Gen vs Het

[briarwood]

Question for you folks, as my flist is wise and all-knowing *g*

I started a new fic last week. I'm not ready to spill details yet (unless you happen to be in the com. where I mentioned it yesterday), but I'm wondering how I should label this one.

Scenario: Future-fic. In this story, a major character (who is single in canon) is married (to a woman). The wife is another canon character but not a series regular. My story is not a "ship" story: the marriage is not the focus of the tale, but it is necessary background, not something I can discard from the story. No sex scenes, minimal romantic dialogue - the main character just happens to be married.

Personally, I think of the story as Gen. Ultimately, it doesn't matter to me because I'll write the fic I want to write.

But when I post this story, how should I label it? I mean, does this non-central relationship make the story "het" rather than "gen"? If I include the pairing in the story info, would that imply it's a 'ship fic?

Story labelling, IMO, is informational. It should give a true picture of the story to follow, so readers can make a decision whether or not to click on the link. So I want to get this right - not in terms of how I think of the story, but in terms of matching the information to what the reader should expect.

Am I making sense?

[ETA: It's like, when I wrote Predator I posted it as Gen with Jim/Carolyn in the pairing, and that was okay because it was an "ancient history" pairing in terms of the fic. She was dead in the present. That's not how it is with this new story. M and F are still married, and happy. It's just that the story ain't about that.]

Basically, if you see "Gen" or "het" as a label, what does that mean to you? If you see a pairing listed, what expectation does that create?

Comments

[redgirl72928.livejournal.com]

IMHO I see "Gen" as being like a G or PG rating at the movies, no 'on-screen' sex, minimum bad language, sutitable reading for all ages.

'Het' would be 'on-screen' sex.

I don't know about 'ship. I really don't do fandoms that 'ship anybody, so I can't help much with that.

I'm sure I've muddied the waters, so I'll go back to work. :)

[rydra_wong]

*wanders by across the friendsfriendlists, hoping that's okay*

For what it's worth, I'd tend to go for a label like "gen with reference to x/y", or "mostly gen apart from reference to x/y".

Right now, there seems to be a lot of fuzziness in how categories get interpreted, and there are people who feel that a story marked as "gen" should have no reference to relationships at all and people who feel that something that's marked as "het" or "ship" (or "slash") should be focused on the relationship.

So I go for a bit of extra detail as a way of avoiding the hassle.

[meeshy.livejournal.com]

Someone on my f'list synecdochic had a very similar post (http://synecdochic.livejournal.com/111282.html) last week!

I have issues with labels on fic, mostly because I labelled something "femslash" recently because it had hints of a f/f relationship (and their interactions were the focus of the story) but someone had commented and said "Wheres the femslash in this" *blinks* So yeah, now I hate labelling my fic because what I see might be different to what other people see!

[slipperieslope.livejournal.com]

To me "Het" implies written heterosexual encounters of an adult explicit nature. "Gen" is content for everybody/all age levels wherein there is little to no sexual content and what is there, is vanilla canon, at most a kiss or a tickle, and should not be the focus of the story.

But that is me ; ) And I have been disappointed by labels in my lifetime!