It's always coalest before the dawn

[coalcube]

Posting deadline: 18th December at 9am UTC - may be the 17th in your time zone
Story reveal: 25th December
Author reveal: 1st January

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Comments

Re: Bullets Dodged

[(Anonymous)]

Meanwhile, I know the person who got assigned it and they're so excited you won't believe, so that worked out all round. :D

Re: Bullets Dodged

[(Anonymous)]

I'm glad they didn't screw a writer over but it kinda sucks they're getting the fic of their dreams with a request like that and no outs. It's just going to encourage them to keep doing it.

Re: Bullets Dodged

[(Anonymous)]

I'd kill for a chance to write Ex Machina genderswap but the request itself is kind of a wet fart. I hope your friend writes the hell out of it and I can read it.

Re: Bullets Dodged

[(Anonymous)]

Because of the lack of any outs, or because you didn't like the request itself? I don't know the film personally, but it sounded cool to me.

Re: Bullets Dodged

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I was all ready to hate it but it's a pretty interesting request (I did watch the movie). I think there should've been more than one option, though.

Re: Bullets Dodged

[(Anonymous)]

NA

I do like fact that they explained how they felt the genderswap could affect the story and the motivations of the characters, and if I were interested in writing something like that I'd find it inspiring.

However, genderswap is a hard DNW for me and I'm sure I'm not the only one (and some people may not be able to write it even if it's not a hard DNW for them), but I'd also find it incredibly awkward to go ODAO on this request because they both express exasperation with the story the original canon told and end the prompt with "I know it's a lot to expect you to tackle all of this, but just...girls. Please just girls.".

In most cases if someone only gives one specific prompt, especially if they have no letter, I'm fine with going ODAO even if there are no outs. ODAO is the assumed out. In this case, the recipient is coming off like it'll Ruin Yuletide if you don't follow these optional details, which is always an awkward situation to be in even if it's well within the rules to ODAO anyways.

Re: Bullets Dodged

[(Anonymous)]

NA: This bugs me about all of these "I only want this one AU" requests. It puts the author in such a tight spot, because it sounds like going ODAO and writing any canon compliant fic isn't something they want. Especially when it's not clear what about the canon they actually like if all they want is for it to be changed in some major way.

Re: Bullets Dodged

[(Anonymous)]

+1

The "AU that's genderswap" is particularly egregious (to me anyway) because someone who asked for A and B presumably wanted them as their canon race/genders. Your only request being "change quite possibly the major reason you offered or ship this thing" is unfair. Save that for a Genderswap Exchange where someone offering the fandom would know that offering two women won't have the writing m/m or vice versa.

It's 1000000% fine to want genderswap and write genderswap and I'm not here to restart that wank. But having it be the only thing you want when almost everyone else wants them as-is is a little D:

Re: Bullets Dodged

[(Anonymous)]

The lack of outs and the part bashing the canon-flavor treatment of robots and gender -- I share the prompter's opinions around that pretty much to a T (which is a big part of why I'd like to read genderswap fic for it where the canon's awful tech bros are awful tech women) but kicking off any request with basically "this canon is shit, fix it" with no other prompts is bad form.