[ SECRET POST #2363 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2363 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 118 secrets from Secret Submission Post #337.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

05. http://i.imgur.com/arRLdUO.png

[astridv]

I agree the multi category is completely useless. Which a shame since I like UST/Bob. But the way those get lumped with multiple pairings/threesomes/whatnot, they are impossible to find.

[dreemyweird]

This is a fairly popular opinion; but IA. It rather irritates me. And it is no better when people tag friendship as "character A/character B".

Thankfully, so far this has not been common in my fandoms, so I can ignore it.

[(Anonymous)]

A lot of prompt memes go that shit too, and it's really pissing me off. I'll find a prompt marked gen, and it'll be interesting, and then there will be some throw-away line at the end like "Oh, and A/B have been married for ages! :D" when A/B was mentioned NO WHERE in the heading.

I'm actually irrationally annoyed that people don't know what gen actually means, and use it instead as a shortening of the rating "general audiences."

[(Anonymous)]

Totally with you there. If it has romantic pairings in it it's not gen!

[(Anonymous)]

Gen != asexual, neither is it a synonym for canon-compliant. A story can be gen and involve a pairing (canonical or non-canonical) provided the pairing is in the background and the focus of the story is on non-romantic plot.

[localfreak]

I agree! Sometimes I just want something that isn't about shipping and to scroll through pages of exactly what I was trying to filter to avoid is seriously unhelpful. Multi-ship is confusing too because it includes gen I can understand using it to say 'this contains a gamut of various relationships and various permutaitons'

[(Anonymous)]

If you want gen fics that have no pairings whatsoever, you can search Gen and then also search -"m/m" -"m/f" -"f/f" in the Search Within Results field (or whatever combination of pairings or tags you want to filter out)

hopefully that'll help

[(Anonymous)]

I think a lot of people get Gen as in no-pairings confused with "for general audiences" rating. Which, yeah, is annoying.

[galerian-ash.livejournal.com]

I get that this is something that bugs a lot of people, so I'm always careful not to do it. I did use multiple categories for one of my fics though -- it was one of those "five things" stories, where a some of the parts featured pairings and the others didn't.

[othellia]

IDK. Like another anon in this thread, I don't think "gen" should mean "no ships everywhere," just that if there are any relationships, they're in the background and not given the primary focus.

Of course, I also realize that what is considered "in the background" is rather subjective, especially in fandom, and most times fics with established relationships marked "gen" probably do lean more towards the shippy side then not. So yeah...

In theory I think they're fine, but in practice you might have a point.

[(Anonymous)]

And what if the story itself doesn't have any romance but some of the characters are in a relationship that is not the focus of the plot?

[(Anonymous)]

This secret could not have come at a better time- I've been absolutely stewing about Gen fics with surprise pairings lately. I'm reading a WIP right now that, up to this point, has had no focus on pairings whatsoever. Over the course of the last several chapters, however, the author has included two non-canon pairings, both involving main characters. Unfortunately, I have a major squick for both of these pairings, so I've since quit reading. It sucks.

The author's now stated, in response to several reviews, that they've been planning and "planting seeds" for one of the pairings (the one I have the biggest problem with, go figure) since the fic started. Both characters have been OOC for a while now, in their reactions to each other and their canon partners, but I wrote it off since I was enjoying other aspects of the story. Now, it seems like the author was slowly changing every character involved, in service of the non-canon pairing. So even if the main plot doesn't revolve around their relationship, the changes the author made to make their relationship more palatable had an impact on the plot and characterization of the fic, overall.

[(Anonymous)]

This, so freaking much. I see fics that are labelled 'gen' along with slash and have an explicit rating. How the ever-loving fuck (literally in that case) is that gen? It drives me nuts. I suspect some authors tick the gen box because there are some characters not in relationships milling around the background of their multi-pairing slash and het orgy fic.

I also saw someone arguing that a story was gen because there were no romantic pairings...but the main character was working as a porn star so there were lots of sex scenes.

With AO3, I think it'd work better if authors could only choose 'slash', 'het', 'slash and het', OR 'gen'.

[(Anonymous)]

What? When did this become a thing?

In my days GEN just meant the plot is the focus and all the canon (or non canon) romantic relationships were in the background. It didn't mean no one has no relationship ever.

[transcriptanon]

[Picture is a screen-capture of the website Archive Of Our Own. It shows a Teen Wolf fanfiction and a Star Trek fanfiction, with the names of the stories and authors blacked out with censor bars.]

I hate that authors use the "General" tag when there are clearly pairings in the fic. Making it hard to find ACTUAL "General" fics. I also hate that Archive Of Our Own lets authors pick the "Multiple" category that includes "General". I wish authors would learn what the damn categories mean!

[(Anonymous)]

But gen fic can still include ships? To me gen just means it doesn't focus on any ships, not that nobody in this entire fic is in any romantic relationship whatsoever.

[madmaudlin]

For me, a gen story has no sex at all and no major romantic elements. There can be minor background pairings that don't involve the main character(s) and those background pairings really should be canon compliant ones.

I get really irked when people slip popular fanon pairings into otherwise "gen" stories. It always comes across as people saying those popular fanon pairings are ~practically canon~ or sometimes not even recognizing that they aren't canon. If I read Steve POV Avengers gen, I might expect an offhand mention that Tony and Pepper are together but I wouldn't expect (nor want to expect) any mention of Clint and Coulson. (Or Thor/Loki or Steve/Tony or Clint/Natasha or the like.)

But then I kind of get annoyed when people slip fanon pairings into the background no matter what, pair the spares style. If something isn't canon, I want to see the build up for how it happened. I'm only going to get frustrated if I'm just told that Dean and Castiel are totally together or that Usagi and Haruka dumped their destined loves and ran off.

It's not that I dislike any of these pairings either (okay, I don't do Clint/Coulson and don't understand it at all) and I'll often read fic focused on them. But that's because I'm looking for Dean/Cas or Usagi/Haruka or whatever. I want something focused on them. At the very least, I want a head's up beforehand.

[(Anonymous)]

I think the gen as in "no pairings whatsoever, even if in the background" is a relatively recent interpretation. Back in the old days (yeah, I'm old), it seemed to be intended to differentiate from porn or very shippy fics.

If I have a fic that is largely plot based (like an episode of the week), and yet there's a canon couple in there, if the majority of the plot is about PLOT, that wouldn't have been called romance, because it's not a romance story. It's an all-hands-on-deck, solve-the-problem-of-the-week, and if canon couples are still couples in your story, that's part of the mix. That's what I understand gen to be. But I'm 100 years old.

I don't understand why everyone gets so riled up about these things anyway. Don't freak out every time a rice crispy ends up in your cornflakes by mistake - just move on.

[(Anonymous)]

Doesn't Gen just mean, basically 'Rated G', so it can still have pairings but they just don't do things beyond a G rating?

[(Anonymous)]

I'm going to make this a main reply too, as it might get lost in comment-thread shuffle (it's all the craze these days).

With regards to AO3 (and AO3 only) this is their 'categories help' description for Gen:

Gen
General: no relationship, or containing relationships which are not the main focus of the work

So for AO3, having minor relationships IN the fic is entirely within the realm of 'Gen'. I can't say about other sites, but for AO3, you're just being silly.

[(Anonymous)]

At least the "gen" with ship labels are easily avoided. I once read a so-called gen fic where the author sprung a ship pretty much out of nowhere. I mean, with kissing, sex, and everything. Some of the reviewers pointed out that the author needed to label the pairing and the author refused to because since the pairing wasn't the main plot, the fic still counted as gen.* It make me angry as hell because the fic was really good up until that point.

* I think the real reason she refused ship labels was that the pairing she wrote was unpopular as well directly contradicting a very popular pairing, and she knew most people would bypass it.

[(Anonymous)]

So, we have a story where Kirk has to go back in time to get some whales. While visiting the 20th century he FLIRTS with some original character. Does this brief flirty romantic interlude make the movie a romance, and therefore, not gen?

[(Anonymous)]

OMG, this thread. Once everyone's determined the TRUE, CORRECT AND PROPER MEANING OF GEN, perhaps we can move on to tackle the equally mysterious word "drabble". That'll be a whole nother bucket of wank right there.

[(Anonymous)]

I really hate the way Sherlock gen fics tend to throw in surprise Johnlock. By the way, they're married--that's not gen. Even if it's just in the background, it's a non-canon ship and not gen.