fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2707 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2707 ⌋

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Do slight non canon shippy moments or canon ship moments negate the gen-ness of a gen fic? I'd consider a fic that doesn't have a romantic plot or subplot to be gen, even if there was some slight shippy moments. What about everyone else?

I'd agree. A few lines of romance do not a romance fic make.

I would say it depends on whether it shifts some kind of central relationship from platonic to romantic. A fic in which Sherlock and John or Bucky and Steve have only a few lines of romance, but the romance is definitely romance, not just an ambiguous "maybe", the fic is still slash.

I think the important distinction though is if that relationship is central to the story. For example if the story is about Steve and Tony and Bruce being friends, and on the side Steve and Bucky have a makeout scene, but the bulk of the story is just about the friendship with no romance, I'd say it's still gen. otoh, if it's about just Steve and Bucky with other characters being minor, and they have a friendship that becomes a romance in the end, then yeah, it's slash.

ayrt

Yes! That makes sense! This would only really work in fandoms with ensemble casts, though -- some fandoms tightly revolve around just two or three characters, with no way to "phase out" a character into the background.

yeah, I get that. I can only think of one fandom I'm in that has a 3 character cast (Portal), and I like romance in that fandom, so.

That's how it works for me, too.

Not enough to make it a romance fic, but more than enough to shift it out of Gen-Fic territory. Its a neither one thing nor other creature when that happens. I always wonder if it is a shipper trying to sucker the gen-fans into reading their ship or whether it is someone that hadn't realized that not every fic has to have oblig shipping moments and trying to tick it off the fandom checklist. Either way it is annoying.

Wait, so if a long genfic had, say, a paragraph about someone's romance that didn't really affect the plot, that would put you off from the entire fic?

Writers write what they want to write. I'm surprised if that would be enough to stop you from enjoying it.

nayrt

I generally wouldn't. Unless the pairing is only "non-canon" in the sense of the characters never actually getting together or explicitly acknowledging their feelings, but UST or something was canonically hinted at. But I guess there could be exceptions.

For me, I suppose it depends on the pairing: if the "shippy moments" (if they are explicitly shippy) are say, between members of a juggernaut slash pairing or a highly popular unestablished het pairing, probably avoid it. If the moments are between two supporting/peripheral characters who don't have a big shipper fan following, or between a main character and a supporting character s/he might have had UST with but never canonically got together with, that's fine.

And basically, anything that would cause the author to label it X/Y or classify it as slash/het, even if 95% of the fic has no romantic happenings going on between them, should be avoided too. For example, a 20 chapter fic in which Kirk and Spock or Harry and Hermione are totally un-romantic except for that one scene at the climax in which they kiss or one or both of them acknowledge that their feelings are romantic, even if it doesn't lead to sex or the start of a relationship in the fic, does not really count as "gen."

However, IMO hoyay or ship-tease that's on the same level as the kind of hoyay or ship-tease that would be acceptable in the canon material would count as gen. ;)

I think so too. I mean, there's times I do think it sort of teeters in the middle, where there may be a lot of romance, but the character arc is still evenly balanced between his/her love life and his/her romantic life, so is it really gen or is it just not completely romantic?

But if you have established characters who exist, yet aren't necessarily even the focus, or if they are get little if any romantic screen time, it can still be classified as genfic.

(Here's another question though - what about smut? I've seen people try and pass smut off as gen, but... even though smut doesn't have to be romantic, it is still sexual, right? So wouldn't that not be gen?)

I would definitely say smut is not gen.

The two cases I can think of when smut could be labelled as gen would be a) if it's purely friendshippy sex (as in, friends having no romance but having sex - and believe me, I have yet to see a fic like this) and b) if the smut is not between the characters whom the fic is about. Though that would be a bit weird.

Edited 2014-06-01 21:51 (UTC)

[ SECRET POST #2707 ]

Question about the classification of gen fic:

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