Pairing labels

[bluflamingo]

So, I'm sitting here, all ready to draw up a header for the fic I've just finished, and I've got a problem. My header for fic in my journal includes, amongst other things, the pairing, or the main character(s) in a gen piece, because I personally like to know who I'm going to be reading about in a story and so assume other people like to as well.

This is the problem, however: there's a very brief, non-explicit sex scene in this story. It's maybe a couple of hundred words out of a fic that's over 5 1/2 thousand, and while it's an important part of the story, the story isn't about the pairing, the relationship, or sex/romance in any way. Even the sex isn't about those things, it's about comfort between two friends. The story is about John's relationship with his father who's just died.

So, the answer is probably It's your journal, it's your story, label it however you damn well please (or a more polite version thereof) but I'm curious to know how you'd label this in terms of pairings. I want to label it John-centric gen, which it is, but I think if I saw that, I'd be kind of surprised to see a sex scene later on. That said, if I saw a story labelled with a pairing, I'd expect the other half of the pairing to be around more.

Help me - my brain is no longer up to these kinds of complex and vital decisions!

Comments

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

I wrote a Teyla story that I considered gen, but there was an allusion to a night she spent with an original character in the story. Which, like yours, was totally not the point of the story! I labeled it "incidental het, Teyla/m", because people can be very taken aback to come upon a relationship in a story labelled gen. But I feel like that story is gen, really.

It's so tough, sometimes, to decide how to label, but I feel like they're important to help people filter what they do and don't want to read.

[bluflamingo.livejournal.com]

Incidental slash could work, thanks!

I feel like they're important to help people filter what they do and don't want to read

Exactly - I know I use them all the time to find what I want to read, which is why I'm wondering how to do this one.

[auburnnothenna.livejournal.com]

I like thepouncer's suggestion, actually, or you might consider labelling something like adult or mature gen. Or use the ratings system and say something like R-rated Gen. No one would be surprised to see a sex scene in an R rated action film, after all. When this sort of thing starts making me crazy, I tend to strip everything off and just list characters and rating and call it, *gasp* fiction. I don't expect a book cover to tell me everyone the protagonist sleeps with in the story, whether its integral to the plot or not.

[bluflamingo.livejournal.com]

I don't expect a book cover to tell me everyone the protagonist sleeps with in the story, whether its integral to the plot or not

That's true, actually - I never really thought about it before, but I guess we're more interested in seeing the characters we like in fanfic than in original stories, so it matters more? I don't know.

That said, maybe a combination of the two will work: R-rated John-centric gen, incidental pairing.

That pretty much covers all the bases :)

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

Perhaps if you listed the pairings but then also made specific note that that it's not slash or not het (whichever applies.) Or you could call it Grog or Bob, but very few people would know what that means.

I wouldn't call it gen, because there are some gen fans who get really ticked off if anything with noncanonical pairings in it is labeled gen.

[bluflamingo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's why I'm struggling - because it really is gen in its soul (or whatever equivalent stories have!) but it has this one sex scene, which technically makes it a slash story, except that it isn't. But I don't want to, as you say, tick off someone who doesn't want noncanon pairings in their gen fic, which is fair enough. I'd expect my gen fic to be sex free.

Though I have to ask - Grog and Bob?!?

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

There was a big discussion in March of 06 re: the SGA story Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose and whether it was slash or gen (it was John/Rodney, but John had been dead for years at the time the story started, and it was about Rodney and WHAT THEY -- The whole command staff -- DID ON ATLANTIS.) Another one in March of 07 on gen in general. And in one of these discussions, I was introduced to the term, which, honestly, I think was created in a different discussion.

I think alixtii may have come up with Grog, to mean groiny gen. And Grog has some unpleasant cognate in German, so Bob was an alternative to Grog, as a sort of neutral placeholder.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Like thepouncer, I'd suggest "Incidental slash, John/X." In my fannish experience, the existance of a sex scene, brief or not, canon pairing or not, makes a fic, if not definitively het or slash, very much not gen (gen meaning "something with no sexual or romantic content,"
i.e. "something I can read on a public library computer without worrying that someone will look over my shoulder and see a sex scene").

[bluflamingo.livejournal.com]

I know - it's just that I want to leap around and say but it *is* gen... just with a sex scene, which obviously doesn't really work. As you say, anything that would be blocked by internet nanny software probably can't be gen, as a rule.

What if it's a fade to black, though - they kiss and then it's the next scene, or the next day or whatever. I mean, it could be read on a public computer, no problem, but does that make it gen (I'm really curious, not trying to be difficult).

Words are problematic :(

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

As you say, anything that would be blocked by internet nanny software probably can't be gen, as a rule.

Buffy gets a mammogram?

And the role of (extreme) violence here is problematic as well.

Which is really agreeing with you, I guess, while thinking out loud.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

IMO, no. It's not the actual explicitness of the sex that makes something het or slash (or both) as opposed to gen, but the fact that the protagonist is having the sex/is in the relationship. I mean, if fade-to-black sex can be counted as gen, then by extension only NC-17 or R-rated fic can be slash, and there are a lot of slashers (and het writers) who would take exception to the notion that their stories are gen rather than het/slash simply because they aren't porny enough.

I mean, I just finished co-writing a very long, plotty comics fic that contains a slash romance as one of its central themes, but has no explicit sex. I'd argue that the fact that the sex involves fades-to-black, that the relationship is part of a larger action plot, and that there's het relationships present as well (all arguements I've seen towards why slash fics should be classified as gen) doesn't lessen its "slashiness." It's still a story where one guy sleeps with another guy.

*grins* and I can assure you, in the eyes of gen fans on ff.net, two pages on non-explicit m/m sex in the midst of two-hundred pages of plot sure as hell make something slash. It was slash, period, because we had, zomg, "made Captain America gay."

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

John-centric with incidental John/X, I guess. I would avoid using the word gen altogether.

[bluflamingo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that seems safest, and least likely to accidentally mislead someone.

[ceteramisto.livejournal.com]

I agree with the poster above me. Calling John centric or John character piece lets readers know who the story is about and incidental John/X let's readers know who John's involved with and that the relationship is not the center of the story. Anything else the reader needs to know can come in the summary.

[bluflamingo.livejournal.com]

True - that seems to cover everything I want to say and be least likely to accidentally mislead someone.

[nakeisha.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom

I have a very simple rule; if there is any kind of romantic and/or sexual relationship between the major characters, whether it is the focus of the story or not then the story is slash or het (depending on the gender of said characters). If there is a sex scene, short and incidental or not, the story cannot be gen.

I know it's an on-going 'argument' and I know that people will say 'oh, but if the relationship is only mentioned in passing' then the story is still gen, and okay, maybe . . . But if there is a sex scene then to my mind the story can't be gen. And if I were a gen reader and saw something labelled 'gen' and read a sex scene I would be very peeved.

I do like thepouncer's idea of 'incidental slash'. Having said, I personally would probably label it 'slash' but I'd also point out that it was not the focus of the story, and I'd do that purely to prevent that 'what do you mean by incidental slash' questions.

But whatever you do, I'd say that you shouldn't label it 'gen'.

I know that some people use the term 'gen-slash' to cover your kind of story, but that just seems to end up confusing more people and also 'upsets' both the gen and slash people.

Just my 2p-worth.

[bluflamingo.livejournal.com]

Thanks - I think gen-slash, as you say, is just confusing because the two are kind of mutually exclusive. I'm thinking the simplest thing to do - well, OK, the simplest thing would be to rewrite the slashy part into something non-slashy, but failing that - is to label it "John, incidental John/Cam" and leave it at that, thus avoiding the whole gen/slash thing altogether.

I don't know, I see what you mean about anything with sex having to be slash because it can't be gen, but I think slash has different connotations for me than just 'not gen'. Maybe there needs to be another couple of labels in there somewhere. Or maybe that would just lead to more confusion!

[nakeisha.livejournal.com]

My take re: gen-slash is the same, they are mutually exclusive, IMO. That sounds ideal to me, a jolly good compromise - very sensible too.

If you don't mind me asking, what other connotations does slash have for you than just 'not gen'? I think fandom gets more and more confused every day *sigh* I swear it used to be far simpler than it is now.

[boogieshoes.livejournal.com]

for the comfort of your readership, i'd go with either incidental slash, or slash, rated PG-13.

but i'm more of your feelings re labeling on a personal note. i've recently started a community ( library_alex ) to review written works, incl. fanfic. for fanfic, i redefine slash and het both as 'fic which *concentrates* on the interpersonal relationship between the characters. the way i explained it was that if benton fraser was tasting dirt, rayk was rambling discoherently, the bad guy was being chased, and weird stuff was happening, and oh, fraser and rayk just happened to wake up in the same bed this morning, that was still an adventure story, not a slash story.

because i usually want to see case fic, adventure fic, weird fic, etc, and i often think that all that stuff gets lost under the 'slash/gen' umbrellas of fan-life.

-bs

[boogieshoes.livejournal.com]

um, that was supposed to be *in*coherently...

i need coffee.
-bs

here via metafandom

[ruuger]

I'm one of the mods of a Buffyverse gen com and our rule is that a story can have mentions/implication of a canonical relationship (because it's hard to write, say, a late S2 Buffy story without mentions of Buffy/Angel) as long as it's not explicit or the focus of the story. Buffy spending half the fic longing after Spike would then be just as big a no-no in our comm as an implied Gunn/Tara or Cordelia/Willow kiss.

Our justification for only allowing canon pairings was that the presense of an implied non-canonical relationship requires the reader to focus on the relationship even when it's not the focus of the fic. If you're a Spike/Xander shipper, you might not cast a second thought to why the two of them are sharing a bed during the summer Buffy was dead, but your average reader would have to fill in the blanks (and basically create the "How Spike and Xander fell in love" story themselves) to make the story work in a way that they wouldn't have to if it was Xander and Anya sharing a bed.

Am I making any sense? ;)

Re: here via metafandom

[bluflamingo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm curious now - you said that non-canon relationships aren't allowed, but what about non-canon random hookups, or past relationships, would they be allowed, or be considered not gen?

Sorry, I like to know things :)

here via metafandom

[melfinatheblue.livejournal.com]

I'm struggling with the same thing. I've got a WIP that's got mentions of slash, hints of het (the main character is happily married), but is staying very firmly in PG-13 land. I have no idea what to label it. There's no sex, and so far not much romance. And what romance there is involves secondary characters (het romance). So is it a het story because there's a paragraph scene of a boy and girl kissing, even though they aren't the main characters?
And then there's pairings. How do you deal with those? Should a pairing only be listed if it plays a major role in a fic? And what if there aren't any major pairings? Just put a character list? Put none?

Re: here via metafandom

[bluflamingo.livejournal.com]

OK, now I'm glad I've only got my one pairing to worry about - yours sounds like a bit of a nightmare to label! I think I'd list the main pairings and then say other minor pairings or something like that. If there aren't any major pairings, maybe implied slash/het, various minor pairings, and put a list at the end for anyone who desperately wants to know.

Funny how it's much easier to label someone else's story than your own, isn't it, I suppose because there's not that feeling of 'but that's not what it really *is*', which is my major problem at the moment :)

[dvorarose.livejournal.com]

Now that I've read all the comments about how to label it I'd love to actually read the story. Can you please link to which fic it is we've all been talking about?