You're Messing with My OCD, Fandom. You Wanna Fight?

[viciouswishes]

This afternoon, I've read two very well-written SGA gen team fics. These are gen fics, gen fics were the authors stuck a couple bits of G-rated McShep moments and PG-rated McShep innuendos in them. This messes up my categorization.

It also makes me curious just why those authors put them in there. Granted, not enough to ask said authors about their choice. I know that both authors are McShep shippers, as I've read and enjoyed their fic in the past, and that would be their answer. But it's not the authors that I'm interested in, it's the phenomena.

Really, it's fandom. I think it's fandom in that if it were a gen team fic, no matter how good it was, that it wouldn't get nearly as much attention. I think it's fandom in that I ran across a poorly written McShep rape fic that garnered more comments than most of the fic that ends up on my rec lists. This is also a very good argument for feedbacking, because if an author gets feedback then they (and other writers reading it) will write more of what's getting feedbacked in general.

(Lack of feedback is what I would label the #1 reason why femslash is as small and struggling as it is. Who wants to write something that's only going to get 2 comments, no matter how good or bad it is? (It makes me angry in the *meets people at con* "Oh, V.Wishes," says Con-Goer #1, "I love your femslash. It's so hot." "Thanks," I respond when I'm really thinking How the fuck would I ever know that you liked my femslash fic since you've never commented on it and I don't know who the hell you even are? *has this conversation with at least 3 other con-goers*))

And it's really freaking annoying me that I'm going to label these fics in my recs as gen and that someone somewhere is probably going to be pissed that they have a tiny bit of McShep stuck in there even if they are essentially entirely gen team fics.

Furthermore, I could change McShep to any other of fandom's OTPs and this would still ring true. I just happen to be reading SGA fic today. I don't like when my organization's screwed up because some things I like in little boxes.

Now my tea is cold.

Comments

[lyssie.livejournal.com]

I suspect part of the problem has to do with how much you consider text and how much is subtext--and one person's subtext may be another's blatant text. It also has to do with how much the canon itself lends to being twisted here, there, and everywhere else.

Gen is funny as a label, to me, because until I wandered into SG fandom, gen simply meant that a romance wasn't the point of the story. There were pairings and, sometimes, even fade-to-black sex scenes, but they weren't sex/romance/pairing free. Gen simply meant that the story was about more--usually action or adventure, with kissing on the side.

I mean, hell, I dare anyone to tell me Alicia McKenzie's "True Believers" is shipfic. It's long, involved, creates an entire universe, and still has Cable and Domino having sex and coming to terms with each other--but the point of the story isn't them. The point of the story is taking the little hints in canon about the Askani and expanding it in mind-boggling ways.

SG fandom, otoh, decided that gen meant "no sex or romance at all." And, boy HOWDY, has it taken that to extremes.

Het or slash, if there's any hint that someone might be sleeping with someone else, you'd better have labeled it, or someone will whine about it not being labeled as such. Even if its unintentional.

We all 'read' the canon in different ways, and we all regurgitate it back out through even more mental filters. And yes, you can put in unintentional subtext, because that's what you see in the show. And if you've got a good beta, they might even catch it.

(and now that I've rambled, I'm allowed to rant about the lack of feedback, and then smack myself for being part of the cause and go leave feedback somewhere.)

[viciouswishes.livejournal.com]

It is a strange balance and I do think that you can include some ship moments, but sometimes when it's oddly balanced that I feel thrown off.

I think in SG fandom it's taken to extreme because so many gen people (and f/f and (in SGA) het) really use it to escape fandom OTPs and hate said ship.

I'm not worried about subtext, which is subtext and can be argued either way. Heck, Toni Morrison is still pissed that people see lesbian subtext in Sula and bitched out some scholar.

[telesilla.livejournal.com]

SG fandom, otoh, decided that gen meant "no sex or romance at all."

That definition is hardly new or limited to SG fandom. Back in '95 I was responsible for the FAQ of the TrekSmut USENET group, a job that included defining various genres. I went with what was accepted in fandom as a whole at that time: gen was described as a story that had no sex and/or romance in it. Now granted, three quarters of fandom wasn't even online, so the consensus I reached was based on somewhat small sampling, but it was also grounded in years of fanfic traditions; while my fannish participation doesn't date back to the 'zine days, I was helped by people who did go back that far.

So the idea that a gen fic could contain romance or a smallish amount of sexual behavior has been around for a long time.

To me the idea of calling a story that has a romance/relationship in it "gen" makes no sense. It's either slash or het, even if it's rated G or PG, because neither "slash" or "het" are synonymous with the words pron smut or erotica. So if I see something that says it's McKay/Sheppard and is rated G or PG, I'm assuming that I'm in for an action adventure or maybe a humor piece or something that could read like an episode only with the acknowledgment that the guys are involved.

[lyssie.livejournal.com]

I wasn't in Trek fandom.

[tenillypo.livejournal.com]

To me the idea of calling a story that has a romance/relationship in it "gen" makes no sense. It's either slash or het, even if it's rated G or PG, because neither "slash" or "het" are synonymous with the words pron smut or erotica.

I can see both sides of this argument. I think one of the problems is that a lot of people are coming at the terminology from different places.

As a simple content descriptor, a label like slash or het applies to every story that features any kind of romantic relationship. The difficulty comes when that same label is used as a genre description, which to a lot of people implies that romance must be the focus of the story. So where does that leave an action/adventure story that happens to contain a het or slash couple, but where the relationship is very much a side plot to the main one? I think the use of terms like slash and het set in opposition to Gen as genre (as opposed to romance vs. mystery vs. action vs. drama, etc.) is what causes a lot of the confusion.