Yet another post about the whole gen issue

[salinea]

(See the last 2 or 3 metafandom editions if you wonder what i'm talking about)

The more I think about, the more I think that the categories of het, slash and gen, as categories, are mostly useless. In fact, I never actually included them in any fic I've posted myself (the information is usually contained in the "Characters/Pairings" line).

If we want categies denoting genres/focus, "Romance", "Drama", "Action/Adventure", "Character exploration", "Smut", etc. make much better descriptors, as well as some kind of descriptions about how the story stands vis-a-vis to canon (A/U, post-canon, missing scenes, just-like-a-canon-episode, retcon/canon-fix...)

I also think the issue is that we're thinking of these categories as mutually exclusive. What is gen cannot be het, what is het cannot be slash, what is slash cannot be gen. Which is bollocks. There's nothing saying a story couldn't focus on both a canon-like-plot and a non-canon Romance! Nor is there anything saying that a story can't be focussed on two couples, one het, one slash.

But yeah, people want to be warned against the pairings they dislike, in every cases, so warning for pairings all the time should be the best behaviour.

ETA : Okay, so non-exhaustive list of genres I can think of right now

- Romance / Smut (probably handier to merge them)
- Plot driven stories (with subcategories for things like action/adventure, mystery/investigation, war-stories, intrigue, Sci-fi...)
- Noromo relationships (a fic which focus on a relationship which is not explored as romantic, whether it's family, friends, partners, colleagues or people who hate each others)
- Character study (any fic which is about exploring a character's personnality, or their reaction to something)
- Comedy / Humour (need I specify?)
- World exploration (for fics that want to expand that little obscure corner of canon)
- Surrealism / Fairy Tale / Dreamscape (because I'm not sure where else this kind of stories fit)

any suggestions/criticisms?

Comments

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's really a counter intuitive terminology I think.

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

It's based on the assumption that 90% of all fan fic is either erotica or romance, with other plot developments being secondary to the pairings in those stories. The other 10% is presumably "every thing else", which gets lumped together, regardless of how much variety is part of "everything else."

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

But lots of stories are plot focusses and pairing focussed! and lots of people love these stories too, that's part of the problem ^^ and yeah, the Gen is the big all lumped together category which makes seeking stuff in it not easy and makes it even smaller i think.