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Offering number two for the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
month_of_meta. This one I'm a bit more nervous about. It's tough to talk about a particular group of fandom, even if you yourself are part of that group, and hope you represented that group in a way that's not "telling everyone their business." This is based both on observation as well as a wee bit of research.
I also feel the need to point out that for this meta, my definition of a gen fan is someone who enjoys stories that contain no pairings, and that the focus of this meta is more on those who are mostly gen fans or who lean more toward gen than they do pairings. The following meta expounds on this.
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month_of_meta. This one I'm a bit more nervous about. It's tough to talk about a particular group of fandom, even if you yourself are part of that group, and hope you represented that group in a way that's not "telling everyone their business." This is based both on observation as well as a wee bit of research.I also feel the need to point out that for this meta, my definition of a gen fan is someone who enjoys stories that contain no pairings, and that the focus of this meta is more on those who are mostly gen fans or who lean more toward gen than they do pairings. The following meta expounds on this.
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Gen Readers and Gen
I would like to start this off by saying that this is not a treatise on what the definition of gen should be. Nor is this me telling fellow writers how gen fic should be written. It’s an exploration into what it is gen readers look for or want when it comes to gen fic.
It’s also important to point out that the reasons why gen fans are drawn to gen varies considerably. Some simply aren’t fans of romantic relationships, whether emotional or sexual. For others, it’s a matter of canon and what canon does and doesn’t give us. For others, it’s not so much “do not want romance at all,” as more that they would like the focus of the story to be on something other than romance, because romance isn’t what they’re in the mood for.
And it’s the latter, I believe, that’s the crux of what it is all gen fans – regardless of why they prefer gen – either look for or want in a gen fic. Because to say that gen fans “don’t want romance at all” is putting it far too specifically and, in fact, is a sentiment not shared by all gen fans. Some gen fans are okay with a hint of romance within a gen story (canon romance, for example, which I’ll talk more on later). But not when that romance is at the forefront of the plot.
The best way to describe what it is that gen fans are looking for in a gen fic is – to say once again - for the focus to be on something other than romance. Explorations into other relationships, for example (such as friendship or family), or character studies that touch on a character’s thoughts and feelings about themselves, their actions or the world around them.
Wanting the focus to be on something other than romance also extends to pre-pairings, UST, pining, and other brief inclusions or hints of romance. As for why canon romances tend to be more tolerated by gen fans, I would theorize that it may be because it’s an already established pairing, and as such there’s nothing that needs to be explored and nothing that really needs to be developed in a manner to help make its existence believable, therefore it doesn’t take anything away from what the story is focusing on (depending on how the pairing is written, of course). Not all gen fans tolerate even canon pairings but, again, it’s a matter individual preference (for example, some don’t like the pairing, others may not like one of the characters involved in the pairing, some may not like the way the pairing is often handled, etc). Whereas non-canon pairings (and for clarity, when I say non-canon pairings I’m talking about canon characters who are paired in fic but who are not paired in the show/book/movie etc), whether brief or one-sided, need that little bit more focus to establish that the pairing, or at least the emotions, exist. Because to have a non-canon pairing pop into the story as though part of the canon verse – with no back story to it and no build-up or acknowledgement – can be incredibly, incredibly jarring to someone who doesn’t see that pairing at all, or who isn’t a fan of non-canon pairings. Which is why some gen fans will get frustrated with a story labeled as gen but which contains a scene, for example, of one character having romantic/sexual thoughts for another character, yet the feelings have not been established by canon.
Think of it as going into a story that has promised you A/B and A/B is your absolute favorite, only the author decides to sneak in a little something that hints at B/C – which isn’t your favorite. Of course you would wonder why the author would do that when the story has clearly been marked as A/B and going in an A/B direction. Why have that hint at a side pairing when there is no point to it? It’s also due to these surprise inclusions of sexual or romantic innuendos why some Gen fans (such as myself) can be rather adamant about labels and warnings. As I said, to come across that moment of romance, no matter how small or brief, when the story is gen and the hinted-at pairing is not canon, can be incredibly jarring.
A canon character paired with an original character… that one’s a bit tricky, because original characters brought in as love interests – even temporary ones – happen even in the canon verse, and it may also be canon for a canon character to have – say, for example – a one-night-stand or to be seen stumbling out of a bar with their arm wrapped around someone in a manner that has nothing to do with drunken camaraderie. Speaking for myself, I’ve read gen stories with a touch of canon-character/OC, and it didn’t bother me at all, because that’s the canon-character for you and because it wasn’t the story’s focus. Heck, I’d even written a story with a bit of Character/OC (brief, light, but still a pairing). While other times it did bother me, sometimes because of the way it was written, sometimes because I didn’t feel it in character for the canon character involved, and sometimes because it just wasn’t something I wanted to read. So let’s call it a grey area and yet another matter of personal preference and how a writer handles such a pairing.
And… that’s all there really is to say. I feel the need to also add that Gen fans vary as much as why gen fans prefer gen. Because you also have your fans who will read romance but have gen leanings, for example. But from what I have seen when it comes to other gen fans, and what I have come to learn when talking to fellow gen fans – whether they are hard-core gen lovers or gen fans with het/slash leanings – is that what it all comes down to, and what we all have in common, is a desire to see the characters and world we’re fanning on explored in ways other than the romantic.
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no subject
Date: 2013-05-07 06:29 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-05-07 07:43 am (UTC)From:In which I meta about heteronormativity in fanfiction
Date: 2013-05-07 05:36 pm (UTC)From:The thing is that, for me, I have a lot of preferences that are more important than pairing. It's not that I have no pairing preferences, but that they fall so far below my other preferences in priority that it continues to feel odd to me that pairings are usually listed in the summary, while there is no three-character code for what I care about.
I will avoid reading sex scenes if I can help it (which is technically a romance-related preference).
I have various ideas about what makes a plot interesting. I love AUs where I can see how differently things unfold and why, and I like to see things unfold interestingly. I like it when aspects of worldbuilding the canon skipped over are explored.
I like various kinds of emotional tone, except for prolonged grinding hopelessness. (Brief grinding hopelessness is great. Twenty chapters of it is not.)
Then I have idiosyncratic pairing preferences, but they're usually less important than the prior considerations.
Beyond that, it seems odd that I feel that I need to write romance, because my romance writing is completely unoriginal and cliche. It's almost totally uninteresting, to write or to read.
Luckily, my most recent longfic is totally gen! :D
no subject
Date: 2013-05-07 11:57 am (UTC)From:I've never really thought about why I dislike non-canon pairings, but what you say makes a lot of sense. Canon-pairings don't need explaining or lengthy romantic/sexual thoughts to establish them and so can be done in a passing/brief reference way that non-canon pairings really can't most of the time.
Thank you, this helps me to work out why I'm the way I am! And can help me explain it to others better now.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-07 09:10 pm (UTC)From:But I also fall into the "what canon gives us" category, which is why the only pairings I've liked are canon pairings. I've always been of the "what you see is what you get" mindset (to an extent, of course, since we all interpret the characters and situations differently).
no subject
Date: 2013-05-07 01:40 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-05-07 09:26 pm (UTC)From:Yes! That summarizes it wonderfully:D
Yeah, and I think gen readers probably do come across as rather negative or anti-sounding with all our do-not-wants :D But, yeah, it's not a matter of "everything in my do-not-want list is icky!" it's just easier, and safer, to say what we don't want rather than say "I want something that explores relationships other than romance." But that's true of any fic, because people are good about working things in simply because the recipient didn't add it to the do-not-want list, and despite the do-not-want list painting a picture of a person who's not going to like what you just slipped in.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-07 04:10 pm (UTC)From:And it’s the latter, I believe, that’s the crux of what it is all gen fans – regardless of why they prefer gen – either look for or want in a gen fic. Because to say that gen fans “don’t want romance at all” is putting it far too specifically and, in fact, is a sentiment not shared by all gen fans. Some gen fans are okay with a hint of romance within a gen story (canon romance, for example, which I’ll talk more on later). But not when that romance is at the forefront of the plot.
The best way to describe what it is that gen fans are looking for in a gen fic is – to say once again - for the focus to be on something other than romance.
Not much to say, except that these are some of my favourite paragraphs in the universe. Heh. It really isn't that I hate romance. Sometimes I quite love romance. I just happen to love stories where it's not the focus too, and sometimes I'm more in the mood for one than the other.
Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-07 09:41 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-05-11 06:04 pm (UTC)From:I wanted to add something to the whole CC/OC thing in gen fics. For me, it can work (or not) depending on the fic, too. But it only works for me if the canon character's sexuality is the same in the fic as it is in canon. If character x is a heterosexual man in canon, only CC/OFC (in small doses, see all the other criteria for a gen fic) works for me. (Similarly, if he's homosexual, only CC/OMC). Maybe that means that for me, it has a lot to do with what is canon (on the other hand, I also love AUs, so instead of saying “what is canon”, I should probably stress that what's important to me is that the characters are themselves/ IC). I have never really thought about why I'm only interested in gen, but reading this made me think about it and I find it really fascinating.
Especially this part: Some simply aren’t fans of romantic relationships, whether emotional or sexual. For others, it’s a matter of canon and what canon does and doesn’t give us. For others, it’s not so much “do not want romance at all,” as more that they would like the focus of the story to be on something other than romance, because romance isn’t what they’re in the mood for.
Because I think I'm kind of a mixture of all three examples you give here *g*
Which is why some gen fans will get frustrated with a story labeled as gen but which contains a scene, for example, of one character having romantic/sexual thoughts for another character, yet the feelings have not been established by canon.
Oh yes! This so much! I'm definitely one of those who gets incredibly irritated if I stumble across wrongly labeled “gen” fic. I know that people argue about how to define “gen” and that some consider a fic “gen” that others don't, but I think there's fic that is clearly gen and fic that is clearly not (and then maybe something in-between, that I would most of the time also consider “not gen”). And if I read a fanfiction labeled as “gen” that I would classify as the exact opposite of gen, I get *very* frustrated.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-11 07:52 pm (UTC)From:Yes! This is how am exactly but I was having a difficult time defining it. Because I'm very "what you see is what you get" when it comes to what I'm fanning on, but I also adore AUs and what-ifs, so neither can I really say I'm a canon purist. But you hit the nail on the head, because it's not really about pure canon, but about the characters and enjoying, as well as exploring, the characters as they are.
Sometimes people's definition of gen boggles me. I've come across stories labeled gen but are M/M or f/M or F/F with sex and all the other pairing trappings, and yet it's labeled gen anyway. But I guess what really bugs me is that we have so many ways to label stories. I mean, why not call a fic with a pairing innuendo pre-slash or pre-het or pre-whatever for example. Or say it has implied pairings? I've said it many times before that labeling isn't just about warning readers off, but also about advertising. It can help people to find the kind of stories they're craving.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-12 01:28 am (UTC)From:After discussing the meaning of gen on
If a fic contains romance, can it still be gen?
Yes - as long as there is a plot separate from the romance, even if the romance is one of the main plotlines 8
Yes - if the romance is only a side plot 64
Yes - as long as there is no sexual content 24
Yes - if the romance is established in canon (and/or fic more or less follows canon in terms of how romance is dealt with) 50
No - gen means no romance at all, period. Background pairings are fine, but nothing beyond that 55
No - gen means no romance at all, period. Background pairings are fine, but only if they are canon and nothing beyond that 21
No - not even side mentions of ships/pairings have a place in gen. It doesn't matter if the pairings are canon; I don't want to see that brought up in gen fic 3
Irrelevant. Gen = "general audiences"/below a certain rating/kid friendly/etc. 6
Other 7
I would consider it acceptable under certain conditions to label the same fic as both gen AND femslash or both gen AND A/B, etc. (Check along with your answer above.) 61
One thing I didn't go into, and am now kind of curious about, is fics that are sexual and not romantic, and whether people think of those as gen. I think it did come up in a few discussions I've participated in, and some people said that, for instance, if a character is sexually assaulted as a plot point, it can still be gen as long as the scene isn't eroticized, but I don't think there was unanimous agreement. But how would you label sex scenes between friends with benefits? Or when a character accidentally sees/hears two other characters having sex, and this is a plot point but not an erotic scene? I'm not even sure what my *own* opinion would be on some of these, and I'd be really curious to see the spread of opinions that is out there.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-12 02:53 am (UTC)From:I do understand why gen tends to be a lot more malleable as a label (that said, as a gen fan who's been shafted by labeling, I don't always sympathize with some of the reasons for it being malleable).
But... I think the trick to figuring out gen is not really to focus on label definitions, but to take into consideration the reader. I always say that labeling isn't just about warning for content, but also about advertising. I say that quite a bit, in fact. And the reason why is because I feel that labeling tends to be regarded too much in a negative light (i.e. as a means to warn) and so some people tend to shy away from it to the point that they won't label at all, so readers have no idea if what they're reading will press all their happy buttons or squick them to no end. So if you can't figure out what to label a story, then think about which readers would get the most enjoyment out of your fic. As I mentioned in another comment, we have more labels than just het, slash and gen, and I for one am incredibly grateful to writers who try their best to let people know what to expect, or how or what they can read into their story (for example, the people who say "gen or slash with your goggles on." Because I've come across fic labeled as slash but might as well have been gen, and vice versa).
no subject
Date: 2013-05-12 03:24 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-05-12 05:44 am (UTC)From:Yeah, that's also the reason why I much prefer stories that are either light on romance or that avoid it all together. That and, yeah, there's other things to explore besides romantic relationships, and that's what I'm more interested in.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-13 02:05 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-05-12 09:03 pm (UTC)From:Funnily enough I have a different problem (and I'm mentioning it here because I've never seen it in a discussion about Gen fics before). There are some Gen stories that focus on friendship that sound very interesting and I've actually once read one that I loved but only read because I misread the label (McKay & Sheppard as McKay/Sheppard). However, there was one moment in it (which clued me in that romance wasn't on the horizon), where one character thought the other was like a brother to them.
So from a shipper perspective there are different ways that a Gen story can make a statement about relationships that's jarring. There is, of course, the sneak mention of a couple. But a Gen fic that mentions brotherly feelings or approval of a canon relationship (e.g. B thinking about how happy he is that A finally has a girlfriend) isn't just a neutral absence of non-canon (or any) romance. It can make an active (negative) statement about possible non-canon romance that goes beyond canon.
Basically, I'm trying to say (and agreeing with you) that I wish there were labels that would cover for which kind of people a story would be safe. This would help not only Gen readers avoid the kind of story they don't want to read, but would also allow shippers to enjoy Gen stories that are ship-friendly vs. those that are not.
And maybe more specific labels would also open up some stories to Gen readers that are now labelled as Slash or Het. I certainly have stories that I've labeled as slash because it's present in the story, but where the focus is on friendship or character rather than romance. Those stories wouldn't be for those Gen readers that consider all non-canon pairings jarring, but if someone is open to my particular pairing and simply wants a story that isn't mainly about romance, they might give it a go.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-13 10:04 pm (UTC)From:I do find the mention of brotherly feelings, or canon-pairing acknowledgment, jarring at times, but speaking for myself what it all comes down to is how it's written. Most of the time, for me, it's just not in-character for the characters to express such feelings ("you're like a brother to me!") but also because, yeah, there is this sort of feeling that the writer is pushing too hard for readers to read their stories as gen or friendship, and it's so obvious what they're trying to do that it's uncomfortable even for a gen reader. Because trying to force your readers to read a story a certain way just... isn't good writing.
Thinking about it, I don't think it's so much labels we need as more consideration for our readers. Because I do know how tricky it is to warn or label for everything, and that there are some things that you don't really think to warn for. But there are ways to label a story to let a reader know what they're in for (or at least give them an idea). Saying a story is gen with pairing/pairing implied or pairing/pairing undertones, or saying Gen friendship and acknowledges canon pairings for example. Or saying a story is gen but can be slash with your goggles on. Which many writers do, and it helps a lot in knowing what to give a try and what to avoid.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-14 07:06 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-05-14 10:39 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-05-16 12:54 am (UTC)From: (Anonymous)This is not a value I hold (I define canon as "something that shouldn't be contradicted, unless I'm writing an AU", which is a slightly different definition), but I get that that is important to some.
Princess of Geeks
no subject
Date: 2013-05-16 11:57 pm (UTC)From:Yeah, that's kind of how I am with canon as well. Or at least canon characterization. Characterization I don't mess with (well, you know, my interpretation of the characters, since we all interpret characters differently), and if I do write a story in which a character's personality has been altered then there has to be a reason for it, and a temporary reason at that (i.e. I have to be able to put them back as I found them, so to speak), even if the story's an AU or a what-if.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-16 01:29 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-05-16 11:59 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-05-16 09:13 am (UTC)From:I always have a slightly weird problem, in that, if I had to really define myself by what I actually write and my favorite things to read, I'm a gen fan who prefers m/m and f/f pairings in the background, which, in 90% of fandoms, are non-canon.
I mean, take SGA for example, since that's a fandom we share. I am a John/Rodney fan, I find it extremely difficult to read John as straight, and John/Holland is a key part of my headcanon backstory for the character. But I don't write romance, and honestly am not a very big fan of reading it. I like reading plotty, non-romance-centric fic that I can really sink my teeth into. Action scenes! Science fiction! Complicated conspiracy plots! These are all my favorite things. I mean, the fic I'm writing right now is basically a massive sci-fi non-romance plot, that just happens to have background McShep. This is, also, generally my favorite type of fic to read. (Or, at the very least, gen that acknowledges queer people can exist, which is, frankly, not a lot of it.)
It's like I don't fit in either the gen or the slash parts of fandom. The gen fans don't want to read most of what I what I write, because it's extremely hard for me to completely eliminate non-canon pairings from my fic (trying to scrub the John/Holland part of my headcanon is especially difficult - most of my true gen has not featured John) and besides, if I'm writing for something that isn't a gen-specific fest, I like writing in those non-canon pairings and who's my fic for if not me? But the slash fans don't want to read my fic because my slash pairings aren't the focus of the fic, I don't write romance, and I've never written anything I'd rate higher than PG-13 in my life. This also means I end up reading a lot of slash and, well, scrolling past a lot of porn trying to find the actual plot.
This makes fandom a lot more difficult than you'd think it would.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-16 11:32 pm (UTC)From:Fanfic pretty much is all about self-gratification, but while we can write whatever we want we can't always read whatever we want, and that's where things get tricky, I think. As a writer, I totally understand the frustration over having to warn for things that you don't want to warn for because it'll give away the plot, or label things that don't really fall into a specific label. But as a reader, I love those labels and warnings because they help me navigate through fandom toward what it is I want to read, while keeping clear of what I don't want to read. So, yeah, it's very tricky stuff.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-21 07:43 am (UTC)From:I write a lot of gen and these days I mostly prefer to read it (although I've both written and read slash and het fic too). I think the reason is that while you can find casefic, character studies, horrorfic, etc. (to name three of my favourite genres) that feature a romance angle, it's comparatively rare. Perhaps it's because these genres tend to require extensive plotting - something that can afford to take more of a back seat (to coin a phrase ;-) in heavily romance- or pairing-centric fics. And as I love plotty fics and storytelling, that's what I gravitate towards.
The other thing gen gives me is the full spectrum of human relationships that exist beyond the well-known romantic ones. Parent:child, sibling:sibling, employer:employee, friend:friend, all the way up/down to monarch:subject. Since I often fall in love with secondary or tertiary characters in fandom, gen gives me even more scope to explore them than a pairing focus ever could. That's why an exclusive focus on a juggernaut pairing (to me) is like insisting on eating cheesecake and only cheesecake when there's a full smorgasbord in front of you waiting to be sampled.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-01 10:37 am (UTC)From:I started reading an writing fanfiction when I was 20 years old. I didn't realize I was asexual until I was 23. I think I mainly gravitated toward gen even before I knew my own sexual orientation was because I couldn't relate to allosexual (http://luvtheheaven.wordpress.com/2014/05/08/why-i-use-allosexual/) characters sometimes, although I liked non-sexual romances just fine... but really a bigger reason I gravitated toward gen is because they tended to be more unique and less cliche, and they even seemed to be better written on average. I mean, generally it's easier to find the "worst fic ever how could the author even think to post this thing" being about a romantic pairing, I feel. Lol.