coaltide | Merry Crisis

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2022

Merry Crisis

On the 7^th night of Hanukkah my vindictive author gave to me....

yuletide |

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Okay it's anon confession time, this is my fic

It was meant to end up with Dellun and Junia getting together but I ran out of steam to make that clear

I usually assume that people reading choose not to warn understand it could be anything in the main archive warnings and I wanted to leave it ambiguous rather than make it 'yeah, definitely noncon happened' but I've stuck a tag on it now because I've realised it can actually harm someone

I'm sorry this went badly and will try to learn things for the future

LOOOL, you're telling me coal has been wanking about "untagged xy" when the fic had been tagged CNTW all along?

A true classic.

+1 Honestly... This place is turning as squeamish as FFA.

It's the same anons at both comms. What did you expect?

Oh ok! if he gets together with his rapist and blackmailer that's totally cool.

Very pern of you.

Yeah, it's not the fact that the fic was CNTW rather than specifically tagged that was the problem.

It's that it was a gross transphobic piece of garbage.

A story about a trans character living in a transphobic world, dealing with shit, but coming out on top anyway with his gender publicly affirmed isn't automatically a gross transphobic piece of garbage. Actually.

Yeah sexual assault as backstory becomes transphobic when it's the only story that gets told but also, this is Pern, sexual assault is everybody's backstory.

No, it's not automatically gross transphobic garbage, but that specific fic, which I have read, is.

She's not the rapist and blackmailer, she's the old friend who repeatedly offers him a free out from the coercive environment of the weyr.

--coalie below who's actually read the fucking fic now.

But since that didn't happen in the fic, and it *is* implied in the fic that he's going to have no recourse but to get together with his rapist and blackmailer...

What the author meant to write is irrelevant, since they didn't write it. What they did write is shit.

It isn't though?

He thinks that in the aftermath of the assault, which is pretty realistic sort of thoughts from someone in the aftermath of an assault and in that enviroment, but he impresses Bronze and the rapist doesn't Impress, in Pern context that means he suddenly has enough power and status that he is not going to ever have to. (He might end up doing it anyway if things go really shit but it will be with him in the position of power now, not the other guy.)

He impresses bronze, which means he's going to be forced to out himself to the rider of every dragon his dragon chases, which is potentially many more than if his dragon only rose once in a while.

No? Bronze dragons only have to out themselves to the riders their dragon *catches*, and there are dozens of bronze dragons in every chase, and a good rider has a fair amount of control over who he catches (and can generally choose not to rise.) He could fly in a bunch of flights, never catch anybody on purpose, and people would only think his dragon was a bit shit and/or picky. He could always be somewhere else when gold dragons are rising, and never rise for greens, and people would think he was a bit prudish but bronzes get away with things.

He spends the whole fic thinking he's going to Impress a Green and then he *will* have no choice but to out himself when his dragon flies, and that will just have to be the price of being a dragonrider (and "if I impress a Green I will get raped" is canon whether you're trans or not, if you don't want that mentioned in your Pern fic, DNW it) but he *doesn't* Impress green, so he *won't* have to.

He has to out himself if he wants to have sex in which he's not careful about not outing himself, but would be true regardless.

If you actually are the author, correct the typo in the summary.

Some advice:

Don't try to defend yourself on anon memes. It never works out.

Shift it to a sock and throw it into the anon collection right now. You can always shift it back later.

There are people who haven't and won't read the fic who will insist you are the worst transphobic piece of garbage who ever lived for the next twenty years. My guess is that if you wrote this, you're also trans. You don't deserve the pile-on. Close the tabs to here and FFA, walk away from the story, and again, shift it to a sock for the sake of your own mental health.

^good advice honestly. even if you want to stand by your art, it is not worth a dogpile. take it out of the perm anon collection in a couple years when this has all blown over

+1

Author, you're going to be the subject of some dumb Two-Minutes Hate garbage on the anon-memes for next couple of days, because bored people will want to keep the wank going with increasingly hysterical denunciations of your alleged sins, so just peace out from these spaces for a week.

"Two-Minutes Hate garbage"

You're making Orwell do pirouettes in his grave.

NC

Not a part of this wank and I agree with this comment.

But I wanted to add that I've had good lucky shifting wank on anon memes by just anonymously pointing out facts that have gotten overlooked or disturted.

It doesn't always work but those ruining hot on wank can sometimes completely miss obvious things or interpret things completely different then it was intended.

You can edit and fix all this. I would stick a line or two in there making it clear that...

1. Mirun does not Impress and is taking his toys and going home.

2. The realization that as a bronze rider, he can fly a queen.

3. Possibly just cut the whole outing/blackmail, and instead have him hurriedly dress and take off creeped out but unseen.

It's a good story otherwise!

+1. Maybe also make it explicit that now that he has a dragon he can't be expelled from the weyr even if he's outed, and that as a bronze rider he's way less likely to be forced into sex.

I can see how not making it through your original plan made the ending a bit unclear but it's fixable with minor edits.

Do you see how this is only a problem if you're canon blind, which their recip probably isn't?

ayrt Dunno, I feel like it's a weakness in the story either way, because MC doesn't really get a chance to react to what happened beyond "yay, dragon!" so the tension that was setup earlier isn't fully resolved. Yeah, part of the advantages of fanfic is that you *can* rely on canon knowledge for some of that but it's still a better story if you don't.

Like someone who deeply understands Weyrs is hopefully not going to go the route of the angry person on _coal, but as both the coalie who was infodumping about bronze dragon sexual politics upthread *and* a coalie who has a huge amount of practice at "oh fuck, I am not going to be able to take this bus pass nearly as far as I planned", giving MC even a couple lines to be relieved about the blackmail being irrelevant now would have made it a better story. If you'd made it longer it would have been a *plot point* so you could have waited, but it wasn't, so don't. I don't think the story is transphobic garbage or anything, but I can still see the not-fully-papered-over cracks of it being a fraction of something that was supposed to be bigger, and giving that a more explicit resolution would have helped a lot.

Also recip admitted to not having canon-reviewed lately in their signup. And since it's a nostalgia fandom on yuletide, you gotta assume there will be collection browsers who haven't re-read in twenty years, too. So it will still be a good idea to make things like that explicit for people who aren't fully canon-blind but still mostly only remember the broad outlines.

(I mean I probably wouldn't have been as sure of all that myself if I hadn't written Weyr politics to somebody's prompt a few years back and done a really intense review of all that.)

Oh, this is such useful feedback about story structure and especially in Yuletide in general. I haven't taken part in this discussion because I don't know the fandom, but I appreciate this <3 Thanks coalie!

NA

I would not generally suggest making large edits (like cutting a whole conversation) after reveals unless you check to make sure the recip is okay with it. That's a pretty big no-no. It's supposed to be finished at reveals.

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Merry Crisis

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