional labor includes this whole process of figuring out whether to reply and how, and doing the reassuring when really the defaulting is something that happened to them rather than a thing they somehow are responsible for consoling the person over. The author did everything wrong here and there is no reason OP should have to deal with any of it. Obviously someone flailing enough to violate the rules is not going to respect the OP's boundaries if they engage directly. The only way to react to a situation like that is through the mods or not at all.

Re: my author sent me a message

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, fuck off, you sanctimonious ass. One, no you are not, and two, in case you missed it upthread:

Thread OP here and if it makes any difference I don't think my author is here.

And I will probably end up sending a "no worries" but it needs to be a couple of days from now when I'm not stressing about other shit and I can be better prepared for a possible response. The original message is pretty heavy/personal and is kind of inviting me to respond to things in detail which I don't want to do. "No worries" is probably still going to invite another response.

It sucks to get out of the blue, unasked-for unloading of personal bullshit, from someone (I'm guessing) you don't even know. And any response will probably just invite even more. There's not a thing fucking wrong with not wanting to reply to that and risk getting more of it, and that's not "harsh".

Not everything deserves a response.

Re: my author sent me a message

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's pretty obvious that they would have "missed" it since it was posted way after that comment. *rolls eyes*

Re: my author sent me a message

[(Anonymous)]

No shit! But just maybe, now that it has been posted, they can see their way back in here and realize it's dumb to assume this kind of thing is probably fine when it's weird, PERIOD (and not that hard to infer from op saying it was begging forgiveness and made them feel uncomfortable, which just makes the automatic jump to call op an ungrateful dick ALSO weird).