yuletide_coal | Deliver Us From Coalptcha

Deliver Us From Coalptcha

PM me if there's transphobia (or racism or homophobia etc) and I'll deal with it.

~~Nominations: 12th to 21st September~~
~~Sign-ups: 10th to 21st October~~
~~Assignments go out: Between 22nd and 25th October~~
Madness opens and prompts are visible: After assignments
Posting deadline: 18th December at 9am UTC - may be the 17th in your time zone
Story reveal: 25th December
Author reveal: 1st January

Ao3 collection: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2018
Letters LJ: https://yuletide.livejournal.com/1315417.html
Letters DW: https://yuletide.dreamwidth.org/139157.html
Tagset/letters app: https://tagset2018.firebaseapp.com/

Latest regular view: https://yuletide-coal.dreamwidth.org/10641.html?page=1000
Latest flat view: https://yuletide-coal.dreamwidth.org/10641.html?view=flat&page=1000

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I don’t know this canon but it sounds like your average case of ‘some people have different top/bottom preferences’.

Honestly their dynamics preference isn’t as off-putting as their hatred of the central ship of the romance novel. The whole book is about their NOTP.

Eh, I’ve consumed canons that are all about my NOTPs before and were I to request one of them for an exchange I might also DNW my NOTP. Although this person could’ve phrased their DNW better, since the ship is a canon juggernaut.

it was the "hates central ship" combined with "requests one half of the central ship" so people offering couldn't avoid easily

but they've presumably seen this discussion and added a second character

By the time I clicked, they'd already added the second character so I was ready to just roll my eyes and move on, but yes, that is my number one biggest peeve in all of Yuletide. I don't care how rare or bizarre your interests are, but if you stick me with them when you could/should have avoided it then you're a dick and you're not going to like the fic I write for you >:(

when you could/should have avoided it

The problem is that we'll never reach consensus on when someone "should" avoid "sticking you" with an assignment. For example, I am deeply unsympathetic to the complaints in this subthread. Requesting half the canon ship while DNWing the ship is entirely kosher.

Exactly. There must be something they liked about the canon, to request it in an exchange. Their likes are not shared by the coalies, but fortunately they are finding that out right now rather than the end of signups. Make a private mental note to avoid them and move on. I don't see what makes their letter terrible enough to merit a mention in this post.

This is coal, anything being irritating to anyone is enough reason to post it. Before, when the requester had only selected the one character that makes up half the canon’s OTP they were much more likely to match to people who both like that ship and wanted to write for it. Now that they’re avoidable they’re much less likely to be matched to someone who enjoys things about the book that they hate. There’s still the issue of DNWing any details from the donghua, which is based on the novel anyway, and trying to figure out what novel details they thing are too much like the adaptation and still runs the risk that someone who hasn’t seen the donghua at all might describe something in a way that the recipe thinks is too much like that version, and their dismissal of the romanization style anyone reading the English translation will be familiar with.

NA

I'm totally unfamiliar with the fandom, but is it possible they just haven't seen the donghua? I always mention what I'm familiar with when I request fandoms with different adaptations. Granted, I'm not outright DNWing elements of them, I just want my writer to know I might not recognize details they throw in, or that I don't mind spoilers, etc.

And I am deeply unsympathetic to anyone who has an alternate pairing that could sidestep the whole mess and doesn't request it, so I guess we're at an impasse. I just can't imagine wanting to put my request in front of someone who apparently didn't read the same book I did, partially because thinking I'd made things unenjoyable for my author would actually diminish my own enjoyment of Yuletide, but also, selfishly, I think it makes it less likely I'll get a fic in even the same ballpark as my tastes.

Do you know that people generally write exchange letters to request what they want to read and not what the writer wants to write? And even then it's not as though they're forcing you to write the fic of their dreams for this particular fandom at gunpoint. Do you know that you can request another fandom? Or ODAO and write them gen?

First of all, what you want and whether/how you request it are two different things, and this way of requesting things isn't a great path toward getting what they want. Do they know that they, too, can request something else? And ODAO is exactly where it will end up, which is why it's not a great idea. I don't have access to the canon that exists only in their head, so why would they want me as a writer in the first place?

You're right. They should have phrased their DNWs better to avoid offending people like you. Although it seems like feelings have been offended anyway what with all the complaints going on in this thread. How dare someone have the nerve to ask for something they like instead of toeing the line, don't they know that their request will cast a blight on someone's Yuletide?

Nice sarcasm but it's actually pretty close to how I feel. I'm glad we had this teachable moment.

Seriously. Yes, I want my writer to have fun with Yuletide, but that's on them in how they approach their sign-up and assignment. As a reader, I want to have fun and I'll ask for what I really want, even if it goes against fandom favourites or whatever. As a writer, I want to have fun, but that's on me in how I approach my sign-up and assignment. Different responsibilities for each side.

+1, yeah, this

I mean it's down to how matching works in Yuletide. You always risk offering a pairing and getting someone who wants fic focusing on half of that pairing -- it's baked into how the matching works. People who want fic for the fandom but don't ship the juggernaut have a right to do so. If someone's only willing to write their OTP, there are other exchanges that work better for that.

And as a writer, I'd rather know that my recips are asking for what they really, truly want, even if it means writing the occasional fic about a bonkers ship I can't really see myself. (Or ODAO gen, which I reserve as an option but haven't had to do yet.)

ayrt

Love that last point about sometimes writing fic about a ship I don't see myself. I've done that often and found a way to have fun with it for the length of Yuletide, even though I never would have even thought about it before or after. Setting aside my hard and fast interpretations in order to write a fic is part of the challenge for me.

I can write ships that I don’t normally consider, but when someone’s take on a character is so far removed from the canon development I have no confidence in the recip’s ability to get out of a story what I’m trying to put into it. Based on their interpretation of the book I doubt that any good faith attempt on my part would be well received regardless of how much of their headcanons I work in, because they got such a wildly different interpretation out of the canon in the first place. Good on you for being able to write unrecognizable versions of characters, I guess.

Re: bad letters

(Anonymous) - 2018-10-18 23:41 (UTC) - Expand

Re: bad letters

(Anonymous) - 2018-10-19 00:24 (UTC) - Expand

But how am I supposed to know how my unknown author feels about the book? I'm going to ask for what I want, and my author can write that or write something else or write a different fandom or default and I will never know their thought process behind it unless they bullshit about it somewhere I can see.

Because this is a case of bypassing a Mexican restaurant for an Italian restaurant and then asking for a taco. It's really obvious! It's going to be a headache for them and not a great result for you, a person who hates pasta! I'll admit there are murkier cases (and I'll even admit that my views on what you should and shouldn't ask for are actually more extreme than I've presented here because I'm embittered by years of "I hate everything about this canon you love"), but this is really basic. You want a rare pairing, you nominate and request both halves of it. That shouldn't even be a question.

The impression I got from the original letter wasn't that they wanted only the rare pairing though. They wanted fic of their favourite character, gave a lot of gen prompts and some optional rare pairs prompts, but DNW the main canon ship. Which I think is fair - when you offer two characters you always have to be prepared that you might get someone who only requested one of them and might not like the same ship as you.

The letter writer changed their letter's emphasis to the rare pair only after their letter got linked here and people complained about matching issues.

That's a sensible way of reading their request and probably also why they requested it that way, but I still think it makes no sense to do so. Requesting just their fave and requesting their fave + their other most-wanted character/pairing both require their author to comply with apparently primary desire, which is to include their fave. But the former ups the chances of a massive mismatch while the latter reduces it.

DA but why are you assuming they want only that pairing when there were a lot of different prompts?

most-wanted

Did you actually read the letter before? They were very focused on a variety of rare ships, and spoke about them at length after making clear their DNW for the main canon pairing. They listed the foster brother they’re currently requesting, the loyal corpse general, the owner of the body he’s currently in, and the teacher who hated their fave’s guts as ships they find more compelling. All of those prompts were basically “pretend the novel was about love between my fave and anyone but my fave’s canonical love interest”, not focused on gen or worldbuilding at all. They didn’t want gen, because gen would include their ship DNW. I suspect they chose Jiang Cheng rather than any of their other rare ships because someone on FFA specifically mentioned Jiang Cheng/Wei Wuxian. And with that ship, they didnt want exploration of the status differences between the characters, despite both characters’ investment in their status and the expectation that Wei Wuxian would be Jiang Cheng’s servant. I honestly don’t know how someone could write about these characters while totally avoiding the class differential that has been a source of conflict and connection between them. What they want their writer to avoid is not a small part of the canon or characterization.