coaltide | Delay? Deny? Depose

That sounds like you have spectacularly bad luck with exchange gifts. Sorry, coalie.

This has come up recently, so I'm wondering about it.

Assuming that you (otherwise?) act in accordance with respectful views on real-life people who use these labels:

Do you think it's OK to DNW trans characters?

Are there situations where it is okay and it isn't okay?

Are there other types of minority identity where a DNW like this is okay and when it isn't? What are the differences?

Does it matter if we're talking about headcanons or interpretations of characters who exist, or if we're talking about original characters? Background or main? Does the length or size or theme of the fanwork matter?

Some views I've seen: your DNWs are purely your preferences for what you want to see in a specific fanwork that will be created for you along with some other specifications. What you receive as a gift, and are expected to respond warmly to, is different to what you're happy to have exist or what you might read/view casually. So it's OK to say "DNW: trans characters" because that might not be what you want to read about for today's gift exchange, and readers should not take this personally. People saying this have also pointed out that trans people sometimes have this DNW because they don't want to deal with clumsy, alienating, or dysphoria-inducing portrayals of their own identity.

I've also seen the view that "DNW: trans characters" is hostile and alienating to trans participants in exchanges, and even if the person with the DNW doesn't intend the hostility, the negative effect is real. It feels unacceptable to some participants to be told to read this as neutral - and it especially feels othering and unfair when "It's okay to DNW: trans" doesn't seem to fly for certain other identities.

and in case it needs to be said

trans rights are human rights, asexuality is real and people can be real jerks about it, Israel is committing genocide in Gaza AND antisemitism in general is foul. To speak non-exclusively of some identities that often come up in DNW debates.

in exchanges i do, this mainly seems to come up re headcanons so i think it's fine to dnw headcanons. i haven't seen any such dnws applying to canon trans characters. i dnw a ton of headcanons myself. not necessarily because i hate them even but because i don't know if a random exchange writer can pull something like that off.

i don't read or write ow so i can't really speak about that.

if someone is all "trans chars are gross and icky and i don't want to see them, ever anywhere" that's not cool.

/trans coalie

I think it's always fine to DNW any form of non-canonical interpretations of existing canon characters, including DNWing writing them as trans if they're not canonically trans, and also fine to DNW a fic that focuses on trans issues, whether that might be for dysphoria-based reasons, wariness of clunky didactic writing, or just not wanting that to be taking up significant pagetime in your 1k exchange fic where you were asking for ninja wizard space battles. I would certainly look pretty askance at someone trying to outright DNW any mention of random background trans people even existing, but I can't say I've ever seen that.

does calling it a 'headcanon' vs an 'interpretation' matter to you or is it all about the same? i've seen people say that headcanon is presumptive/insulting because actually we have no evidence many characters are cis - fans just don't know either way (or fans assume they're cis because, say, they were created in an environment where it's likely trans identity wasn't on the creators' radar at all). that assumes that headcanon has the implication it's only your theory rather than being supported by canon.

I'd consider them more or less synonymous, I guess? I would tend to read "headcanon" with its original meaning of something that's fully compatible with available canon evidence but not canonically confirmed, so I would argue that if there's no clear canon confirmation either way then "trans X" and "cis X" are both headcanons and it would be equally reasonable to DNW making the character explicitly cis.

SC

Oops, BTW, I'm the other coalie in this thread, not the one you were replying to, got confused by threading.

CYRT

Makes sense to me.

I think sometimes people try to cover every possible issue with DNWs and that can end up making things messy. People used to just say you could ask for no unrequested gender or sexuality headcanons and figured that covered it without singling out a specific identity. Then there was handwringing over the tiny minority of people who don't see their identity beliefs about a character as being a headcanon and how they might write it anyway because it's not against the DNW. So people ended up getting more and more specific in their requests, and adding more in an attempt to leave no loopholes. There's also people who want to avoid a fic being focused on gender or identity issues, and DNW them as a whole to avoid people rules lawyering over whether or not the topic is a focus of the fic

Personally so long as people are phrasing their DNWs neutrally, and are not being offensive in their wording, then I think it's better to look at their requests in good faith, and not automatically assume the worst.

DA (cis, in case that is relevant - not expecting others to disclose though!) - also sorry, I wrote an essay

I would certainly look pretty askance at someone trying to outright DNW any mention of random background trans people even existing, but I can't say I've ever seen that.

Before last week I would have said "agreed 100%" to this, but the discussion on FFA gave me a slightly different perspective.

People were arguing that trans depictions can be such a minefield for them that they prefer to read about trans characters only on their own terms, not in a gift fic. After all, you can't DNW bad writing, but you can DNW topics that have a high likelihood of pissing you off - or worse - handled badly. Or even topics that have a high likelihood of pissing you off - or worse - even if they're handled well, but where you may have days you don't want to read about them even if handled well.

Obviously, this is an extraordinary requirement. Like you said, trans people existing is a neutral default (we will leave aside the opinions of our least-favorite conservative-voting relatives). So on the face of it, "I don't want to think about trans people even existing" feels outrageous.

On the other hand I guess sometimes someone doesn't even want to think about dysphoria being possible. I get that being trans doesn't always mean dysphoria. But it does a lot of the time.

Admittedly I'm speculating here. All I know is that the conversation seems to have gone:

A: "You seriously mean you can't deal with the mention of a trans person in your gift fic?"

B: "Yes, seriously. The mention of trans identity in a gift fic would change this from a gift I wanted to get to being a gift I had a negative reaction to." (Sometimes with the addition: "Also, I'm trans.")

And it feels like there are two ways to go from there. One is: even if B is serious, that's such an offensive thing to say that they need to manage their needs in some other way that avoids conveying this sentiment. Like, maybe they should only sign up to low-min exchanges, request cis (/cis-assumed) characters, and say DNW trans heacanons, DNW original characters. Maybe they should only sign up to exchanges where you're encouraged to bake relationship-to-gender into the tags (if there are any). Maybe it's their duty to positively signal that they welcome other trans creators' experiences and expressions, because the default society position is so inimical.

The other way is: aside from the offense issue, what does this mean for the writer? Some things I can think of: no explicitly trans OCs (but it ought to be okay not to make them explicitly cis). No plots about trans identity. No trans headcanons. And trans headcanons are already considered a reasonable DNW by many mods, so what remains is largely the OCs.

That is less fun for the writer if writing about trans identity is a huge source of joy for them in fandom. But it also seems like a reasonable level of flexibility to require of any writer in a gift exchange context, especially because I think it can go both ways: if B can request that no characters are explicitly trans or heavily hinted to be trans, I think it would be fair to DNW characters being explicitly cis or heavily hinted to be cis.

(I'm probably averagely ignorant for a cis person, and I'd do my best to obey the instruction "DNW: explicitly cis characters". Depending on the canon, or the tropes involved, I might need to seek clarification through the mods for how to carry that out, especially for higher wordcounts. But that's okay.)

I think it would be a bad sign if "DNW: trans characters" was a growing trend. Specifying what identities are and aren't allowed to appear in the background of your fic already feels like micromanagement to me. That's true even when people who hold those identities don't have to deal with "Sure would be nice if you didn't exist" in their actual day to day.

So if someone is doing it casually, that feels like railroading to me, with a lack of care for others on top.

And if you aren't doing it casually, you're exposing your own vulnerabilities. And exposing yourself to criticism.

So there are a lot of reasons to ... not do that, and find other solutions if you can.

I guess I arrive at place where, if you say DNW: trans characters (maybe "explicitly trans characters" is better), I can accept some morally neutral reasons for doing that, and I'd focus on how to create a gift you like. But if anything else sounded like a dogwhistle, I'd be skeeved out and think that "DNW: trans characters" came from a bigoted place.

And I don't know how to tackle the other minorities question. I've seen people say "DNW: Jewish characters unless you're Jewish[ or consult with a Jewish person who can do a sensitivity read]" - and most of the contention in that case seems to be about outing yourself as an identity via your writing choices. That angle also comes up a lot with neurodivergence.

Perhaps it shouldn't be necessary for someone to be able to think of *a* reason that you could "legitimately" DNW an identity in your gift fic. If I see "DNW: YOUR blorbo, yes yours," I shouldn't have to go on a mental journey to persuade myself that some people who hate blorbo are good people. I just need to use this as a programmatic instruction: don't write blorbo. But I think it is reasonable to go on that journey when "DNW: [thing]" *is* a threat in other contexts.

I don't know how often a bare "DNW: trans characters" comes up either. FFA mentioned it had come up once last year in Goreswap, but I couldn't see that in the app, at least.

Oh, fuck off.

I am completely uninterested in reading about trans identity, journeys, or bodies.

So I DNW it for the same reasons why I DNWed poly when I saw that rosefox was around: if you don't DNW trans altogether, there's a chance that you will get them from evangelizers who cannot resist putting their unasked-for headcanons into giftfic.

Trans rights are human rights and I'm sure many poly people are lovely. But I'm tired of people getting in their feelings that I don't want a fic written for me to be all about their desires.

"but the discussion on FFA gave me a slightly different perspective"

Noooobody here cares. Take this shit back to FFA.

This has come up recently

At FFA! Go blab about it on FFA!

k

I can see it hitting a little differently considering how trans people are treated in the media and the law vs poly people. Not that poly people always have it perfect, but, you know, it's not the same. (I can say that, I'm poly. Sure, we have our own angst, but we aren't an oppressed class. I hope I'm lovely! No guarantees though.)

But agreed that a lot of people who are using adjacent DNWs would simply like to avoid specific awkward types of either narrative that they do not enjoy. Taking part in events is fun, but it's effort, and when a large part of the motivation is a gift, it should be a gift you have a reasonable chance of enjoying.

looks like it did need to be said.

shame.

With respect: you seem to be massively over-navel-gazing this to death in search of Correct Answers which don't exist. Competing needs clash, what can be perfectly fine in one situation can be bad in another, and it's always at the end of the day got to be a judgement-based call that some people are going to judge differently. Not much anybody can do except read and write things in good faith, rely on other contextual information to inform their judgement, and sit with the fact that some people's choices are going to hit other people badly without that necessarily meaning either side is being unreasonable or in the wrong.

We're talking about what you want to read in a specific gift fic written for you in an exchange.

"DNW: trans characters" is no more "hostile" than "DNW: therapy" or "DNW: kidfic" or "DNW: chronical illness" or any other neutrally phrased. It means that in this specific fic that your authors writes to your preferences AS A GIFT for you, you don't want the plot element you're DNWing included.

Unless the DNW is phrased in an asshole or bigoted way, taking it as a value judgement is antithetical to what exchanges and DNWs are supposed to be, and it's excessively stupid to speculate about the reasoning behind it. Sure, maybe the person DNWing therapy is a scientologist who doesn't believe in mental illness. Maybe the trans DNW is a transphobic bigot. Or maybe they have personal reasons they don't want to and should not need to disclose. Or maybe they just don't want the thing in a gift fic because they don't trust a random author to handle it well.

If you don't understand that, I don't think you should be doing exchanges (and you also should take a good long look at your own DNWs and ask yourself if those really are meant as value judgements or if you're making an exception for yourself). You most definitely shouldn't be modding exchanges.

And when it comes to side characters, there's also the more mechanical question of story structure. If you're writing 500-1000 words for an exchange, you need a tight focus and there's no room to go into the back stories and subplots of side characters who should only exist to facilitate whatever blorbos are doing. And while I'm not saying it's totally impossible to go into a side character's background and identity in a fic of that length without either a heavy-handed exposition dump or leaving an unresolved subplot, I can see why you wouldn't want to take that chance.

+1

And while I don't personally care if background characters in my gift fic are trans, I'd prefer if there were no background characters at all to begin with, and if they really had to be (though, real talk, there have been exchanges where I flat-out DNWed characters others than [requested ship]), their role would be kept to an absolute minimum.

Nah this is fine

It's also how fandom likes to write identity fic that gets identity fic DNW'd. Maybe the requester doesn't want to read 1k of dysphoria or a trans character dealing with transphobia.

+gazillion

Delay? Deny? Depose

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