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[lettered]

I just switched the tags for my Avengers fic on Ao3 to the "character&character" format rather than the "character/character" format. No characters have sex, make out, or profess love for any of the other characters in these stories. Characters do feel lust and look at each other with longing

Comments

[sisi_rambles]

That's a very interesting question. And I don't really have any concrete thoughts. But here is my random input/opinion. For the most part, stories are either really obviously gen or really obviously pairing-focused. As for the ones that aren't as clear cut: as a reader, I decide if the story is gen or not depending on how much on an impact the pairing has on the story. Like, is there a pervasive sense of "these people are together and that's essential to this story" or is it almost an incidental thing where the focus is on something else. And also, I guess the ratio of romance-focused parts to gennish parts. HP has all the couples and the romantic subplots, but the overwhelming majority of the story isn't about that, it's about something else. So that makes it gen. Any romance novel, even if it has a solid actiony plot is still about the couple getting together as part of the plot. So that makes it het/slash. A lot of sex also tends to send things in a non-gen direction IMO

[lettered]

the story isn't about that, it's about something else

I think that this is where things get blurry for me. HP is very obviously about defeating Voldemort. I think it less obvious the Buffy is about slaying vampires, and then there's something like the tv show FRIENDS. I never watched it, but anyway, what's the show about? It's about relationships, people hooking up and breaking up etc. But despite numerous het relationships that go on in the show (I know because of my learnings), and despite the fact that the show probably became more about that than anything else, the idea behind the show is still a group of friends. The kind of stories I want to write don't have a lot of hooking up/breaking up, but in the end they're about relationships--about intimacy and friendship and even attraction, because I think some level of attraction is a perfectly normal thing to feel for someone you really only want to be platonic with. So if you're writing about that, do people consider that romance?

I save them as gen or under a pairing even

[skriftlig]

Wow - that was much trickier than I thought it would be. My opinion on whether a story if gen or not depends on (i) if the romantic relationship is the point of the story and (ii) if there are any romantic relationships involving the main characters. The HP series as a whole is hard because for the first books I would definitely choose gen, but for the final one I think I would class it as het because of Hermione/Ron

[lettered]

I would only include relationships that are fairly central or play a significant part in the main characters' lives, e.g. Arthur/Molly, but not Severus/Lily

You don't think Severus/Lily is central to the characters' lives? Imo that was one of the most important ships in the book. It was the sole explanation for Snape's motivations, and Snape's motivation is so pivotal, and it's also a large part of the explanation for how Snape treats Harry, which colors so much of Harry's time at Hogwarts, and . .. yeah idk to me the only other pairing as significant was Hermione/Ron.

I could only pick one in the poll

I know it was evil, but I did it on purpose. On Ao3, I kept marking the stories I'm writing these days as het, slash, and gen, and then there were pairings. People were like, "idk about these pairings bc this is gen" which . . . seems to imply you can't have both? I.e. gen means not het, etc.

AO3 tags: are they always alphabetical?Yes! Isn't that cool? I like it, because the whole thing about what order they're in

[skriftlig]

Oh, I definitely think Severus/Lily was important and arguably the most influential relationship in the books in terms of how the fight against Voldemort went. By play a significant part in the main characters' lives, I meant knowingly so--it was poorly phrased, sorry. I guess I'm saying I would include the pairings that Harry, Ron and Hermione would say were the most important. Severus/Lily was only revealed quite late (I think?) and Harry, Ron and Hermione spent far less time knowing about it, compared to, say Arthur/Molly. I suppose I have also come to expect a certain amount of action from pairings and there isn't much of that for Lily and Severus as I remember it.

Maybe it makes sense that gen means not het etc, but it sounds a bit odd to me. And surely all stories are gen, unless everybody is sleeping with each other?? And then if there is also het, slash, femslash, then that should be added to. In a way, I think once you specify the pairings, then the gen, het, slash, femslash bit becomes obvious. Or maybe not

[lettered]

"multi" implies to me threesomes and moresomes? Because if you want to say it's both gen and het, you can check both. Which I do. The problem was one of the other tag selections, where you can choose who's with whom. The reason I want to select something there is that when I'm searching for something to read, I usually want to read about character A's relationship with Character B. I don't care if they're having sex or end up together or are just friends; if I'm reading a really solid fic about Harry and Draco having a real and powerful relationship, I honestly don't care if Harry ends up with Ginny at the end of it (as long as there's build up to that relationship too, as there was in QoM). If I don't tag the fic with a "relationship" and just suggest that it's there in the A/N, then if it wasn't my story, I'd never see it (because you can search by tags, and that's what I do). And I want the people who want to read the things that I would like to read to see it

[starcrossedgirl]

I started filling out your poll and then couldn't decide how to keep filling it in, because, the truth is, I would consider all the canon stories gen. As other have already mentioned, there may be romantic pairings in each of the canons, but they're not the main thrust/point of the story, and because I tend to come at them with my own shipping preferences firmly attached, I tend to... disregard whatever (het in HP, usually) canon pairings exist. Buffy's certainly shippier than HP in my mind, although it becomes less so as the story goes on, but the romance in HP always felt a bit pastede on yay to me, by comparison? So I could see Buffy coming with tags of Buffy/Angel, Buffy/Spike, Willow/Oz, Willow/Tara, Spike/Drusilla and -- you know what, I started typing these out and now I'm again struggling, because what I felt were the most major/impactful canon relationships aren't necessarily what another person might see, so I don't quite know where to draw the line? Anyway, point being I could see tags in Buffy, but no so much in HP, in

[lettered]

I'd call all that canon gen and then I would label it with pairings. Which was totally what I was doing with my Avengers fics, and then people were like, "Why are there pairings? This is gen." No one was angry or upset and everyone who asked about it was really, really nice to me, but someone asks you that and there's a definite impression you can't have a pairing tag and be gen at the same time. Idk.

I felt were the most major/impactful canon relationships aren't necessarily what another person might see, so I don't quite know where to draw the line?

This is exactly it. The problem is that tags are for other people, not the author. When I write my story, I don't get overly concerned about what the reader will think beyond, "what am I trying to convey, here?" But the header is for the readers. It's all about the readers and should be written with their wants and needs in mind. But how are you supposed to know what they want and need

[starcrossedgirl]

Re: AO3 tags, no--using 'implied [pairing]' works just fine, because of the tag-wranglers doing awesome work behind the scenes! (Or at least it does for my fic.) So if people search for 'Dumbledore/Snape', In Perpetuity comes up, but the actual tags on the story retain the "implied" bit, so people can still reject if they see the story proper come up and fancy themselves some non-implied, full-on-textual Dumbledore/Snape. :) It also comes up (obvs) if you decide to search for "implied Dumbledore/Snape" directly.

Doesn't solve the problem of finding this: is basically a fic that examines the deep-seated issues between those characters, and plenty of gen stories do that (and while we're on the topic, plenty of romantic stories don't), I agree. But that isn't so much a case of gen vs shippy for me, as style of writing (character-driven vs plot-driven at its most fundamental level, though it goes much deeper and more complex than that). I guess that's what recs are for? And the occasional fandom-specific shorthand (e.g. Mentoring fic

[jain]

Poll needs tickyboxes for the labels questions. I'd call Harry Potter gen and het and Buffy the Vampire Slayer het and femslash.

[lettered]

I didn't do ticky boxes because I often get the impression from readers that a fic can only be one thing or the other--or anyway that gen means exclusively "not het, slash, or femslash". I know that others have different opinions, but I did it this way because I was interested in seeing what people would pick if they had to choose just one.

[jain]

I often get the impression from readers that a fic can only be one thing or the other--or anyway that gen means exclusively "not het, slash, or femslash".

I'd say that I lean somewhat in the direction of those readers' beliefs, in that gen seems to me a more exclusive category than het, slash, and femslash. I really like the flexibility of being able to categorize Harry Potter as gen and het (or labeling one of my own stories, about a woman in the middle of divorce proceedings who vandalizes her soon-to-be-ex-husband's car, gen and het) but if absolutely pressed I'd be fine with calling Harry Potter het and my own story gen.

But calling Buffy the Vampire Slayer either het or femslash when to me it's obviously both feels...very, very wrong, as though I'm dismissing or denigrating either the het or lesbian relationships on the show.

[lettered]

Oh! I should have made the choices

-gen
-het
-slash
-femslash
-het and slash
-het and femslash
-slash and femslash
-het, slash, and femslash

or even just

-gen
-het, slash, and/or femslash

Because the issue I was interested in exploring was if you have to choose between gen and X, X being whatever categorizes the major relationships on the show, which do you choose? But of course BtVS is rockin' since you can't put the major relationships of the show into one category sexually. And actually, when readers get up in arms about this, they're usually not up in arms about the idea that something can't be both het/slash/femslash. Though of course there are also people who argue if something is labeled slash you can't have het in it, I actually see those arguments less than the "gen is exclusively gen" arguments.