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2020

Coalway to Hell

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If a person requests sickfic and h/c in a fantasy world, would descriptions of a person sick from unknown plague and their mate caring for them (and then getting better) be a little too close to real life for you, Coal? They didn't DNW anything relevant, but I known consensus is that COVID-related stuff is opt-in. Is this plotbunny too close to home this year?

Is plague something mentioned in the world? If so, you’re kinda fine.

If not, you probably wouldn’t have written this fic in 2019 so there may be more covid references than you think, which is risky. Can you not just make it a normal, individual illness since the plague isn’t canonical anyway ?

There are canonical plagues, but not this one. I see your point, though.

“Plague” = “nasty (but not THAT nasty) strain of the flu going around” = fine

“Plague” = “no, seriously, there are bodies piling up in the alleyway, this is an emergency” = ehh, wading into murky waters

If they specifically requested sickfic, I would say they opted in.

+1

I also don't think this is something that people wouldn't have written last year, as a coalie above suggested. For fantasy and historical canons, it's a pretty obvious storyline for sickfic.

I think the wank would be the general/average reader having a “what the fuck is wrong with you” reaction combined with people thinking writing it unprompted is Bad. If you remember the polls/opinions about this here and at FFA, a lot of people thought outright requesting it was NAGL because who knows if your author was impacted. So OP is risking their rep even if the recip likes it should it happen to strike a tome deaf cord that hits critical mass.

(Obviously they don’t have to care! But exchanges are a social thing and if it bothers you to be disliked, it’s worth noting.)

DA

Some wankers will always dislike you for something, especially in fandom, where the most harmless things will be construed as 'problematic' in certain circles.

Fantasy sickfic isn't Covid fic, but even IF someone specifically opted in to Covid fic and someone else wrote it for them, I would judge the hell out of anyone who'd judge then for it. It's not up to you to decide how other people are allowed to cope with this hellish year. And I say this as someone who DNWs any kind of illness in their fic because of health anxieties. "Don't like, don't read" doesn't just apply to ships and kinks.

ayrt

I understand. I’m just saying that clearly OP is concerned, and for stuff like this, where a mass event impacts a lot of people negatively, the author will have to deal with more than the recip. Don’t like, don’t read is nice for us to say in theory, but if you care about your reputation or just aren’t interested in rocking the boat, actions have consequences in social situations. Even if it’s quiet judgement and not death threats in the comments, we all decide what our hills are, especially for unprompted tropes.

AYRT

Sure, but my point is that the only way to escape judgement is not to post anything publicly, because I guarantee you that someone out there will be judging you for the fandoms, characters, ships, kinks, and tropes you write no matter what. "Will this be something the recip enjoys or is there a chance it will upset them" is a legitimate concern. "Will a random reader judge me for it" isn't, because the answer is always "yes".

Re: Need an Opinion, Coal

(Anonymous) - 2020-12-23 10:33 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Need an Opinion, Coal

(Anonymous) - 2020-12-23 10:44 (UTC) - Expand

NA

My recip DNW'd "real world tragedy," but requested a fandom that is extremely pandemic-dependent. They're getting a fic with 2020 as the setting and all that implies, but no specific references to illness or loss.

It was definitely a weird needle to thread, but I had a lot of fun writing the fic.

Tag it well and quote the prompt in an author's note if you're really worried about this.

+1 I mentioned a canon-related plague-adjacent idea as one of several prompts without even thinking about covid (for once) because I'd wanted that fic before covid existed and still wanted it, and it didn't occur to me until too late to edit my letter in light of this year being this year.

If they prompted sickfic, I still wouldn't do an outright covid AU, but they opted into infectious disease in general.

Most sickfic I've seen is someone getting a cold or a fever, and having to be nursed through it. I wouldn't normally think "life threatening illness" for sickfic, which plague is.

Wouldn't that massively depends on the setting? In historical, post-apocalyptic or some fantasy fandoms, "a cold or a fever" IS a life-threatening illness.

Incidentally, in my fandoms, h/c and sickfic is mostly synonymous with "moderately serious but non-lethal gunshot wound", so this is probably canon-dependent.

Yeah, in most of my fandoms sickfic and h/c involve hospital trips because someone was too independent/broken/worried-about-seeming-weak to let their partner know how bad the flu/gunshot/being-beaten-half-to-death/etc had gotten.

I have been told there are fandoms where sickfic literally just means a bowl of chicken soup and a cold compress and some cuddling, but... that has not been my experience :P

It's hard to answer the question without knowledge of the fantasy world of the canon or the details of the recip's request. If they're generally looking for light romance to which the h/c is a just a vehicle for, I would go for something less serious. If they're into angst and world building and potentially darker fic and (different kinds of) plagues are canon-typical, it sounds fine.

I don't think a generic plague in a setting different from our own would immediately bring on COVID associations, unless you deliberately write them in by making the circumstances similar to current events. If anything, my real world association would be the actual plague.

I think it's fine, as long as you don't give it the symptoms very specifically associated with Covid and not much else, like loss of taste.

I just finished watching a recently made (during Covid times) historical show which had a whole plague/mysterious lung disease plotline and it didn't occur to me to link them at all because they were very different beasts and the past is riddled with various plagues and mysterious lung diseases.

I'm sure there are people out there who can't do any mention of infectious disease right now but they're probably not asking for sick fic with no qualifiers.

I would write the sickfic h/c.

I would not make the sickfic at epidemic- or pandemic- level in the setting world. Keep that stuff at a level closer to "oh there's a thing going around"/"yeah Fred had that thing a month ago and it's a nasty one"

I would not use a respiratory illness. (so that rules out cold, flu, whooping cough)

I would not give it commonly death-causing attributes.

Most people don't want poop or vomit in their fic so that excludes GI distress, though if you go the vague route of "can't keep anything down/fever/chills/feels awful" you might be able to swing it.

Injured people can be more whiny and annoying than h/c miserable so that's a take it or leave it. (I say this as a person who gets whiny and annoying when I'm injured.)

Something like strep or scarlet fever are contagious to people who've had them before, so that might be a non-starter if you want lots of gentle physical contact.

Headaches/migraines are pretty common so if you get it wrong and your recip also has migraines it could annoy them.

I'd go with making up a disease like mono or a fictional childhood disease that Comforter has had but Hurtee has not, like an in-universe mumps, chickenpox or measles. Maybe the Local Moms all bring their noisy zoomy children around to catch the lurgy and get it over with? So now Hurtee is exhausted from their sick and completely mentally wiped from helping entertain all the littles.

DA

I would go with fictional mono myself. Lethargy, loopiness or dizziness, feeling achy. It gives you opportunities for cuddling, massages, taking care of things around the house for them, and confessing things they might have wanted to keep secret. No threat of death, and no gross body stuff.

If you want some pining for an established ship or some fake outs, going full mono so they can’t be intimate until the illness passes can lead to bonus UST/pining too.

AYRT Also some people get it and don't have any symptoms (lucky bastards)

DA

I mean, mono is often caused by Epstein-Barr virus, and once you went through an infection, it means you have a higher chance of getting lymphoma later in life, so I'm kind of boggling at the idea of mono of all things as a good example for a consequence-free kind of disease to model your h/c fic after.

(Do I think this should necessarily stop you? No. But it's not a better, and certainly not less controversial option than a simple cold.)

I mean, eating too many bananas also puts you at a higher chance of getting cancer later in life. Living in Nevada puts you at a higher risk of getting cancer later in life. Acute respiratory distress syndrome is likely to kill you a lot faster than an increased chance of lymphoma from having mono.

OP wouldn't be writing random cancer fic featuring the lymphoma the character acquired from having had mono--that would be bad.

The salient thing right now is that mono/epstein-barr is less likely to hit any given recip's sars-cov-2 pandemic-related buttons than pretty much any respiratory-related disease. If they have a specific trigger or squick around epstein-barr then they need to stick that in their DNW.

Plus, it's fantasy mono: Another layer of removal from reality. Fantasy mono doesn't give you cancer because fuck cancer.

Re: Need an Opinion, Coal

(Anonymous) - 2020-12-23 23:29 (UTC) - Expand

This comment has reminded me of how much I love sickfic. Thanks coalie.

Re: headaches/migraines - I've written stories where the character gets the exact same kind of migraine that I and my sis get, and have comments telling me I'm "wrong" because that isn't how *they* get migraines. Like, the fact that migraines manifest in more than one way completely escapes some people.

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