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Coal All The Way

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I've noticed a few people who've complained about fics that skirted close to their DNWs but didn't quite hit them in a way that would justify going to the mods.

In your experience, coalies, how common is this?

Depends on the fandom/writer and how the DNW was worded. And I don’t mean “I wouldn’t like x” vs “DNW: X” (people that don’t get that are idiots) but saying “I want happy endings” instead of saying “I don’t like prolonged angst” and then thinking a mostly unhappy fic with a HEA ending is skirting your DNWs.

I got a fic that was the opposite end of the [trope] dynamic that I enjoy to the point where it felt like a DNW. I don’t think the author was skirting my DNWs even though all my other likes (when put next to that trope) would show you clearly what I would be looking for when it came to that ship, but some people are bad at context clues or are so into what they like that they are blind that it isn’t what you like.

IME, that is the most common form of DNW skimming. The “I’m not touching you” circling your listed DNWs is intentional even from casual readers POV and is thankfully more rare.

Why not say what you want from that trope instead of putting it next to other things and expecting your author to infer?

I...did? I prompted something of the effect of “[trope] for X/Y. I would love to see X carrying on with [trope] while Y uses their charms to flip it on its head since they have all the power” as my prompt. And the fic seemed to believe Y’s power was Y bending themselves over backwards (it isn’t, it’s Y getting their way without bending even if it means being scandalous) so that in the end X is the only one satisfied, with hints of what Y really wants in the narration with an ending that implies Y may change tactics. It also felt like X is their favorite when Y is mine, and that’s why they made Y obsessed with satisfying X.

My point is that even if you misunderstand a prompt or have a different headcanon, if someone requests “safe safe consensual, fun sex, over stimulation, sex before feelings, confessions during sex” and nothing dark, you shouldn’t write them noncon hatefucking with mindbreak even if they don’t DNW those things. It may not be DNW fic, but it will likely be skim-worthy. Authors don’t have to write anyone’s prompts but going away from the general direction/tone of what they’ve implied liking in their letter is “this feels like it skimmed my DNWs” 101.

NC

I do think what you're describing is a dumb and shitty thing to do, to basically take a prompt and do the opposite, but I don't think that's what skirting a DNW means.

To me, it's more like if someone had a "focus on unrequested pairings" DNW, and the author sprinkled in something like 4-5 different one-liners about unrequested background pairings. It's not technically a focus, but for someone who's not about unrequested pairings, having them randomly in the background with that frequency skirts close enough to the DNW that the author should know it's something that their recip wouldn't like.

Well, for what it's worth, my gift this year was basically 100% about a thing I specifically said I didn't want, but since I wasn't smart enough to put all my DNWs in my signup this year and I only mentioned this particular DNW in my letter, I just have to live with it.

It might have been an honest mistake - maybe they just didn't read my letter (which they technically don't have to do), where I said I don't like cheese but any other dairy product is fine, before they wrote me several thousand words of camembert?

I'm still kind of pissed, though.

I reckon you're being too nice. That sounds like spitefic.

Put your DNWs in your signups, people!

Yes, ideally people look at letters, but there are a lot of less-invested people who just see the assignment in their email and write to that, especially if you have enough information there that gives them ideas. Mods will only enforce (and maybe check, if they're checking) signup DNWs.

I mean, I feel bad for you, and I don't blame you for being pissed. But there is something you can do to prevent this situation, and it's on you to do that.

Skirting a DNW is inherently subjective. One person's "this fic skirts close to my DNW: thing" could be another person's "this fic avoids exactly what I didn't want when I said DNW: thing."

It's not super common, but I think it generally falls into four categories:

The most common cases of DNW skirting seem to be a bad case of author and recipient matchup. As in, recipient is a hardcore Yuletider with a long letter and a long list of DNWs, and the author is a very casual Yuletider who skims the recipient's letter once and posts the fic they wrote in one sitting without a beta or a double-check as soon as they finish. Not malicious, but definitely careless on the author's behalf.

The second is where the author obviously had a specific fic idea in mind when they offered that fandom and they'll be damned if they're going to change it up because of an unexpected DNW, so they rewrite it just enough to skirt the DNW.

The third is the most baffling, the "this doesn't technically hit a DNW but what on Earth made you think this would be a good gift for that recipient" sort that sometimes seems like spitefic. For example, if someone DNWs pregnancy and their gift centers around a character recovering in the hospital and bonding with their newborn immediately after giving birth.

And then there's the fourth, the just plain obnoxious category of people who see the DNW list as a challenge to test their writing chops and see if they can write something outside of that recipient's wheelhouse that they end up liking anyway.

I think there's another common case: The recipient's DNWs are adjacent to what they ask for. For example "DNW: graphic violence" and them asking for canon-typical adventures in a canon where the canon-typical adventures feature graphic violence.

Yeah, I see this in letters a lot. I've been lucky enough never to get assigned to a recip who did it, and I don't know what I'd do if I got one – 1000 words of bland introspection, I guess?

But this is how you run into the ForceGhostGate scenario, where an author trying hard to fulfill a prompt slams headfirst into the DNW.

That DNW is only adjacent to the request if the writer's an idiot. Write an adventure like in canon, skim lightly over the violence rather than wallowing in gore. It's incredibly easy.

Eh, not so much. Especially since how much violence counts as graphic or disturbing is subjective.

It also does not track for other instances.

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