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

[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.

[bluflamingo.livejournal.com]

I remember the discussion (vaguely) - thanks for explaining!

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

glossing proposed "grön" as a sort of portmanteau for "porny gen." I seem to remember there being some subtle semantic distinction between gr0n and Bob, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is.