Yuletide troubles

[tielan]

Either Inception has no business being on Yuletide (given the size of the fandom: forget whether it's a 'new' fandom or not), or Yuletide has no business claiming to be for rare fandoms.

Interestingly, Harry Potter and Merlin are also on the 'fandom nomination list' for Yuletide.

There's something seriously wrong here.

Comments

[adelheid]

'Seriously wrong' or just people playing funny buggers?

[tielan]

Playing "stupid idiots" is more like it. Oh, hey, wait! I like the sound of "ENTITLED ARSEHOLES". Has a better ring to it.

I get that people have entitlement. They want their white males from popular fandom, their white males from popular fandom, and, oh, look, their white males from popular fandom! Which they can get anywhere online, frankly.

I'd like something that features, I don't know, actual homo-/bisexual characters as compared to straight characters turned gay (Tanya Huff - Blood and Smoke), female characters being tough and decisive without having to be romantically involved or sexally castrated (Mike Shepherd - Kris Longknife series), supernatural steampunk (Gail Carriger - Alexia Tarabotti series), and non-white canons (Barry Hughart - Master Li chronicles).

So, sure, 'funny buggers'. With a side helping of 'idiot shitwit entitlement'.

I apologise for being all SRS BSNS about this, but the truth is that we let people get away with shit they shouldn't. And then they think it's acceptable to go 'hee hee! it's a rare fandom challenge - let's put my favourite non-rare fandoms in for shits and giggles and not think about the trouble it causes for anyone else'.

[adelheid]

(Whoops, reply went in wrong spot.)

No, you've totally got a point. But I figure that at least stuff like Glee, HP, Inception - it will be easy for the tag wranglers (or whoever else's job it is) to get rid of. I'm more worried about the lineball fandoms, where a very few of us write a lot of stuff, but it doesn't make the fandom 'big' (Chalet School, for example).

[beatrice_otter]

It's only in the nomination phase. There's always people who nominate stuff that's obviously too big, or where they think it's a small fandom because they haven't managed to find the fic comms for it, or whatever, and so they nominate stuff that ain't gonna fly. Then the mods go through (in this case, there's an algorithm making first pass based on numbers/percentages on AO3, and the mods double-checking, but everything still gets looked at by real humans) and weed out the ones that shouldn't be there.

Inception actually probably is eligible, despite the amounts of fic it's generated; there's an exception for fandoms less than a year old. But the assignment process weights toward the rarer fandoms--the fewer requests and offers a fandom has, the earlier it gets matched up, so people are much more likely to be matched up by the rarest of the fandoms they request/offer than the more common ones.

I'm just thrilled that they changed the overarching fandom rule--I love Batman Beyond, and there is almost no fic for it, but it's been ineligible because it's part of Batman. Even though it has an almost entirely different set of characters and takes place fifty years later. And now it's eligible! Yay!

[tielan]

I admit, I dislike the 'first year' rule quite heartily. It seems to be a self-indulgent way of permitting popular fandoms in amidst the rare mixes 'just because they're new'.

It might be mitigated by matching up on the rarer fandoms, but chances are that if someone is matched up with the chance to write [exceedingly rare fandom with a handful of supporters] vs. [stupendously popular and common fandom with loads of people to read fic], they're going to go for the stupendously popular one. Because it's easy and there are more readers.

Which eliminates the point of 'a rare fandom challenge' entirely.

I understand the frustration behind the overarching fandom rule - Batman Beyond would ba particularly annoying exclusion. I'm curious about sub-genres of the Batman franchise myself: Birds of Prey, etc.

[liviapenn]

I admit, I dislike the 'first year' rule quite heartily. It seems to be a self-indulgent way of permitting popular fandoms in amidst the rare mixes 'just because they're new'.

I think, actually, it's more that if there weren't some popular fandoms in the mix, it would be exponentially harder (maybe even impossible) to actually match everyone, especially now that Yuletide is so huge.

[glass_icarus]

Yeah. As far as I'm concerned, that "new fandom" thing is SUPPOSED to be a LOOPHOLE- except that last year, AI8 and Glee (and probably others, I can't remember; and maybe some shit went down in previous years also? I wasn't paying as much attention back then) were driven through that loophole like a fucking MACK TRUCK and now all these people are like "hey, it's (practically) a RULE!! let's take ADVANTAGE!!!!"

... This makes me UTTERLY FUCKING CRANKYPANTS, you might possibly have noticed!

[tielan]

AI8?

Including 'new but popular' fandoms would seem to be shooting themselves in the foot. The point is to be a rare fandoms ficathon.

Watching it become 'new but popular country' is like watching an organisation formed to help underprivileged ghetto kids give chunks of its budget to wealthy upstate private schools.

[saraht]

Someone nominates Harry Potter every. single. year. It's like a tradition at this point.

Yuletide season is almost two months long. You'll never make it if you're already mad!

[tielan]

I'll be grumpy if big fandoms get through just because they're new. But I'll deal.

I just think it's shitty behaviour to co-opt a rare fandom ficathon with popular fandoms just because one can do so.

[saraht]

Nomination isn't the same thing as official selection, though.

[havocthecat]

People keep nominating non-rare stuff every year. It's so very annoying.