mf

As some of you know, I've had some Yuletide drama.

On December 20th, I posted a 980-word story to the Yuletide collection, intending to complete it before reveal. This was my fifth Yuletide.

On December 21st, I got this from yuletide mods:

Dear emef

The story you have submitted to the Yuletide collection (http://archiveofourown.org/works/2805509) is too short. A story under 1k words in length is not a suitable gift for your recipient and does not meet the challenge requirements.

Please complete this story by 19:00 UTC December 22 and let us know when you have updated it.

If you do not complete this story promptly, you will be banned from further participation. We also require you to complete a story for the New Year's Resolution collection before signing up again.

Yuletide mods

On December 22nd, the story was complete, betaed, etc etc.

Eight months later, on August 5, Yuletide mods wrote that their earlier email was incorrect and that I would not have been banned if I had not completed the story. If I had left the incomplete story up, the penalty would have been to write a story for the New Year's Resolution collection.



I asked for clarifications, and they wrote this:

Yes, there is the same penalty for:

-defaulting after a set deadline (last year was the end of December 13)
-not turning in a fic at all
-submitting a fic that is a placeholder, under wordcount, or otherwise clearly incomplete at the deadline. [In some ways the last one requires the most work on our part in order to identify recipients for whom a pinch hitter may need to be found.]

I hope that answers your question; if not, feel free to ask further.

So I did ask further. As a friend on twitter pointed out, given those rules, I could (had I been wacky and cynical) have chosen to take my story down, defaulted, finished the story, posted it to the New Years Resolution collection, and been good to go for Yuletide 2015.

Now I just want anybody reading to know - I've worked in many nonprofit/charity/volunteer organizations, I've been there. I fully understand and sympathize with the fact that Yuletide is volunteer-run, that life is complicated, that no one ever said that fandom has to be fair, and just - I'm not here to write some kind of contempt-driven, derisive entry about this.

Anyway I wrote this:

Hello,

Just to make sure I've got this absolutely, totally right: the fact
that I completed the story has no impact whatever. Is that correct?

Thank you,
emef

But then they wrote back:

Hi emef,

The imposed requirement to complete a NYR story, should you wish to sign up to future Yuletides, relates solely to the fact that you uploaded an incomplete story and this story was incomplete at the deadline. That is something we had asked people not to do and had said we would check and penalise. It is not affected by whether or not you completed your story.

If you had replied last year with a refusal to complete your story, we would have had to consider a further penalty, because that would have been a poor indicator for future participation, and rude to your recipient. I would hope you would not have done that! Otherwise, we are glad you completed your story - as you probably intended to do - and I am sure your recipient appreciated it too.

Regards,
Yuletide mods

So then I... got cranky and wrote a 900-word essay. Title: I'm Not Angry, I'm Just Disappointed.

Hello,

The thing is, I'm sure everyone is well-intentioned here, and everybody just wants Yuletide to go swimmingly, but these emails makes it all sound like the actual stories are a huge pain. For the mods, anyway. I mean: one of the above emails literally says that no story is better than a 98% complete story (i.e. that it is better to default than to submit something that is 20 words short.)

And I want to be on your side, you know, I want to sympathize with Yuletide mods, but right now I'm realizing that according to the rules, as they stand, I could have taken my story down and defaulted, finished it, posted it as a NYR story, and been good to go for Yuletide 2015.

Not that it would have occurred to me to do this at the time.

Now, I'm sure you're sitting there, shaking your head, muttering "yeah but that would be rude" and maybe adding "we would have had to consider a further penalty". And again, I want to be on your side. I really, really do. You're saying that because as a mod, you know established rules can't always appropriately reflect the reality of a situation, so they have to be tweaked. Sometimes you have to punish people, even if those people have followed rules to the letter.

But then I turn around and think: yes but can't the opposite also be true? If it's okay to bend the rules one way, is it be okay to bend them the other way?

Last December, the mods noticed that my story was twenty words short, and it was plain that it had been an oversight. Given that I'd completed yuletide stories without a hitch for the four previous years, would it have been an option for the mods to say: the rules say this should be penalized, but in this case, we will consider tweaking them?

Let me be clear: I am under no delusions that this would have been a possibility. The tone of the emails I've received from Yuletide mods imply, if anything, that a perfect world would be one in which no one writes Yuletide stories at all, because that would be less work. So I am absolutely not imagining that my question will lead you to change your mind and think, you know what, emef has been reliable many times over in the past and showed good faith in finishing her story a few days before reveal, so let's drop this whole penalty BS. I am absolutely not imagining that you will magically start grasping the fact that people like me - maybe not all Yuletide participants, but surely most of us - write Yuletide stories because we love the fic exchange to bits, and being spoken to like we're recalcitrant teenagers being imposed extra homework as penalty for being disrespectful isn't distressing as such, it's more like a punch in the face. You don't need to tell me, you guys, I get it: unless I quit complaining and do as I'm told, this fic exchange is over for me.

So why won't I leave you alone and do just that, you ask? Well. Let's talk about writing stories as a penalty.

When I first read the rules, writing NYR stories as penalty seemed like a cute, fun way to encourage timely posting of stories. Heaven knows that writers like writing so why not write more? Sounds like fun. But! Last December, when I was told "If you do not complete this story promptly, you will be banned from further participation. We also require you to complete a story for the New Year's Resolution collection before signing up again" etc it sounded way more like "emef! You've been caught! You are the reason we can't have nice things and now you must be made to regret your actions, how dare you besmirch the noble name of Yuletide" and it sounded like the penalty was supposed to be something that made me learn not to make the same mistake twice. Which is a bit like if my partner was upset I hadn't done the dishes on time or something, and ordered me, in a genuinely angry tone, to kiss him as penalty. Great if that was my kink, but it isn't, so if he did that it would take something lovely and and make it weird.

Anyway, I'm sure by now you're now grumbling to yourself about how writers think they're all such special fucking snowflakes, so I'll leave you to it. No wait - if you're still reading, I'll tell you something else: right now a part of me wants to apologize for kicking up such a fuss over this. But. But! This is fandom, this is what we do! Right? One time I kicked up a fuss about John Reese and Harriet Finch to the tune of 30,000 words, and that was NOTHING compared to what some other people do. So is this really such a surprise?

Kind regards,
emef