A poll about gen fanfic

[alias_sqbr]

This post is about fanfic. If you are not into fanfic, just be grateful I used a cut and scroll on...

In Words, Words, Words pandarus talks about the way fanfic about same sex couples get classified as "slash" when the equivalent story about an opposite sex couple would get classified as "gen", and in the comments gives a specific example ("Child via mpreg is read a story" below) which really got me thinking.

So, first, a poll, about different types of stories. It doesn't matter what definition of gen you use, as long as you're consistent. Assume these hypothetical stories are otherwise totally free of references to sex and romance.

[Poll #1392668]
(Sorry for the stark same sex/opposite sex dichotomy, but the whole slash/het divide isn't really designed for the possibility of trans/intersex/genderqueer characters. Or threesomes etc. Someone else will have to do another poll :))

I must admit I'm guilty of this myself. I tend to classify borderline stories as not-gen if the mentioned couple sticks out at me, and having been raised on a diet of heteronormative fiction where any two members of the opposite sex can plausibly get together with no warning, but none of the same sex ones can, it's the same sex couples that tend to jolt me more. Now I'm not one of these people who gets really uptight about categories, and I read plenty of (boy and girl) slash, but I still don't think it reflects very well on me.

I don't have a paid Dreamwidth account or I'd post over there with my nice comments policy. So assume it applies, though even if you don't like it you're welcome to take the poll.

(*)I am thinking of a Spike/Buffy story I read once. I don't think the child's conception was ever explained. Maybe Spike had become human? I back-buttoned pretty quickly :)

Comments

[lizbyrd.livejournal.com]

I am pretty staunch about gen = no romance at all, but I decided to make allowances there for canon partnerships.

Your last question is something I've been thinking about recently, because the effect of having canon GLBT characters is to make slash less plausible in my head (which caused writing my Richard Jury fic to require an awful lot of maneuvering the characters into the state of mind where their relationship would be plausible).

[edible-hat.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what any of this is about, in my opinion fanfic is for people not creative enough to invent their own characters and settings.

[alias_sqbr]

I used to think that and now I write it, there is nooooo escaaaaape :D

*Adds "if you do not like fanfic do not read this post" disclaimer*

[havocthecat]

Yeah, the general definition I've seen for gen is no pairings at all, whereas het is opposite sex pairings, and slash/femslash are for same sex pairings.

[lizbyrd.livejournal.com]

Hehe, general definition. XD

I do constantly see (on del.icio.us and reclists) people tagging het fic as gen if it isn't explicit, and just... no! That's not what gen is!

[elaran.livejournal.com]

If you are not into fanfic, just be grateful I used a cut and scroll on...
This made me smile

I quite liked that post but hadn't gotten around to commenting. I also agree that a lot of people seem to think that slash = more sexytimes automatically than het fic which wtf, OR NOT. [I think most of my super favourite fics tend to be slash fics that are... um, curtain!fic to put it one way.]

Argh you have hard questions. I second Liz in that at first I was all NO MUSHY LOVEY DOVEY STUFF for gen.

I don't know, would you classify Freedom's Just Another Word... (http://www.kekkai.org/synecdochic/sga/freedoms_just_another_word.html) as gen or slash? It has no implications of romance but the whole fic is Rodney mourning and learning to live without Sheppard [and McShep is not a canon pairing]. To me, the fic is slash. [Also it really threw me to realise that people considered the fic gen O_o]

Gen!fic is like team!fic for me - it's about other things than romance.

I tend to classify borderline stories as not-gen if the mentioned couple sticks out at me
Canon pairings [regardless of m/m or m/f - though canon is so very het usually] mentioned in gen!fic is a-ok for me but any other pairings - even ones that I support - if they're not canon, jar me when I'm reading the fic.

[havocthecat]

I know! I don't get that! I might define something as gen if it's got blink and you'll miss it pairings of any persuasion, like, someone talking about X character and Y character and how happy they are, but that's about it.

Of course, people automatically assume slash = porny fic, which is also totally not true. I kind of get on people for assuming that, when I want to write femslash about adorable high school aged characters who hold hands and run around a lot, that I want to write porn. But no! Handholding and mild smooching is totally all I'm looking for there. (H2O:Just Add Water, I KNOW, but they're darling.)

[alias_sqbr]

Oh that's interesting. So your logic is what: the fact that same sex relationships have the chance to be on-screen means that any that aren't on screen mustn't exist?

[lizbyrd.livejournal.com]

Something like that. I would put it more like, given that GLBT people are acknowledged as existing in the canon, if Character A is interested in members of his/her own sex it would have been mentioned in canon.

You could probably still work with "Character A is interested in members of his/her own sex and just never realised it before".

[alias_sqbr]

would you classify Freedom's Just Another Word... as gen or slash?
I classify it as slash.

Some non-canon relationships don't bug me as not-gen, it depends on how natural it feels as a necessary part of the plot. Like..if a Bones case file fic started by mentioning that Angela had suddenly married a guy she met in a bar and moved to Alaska, and they had to hire a new artist, and that person turned out to be the murder.

[emma-in-oz.livejournal.com]

Gen = no romance. Adventure, spy stories, children's stories.

Het = primary pairing is het, focus on relationsihp

Slash = primary pairing is same sex, focus on relationship.

[black-samvara.livejournal.com]

*coughs* which tells me I regard 'Gen' as about right-now relationships, not back-when relationships and don't give a damn what gender is involved.

Possibly this is actually a rating thing for me, as I regard 'Gen' as something that won't offend the sensibilities of the kind of people who get offended by err not_gen.

this was a very fast reaction, it may change when I have a chance to think about it more

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

I don't know why you care! I tried to answer your questioned and just failed. I don't classify the stuff I read obsessively!

Though I have found I think of any pairing that is has a / as slash or fanfic in my head. This isn't helped by Chris referring to it all as slash, I think, for a guy that's good with words he gets a lot wrong.

And there is totally a heap of slash OT3's out there. Admittedly a disturbing amount of them seem to be coming from Top Gear fanfic though... and now that I've thought about it, I have no idea what you'd classify as a het threesome. Crazy stuff.

[alias_sqbr]

And then people say "I would read femslash but have no interest in lesbian porn". Bah!

[alias_sqbr]

Because I am a big nerd who liked to over-analyse everything, duh :) (I love any excuse for a poll)

There is a lot of OT3 and OT4 stuff out there, it certainly is one way to short-circuit OTP shipping arguments :) But I think we can both agree the poll was already long enough!

[elaran.livejournal.com]

a het threesome is when there's at least one person of the opposite gender to the other two?

mainly i love obsessively classifying the fics I read for delicious. also some people are goddamn nitpicky about warnings on the stuff the read [which y'know is fine, just that bleh whatever]

[elaran.livejournal.com]

of course, in complete opposite to what i just wrote i realised that i've tagged fics with non-canon pairings as gen but then also tagged them with the couple names. i dunno. like ones with mcshep!kids where mcshep isn't the point, the kid is.

[gemfyre.livejournal.com]

Didn't do the poll.

I do find there are many varying levels of slash fic though -

Characters in homosexual relationship when it is in character (which really isn't slash).
Characters of questionable sexuality in homosexual relationship (one of my favourite pairings like this is Jonathan Crane/Thomas Schiff in the Nolan-Batman fanfic universe - both characters are rather effimate and they work wonderfully as a gay couple).
Characters that are portrayed as heterosexual but could easily swing the other way. (A great example is Eyes Of The Jackal - a Phantom of the Opera fanfic involving Erik and Raoul and a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome).
Characters who are definetely hetero in canon but are made gay just to titilate fangirls.
Characters that would never have sexual relations in canon that are put together to titilate fangirls (while Batman/Joker is a great example of this, I also find some Bat/Joker fics work because they allow for more exploration of the character's psyches - 2 sides of the same coin and all that jazz).

[dr-jekyl.livejournal.com]

Curious about that interpretation. For me, gen is anything that isn't devoted to or focused around a romantic or sexual pairing of any stripe. That can include stories that would generally cary a high rating, for violence, other forms of abuse or drug use, that a wider audience wouldn't find appropriate, or even het and slash readers would find offensive. There seems to be this perception out there that gen writers are just writing safe, pg stories - that's not always the case. It infuriates me no end when people take the stance of 'it's gen, it's not worthwhile because it's not pushing any boundaries'.

[black-samvara.livejournal.com]

I should clarify, by something that won't offend the sensibilities of the kind of people who get offended by err not_gen I mean homosexuality, explicit pornography etc as opposed to violence which people seem to not care about nearly as much.

[dr-jekyl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I thought you'd meant that. My point in response, which I don't think I meant very well, is that there is a lot of gen out there that would offend them anyway. A story containing strong themes of sexualised violence, for example, or purporting atheistic views. Gen isn't necessarily written to cater to the 'gays and porn are evil' crowd, which is what you seem to be implying (but it is late and I'm kinda spacey, so I ma be misreading you).

What do you call the stories that don't focus on shipping of some sort, but would also potentially piss off those who get offended by 'not gen'?

[black-samvara.livejournal.com]

umh.. I call those stories 'Gen' with an adult rating...

[dr-jekyl.livejournal.com]

fair enough :)

[kadeton.livejournal.com]

I use 'slash' as a derisive term anyway, so I'm not particularly worried about using it inaccurately. :P

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

I HAD NOTICED THAT DEAR.

LIKE THE PART WHERE YOU LAUGH YOUR ARSE OFF AT ME READING FANFIC. THAT HAD BEEN NOTICED


:P

[alias_sqbr]

Well, GLBT people are acknowledged as existing in real life (by most people anyway :)), and there have been plenty of GLBT people I've known for years, sometimes quite well, without realising, sometimes because they were closeted or didn't identify that way yet, but often just because it never came up. This is less plausible with first person stories of course :)

[alias_sqbr]

Mm, I think you can't really make broad generalisations, the same basic premise can ping very differently based on execution.

[alias_sqbr]

*nods* It's the stuff on the boundaries that gets tricky.

[alias_sqbr]

I think that's one of the big problems with fanfic categories: they act as both warning and advertisement, and can result in very different expectations.

One of the things I like about gen is it avoids the "The plot is just a device to get the leads together, and will be dropped once that happens" type of story, sometimes I just want a story which isn't about romance or sex. So a G rated canon het romance would still annoy me if it was categorised at gen, while a story where two characters have explicit gay sex that follows naturally from the story and doesn't impinge on the plot much wouldn't bother me so much when I'm in that mood (though I still wouldn't classify it as gen :))

[lizbyrd.livejournal.com]

I'd say, less plausible with viewpoint characters rather than specifically first-person. Certainly with minor characters I could believe it.

But if the main character is a bit of a womaniser I'm going to find it (even) harder to buy that he's bi if there are actual GLBT people in the canon.

[alias_sqbr]

Characters that would never have sexual relations in canon that are put together to titilate fangirls

Het is just as guilty of this :) Though I'm sure many of the authors would argue that they think their stories are entirely plausible, and they just have different visions of the characters.

[pandarus.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that was interesting! And I honestly don't know which way I'd jump on the bereavement or the fight ones - they sound like they'd be slash or het, if the relationship is central to the story, but I think I'd have to go on a case-by-case thing, probably.

Basically, my take on Gen is still that it's a story which isn't about romance or sexual relationships. Which is why I think Best of All (http://pandarus.livejournal.com/265204.html) is Gen. And, in fact, I'd have more readily understood the objection that, no, it's actually Het, since Ruby and Sam are clearly in a relationship in it, and are a bit flirty.

Apparently, though, or so I have been assured, it is actually "Interspecies Rape MPreg." I'm...still rather startled by this assertion, on a number of levels. Evidently one person's wholesome fluff is another person's Interspecies Rape MPreg.

[alias_sqbr]

Yes, I had trouble answering the poll myself :)

*reads story with trepidation*
*squints*

Yeah, het I can see, but the Interspecies Rape MPreg not so much :)

[busaikko]

This is interesting! For the shows that I watch (mostly SFF), I tend to think of gen as "similar to a TV episode". So for me it would be gen if The alarm sounded, and John leapt out of bed to go deal with the week's latest disaster. He dropped a distracted kiss on [Jennifer or Rodney's] forehead as he left .../insert plotty action here/... "Well, we sure killed all of them," John remarked from his infirmary bed, and [Jennifer or Rodney] said, "Do not ever be so reckless again, you mad fool." That is, there can be relationships, but they're more background noise and not focal, if that makes sense. In het or slash, the romantic relationship has a larger role in the story.

[cesy.livejournal.com]

For me, the first question hangs a lot on whether the angsting is about the lack of a specific partner (i.e. sighing over a specific person) or in general about being lonely - the former would not count as gen, but the latter would.

Also, the canon/not-canon divide is key for me, in terms of both the casual mentions and the "casual implications" (I can't think of a better term than that, though that doesn't quite say what I mean) of reading a child a story or having a fight with an ex or angsting over death. But I think that's less about whether it's actually gen or not, and more about whether I'd expect the author to state the relationships in the headers - I don't tend to mind if an author makes a casual mention of a canon relationship in a gen fic, but I'll tend to be thrown if they make a casual mention of a non-canon relationship in a gen fic and they haven't mentioned it in the headers (particularly if the non-canon relationship is incompatible with my personal canon).

[alias_sqbr]

I tend to agree, though I think, from the way people tag their stories, that I have a more narrow definition of "not focal".

[alias_sqbr]

For me, the first question hangs a lot on whether the angsting is about the lack of a specific partner (i.e. sighing over a specific person) or in general about being lonely - the former would not count as gen, but the latter would.

Oh yes, I definitely meant the latter (stupid uneditable polls)

I'll tend to be thrown if they make a casual mention of a non-canon relationship in a gen fic and they haven't mentioned it in the headers (particularly if the non-canon relationship is incompatible with my personal canon).

Yes, me too.

[hyel.livejournal.com]

I sort of consider it gen if a) romance is not the central point of the story, and b) no non-canon pairings are mentioned. So no ticky on angsting about partner or on reading stories to child of a non-canon pairing, although the latter is kind of dubious... It's gen but should at least have the pairing mentioned in the notes somewhere because it might still surprise the person moving in to read it.

[alias_sqbr]

I find non-canon pairings depend a lot on context. I am especially ok with gen stories set in the same universe as slash/het about a non-canon couple, then it makes sense to me to include a reference.

[hyel.livejournal.com]

You mean, for instance, a gen side-story to a pairing fic with a non-canon central pairing, or fic where a non-canonical pairing (not one of either of the main characters of this fic) is not central but mentioned?

Lord love a duck, how complicated this all gets. :D I think in general it's better to just go with what feels right.

On a related note, a friend just suggested the "queerification" tag for fic where a canonically non-queer (or merely subtextually queer) character is presented as queer in the fic without there being any pairings involved. I'm going to start using that!

[alias_sqbr]

You mean, for instance, a gen side-story to a pairing fic with a non-canon central pairing, or fic where a non-canonical pairing (not one of either of the main characters of this fic) is not central but mentioned?

I was talking about the first but the second is gen too, in my book.

And yes, very complicated indeed!