Years back, I got matched to a person without a letter or optional details. All it had was characters and "post-canon". But there were some things about that particular fandom that REALLY needed optional details. (Hard to explain without outing the fandom, but it's basically a fandom where if you like one thing, great, but if you hate it and you get that for your fic, you'll probably hate your fic.) So I quickly sent an e-mail to the mods to get them to ask a question to them, and never heard anything back. Nothing. I stalked their LJ and AO3 a bit and there was nothing about this fandom ANYWHERE (the only fandom we matched on and that I was familiar with in their requests).
So finally I decided to just write the idea I had in my head and what I was most capable of writing, regardless of what they might like. I like what I wrote, and I still like it years later, and so did other people in the fandom. My recipient? No comment. No "thanks for writing for me", no "fuck off you're terrible" or anything else.
Cut to two years later and that recip shows up on the PH list. Still no letter, but now in their optional details they specifically said the kind of fic I wrote was a DNW. It wasn't anything extreme, I swear. But it did have a (canon-appropriate) sad ending, so that was what they objected to. (No one else who read it had any objections, so oh well.)
Maybe I could have written something else (though lighthearted fare really does not match the fandom at all), which is where I am at fault. But at least me ruining their Yuletide taught them to put their DNWs in their request.
Re: Worst Yuletide Ever
Years back, I got matched to a person without a letter or optional details. All it had was characters and "post-canon". But there were some things about that particular fandom that REALLY needed optional details. (Hard to explain without outing the fandom, but it's basically a fandom where if you like one thing, great, but if you hate it and you get that for your fic, you'll probably hate your fic.) So I quickly sent an e-mail to the mods to get them to ask a question to them, and never heard anything back. Nothing. I stalked their LJ and AO3 a bit and there was nothing about this fandom ANYWHERE (the only fandom we matched on and that I was familiar with in their requests).
So finally I decided to just write the idea I had in my head and what I was most capable of writing, regardless of what they might like. I like what I wrote, and I still like it years later, and so did other people in the fandom. My recipient? No comment. No "thanks for writing for me", no "fuck off you're terrible" or anything else.
Cut to two years later and that recip shows up on the PH list. Still no letter, but now in their optional details they specifically said the kind of fic I wrote was a DNW. It wasn't anything extreme, I swear. But it did have a (canon-appropriate) sad ending, so that was what they objected to. (No one else who read it had any objections, so oh well.)
Maybe I could have written something else (though lighthearted fare really does not match the fandom at all), which is where I am at fault. But at least me ruining their Yuletide taught them to put their DNWs in their request.