coaltide | Demure

CYRT

Unless you are a bad faith asshole, you're going to write something that includes the characters they asked for acting in character in a canon or at least canon-like setting;

So: I'm not trying to be antagonistic, I just find it interesting that there's already an asterisk attached to the "whatever you feel like" thing - but you think it would be bad faith to write an IN SPACE! AU (for instance) for a blank sign-up, then?

It's called "reading the room" and if you can't do it, you shouldn't do Yuletide.

CYRT

I really really doubt that "You shouldn't write setting change AUs for a blank sign up" is the common sense consensus you're implying it to be.

It is though.

+ 100

It's the minority opinion of a few overinvested anons on coal and meme. And even there it's a controversial opinion.

of course it is, you nutjob.

DC

I prefer the way someone else put it in a comment here: for a blank sign-up, you should write "a good faith attempt to write something that invokes canon using the characters in ways that reflect their canon characterisation"

https://coaltide.dreamwidth.org/8335.html?thread=18327183#cmt18327183

And if you can do that with a setting change AU, say by using the setting change AU to explore something you love or find interesting about canon characterization, you may be successful.

Of course, most writers (including myself) are not very skilled and can't always pull this off. So I'd downgrade it to "risky" rather than "obviously a faux pas".

DC

I personally think an In SPACE! AU is okay.

As a non-hypothetical example, one year, Elf wrote an omegaverse AU for a blank sign-up for Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1991). I remember reactions were mixed and I've flip-flopped on it a bit myself.

Pro:
-blank sign-up
-was written because the author thought it would be fun and felt freed by a blank sign-up
-was something that was reeeelatively trendy and so perhaps could have been predicted

Con:
-was very cracky (though that's a matter of execution)
-was not canon-typical
-author's note "you had a blank sign-up, so..." was read by some as "you deserved it", that may be insane though

I guess I think it was a bad idea but not crossing a line, and the reason I think it's a bad idea is that a crack AU with gender essentialism parts changes so much about the canon that it exceeds a level of acceptable risk for me. You're really going beyond "what I know my recipient likes" here.

I thought it was a dick move at the time, and after some reflection I do not think it is a dick move. Just not one I would have made.

TBH, the coal scrutiny associated with writing anything but bland tame stuff for a blank sign-up alone seems like reason enough to play it safe rather than actually write what you want, as coalies keep saying you should.

Nah, you can't pick what coal/the claw will scrutinize.

"Read the room" doesn't require blandness/tameness (and plenty of the 2edgy4u shit people write is, in fact...bland).

Tangent but this is my reason for DNWing noncon and other common squicks/triggers. I'm not squicked or triggered. I find most edgy shit written by the exchange crowd bland, dull, and tryhard. I'd rather read babyfic. It's not more readable but the authors don't tend to be up their own asses about how ~deep~ they are while the baby gets burped.

NC

I wasn't there for this example, but omegaverse is so endemic to fic culture that I don't find it crosses a line (even if I wouldn't do it... Maybe). But I have a better example. One year there was some AU where characters were in hospital because of eating disorders when there's nothing in canon about any of this. It was for a blank signup. Now, *that* I think is a dick move and a terrible idea, even if it's technically allowed.

Agreed. Too low on the "could you have reasonable expected this, based on canon?" scale, and too high on the "too likely to be actively upsetting" scale.

The thing is that omegaverse is built off a lot of the tropes of sexist oppression, which is something that it's likely that your recip has had some experience with. You have a greater chance of hitting a recip who's been sexually harassed or sexually assaulted or hit a significant barrier due to sexism than to hit a recip with eating disorders.

I don't think omegaverse is "so endemic to fic culture" at all. It's a large AU in some fandoms. That's it.

Omegaverse is still a fantasy trope though where the sexual oppression that exists is several layers removed from the real world. Eating disorders are very much real world issues.

Also, omegaverse is fairly popular, eating disorders popping up in fic when there's no canon basis for it is vanishingly rare. So omegaverse is much more in the "they should know it's not unlikely to appear and DNW it if they don't want it" than random eating disorder fic.

Eating disorders therefore presumably exist in the world of the canon, while omegaverse does not. It's therefore far more of a step away from the canon setting and situation. It's precisely this lack of canon basis that means that people shouldn't have to specify it as a DNW as they shouldn't be at risk of getting it unprompted. Just like they shouldn't be at risk of getting the fic where A and B and C are part of a swarm of bees and D is an anteater.

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