And another one!

[coalcube]

I see my nemesis getting a fic that I love
And I'm like, "Fuck you" 
I guess my 10k letter wasn't enough
I'm like, "Fuck you and fuck morbane, too"
Said, "If I was a long commenter, they woulda gamed for me"
Ha, now ain't that some shit?
(Ain't that some shit?)
And although there's pain in my chest
I still comment it's the best
And runs to coal to shout "Fuck you" 

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Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Say the DNW character is Batman, and the requested characters are Robin and Alfred. (Caveat: I am, at best, distantly familiar with Batman stuff.)

One could write a story about Robin and Alfred are hanging out in the "Manor," with no reference to Master Wayne. (Where's Master Wayne? Not important. He's just Not Here Right Now, and Robin and Alfred are incurious about his whereabouts, so incurious that they never think about him at all.)

One could write a story where Robin and Alfred take down some Gotham City criminals. (Where's Batman? Not important. Robin is on the case, Alfred is along to assist/supervise, nobody in the story pauses long enough to consciously wonders where Batman is.)

One could write a story where Robin and Alfred go on a picnic, or are kidnapped by the Joker, or visit Arkham Asylum. Where's Batman? Nobody stops long enough to wonder why he's not around. He's not important in this exact story-moment; Robin and Alfred have better things to think about and talk about.

Obviously, canonically, Robin and Alfred only know each other due to Batman; obviously he "exists" beyond the fringes of the no-Batmans-allowed fanfic. But there's no necessity for him to be foremost in the minds of the characters when they're off doing their own thing. They can just...not think about him, ever. Poof. He's gone.

[(Anonymous)]

Doctor Who example coalie:

I just don't think you could do this, either. A story where Robin and Alfred get kidnapped by the Joker or fight crime or visit Arkham and neither of them ever, even just once, thinks about Batman? That would be weird and stilted and OOC. They would! They would think about Batman if they were kidnapped by the Joker! Maybe all they would do is think "Batman is currently in space with the JLA so we're on our own" but if neither of them even thought about it that would feel wrong. I mean I suppose I could do it if I had to but it would feel like I was deliberately writing badfic where all the emotional arcs that should be there were missing and there were giant plotholes.

I might do the picnic, or "Alfred helps with homework" or something, by resigning myself to doing a boring plotless thousand words. Sure, you can work around anything by writing badfic. But I wouldn't like it.

It wouldn't have to be about Batman, it could absolutely focus on their relationships with each other and them kicking ass on their own. But you'd ask for that by saying that's what you want it to focus on, not by DNWing Batman.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

I might do the picnic, or "Alfred helps with homework" or something, by resigning myself to doing a boring plotless thousand words. Sure, you can work around anything by writing badfic. But I wouldn't like it.

I don't see why a fic like that would be badfic? Slice-of-life fics can be great. Maybe they're not your thing in general, but they're only badfic if they're badly written.

[(Anonymous)]

Right, slice-of-life fic can be fine and not boring, but if I steered away from anything that came close to referencing Batman, I would end up writing something flat and boring and that probably had no kind of arc to it at all.

Like if I got a prompt to write 1000 words of Alfred helping Robin with homework, and there was no DNW, it probably still wouldn't have much Batman in it, because actually Alfred and Robin *are* cool on their own and don't need to constantly revolve around him. But to give it enough emotional resonance to try to work as as story and not just 1000 words of algebra problems, I would probably have something about Alfred thinking about when Bruce was a kid, and his mixed feelings on how early the Robins are working in heroes in comparison, and Robin would be dealing with expectations and the complications of having a foster/found family helping with homework instead of their bio parents, and probably at some point Alfred would tell them a story about Young Bruce, and maybe Robin would get to learn some things about who Alfred was before being Batman's butler and what he gave up to do that and how he made those choices, and maybe they'd talk about Robin's school and some of the social issues of being Bruce Wayne's teenage ward, and to stay under 1000 words I'd probably come up with a lot of things I'd like to have as emotional undercurrents in the story and cut half of them.

But if I cut all the ones that had anything at all to do with Batman, all that would be left would be a couple of generic people doing algebra problems, and it would be badfic.

[(Anonymous)]

Ayrt

Or you might write the same fic from Robin's POV and have him think about his bio parents, and build the emotional arc from there. Dick remembering how his mom used to help him with homework and how after his parents' deaths he never thought he'd have this again, Jason or Tim marveling at how they never had this, Damian thinking about how different things were with the League.

If you can't write about two characters - any two characters - without either falling back on their connection to a third character or writing badfic, that's a you problem.

[(Anonymous)]

Do you think you could write about Dick remembering his mom and his parents' deaths and how he didn't think he'd have family again after that and not have it be at least a little bit about Bruce? Really?

I mean, I think we are mostly just working from a different definition of what counts as involving Bruce.

[(Anonymous)]

Ayrt

Yes, I think you could easily make his feelings about his present situation all about the scene you're actually writing, which involves him and Alfred and not Bruce. Does he generally think of Bruce when he thinks of found families etc? Sure. But that doesn't mean he'll think about Bruce every time, and that it's OOC for him to spend a 1k or even 3k scene just thinking about his relationship to Alfred instead.

I don't think the issue is that we have different definition of what counts as involving Bruce, it's that we approach fanfic and character dynamics differently.

[(Anonymous)]

You may be right! And probably if I actually sat down and wrote it out in an actual scenario I would find myself writing more specifics to the situation and less the kinds of things I mentioned above. Like if the prompt was "Alfred gives Tim advice about Bernard" or something I might not even notice if Batman didn't come up, because that's going to be about parts of their lives that aren't really about Bruce at all.

And certainly there are people who don't really write with much interiority at all where it would be way less of an issue, and that could still be good fic.

But with the DNW in play, even in a situation that doesn't need to be about Bruce I would still feel like I was tiptoeing around the existence of Batman in their lives and why in this specific fic they aren't thinking about him even in situations where they generally would.

[(Anonymous)]

It seems like you think very little of the character of Robin.

[(Anonymous)]

+1

Robin's not just an extension of Batman. Neither is Alfred.

[(Anonymous)]

I was trying to stick with a generic Robin there since we haven't specified one. If I was writing Teen Titans Go! Robin the details would obviously be different than if I was writing Steph.

[(Anonymous)]

DC

I mean, you can very easily imply Batman without ever having to mention him at all? Like, "Robin definitely wasn't supposed to try to handle the Joker on his own, but the JLA were in space and there was no one else that he could risk calling in," or, "If he got out of this alive or he was going to be grounded until he was thirty," or, "All those mind-numbing hours of going through emergency drills down in the Batcave were paying off now," or whatever similar thing suits the situation at hand.

[(Anonymous)]

But would that comply with "DNW even a trace of Batman"? Surely implying that there is someone giving him drills in the Batcave or grounding him or setting limits on what he can take on is more than a trace of Batman.

I could even write an entire fic solely about Robin's relationship with Batman without ever mentioning him by name or epithet or having him appear onscreen! But a DNW isn't about avoiding saying certain words.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, firstly, this isn't the "DNW even a trace" DNW, the one referenced in the OP was just "I DNW (insert character(s) here)". Otherwise the OP presumably wouldn't have found the question of whether mentions were okay ambiguous enough to ask about!

And secondly it just seems like you're bending over backwards to find reasons to claim this DNW is impossible when it's extremely straightforward and I don't see how it would be particularly difficult even in 1k of canon-typical casefic. I've read plenty of actual Batman comics where the characters manage to go for whole pages without mentioning or thinking about Batman.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, the point of my original Doctor Who example is that you probably could do it pretty easily most of the time. Robin and Kid Flash on a date actually might not reference Batman at all and it would be fine! Robin working a case on his own against one of his own baddies could just focus in on the case! Alfred probably goes and visits a lady friend on the town on his afternoons off and they have a date at a shooting range and he puts Bruce out of mind entirely! Just because someone is the protagonist doesn't mean literally everything revolves around them. But there are some combos of characters where you really can't completely erase a third person from their dynamic, because that dynamic does revolve around the third person.

[(Anonymous)]

I remember the good old days, when most people's DNWs were just scat and watersports.

[(Anonymous)]

all my dnws are "guy who wrote this specific fic for me that I really hated and had to truly scrape the barrel to comment on, don't do that again"

[(Anonymous)]

They would think about Batman if they were kidnapped by the Joker!

If I were kidnapped by the Joker, I'd be too busy thinking about the Clown Prince of Crime to think about anything else.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, Jason Todd canonically thinks about Batman, so...

[(Anonymous)]

dc

That doesn't mean that he (or any Robin) has to do that in a fic! "This happens in canon" doesn't mean "if this doesn't happen in the fic, the fic will be OOC".

[(Anonymous)]

Even if I wasn't hoping for superhero help, I would probably be thinking about the people I love who would be worried about me if they knew.

[(Anonymous)]

There are multiple issues of Nightwing and various Robin titles in which Batman is never mentioned once. There are multiple issues of Batman specific titles in which the current Robin and Alfred interact in ways that don't mention Bruce at all. Alfred was Dick's butler in Bludhaven for a bit. He was Tim's at Tim's boarding school. He was Damian's guardian during the Bruce is dead thing. If canon can provide multiple examples of these people interacting without mentioning Batman, fic writers can too.