Gen - Fanlore

Gen

Synonyms:
See also: slash, het, adult, ratings
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(n., adj.) A fanwork that contains no romantic or sexual content, either het or slash. (Before '90s, the word General was more frequently used, as for example, in the Surak awards.)

In practical terms, mild het content is often considered acceptable in a gen story (with the "het" label reserved for more adult stories, or those that specifically focus on romantic elements), because many gen stories do involve characters that are romantically involved in canon, but mild slash seldom is, perhaps because there are few fandoms with both homosexual relationships in canon and gen stories. In general, however, to be considered gen, fanworks may acknowledge the existence of a romantic relationship (usually, though not always, canon), but should not focus on it.

Although gen is probably short for "general audience", it shouldn't automatically be considered G-rated (suitable for children). It can -- and often does -- deal with adult subjects, including graphic violence and other potentially upsetting themes.

A minority of fans defines gen much more widely, e.g. the LJ community comics_genfic states on their community info (accessed 3 October 2008) as:
"General interest fic -- genfic -- for this forum, does not preclude either sex or relationships (homosexual or heterosexual). It can have sex, violence, adult language, adult situations. It can be rated G, PG, PG-13, R, or NC-17. (Why NC-17? Because the real NC-17 is for adult themes and not for pornography.) [...] So Genfic can be anything that the MPAA would accept as a movie to be rated -- anything short of porn."

There is a recent term used among some gen writers/readers called 'bob' which, the definition used by musesfool in her meta about gen, is "stories where there is a sexual element but it is not the point of the story"[1], it was first used by Cofax: "I just don't know that segregating fic by just this one criteria is the best way to solve it. Eh. I may just do as Vee suggests, and label all my stories "Bob" in future."[2]

Contents

Is Shipping the Default for Fanfic Fandoms?

Some fans on LJ have remarked upon the apparent lack of gen in fandom (especially non-sf fandoms). Many fans believe that, when averaged across time and multiple fandoms, gen only accounts for about 20% of fan stories.[3] (Note: interestingly, gen vids, especially those that are intended as character study or ensemble/team vids, make up a higher percentage of total vids than gen stories do of total fan stories. See Vividcon for more detail.) The other 80% is thought to comprise of works of a romantic and/or sexual nature. Anecdotally, a gen work posted to LJ or some archives will typically receive less feedback than a work containing romance or sex of similar (or even lesser) quality or by the same author, and few gen authors will go on to receive any wide acclaim within their fandom. Unsurprisingly, this is a situation many gen authors find frustrating, if not outright disheartening.

According to Nicole V, this perception existed on mailing lists as well, that it was a constant argument on the B7 big email list, that slash 'drove out' gen. Sometime in 1994:

I remember combing thru [sic] several GAZs—the old zine listing zine—and totalling up the number of slash zines versus gen zines currently available at that time, and there were far more gen than slash (facts! I had data!). [4]

Verba [5] mentions a similar "all Star Trek fanzines nowadays are K/S" whine happening back as far as 1980. She counted Trek and K/S zines listed in adzines throught the '80s and showed that K/S never reached even half of Trek zine output. (Though admittedly, she was comparing K/S to all other Trek, not K/S and het to all other Trek.)

The reasons put forth for this perceived imbalance are varied:

  • Fans want to play "what if". When the source material is largely gen, slash is one of the easiest ways of pushing the boundaries.
  • Similarly, fandom is about subverting canon, not conforming to it.
  • Women like romance.
  • The majority of content produced by our culture is gen—why add more?
  • Shipping is the entire draw of a fandom.
  • Gen is boring.
  • With pairings, you generally know exactly what you're going to get, while fics labelled gen are a grab-bag.
  • Romance or smut is easier to plot than gen, or make it easier to 'raise the stakes' of a story.
  • It's easier to generate conflict between characters when they're romantically involved.
  • Humans like sex.
  • Sex is an easy metaphor for emotional intimacy and vulnerability.

The difficulty of finding gen works is often remarked upon by gen aficionados. The relative scarcity of material is compounded by the tendency of archives and communities to classify works by pairing, or to simply not accept works that do not contain a pairing[6]. Most major fan communities, including rec and commentary sites, also have a strong pairing—typically slash—focus. Needs Citation

SF fandoms as partial exceptions

SF fandoms tend to have a larger gen community than non-SF fandoms, possibly because SF sources tend to also include a 'boy' fannish community, (i.e., a non-fanfic based fandom) that the gen community can share some energy with. Bi-fictional fans in SF fandoms often say that more of the interesting universe-building and universe extrapolation comes from the gen fans, that the pairing fans are too busy getting characters into bed to do the fictional heavy lifting the fandom needs.Needs Citation

Genre Boundaries

Fans can, and often do, debate applying the label of "gen" to a story. Below is a list of types of stories that may be labeled gen, but over which there has been controversy.

Pre-slash/UST

Some stories labelled gen by their authors may be perceived as pre-slash by readers if they contain slashy subtext or apparent UST, or may even be argued to be slash by readers who feel that any sexual interest—explicit or implicit, intended or not—makes it slash. Some authors may object to this reading, arguing that any perceived slashy subtext was not intentional and that the author's intention is what determines the genre, and that the label of 'pre-slash' creates the expectation that any subsequent works will contain true slash elements. There are also those who are bothered by what they see as fandom's increasing inability to accept deep friendships or other close relationships between characters without sexualising them.[7][8] (Mind you, they say "increasing inability" because they don't realize that these battles and accusations were common from the very beginning of K/S in the mid-70s.)

Such debate also occurs in het circles, but to a lesser extent.

Stories with slash pairings but without sex or romance

Some authors or readers may label stories that involve a slash pairing as "gen" if the focus of the story is not on romance or sex, but instead has a plot that is unrelated to any sexual interest between the characters -- the slashed characters are clearly a couple, but the story is about how they fight crime or explore an alien planet, not about their relationship. Some authors (and reccers, and people who tag stories on Delicious) label such stories both slash and gen, or slashy gen, labels that can completely confuse other fans. Labeling a story both het and gen is more rare.

Intense Friendship or Smarm

Smarm is a genre of fanwork which focuses on the emotional connection or intense friendship between two characters. In its most extreme form, smarm may include declarations of love and commitment to one another, physical displays of affection, or soulbonding between the two, (e.g. in The Sentinel,) but no sexual relationship is depicted or referred to, and so it is considered gen by most readers. See Smarm for details.

Readers may debate whether stories involving intense but not explicitly sexual relationships are slash or gen, or possibly pre-slash. Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Lose is one example of a story that was labeled slash by its author, but was considered gen by several readers and in fact won a gen award. Meanwhile Beach was labeled gen by its authors, but was considered slash by many readers.

In American popular culture of the later 1990s/early 2000s, the non-fannish term for this type of relationship may be Bromance.[9]

Domestic Discipline

Sometimes Domestic Discipline is written as part of a non-sexual relationship, and some authors classify those stories as gen. However some gen archives find such content unsuitable. For example the DD policy of the gen Sentinel archive Cascade Library excludes DD[10], whereas the first TS archive Guide Posts accepted gen DD. (See The Sentinel for details)

Rape

See Rapefic for details

Some fans label stories including rape as gen if the rape is the only sexual content in the story, it is not depicted erotically, and the focus of the story is on a character's recovery or on non-sexual hurt-comfort. These fans may feel that labeling a story in which a character is raped "slash" or "het" implies that the story is about a sexual relationship rather than about an act of violence. Other fans argue that any story involving sexual content cannot be gen, even if it contains no consensual sex.

Gen Slash or Gen Het?

Many fans feel gen stories are ones without major slash or het elements, but a quick search or two at Delicious will show that other fans happily give both, or even all three labels to a single fanwork. A search for stories with both "gen" + "slash" tags receives 4506 hits; "gen" + "het" gives a still large 3358 hits. (Accessed 3 December 2008.)

External Links

References

  1. ↑ Musesfool. baby, i got my facts learned real good right now, posted 21 July 2009. (Accessed August 19, 2009)
  2. ↑ Cofax. comment, posted 22 March 2007 in cofax7: recs, and meta (accessed 20 Aug 2009)
  3. ↑ mecurtin, 'Untitled Comment'. Posted 24 June 2007 in fanthropology: Fic Genre Frequency. Accessed 2 December 2008.
  4. ↑ Personal communication from Nicole to rache, December 2, 2008
  5. ↑ Verba, Joan. Boldly Writing. F T L Pubns, March 26, 2003, pg 54 and others
  6. ↑ liz_marcs, ''Untitled Comment'. Posted 07 September 2007. Accessed 2 December 2008
  7. ↑ irreversibly, 'Untitled Post'. Posted 11 May 2008. Accessed 2 December 2008.
  8. ↑ minisinoo, 'RECLAIMING PHILIA: or the mis-sexualizing of relationships' Reposted & revised 29 June 2005. Accessed 2 December 2008.
  9. ↑ Wikipedia entry on Bromance
  10. ↑ Cascade Library - Site Information. Updated 21 March 2008. Accessed 1 December 2008.
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