Coal All The Way

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It's coal-bo time.

 Coal Friending Meme


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Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I really don't even think the author didn't know about the rule. I think they just had a good idea for one character and not for the other, but worked the other in in a non-speaking role to follow coalie's request.

[(Anonymous)]

I think so too, and that’s why I’m on Team Tell The Mods.

[(Anonymous)]

What? Why? By doing that, they didn't break any rules and coalie liked the fic.

[(Anonymous)]

They knowingly broke the rules, in fact. You can ODAO all you want on everything but Fandom and Characters (and DNWs). You can’t just offer two characters, decide the idea you like best means you only care about A now, and then have a one line mention of B to do the minimum to cover your butt/as an afterthought.

They should not have offered B if they didn’t want to write about B. If those were the only two characters nommed? Don’t offer the fandom.

[(Anonymous)]

But it's not breaking the rules. It is at worst bending them slightly to write something their recipient will enjoy, which coalie did.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh please. If Untherius' bullshit is allowed to continue because he's supposedly making a good faith effort to write something his recipient liked, you cannot realistically think that this counts as breaking the rules.

[(Anonymous)]

dc

Well, if nothing else, the mods are in a better position than the recip or any of us right now to judge whether the author is clueless but acting in good faith or someone who should know better actively trying to skirt the rules.

[(Anonymous)]

It is breaking the rules. At best, very best, it's skirting them, and it's a shitty thing to do. But given Untherius' history and what he gets away with, I don't think realistically the mods will give a shit.

I'd point out in my comment that I'd requested character both characters and was disappointed one of them wasn't in it, but that I liked other things about the story, if I did, and be done with it. (I probably wouldn't have liked it if it flew in the face of my request that way, though. I might be able to think it's well-written or probably a decent story, but it would be coal for me if it only contained one of the two characters I requested. So easy decision.)

[(Anonymous)]

An actually reasonable interpretation of what probably happened? Surely you jest.

[(Anonymous)]

Okay? Doing it on purpose is actually worse. Matching criteria are the main thing that's not a suggestion here. You match on A and B, you write about A and B.

[(Anonymous)]

How? If coalie liked the fic and it didn't break any rules, what is the actual thing the mods are supposed to do with this information? What is the practical outcome of telling them that you're hoping for?

[(Anonymous)]

Mods to author: "Hey, looks like you're unaware of this rule! This is the rule!"
Author: can't pretend they didn't know next time
Mods: check that author's fic immediately at deadline next time, send pinch hit if required

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, except that both characters are in it. The other's just in a very small role. There is no rule that says that both characters have to have equal screentime.

[(Anonymous)]

Should both characters appear in 100% of the fic? 75%? Could Character A appear in 60% of the fic and Character B be in 40%? 66/33? 75/25? At what point would you report the author for not understanding how the rule works?

[(Anonymous)]

DA

In the story in question, doesn't one character appear in basically a no dialogue quick walk-on, though, so it's like a 99.9/1% ratio? Or he has one line and disappears or something? I don't understand how it's so contentious to say that in "and" matching, that's not how it should be done.

It seems possible the author didn't know the rule and tossed the character in there thinking they were being magnanimous by including the other requested one ever so briefly, or they knew the rule but didn't want to write that character and thought if the one showed his face for half a second, nobody'd blink.

[(Anonymous)]

Think of it this way. A fic is tagged with both Ernie and Bert. As a Bert fan, would you be disappointed in how small Bert's role is?

[(Anonymous)]

For me, I would report if character B was in 20% or less of the fic. In this case, it's really egregious.

[(Anonymous)]

Coalie should have had in their letter “you don’t have to use both characters”. Coalie clearly knows that they didn’t, and if they weren’t so cool this really could have ruined someones Yuletide and ended up in more work for the mods.

Yes it’s lucky this worked out fine but don’t you see that just because one person can drive 200 MPH and not get in an accident doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be speed limits? The absolute worst thing this author will get is a heads up warning. Letting the mods know about issues before they happen saves authors and recips. These are the same mods that will mediate questions from treat writers, obviously they are going to be open and encourage these types of mod alerts.

[(Anonymous)]

This ice-cold take. You're making the weird assumption the author serially goes around only writing one character in people's requests, rather than considering that maybe coalie's prompts just kind of sucked and they were doing their best.

[(Anonymous)]

It doesn’t matter if the prompts sucked, that is what ODAO. You still can’t turn AND matching into an OR fic.

The flip side of this wank is the Die Hard fic that was all about John’s wife and not the requested John/Matt ship.

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe next year I'll go around writing 49 treats with only one character requested just for the lolz.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, a course of action that produced a fic their recipient likes is worse. A+ reasoning skills.

[(Anonymous)]

The reason why they broke the rule doesn't in any way change the resulting fic.

[(Anonymous)]

You don't seem to be grasping that they didn't break the rule. Check the Yuletide rules. Nothing says that every character has to be a main character with equal attention.

[(Anonymous)]

Except both characters are featured in the fic, just not equally, and the recipient liked the fic. Technically no rules were broken, and more importantly, the recipient got a fic they admit they like.