coaltide | The Coal Game

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2021

The Coal Game

We're scrolling
And watching coalies make errors
The most pathetical errors!
We're watching experienced coalies
Who stayed up all night tracking a source in its original Latin
Up, writin'
And writin' bad!

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What drives me crazy about people who want ship matching is that it is fairly easy to get a ship you want right now (request the characters you want, DNW any specific combinations of them you can't stand, DNW ship bashing/ship breaking to avoid b_o and other wankers). All you can't do is make it impossible for people to take a gen out.

And, at the same time, character matching is very user friendly for people who don't specifically want ships. Both those who prefer gen, or people like me, where I don't know in advance if I'll be up for writing ship fic and I want the freedom to write characters I like without needing to explicitly define their relationship status, since I sometime vary between shipping romantically and shipping platonically by the phases of the moon. (and, of course, worldbuilders etc).

Whereas relationship matching makes things absurdly, unworkably complicated for people who don't want ships. It basically ruins the exchange for them. And yet the people who want relationship matching just seem not to care that for a really mild increase in convenience to themselves they're destroying the exchange for others.

+100
Plus there are other exchanges specifically for ship matching

Whereas relationship matching makes things absurdly, unworkably complicated for people who don't want ships.

I don't understand that. With ship matching, if you don't want a romantic relationship, literally all you have to do is not request A/B. Depending on the exchange, you either request A&B or "character:A" or, if it was like the extra option someone mentioned above, check the "gen" box.

And I think the lack of understanding goes both ways, because that: "All you can't do is make it impossible for people to take a gen out." is the clincher. I can request the characters I ship, and I can write all over my request details that I want shipfic about them, and sure, 70-90% of the time (depending on the fandom and whether what you ship is popular within the fandom) it'll work out. But it still means there's a chance that you'll match to someone who hates the ship or doesn't see them like that and can't or won't write them as a ship. People who want ship matching don't want to punish that person or force them to write their ship or anything like that. What we want is to make sure that we're not matchable to that person, for both our sakes.

And with writing, it's even worse. If you offer A and B and ship them and your recip doesn't and sees them as platonic best friends with a sibling-like bond, this is not going to be a fun time for either of you. You can avoid it by, in your own words, "absurdly, unworkably complicated" gaming, but it would be a million times easier if that person just weren't a potential match.

You can avoid it by, in your own words, "absurdly, unworkably complicated" gaming, but it would be a million times easier if that person just weren't a potential match.

Ok, so, question: how does this work in a rare fandoms exchange with a noninsignificant number of 1:1 requests:offers ratio? Do you foresee no problems at all with unmatchable participants or people being told to add a ship request or add a gen request to make themselves matchable?

There’s two types of 1:1 requests (well, three).

1. It’s the requester also offering the fandom aka nobody will match on it.
2. Someone is specifically offering it just to match to that person, so adding ship/gen isn’t gonna have any impact.
3. There are A, B, C, and D nominated. The only request asks for A and B. Someone is offering C and D (or A and D,etc) to pad their offers/game to match someone else.

Ship/gen/both is useful for fandoms with more than one request.

sa Also most unmatchable people probably fall into the “both ship or gen” camp if they only have 1-4 fandoms they can write.

The majority of Yuletide participants are multifandom - if one fandom is ship only requests, they will offer another fandom where they can be choosey since they have a wide pool to choose from. People already cull offers based on letters that DNW shipfic or incest or any number of things.

You are heavily underestimating the number of 1:1 "any" requests and/or offers in the truly tiny fandoms. Over 15% of requests this year were "any". A lot of the others are one nom/one request, which is basically the same thing. I suspect the proportion of any offers is higher, due to buckets.

Dear coal: the majority of yuletiders don't game. You are outliers!

+1

It's one thing to be in ted lasso or locked tomb fandom. This just isn't workable for much smaller fandoms.

CYRT

No, I don't think that's going to happen.

There will be more initial pinch hits, but also less defaults because people won't go "WTF, my recip ships those people I see basically as brothers? yuck!" or "they want gen of my OTP, wtf is wrong with them?" and slam that button (or wait until the deadline to hope they'll get a gift and then slam the button).

People who won't care can check both options, people who do care aren't forced into a 'either default, write something your recip hates, or write something you hate" situation.

As a gen writer, there are times when I would love to offer both lead characters in my fandoms, but I end up offering only one lead and a side character (who is not usually shipped with that lead) to make it less likely I will match to someone who just wants shippy fic. It means that I don't get to offer everyone I want to write, and it also means I'm less matchable in the fandom. Plus it doesn't guarantee I won't get a ship request, although at least I'm not offering both characters of the most popular ships.

I like the idea of matching on "only want shippy fic," "only want gen fic," or "open to both." Officially, Yuletide is "open to both" -- I can request gen, but ODAO means I won't necessarily get it -- but matching on ship vs. gen preference might genuinely make things easier for a lot of participants.

+1 million

As someone very opposed to relationship matching, allowing a choice between "shippy, gen, both" would be totally fine and not exchange ruining imo

+1

That would also avoid the logistical tagset issues, since it would only be adding three tags total.

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The Coal Game

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