Crack Van is closing.

Aww, man. End of a cracky era.

Reading 6 chapters of the story where there was apparently a long gap between 5 and 6 (AO3 doesn't let you see that AFAICT).

Full page index. Gives the dates. When I've forgotten to subscribe to something, very useful.

I think as AO3 grows, the user base has grown and, err, diversified. I mean, given its start, the early users tended to be more established writers.

Also, it seems like the older a fandom, the crappier the quality of the work. The better writers lose interest and move to something shinier, you get a massive increase in improbably named OFCs, and signal to noise goes all fucked.

I occasionally use a rough kudos to page views measure, but as the original reader base and original writer base tend to shift fandoms in bulk at around the same time, the pandering to the LCD makes that an almost-meaningless measurement. One of the absolute WORST writers in any fandom (poor quality, high volume, skeevy race and gender issues, drama llama) had a very high kudo/comments to ratio, for example. Thankfully, the idiot flounced and is now just on DW.

I'm getting to the point where I'm clicking largely based on lack of spelling errors in the tags and summary.

If the summary doesn't include "OMG I don't even!" or "the feeeeeelllsss!" or "I know it suks", I'll likely give it a shot.

"Sorry-not sorry" is a huge warning flag to me too. I can't think of many cases where the sort of indulgence it heralds works out to the story's advantage.

In general, tumblr-style tags on a story are a huge red flag for me. Sometimes, they're genuinely clever, but in the majority of cases they just strike me as self-indulgent and twee. It takes a damned good summary to overcome a flock of bad tags.

One of my requests for Yuletide was The Fast and the Furious, and the mods have sent out a note to all of us who requested it. Given the death of Paul Walker, they're giving us a chance to decide if we still want to receive a story in that fandom (and if we would want that story to address the character's death).

My answer to the second question is hell no, but I'm not sure what my answer to the first question is. It's weird.

But the "character" hasn't died, right? Just the actor. (I don't mean to sound dismissive). If it is a story set in TFatF universe, Walker's accident shouldn't come into play. At least that is how my mind would reconcile it.

The character hasn't died yet, but they may address it in the movie that was in production. Or they may not, who knows? I guess they wanted to leave the option open for people.

THREAT LEVEL BEARS. I REPEAT, WE HAVE REACHED YULETIDE THREAT LEVEL BEARS.

Have I started revisiting the source material yet? Ha, no. Do I have the faintest idea what I'm going to write? AHAHAHAHAHAHAAHA no.

Right. Yuletide. I probably should try to have a first draft by the end of the weekend, huh? I think I have about 600 words, so I guess I'm at threat level orange?