coaltide | Offseason #5

(this is not so much "what I expect" as "what I aspire to myself and usually fail at"

1. Make requests that are thoughtful about what might make the writer's experience pleasant as well as their own. Think about matchability, too.

2. Don't request things where they will only be very picky about what gifts they would like.

3. Put up a finished letter (that reflects 2&3), if expected, on time & in a convenient place. Add letter info to any supplementary stuff like apps as early as possible.

4. Sign up for exchanges with a name/account that lets your writer have some idea of who you are beyond your letter.

5. If you're socking, at least give your socks some AO3 bookmarks and a profile with some kind of mini bio, even if it's like "I'm a dentist and one of my patients suggested I try this exchange this year!" so your writer isn't left floundering with no idea if you're a fourteen-year-old who doesn't anything know about fandom or secretly their mother.

6. Don't sock excessively.

7. Don't default unless there's a legit emergency. Don't sign up if you think there's a high chance you will default.

8. Write a story to the best of your ability that will make your recip happy.

9. Communicate with and through the mods promptly, politely, and clearly.

10. Get a good beta-reader. Be a good writer. Pay enough attention to the fandom/exchange norms to know you won't violate them. (Offer to beta for others, if that's something you're good at.)

11. Double-check for DNWs and making sure you interpreted the prompt as intended.

12. Post a complete and finished story early, one that exceeds the minimums by a reasonable amount.

13. Keep an eye out for pinch hits and treats you can do. Do at least one or two if you can.

14. Leave a good meaty comment early on in the anon period.

15. Share the link to your stories with your social media in the anon period.

16. Leave at least one more comment post-anon period reiterating what you liked about your gift.

17. Don't act like a hoarding dragon about your gifts (either the ones you wrote or received.) Be generous and gracious.

18. Assume good intentions (publicly)

19. Keep your griping to anon spaces. Don't accidentally deanon while doing so.

Hm, I disagree on the 2 comments thing. That feels a little much, especially if it's just saying the same thing.

It can be just replying to their reply to you, if they did, to say thank you again. Or it can be coming back several months later to say you reread and still liked it. Or leaving one comment on opening day with first impressions and another later with things you've thought through. You're right that leaving the same comment twice isn't useful. And it's definitely not required or expected (And one of the few things on the list I haven't seen coal talk about a lot,) but when it has happened to me as the writer it has always filled me with joy, and it's super low effort compared to some of the others on my list.

I wouldn't do it just to be dutiful on a story I didn't much like to a writer who didn't reply to my first comment, but then I'm not a perfect Good Egg.

"It can be just replying to their reply to you, if they did, to say thank you again."

That sounds like a great way to get even farther into the "no thank you/thank you/no thank YOU" crushing awkwardness that I hate about creator replies, I cannot even begin to express how much I would hate it with every single fiber of my being if someone did this.

I mean, then don't reply.

One extra "thank you" reply after reveals isn't a meaningless chain of politeness though, it's a reassurance that they still like your gift even though they know who you are now. For some people that doesn't matter, some people it makes a big difference.

> 15. Share the link to your stories with your social media in the anon period.

Eh, I'm not very active on social media and don't really notice/care if my recip has social media. Like if you like the work and wanna share it, absolutely do, but I wouldn't think not doing it is bad? And some people don't have social media or have it connected to their real name or something so they wouldn't want to share fic there

I mean these aren't things where not doing them makes you a bad recip? They're things where if you do them, it's extra great.

(Also very few people with no fandom social media get on Good Egg lists. I'm not saying that's fair, but being a person who exists in fandom outside AO3 helps generally.)

Most of the people I'd put on my personal good egg list I only know through ao3 and discord.

Of course, I don't maintain fandom socmed presence, so...

I count Discord as fannish social media these days (and my fandom discords' recs channels are always full of people linking their exchange gifts...)

I don't even know how to find fandom discords that aren't full of wank or teens so I just do ead.

Re: what makes a good egg to you

(Anonymous) - 2024-02-08 19:52 (UTC) - Expand

Re: what makes a good egg to you

(Anonymous) - 2024-02-08 19:59 (UTC) - Expand

NC

I don't do fandom on my socials, other than AO3. Not at all.

Nah. Doing all this sounds less like a good egg and more like a desperate to please to the point of neurotic overachiever egg. Fucking ridiculous.

Which ones sound like too much work? Being gracious? Assuming good intentions?

No and no.

what do you mean by hoarding gifts?

on the author's side, things like deleting or locking them, or editing them heavily post-reveals, or putting in weird author's notes downplaying the prompt, or shifting things around between accounts so you are or aren't associated with certain gifts, or getting mad that they got another similar exchange fic from someone else, or retroactively making them part of your ongoing WIP, things like that. You know, the stuff that coal would endlessly argue about if someone brought it up here.

and the inverse on the recip's side: throwing a fit because your author made edits, or demanding an eph for a perfectly good fic that followed your DNWs, or getting mad because they wrote a sequel without your permission, or they wrote something similar in another exchange, or sending them hate because they deleted their entire AO3, or that kind of thing.

Basically just be normal about the fact that somebody wrote a fan fiction to somebody else's prompt and then posted it in public? That one should be pretty easy to manage and yet.

huh I can't imagine getting mad about someone moving fic between their accounts, that's just general identity bookkeeping

I've seen people get really intense about it either because it's "their" gift and how dare the author change literally anything about it, their gifts page is sacred. Or more generally because it makes it hard to obsess over the exchange history of people you might want to game in the vicinity of.

people in general need to unclench

Re: what makes a good egg to you

(Anonymous) - 2024-02-08 22:07 (UTC) - Expand

I have questions, like: if this is your rules for yourself, why do you have so many rules about socking and why do you claim you often break them?? What exactly is excessive socking, to you? NovaMist levels??

What does it mean to act like a hoarding dragon about your gifts?!

5. If you're socking, at least give your socks some AO3 bookmarks and a profile with some kind of mini bio, even if it's like "I'm a dentist and one of my patients suggested I try this exchange this year!" so your writer isn't left floundering with no idea if you're a fourteen-year-old who doesn't anything know about fandom or secretly their mother.

This one is weird to me, though to be fair I'm not sure I care about the feelings of someone who's going to freak out by seeing an empty ao3 account. Besides, your prompts and DNWs should cover that aspect. Basically this just sounds more like it would benefit you by making you look like not a sock. When you are a sock.

Nah the socking ones are just me wanting to know if I matched on a sock or not. It's not that I freak out about getting an empty AO3 account, it's just that it would be nice to know if I'm writing for a newbie 14-year-old or the sock of someone I know and might otherwise talk about my fic with. (Especially in fandoms where an empty AO3 account is probably one or the other of those.) Plus there was at least once when I assumed the empty account *was* a sock and it turned out to be a teenage newbie, and I would have done my tags and stuff very differently if I'd known. Also saying "I'm a dentist" is not hiding the fact that you're a sock.

Like, again, these are not requirements, but if you're socking up I don't think it's wrong to say people will like it better if you put a little, teeny tiny, bit of effort into your sock.

Anyway I never sock up because I have a weird hangup about not breaking explicitly stated rules, but I've given up on anyone thinking socking is actually bad etiquette. The ones here I usually don't manage are the ones about doing things on time and leaving good comments ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Plus there was at least once when I assumed the empty account *was* a sock and it turned out to be a teenage newbie, and I would have done my tags and stuff very differently if I'd known

I feel like this is a you problem, especially since one of your other tenets is assuming good faith.

...how is "I don't want to use fandom jargon to a newbie" or "I don't want to handhold too much for an experienced recip" or "I would interpret these dnws differently depending on how familiar this person is with fandom culture" not acting in good faith

like the problem with an empty account isn't that any of the options are bad, it's that it could equally be a signifier of either a super experienced exchange person who's really blase about socking, or it could be a brand new person who doesn't know anything about exchange etiquette, and figuring out what kind of thing they expect to get could really depend on which it is. In some exchanges you can probably safely assume it's the first one, but in some you can't.

But, like, again, I'm not saying you're a horrible person if you sock with an empty account. The newbie with the empty account isn't a horrible person either. And getting the empty account isn't ruining anyone's yuletide. But putting a tiny bit of effort in makes the experience better for everyone.

The only times I've ever looked at my recips fics/bookmarks was when I matched on CCOF and wanted to write something in a genre they liked. If I match on an actual ship why would look? I know what they want, I'll just do that.

CYRT

On thinking about it I agree with you a bit more. For me, looking at an empty account and assuming it's a sock would be bad faith, but that's because I'm kind of sick of socks from the ones I've had to deal with. If you don't feel that way then it's more neutral.

If I see a blank account, I default to assuming it's a newbie.