coaltide | It's the Most Coal Time of The Year!

Entry tags:

2022

It's the Most Coal Time of The Year!

yuletide |

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OP

I offered A, B, C, and D.

Recip prompted for A with E and F. Who aren't random background characters, but major players I don't care about, or I would've nominated them (or let my dentist nominate them).

It was my understanding that offering "any" is offering any characters *in the tagset*. And of course you can include unnominated chars in the story, but giving prompts that only involve one nominated character and a bunch of unnominated *main characters* is a shitty move imo. Especially when E and F appear in a part of the canon where B-D don't, so you can't even work them in as background characters and focus more on your nominated characters.

YMMV, of course, but I'm not gonna offer any again. At least that'll give me more wiggle room with odao.

Coalie, this is a perfectly normal sort of request for someone to make for A. Furthermore, the conclusion of this comment, and other comments you've made, make it seem like you don't understand how character requests work. Very sincerely, you should probably figure that out before you start judging people's requests.

You have to write them A. You can, if you want, go ODAO and write A with any character of your choosing. That has absolutely nothing to do with either your offers or which other characters appear in the tagset.

+100

Offering A and B wouldn't change anything here. You could still match them on their A only request, and just because you also offered B you wouldn't be any more (or less) entitled to write them a story about A and B than you are right this very second. The fact that the other characters are not nominated is also not really relevant. Even if they were, that would not change anything her, if the person only requested A, which would be a very normal thing for someone to do if A is their fave.

It's just an id mismatch. Either write to their requests, or go ODAO and write some random A on their own story or whatever. But there was no way to totally avoid this situation unless they happened to post their letter and you gamed away.

It was my understanding that offering "any" is offering any characters *in the tagset*. And of course you can include unnominated chars in the story, but giving prompts that only involve one nominated character and a bunch of unnominated *main characters* is a shitty move imo.

Completely disagree. Would you feel differently if they had nominated the characters you don't like, but only requested A because A was the character they most cared about getting? Because that is INCREDABLY common in Yuletide.

If you hate a significant portion of canon that a character appears in, maybe don't offer that character in the future.

A was one of the characters you offered, and your recipient has asked for A fic, if you weren't comfortable with writing the whole canon, or only wanted a specific part of canon you should have stuck with offering characters that only appear in the part you wanted to write. Your recipient had no way of knowing that they'd be matched with someone who only liked part of the canon and only wanted to write one part of A's life. They did nothing wrong by making prompts based on A, you on the other hand shouldn't offer canon's you only like parts of.

IDK why all these other people are jumping on you when “write what you offered” is common exchange advice when you match to someone who prompted nominated character plus only un-nominated characters. If I offer nominated characters A & B and am matched to someone who requests only A and prompts for A and characters not in the tagset without prompting the characters who ARE in the tagset, I will write the A & B I offered without guilt. Going ODAO is not some shameful thing to do. If they DNW B and I offered A and B, then they get whatever A-solo thing I find interesting because C D E F and whomever else aren’t in the tagset and aren’t what I offered for Yuletide so I’m not writing them.

have you read the thread? Most of us aren’t judging them for going ODAO. Most of us are pushing back at them going on about how this is a bad request and for complaining about having to go ODAO if they want to write characters their recip isn’t prompting for.

+1

It's the continued, dogged insistence that the recip fucked up. ODAO, but the recip has a perfectly fine request and did not do anything wrong. OP should feel bad about besmirching their anonymous honor.

DA

If your only two choices are writing characters you never offered or go ODAO, it kind of is a bad request.

The thing about Yuletide is that you can always match on only one of your offered characters, and that person is not guaranteed to like your other offered characters. You need to be flexible on that point as a writer.

ayrt

This isn't about your other offered characters, though. It's about the recip not asking for solo prompt that don't include unrequested/unomminated characters. If you offer A and B and match on A, it's unreasonable to expect your recip to also want B. But it's not unreasonable to expect them to want A alone, instead of only wanting A with C, D and E.

I think you would be much happier sticking with ship matching exchanges over character matching exchanges. Happily for you, that's most of the exchanges currently running.

It sounds like your real problem here is not the characters, it's that you want to write the part of canon with b,c,d and not the part with e,f,g.

With fandoms with several distinct parts like that YT matching can make it tough, but the problem there is not recip's request, it's that you offered a character who appears in the e,f,g part of canon. If you want to force a match only with people who like the b,c,d part of canon, then only offer them, and *not* A. There's usually at least a couple fandoms a year where I do this. Like other people have said, seems like you'd have been just as stuck if they'd had an A-only prompt set during the e,f,g era.

+100

+200

If you match on a single character there's always the chance that the person is going to want interactions you don't. In Yuletide the only way to avoid that is by not offering the character at all. In all other exchanges you can just monitor the requests and drop if someone like your recip appears, but they did nothing wrong.

dc

I can understand your frustration with your assignment including prompts for A+ characters you don't like. It's frustrating to receive prompts that don't work for you! I don't think you or your recipient have done anything wrong.

YMMV, of course, but I'm not gonna offer any again. At least that'll give me more wiggle room with odao.

This I don't understand. How does offering a specific combination of characters give you any more wiggle room with odao than offering any does?

In your situation, you offered any, which means a, b, c, d. Recipient requested a. Recipient prompted for a+ unnominated characters e, f, or g. All you have to do is write a, not any of the prompts or non-a characters.

In your future scenario, tagset still includes a, b, c, d. You offer a and d. Recipient requests a. Recipient prompts for a+ unnominated characters e, f, or g. All you have to do is write a, not any of the prompts or non-a characters.

What changes between the two to impact your use of odao?

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