Character Matching in Trick or Treat
Sep. 13th, 2017 10:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pumpkinkingmod posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
trickortreatexCharacter matching does not work in Trick or Treat the same way as it does in Yuletide. Yuletide is an AND exchange, where the offer has to match every requested character. Trick or Treat is an OR exchange where the offer only has to match a single requested character.
This is PumpkinKing's OTP
PumpkinKing adores this pairing. They request it in every exchange. This year PumpkinKing will sign up for both Trick or Treat and Yuletide.
Now after sign-ups close all the sign-ups become assignments. Think of it like a river.
If we just let assignments flow like a river that would make things super easy on AO3's matching algorithm and moderators as anybody could match to anybody. We'd never have initial pinch hits. This is where the offered characters come into play. Think of each character you are offering is like a gate.
When the assignment river comes to your gate it checks to see if the requested character matches the character the gate lets through. If it doesn't match then the gate stays closed, the river stops, and the sign-up doesn't become an assignment for that person.
If the character matches the one the gate is looking for then the gate opens and the sign-up is allowed to become an assignment.
If you're only requesting a single character it works like that in almost any exchange. What happens if you want two or more characters like PumpkinKing? The sign-up has to pass through one gate for each character requested. There are primarily two ways that the gates can be laid out with multiple characters in exchanges.
In Yuletide the gates are in succession. All of them need to be open for PumpkingKing's sign-up to successfully become an assignment. A person would need to offer both Moss Covered Unicorn and Doritos to be matched. If they offered only one of the two the sign-up would be stopped and wouldn't become an assignment.
When participating in Yuletide PumpkinKing can be safe in assuming that anybody who matched them on that fandom had to be willing to write both Moss Covered Unicorn and Doritos.
How is Trick or Treat different?
In Trick or Treat the sign-up still has two gates to pass through, but they are no longer in a row. Now they are different paths that the sign-up can take. Only one needs to be open for the sign-up to become an assignment.
This means that someone who only offered one of the two characters could get PumpkinKing's sign-up. While PumpkinKing should still be hopeful of getting their OTP, they should also keep realistic expectations that someone that only wants to write one or the other is matched to them.
This is PumpkinKing's OTP
PumpkinKing adores this pairing. They request it in every exchange. This year PumpkinKing will sign up for both Trick or Treat and Yuletide.
Now after sign-ups close all the sign-ups become assignments. Think of it like a river.
If we just let assignments flow like a river that would make things super easy on AO3's matching algorithm and moderators as anybody could match to anybody. We'd never have initial pinch hits. This is where the offered characters come into play. Think of each character you are offering is like a gate.
When the assignment river comes to your gate it checks to see if the requested character matches the character the gate lets through. If it doesn't match then the gate stays closed, the river stops, and the sign-up doesn't become an assignment for that person.
If the character matches the one the gate is looking for then the gate opens and the sign-up is allowed to become an assignment.
If you're only requesting a single character it works like that in almost any exchange. What happens if you want two or more characters like PumpkinKing? The sign-up has to pass through one gate for each character requested. There are primarily two ways that the gates can be laid out with multiple characters in exchanges.
In Yuletide the gates are in succession. All of them need to be open for PumpkingKing's sign-up to successfully become an assignment. A person would need to offer both Moss Covered Unicorn and Doritos to be matched. If they offered only one of the two the sign-up would be stopped and wouldn't become an assignment.
When participating in Yuletide PumpkinKing can be safe in assuming that anybody who matched them on that fandom had to be willing to write both Moss Covered Unicorn and Doritos.
How is Trick or Treat different?
In Trick or Treat the sign-up still has two gates to pass through, but they are no longer in a row. Now they are different paths that the sign-up can take. Only one needs to be open for the sign-up to become an assignment.
This means that someone who only offered one of the two characters could get PumpkinKing's sign-up. While PumpkinKing should still be hopeful of getting their OTP, they should also keep realistic expectations that someone that only wants to write one or the other is matched to them.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-14 03:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-14 07:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-14 09:02 am (UTC)So, say I've requested Doritos and The Moss Covered Unicorn, can I in my letter state that I'm ok with receiving Doritos/Monster Munch even though Monster Munch is not a nominated character in the belief that Doritos is and will be the main focus/POV of the work or can I only have them shipped with chips that are nominated in the tagset?
And likewise, assuming that my recipient has stated they're cool with Doritos/Monster Munch or cool with Doritos/any chips, can I write Doritos/Monster Munch for them or in that case, if I wanted to pair Doritos up, would it have to be Doritos/Moss Covered Unicorn as Moss Covered Unicorn is also a nominated character?
(Translation: do I have to keep pairings exclusively between nominated characters or as long as the focus is on one of the nominated character(for extra treats)/the requested character(for matching), can I pair with non-nominated ones provided the recipient is ok with said pairing or at the very least has given a blanket pairing approval or at the very very very least it's not listed that they don't want it?)
no subject
Date: 2017-09-14 09:29 am (UTC)So... can I, further down the road when I'm writing extra treats, write gifts that aren't necessarily a treat for a specific person but more like... a free for all bowl of (smutty) candy and gift it to the collection as a whole by submitting it to the collection without tying anyone's name on it?
This is normally most useful when either a) a character gets nominated but not requested and ends up lonely but someone did want them at some point though I'm not privy to who or what they want because they didn't sign up for them (but I want to show that character some love anyway). Other cases might be someone did request a certain pairing but states they don't want adult content but me being an optimist would like to write some as a gift for anyone lurking that might want some. Because, in my mind, there's a lot of fandoms I couldn't request for obvious reasons but I'd still be up for reading them if someone wrote them and left them lying around.
(Basically I don't want to make people uncomfortable by gifting them smut unless they specifically say they want smut -- but I still want to write all the smut for people that might want the smut -- can I leave a bowl of smutty candy on the table that people so inclined can help themselves to?)
no subject
Date: 2017-09-14 02:55 pm (UTC)Leave all the smutty candy you want. I do ask that it be for a nominated fandom and at least one nominated character, but other than that go to town. It doesn't create any extra work for me and it doesn't negatively impact anybody else, so go to town.
You also have the option of gifting it to the mod account.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-15 12:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-15 09:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-14 02:50 pm (UTC)You can request/write any pairing you want as long as it involves at least one of the requested characters. Pairings don't have to be made up of just requested characters.
So....
PumpkinKing's favorite characters are Doritos and Moss Covered Unicorn. They ship both Doritos/Moss Covered Unicorn and Doritos/Monster Munch, but while they'd enjoy Doritos by themself or Moss Covered Unicorn by themself, they wouldn't enjoy something that was just Monster Munch. So PumpkinKing opts not to add Monster Munch to their list of selected tags, cause they don't want to risk getting someone that was really excited to just write Monster Munch, and instead adds their love of Doritos/Monster Munch to their optional details. They also decide that they kind of love Doritos with the unnominated Candy Corn, so they can add that as an optional detail.
Short version: As long as PumpkinKing understands that they might just receive a single requested character they can still include any prompts for groups or pairings that include at least one requested character or give a blanket approval.
Does that answer you question? Also, I wish I had Doritos now.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-14 03:07 pm (UTC)Also thank you for the response RE the candy bowl too. Basically how I roll is, I check out all the tags and start going "oooh, yeah, I fancy a bit of that" then wait for the requests to roll in and see who I can match my desire to write porn to... but when I run out of people to write porn for, it's always nice to know I can keep going and write free-range porn with the nominated characters for everyone/anyone to enjoy <3
no subject
Date: 2017-09-14 09:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-15 07:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-15 05:28 pm (UTC)Yes, AO3 will count characters in the optional field the same as characters in the character field in terms of matches. However, the tag has to be identical to the one in the tagset for it to work.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-16 07:26 am (UTC)Glitch?
Date: 2017-09-17 07:14 am (UTC)Re: Glitch?
Date: 2017-09-17 04:33 pm (UTC)Thank you. It has been taken care of.