30 Days of Actually Posting

[extrapenguin]

8. Squicks - What are some things that squick you in fandom - not necessarily "icky", though it can be. From anything involving blood, to bad grammar.

Well, a squick is by definition something that makes you go "ew", so ... I, uh, disagree with the posing of this question! It is, however, something that I do think about semi-regularly, as I participate in fanwork exchanges and part of that is figuring out what are the things that I Do Not Want in my gifts. (On a side note, it ammuses me immensely that the whole term for DNWs comes from Backstroke of the West, the bad back-translation of Chinese subs for Revenge of the Sith into English. Do Not Want is the big NOOO Vader gives after waking up in the suit.) So I'm going to just navelgaze about my DNW list.

My current set of DNWs is:

• Setting change AUs (eg: Hogwarts AU, Coffee Shop AU)
• Christianity, mentions of "sinning".
• Humiliation, especially public.
• Unrequested incest, including foster/adopted relationships.
• Stories about motherhood.
• Unrequested het between humans or humanoid creatures. (Dolphins are fine, spiders are fine, people having parents is fine, the fabric of society being canonical and het-enabling is fine.)
• Requested characters being presented as/rendered utterly helpless; the "damsel in distress" trope; woobiefication.
• Stories about mourning unwelcome changes to/realizations about the body, with "body" defined broadly, (ex: acquiring a disability, infertility, weight gain) and the associated grief/angst.
• Stories about mourning a dead person.
• Requested characters dying.
• Stories where the characters have never loved or could never love anyone but each other, incl. soulmates, demisexuality, single-target sexuality, etc.

This is a mix of things that I never want to see again (e.g. Christianity), squicks (e.g. the mourning changes to the body one), stuff that will make me feel bad (e.g. mourning dead people), and stuff where the likelihood of squicking me is so immensely greater than the reward from threading the needle that people should just Not (e.g. soulmates). Most exchange fandom's people's DNW lists are some mix of the above.

This isn't the complete list of things that squick me – merely the ones I really really hate or judge likely someone would in good faith try to give me. There are several sex kinks that I dislike, for instance, but I seriously doubt anyone's going to write me scat, say. (If they do, I'm just going to add that to my DNWs next time.) Also a lot of the things that squick me are less tropes and more nebulous things, like ... well, it has taken me a lot of introspection and figuring things out to get some of those DNWs into a shape that covered at least most of the squick and made sense to people who were not me, like Stories about mourning unwelcome changes to/realizations about the body, with "body" defined broadly, (ex: acquiring a disability, infertility, weight gain) and the associated grief/angst.

There's also the question of DNW exceptions – after some rather hilarious meme doom-mongering about "DNW unrequested relationships" I've added the caveats to my het DNW, since I just don't like het and don't want anything that is or should be tagged as F/M on AO3. I guess I could add that walk-on extras for casefic can also be in a heterosexual (un)happily ever after, but lbr, I'd rather the whole universe be gay. Though not to the extent that the author needs to spend 2k establishing that children come from vats or something. (...maybe this is the actual reason I like Anakin Skywalker, lol. The product of asexual reproduction!)

Anyway, that's the tl;dr for the day! Maybe it inspired you to rephrase a DNW better, maybe you have had a good laugh at my neuroses, but as long as you had fun, it's okay.

(list of questions)

Comments

[nnozomi]

Also a lot of the things that squick me are less tropes and more nebulous things, like ... well, it has taken me a lot of introspection and figuring things out to get some of those DNWs into a shape that covered at least most of the squick and made sense to people who were not me
This is really interesting to me (if you don't mind a personal statement being generalized). I was thinking something like this about why I will watch some dramas but not others, why in certain circumstances a character "threatened with potential torture" doesn't bother me but "pressured to perform well at work" does, for instance. I hadn't considered DNWs as a translation tool for the psyche.

(the "damsel in distress" trope
Somewhere Zhao Yunlan is waving cheerily at you and saying "Subverted that one!".)

[extrapenguin]

I think that familiarity with DNWs and their purpose is more likely to encourage self-reflection? In that one doesn't want a list long enough to make people's eyes glaze over, yet it needs to contain all the relevant bits. And a lot of the time the dislike is based on the emotions and other threads of the scene rather than simply the content. "Translation tool for the psyche" is a remarkably apt description.

Somewhere Zhao Yunlan is waving cheerily at you and saying "Subverted that one!".)
??? Zhao Yunlan comes nowhere near the damsel in distress trope. If he had, I'd have DNF'd Guardian/at best completely ignored the fandom and you wouldn't know I exist. Trust me. (He's a badass normal who occasionally needs assistance dealing with superpowered entities and manages to rescue Shen Wei all by himself!)

[nnozomi]

??? Zhao Yunlan comes nowhere near the damsel in distress trope.
oh no, I was just thinking of the joke he makes about being the hero rescuing Shen Wei the damsel in distress, you know, early on when Shen Wei is being mugged (also the joke's on Zhao Yunlan, who doesn't yet know his damsel is the Envoy). In general terms I'm in full agreement with your description.

[pauraque]

This isn't the complete list of things that squick me – merely the ones I really really hate or judge likely someone would in good faith try to give me

This is the way I do mine, too. I only bother to mention things that a good-faith writer might reasonably think would be okay if I didn't rule them out. If my writer isn't reasonable or operating in good faith, that's a problem I can't fix with my DNW list.

[extrapenguin]

Yep! A bad faith person can always figure out a way to squirm just out of the remit of one's DNWs while producing something one hates. for the good faith people, likes and prompts are a better way of producing direction.

[trobadora]

On a side note, it ammuses me immensely that the whole term for DNWs comes from Backstroke of the West

Right? I love that. :D

This isn't the complete list of things that squick me – merely the ones I really really hate or judge likely someone would in good faith try to give me.

That's how I do mine as well - I don't DNW things I feel wouldn't be given unrequested in good faith anyway.

Also a lot of the things that squick me are less tropes and more nebulous things, like ... well, it has taken me a lot of introspection and figuring things out to get some of those DNWs into a shape that covered at least most of the squick and made sense to people who were not me

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean! By this point I feel I've got the general one mostly nailed down, but I'm still working on the ones that gut-punch me in a particular fannish context, because sometimes it isn't the thing itself, it's the thing in the context of that particular character's circumstances. Every new fandom can bring new ones to the table! /o\

after some rather hilarious meme doom-mongering about "DNW unrequested relationships" I've added the caveats to my het DNW

Heh. I put "unrequested relationships for requested characters", because I really don't want to DNW background ships in most cases, or make writers avoid background characters with their own lives. (I know some people prefer a really tight focus on only the requested ship, but I like it better when there's a whole world around them, even if we don't see much of it.)

[extrapenguin]

I've got the general one mostly nailed down, but I'm still working on the ones that gut-punch me in a particular fannish context, because sometimes it isn't the thing itself, it's the thing in the context of that particular character's circumstances.
I don't really have these, I think? Or the combo of likes + prompts + DNWs means people don't write me stuff that would be okay except for the character's circumstances. Hm.

I know some people prefer a really tight focus on only the requested ship, but I like it better when there's a whole world around them, even if we don't see much of it.
Me too – though if I'm requesting A/B shipfic, I prefer secondary relationships to be stuff like A & C rather than background het. I'm also okay with a bunch of rarepairs, so if someone writes slash or femslash A/Q to my solo A request, I'm not going to be that unhappy. Generally I establish the direction for what sorts of stuff I like with my likes and prompts. I have considered DNWing the whole "really tight focus on only the requested ship, no-one else exists" thing, but it's not been a problem yet.

[china_shop]

This is a mix of things that I never want to see again (e.g. Christianity), squicks (e.g. the mourning changes to the body one), stuff that will make me feel bad (e.g. mourning dead people), and stuff where the likelihood of squicking me is so immensely greater than the reward from threading the needle that people should just Not (e.g. soulmates). Most exchange fandom's people's DNW lists are some mix of the above.

This is interesting and useful. Being still relatively new to current-era exchanges, I tend to take "Do Not Want" more literally, so I include "hurt/comfort" even though it doesn't fit any of those categories. It's just that there's a high likelihood of people writing it, and a low likelihood of my being able to appreciate it properly -- but it's rarely a squick on its own, more just a DGI. (I haven't totally pinned down what elements make it a squick in some instances.)

I feel like there's potentially some kind of formula involving how much you want to avoid something and how likely people are to produce it that could indicate whether or not to include it in a DNW list?

[extrapenguin]

On the rules end, DNWs are stuff where if you get a gift containing it, you're eligible for a new one, so the more seasoned participants (and most rules) say it should be for stuff that would ruin a gift for you. When it comes to the IDGI stuff, I've generally found that having an extensive likes list and some prompts is good enough – your authors will generally go "now, what should I make my recip...", observe the likes and prompts, and get an idea based on that. Of course, in some fandoms, certain tropes or fanonical takes are ubiquitous enough it's better to DNW them if you don't like them, but even then, exchange participants (especially for multifandom exchanges) are not a random selection of people in the fandom and might be doing exchanges because they don't like the fanon/like a different set of tropes.

[tinny]

I really like your last one. :D

I seriously doubt anyone's going to write me scat, say.

Yeah, I see that in DNWs and go... is it necessary to mention this? I feel like it was necessary a decade ago, but I don't know what the difference was. Bigger fandoms?

[extrapenguin]

Multifandom exchanges do have their own culture, and maybe there was more emphasis on "anything for the requested character(s)" and less on "something the recip would like"?

...also, I went and checked when I first signed up for an exchange. It was 2013, which was 8 years ago! Time flies. (Even if I only properly got into multifandom exchanges in 2016.)