C.R.E.A.M

[coalcube]

Coal ruins exchanges around me - spitey spitey fic y'all. 

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Comments

[(Anonymous)]

kittyfic at least tries to guess what your canon is about and use a like or two.

i propose that ‘i refuse to default’!odao fic written because the author hopes that their author is writing them the fic their letter asked for is worse.

there’s an inherent bastard quality where you’re denying someone else a better match because you hope you’re gonna get the fic of your dreams. at least write your 1k of what they asked for and then orphan it.

also theres a special place in exchange hell for people who refuse to default but also wish their author would default rather than giving them ODAO/kittyfic/etc

[(Anonymous)]

people who write odao rather than defaulting but throw a fit if they get odao are fucking hypocrites.

people who write odao because they're doing their best to fill their assignment while assuming their assigned writer is doing the same thing are doing what they're supposed to be doing, all the rules say odao is fine! and expected! yuletide is an odao fest!

like I get people being disappointed but like. fulfilling the requirements of a fic exchange, which are what you signed up for, is not a cardinal sin.

[(Anonymous)]

how many of the ‘im fulfilling the bare minimum and hope my author is too’ recips do you think really exist tho? and how many do you think run here to complain when they get average to subpar fic?

if they really are happy with “anything their author gives them” like odao implies then surely they can do their best to write whatever their assignment asked for. that falls within the “anything” the author might write them that they’re willing to read!

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, I don't think they run here to complain, because anyone who's spent time on coal has become far too anxious and neurotic to be able to blithely do that.

But like, a significant proportion of signups have no optional details, and about a third of them don't bother with a letter and/or have only DNWs listed. There's still a fair contingent of people every yuletide who *aren't* neurotic coalies and just want to do a fun small fandom exchange that matches on fandoms and characters.

And a lot of people who aren't neurotic and aren't neck-deep in exchange culture would assume that a recip would rather get 5000 words of interesting, lovingly-written fic about the things they actually matched on than get 1000 grudgingly written words for a prompt they probably don't care that much about, *or* than be defaulted on. After all if you cared that much about getting your exact prompt, why would you sign up for an exchange that is explicitly odao?

[(Anonymous)]

Unpopular opinion: odao isn’t necessarily the bare minimum but writing 1k of fic to prompt that’s clearly forced and awkward always is

Most of us can tell you hated the entire 45 minutes you spent on the story and resent that you’ll never get that portion of your life back

[(Anonymous)]

DA

Except with most requests that aren't "write me that weird AU or I'm going to kill myself", there's a hell of a lot room between "writing a specific prompt you hate" and "writing something in line with what your recip likes".

You don't have to force yourself to do the first, and anyone who expects you to is unreasonable. And if the recip only gave you one specific prompt and nothing else, I have no sympathy for them when you go ODAO.

But if you get a OD box full of general likes and you ignore them all in favour of writing your own thing because everything else will be "forced and awkward", maybe you're not cut out to write gift fic for strangers and you should reconsider your participation in fic exchanges.

[(Anonymous)]

If you get a long list of good general likes it's basically impossible to go totally odao, you'll probably hit one just by accident, that's a straw man either way.

unless like you're like my recip this year and your general likes are all things like vore, torture, mind break, incest, abuse and mutilation and we matched on a kids' movie about a cute dog where they prompted one specific gen scenario of dogs having cute fun dog adventures, so it's either write your one prompt, go odao, or cute puppy incest vore, nothing in between.

(Luckily I know one of their other fandoms, where the likes are a better tonal match, but never underestimate how badly a signup can go.)

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

I know there's some controversy what counts as ODAO, exactly, but if you accidentally hit one of their general likes but totally go against the resquests otherwise, that would still essentially be the same as ODAO to me.

I don't think you need to write torture incest vore, but you could still write something in line with the darkfic theme OR something that incorporates elements of the cute gen dog fun adventures prompt (without writing it down to every details) that aims to stay in the spirit of their request. I wouldn't call any of that ODAO. ODAO would be writing fluffy romance shipfic or a murder mystery.

[(Anonymous)]

+1
yeah things that don't follow the exact specifications of the letter down to every detail but is still in the spirit of the request, I wouldn't consider those ODAO

[(Anonymous)]

yikes

[(Anonymous)]

It sounds like you're defining ODAO as "doesn't match the general tone of the request" which is a good metric for an author who tried or not, but not ODAO! If the story doesn't hit any likes or fill any prompts, it's ODAO even if's a tonal match and the recip loves it (which is why a lot of recips write that they're okay with that in their letter!). If it fills a prompt/hits a like, it's not ODAO even if it's not at all what they want. It might be untherius!fic, but that's a different problem than ODAO.

If op's recip prompted fluffy dog POV about the dogs exploring the cave in the park, and the writer can't do dog POV and has claustrophobia, so they write fluff about the human watching the dogs play in a non-cave-related way, it's still odao. Justified odao, but odao.

If you'd be okay with anything in a certain tone, put that in your likes.

[(Anonymous)]

Oops this was supposed to be downthread

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

General tone =/= in the spirit of the request.

If it fills a prompt/hits a like, it's not ODAO even if it's not at all what they want.

Absolutely no one in their right mind would say that a gift for a recip who says they want fluffy shipfic written in past tense that's a grimdark gen fic written in past tense is not ODAO because it happens to hit the tense like. If that's the definition you're operating on, then the entire concept of ODAO is useless.

[(Anonymous)]

Fair enough, I concede the point. But your definition seems to be that as long as you write something that seems like the kind of thing the recip might like, it's not ODAO, and that's pretty useless too.

[(Anonymous)]

Why would you miss this incredible opportunity to write cute puppy incest vore?

[(Anonymous)]

Mostly because their fandom-specific prompt gives me the impression they don't actually want puppy incest vore, sadly.

[(Anonymous)]

I'd personally rather get odao from someone who knows the fandom over fic someone wrote from a wikipedia article to one of my prompts/likes

[(Anonymous)]

can’t decide if that means you should say you’re happy with anything or if you should say you prioritize canon compliance over everything else

[(Anonymous)]

neither? I just don't see the point of reading fic from someone who doesn't even know the source material

[(Anonymous)]

+1
i'd rather just not get a gift than get very obvious kittyfic

[(Anonymous)]

NC

I would rather take the kittyfic every time.

Something mediocre or bad about a thing I care about > something of whatever quality about a thing I don't care about.

[(Anonymous)]

it would still be about the requested characters/fandom though