One Wank After Another

[coalcube]

A blank assignment is a funny thing, isn't it? When you have it, you don't appreciate it, and when you miss it, it's gone.

Wednesday 10 December: Default deadline (9pm UTC)
Wednesday 17 December: Assignment deadline (9pm UTC)
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Thursday 25 December: Madness collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 1 January: Author reveals, end of event (9pm UTC)

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Comments

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

DC

Or we just disagree because we understand that "I personally find this DNW limiting because I have an id mismatch with my recip" and "the request is railroading" are very different things.

It sucks to be matched to someone who's such a mismatch that writing something that fills the request feels like pulling teeth, yes. That doesn't mean the recip did anything wrong.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

I think it depends. What bugs me about this thread is there's a lot of "id mismatch is the writer's burden to deal with and resolve" vibes going around. I think it's absolutely fine to make it clear what you like in your sign-up and be unapologetic about it. Using DNWs to achieve that is also fine... but it can go too far, and the line isn't always obvious, but it is there..

The thing is, you can put what's most iddy to you (down to the most trivial details like what pet names you want your OTP to use) in your likes or in your DNWs. Either way, the information is there. If the author wants to write that, they probably will, right? Why isn't that enough?

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

Because for most people, DNWs are dealbreakers not just "well, it's nice if the writer wants to avoid that".

Sure, I can skip the DNWs and put it all in my likes and optional details instead. And like you said "If the author wants to write that, they probably will". And if they don't, and I back button out of the fic because that was one of my dealbreakers and I'm not going to read a fic that has OCs or unrequested ships or mentions of lemons, then that should be okay for the author, right? After all, they had the information in my optional details and chose to not write it, so not getting a comment is also okay?

Because let me tell you, I really doubt it works that way. (And if it does, and the author doesn't care about the comment and also clearly doesn't care about writing what the recip likes, then what's the point of a gift exchange here?)

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, yeah.

I think a lot of the people complaining about unreasonable DNWs are people who do not believe that having a barmaid named "Mrs. Jones" hand you your drink is actually anybody's dealbreaker.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

I personally don't care if she's called Mrs Jones or Lucy or Candy Boobtastic. I just don't want your OCs in my gift fic at all. So, yes, it's a dealbreaker. If you can't wrap your head around that, that's a you problem.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

DC

Okay, I believe you, and I'm also not trying to get you to out your AO3 name or anything, but what sort of canons and characters are you asking for?

Feel free to tell me it's a skill issue and a me problem but - genuinely, I do not understand what you're looking for here and why brief OC appearances - especially if they're devices to move the plot along - are a dealbreaker.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

I really just want my requested characters talking or kissing or fighting or fucking for however many words my writer can stretch it out. I don't want Mrs Jones the bartender or Toby from accounting or their roommate the Great Blob to distract them (and me).

I mean, most DNWs don't exist in a vacuum. And I totally get that sometimes people have DNWs that clash with the prompts or request details but a lot of the time, they don't and people have thought them through. So obviously, I'm not going to prompt for stories that need OCs to work.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

Yeah, I still don't grok it, but most of the time I can make that work! It helps that I personally am happy writing porn though. (No one wants to see my attempt at a fight scene.)

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

Tbh, some of my favorite fics are just my faves having a conversation (or a series of conversations, even). Porn is nice, but it's not a requirement or anything. I just want the requested characters interacting as much as possible.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

Hey, people who wanted an example of being railroady, I think this qualifies for me.

"DNW: Anything except my requested characters talking or kissing or fighting or fucking for however many words my writer can stretch it out, with no distractions"

That seems to me like it's the same category as DNW: anything but coffeeshop AU.

(is it unwriteable? no, but then I will also always happily do a coffeeshop AU. Is it attempting to force your writer into one very very specific type of fic? Yes.)

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

DC

Interesting! It doesn't qualify for me.

I suppose it would qualify, for some canons, if the people weren't allowed to mention OTHER people in the intense conversation they were having with each other.

And I have canons where it's difficult to even explain why two people are in the same room together without mentioning further parties. But coalie did say their requests are geared towards canons where this is not ridiculous.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

You realize that this is not a DNW but a like that's in my optional details?

You can still go ODAO and write, idk, fic where my requested characters are separated and never meet or interact for the entire fic. I'd think you're a massive asshole and would hate the gift, but I can't stop you.

(Though I'm also boggling that you apparently consider "A and B share a pizza and talk about A's bad cooking", "A patches up B's injuries", "A tries to kill B in an underground garage", "A and B are stuck in a closet" and "alpha!A fucks omega!B" all "one very very specific type of fic". Personally, those are a lot of very different options. But apparently YMMV. TIL.)

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

I hate to do this as one of the coalies who's been complaining about railroading but I'm gonna split hairs here and slightly disagree. IMO DNW: OCs doesn't quite cut it even if they admitted to a pretty railroady motivation (although the other DNWs they have might make it more railroady than it sounds in isolation).

It would also depend massively on the canon.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

This is such a better discussion when we're talking about a specific example caused by someone's actual earnest preferences.

/intended tone: appreciative/relieved

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

DC

So you DNW OCs not because you cannot bear to have a barmaid hand your Blorbo a drink but because it's a way to nudge your writer towards following your (optional) prompts?

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

If having a barmaid show up for one line in a fic is truly a dealbreaker for you, coalie... well, I shan't say it.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

I want them to keep going! Is onscreen vs not the dealbreaker? Is the implied existence of other members of the same species a dealbreaker? How explicit can the reference be? Are their preferences like that when consuming media that is not fic? Have they always preferred these things or did they get some truly awful OC-centric fic that caused them to declare, nevermore!?

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

The question is: why do you need to write fic where the barmaid appears for a recipient who clearly doesn't care about your barmaid and doesn't want her in the fic.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

DC

I don't write barmaids for recipients who clearly don't want them to show up in the fic.

I try to write stories about the requested characters/ships doing things that are interesting to me and that seem to match with my recipient's likes. A lot of the time, that calls for acknowledging or depicting the existence of other characters, because that is very common in fiction generally.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

DC

The thing is, you can put what's most iddy to you (down to the most trivial details like what pet names you want your OTP to use) in your likes or in your DNWs. Either way, the information is there. If the author wants to write that, they probably will, right? Why isn't that enough?

And now we're back to something I personally find more interesting as a talking point, yay!

I think my own requests are like this - tldr

- I have a very short list of DNWs, and my prompts are a few cheerful paragraphs rather than likes. And this works for me. However, I am probably ticking other boxes some coalies find undesirable. My system works for me because I care less about getting a gift than successfully completing a writing challenge. There are things I don't put in my DNWs that would probably ruin a gift for me, but I focus my DNWs on things I see as a real risk. If I get something else unpleasant (hasn't happened yet) either I roll with it or I would assume it's an author with extremely different ideas to me; either I would get their bizarrely weird edgy take OR I'd get the very bland thing they could write if I'd thrown a DNW book at them. Eh. Some coalies (or maybe just ffa nonnies) would say I'm being unfair to my writer by potentially setting them up to write something in good faith I'd dislike. Call me when it happens.

-I think it's hard for people to talk persuasively about what they like, and people who have mastered this skill underestimate how difficult it is for others

-When people get awful fic or see awful fic in the wild they often add DNWs to protect themselves and so DNWs seem to accrue to people who've been doing exchanges for a while. Meanwhile, it's seen as risky to shorten your DNW list because it can signal that you now welcome something you previously forbade

-It's hard to generalize the right DNW strategy because it's so dependent on the quirks of people with whom you share fandoms.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

Those are good answers, though I have to admit it was a bit of a leading question on my part. "I'm putting it in the DNWs because it's an easier way to make sure I get what I want" is an understandable motivation, but the part I didn't want to say for fear of sounding too judgy is that I think it's a bit rude.

Although, maybe this is inconsistent of me but I don't mind anyone with long DNW lists when it comes to smut, because even tiny details can have so much impact to whether a smut fic is hot or just completely unreadable to you. But when it comes to more neutral or less emotionally charged elements, I do have trouble believing that (like other coalie said), something like a brief OC appearance is a genuine gift enjoyability dealbreaker.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

The coalie who finds OCs an unpleasant distraction from the characters they want to be completely absorbed in seems like a good example for this discussion, actually. Personally, I think I'd react better to "I can't get enough of these two, please spend as much as possible of your story with a laser focus on how they feel about each other and act towards each other," than "DNW: OCs, unrequested characters."

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

/that coalie

Phrasing it positively is nice, sure, but "I can't get enough of these two, please spend as much as possible of your story with a laser focus on how they feel about each other and act towards each other" doesn't actually say "I absolutely don't want any OCs in the fic", so I'd be sacrificing clarity here. And I might get a perfectly good faith fic from an author writing me my faves just the way I love them and include OC mentions because I didn't explicitly say that I don't want them, which would suck both for them and for me (and it would be my fault because I wasn't being clear).

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

Sure. Though if we were genuinely workshopping a positive phrasing because you wanted one, we'd obviously want to polish it a bit.

I guess the part that I'm still not getting is: if you direct your author to just absolutely wallow in A reacting to B and B reacting to A, and they make a good faith attempt at it, and there are mentions of OCs existing ... that truly ruins a gift for you?

That's still the part where I'm just - huh.

Re: Unpopular Opinion Time

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

I mean, depending on how much I love the fic otherwise and how big the OC appearance is, I would just copy and paste the fic into word and delete the OC scene, and it would be okay. But it would negatively affect the initial reading experience.