Gen, Slash, and Het: Warnings or Genres?

[alixtii]

After--what? a week? a week and  a half?--of the gen vs. ship debates (cf. metafandom), I've finally come to a conclusion. They--with "they" being pretty much everyone with whom I disagree, on every side of the table--don't want genre labels. They want warning labels. (Admittedly, this wasn't so much my brilliant inspiration, as some of them coming out and admitting it.)

When we look for Serenity in the DVD store we look under "Science Fiction" (if the store has an S.F. section), because the movie is more science fiction than it is a western. You won't find a sticker on it saying "Warning: This film contains Western elements" and even if you read the entire back cover you won't find any indication that some people consider the film to be a western in addition to being science-fiction (in part because the cover sucks, but what can one do). (I'd use Firefly rather than Serenity to make my example, as the former has more western elements than the latter, but it'd probably more than likely be found in a "Television" section--which shows that fannish categories don't make any less sense than any others.)

If I go to the bookstore and browse through the science fiction section--which I do less than I used to, since I have an insane number of books already purchased and unread--they are in that section because they belong to the genre. They do not, however, have warnings that say: "Warning: This book may contain mystery elements" or "This book contains a boy and a dog" or "This book has a romance in it." No, it gets filed under the dominant genre, the best fit. The summary, if the book has one (not all do), might give a sense of the secondary or tertiary genres if there are any. (And even then the summaries aren't written by the author, so sometimes the summaries suck and give away too much, and sometimes they seem to be for a completely different story altogether, like the summary on the back of my copy of Time Enough for Love.) Then again, it might not, and you might find out half-way through the science fiction mystery you've been enjoying so much so far that it also includes a romance and a boy with a dog. If you hate these elements so much you can't go on, then tough, you're out $6.50 you could have spent on a different book.

In the fanfiction world, things are much better for the ridiculously fragile: all fanfics come with a money-back satisfaction guarantee.

"Het" is a genre which includes texts that focus on m/f romantic or sexual relationships. It is not a warning; I refuse to label my stories for someone so ridiculously fragile they will be crushed if they come across a reference to a heterosexual couple, even (what they, using their hermeneutic, consider to be) a non-canon couple. "Femslash" and "m/m slash" are genres as well, not warnings. I absolutely will not label my stories for someone so ridiculously fragile (or homophobic, although in these cases I don't think my interlocutors are) they will be crushed if they come across a reference to a homosexual couple, even (what they, using their [heteronormative] hermeneutic, consider to be) a non-canon couple.

Indeed, the best way one can tell that "gen" isn't a genre the way the gen fans (or at least the vocal gen fans with whom I've been disagreeing) have been using it is that it can be defined far too precisely. Genres don't work that way; their edges are always-already fuzzy. Warnings--or, in this case, the lack thereof--do. A genre specifies what a work is about, whether it's about falling in love or solving a mystery or fighting demons, which is subjective. A warning specifies if a given element is present--think of those warnings for peanuts on products that don't even include peanuts, because people can be just that sensitive to the oils--which is not subjective.

"Milk Chocolate" M&M's may contain peanuts; it says so on the wrappers. That doesn't make them Peanut M&M's, and anyone looking for Peanut M&M's and finding Milk Chocolate ones isn't going to be satisfied.

Anymore, the only time I warn, ever, is for non-con. I wouldn't (I don't think--I'm not making any promises) withhold pairing information if the relevant pairing was incestuous, even if it was very brief, and I think I might even add a note in the case of a pairing like "Cindy Mackenzie/Lauren Sinclair" making clear the relationship, so you could say I'd warn for incest. But I don't warn for death, and I don't warn for pregnancy, and if I've already said it, I don't care, I'll say it again: I will not warn for het or femslash or m/m slash. Absolutely out of the question.

I provide a Genre Index so people can find the sorts of fic they'll probably like, like putting all the science fiction books together in the bookstore--not so they can be protected from stuff they don't like. If you like homoerotic stories about women which are romantic and/or sexual, you'll probably like the stories I classify under "femslash." But that doesn't mean you won't find elements you don't like there. Tough. As I said, money-back satisfaction guarantee. (Stealing a languagelog chestnut even more, I'll even throw in a free year's subscription to this journal.) Stories are frequently listed under more than one genre, and yes, a story about fighting demons in which Dawn and Giles just happen to be married will be listed under both gen and het. (And I suspect the reader going in expecting pure het is going to be more disappointed than the reader expecting pure gen.)

Admittedly, it's not just gen fans who want warnings when it comes to pairings. 'Shippers can be just as bad, with a Buffy/Angel fan not wanting to hear a mention of Buffy/Spike or Spike/Angel even if the fic is post-"NFA," or some such. A plague on both their houses, I'll say--if a couple paragraphs referencing some (in your mind noncanon) pairing in a long plotty multichapter epic can ruin your entire reading experience, you really have to get over yourself.

But this is the first time I've heard anyone suggest that we subvert the entire genre classificatory system to turn it into a warning system. Because just, erm, no.

Comments

[spikendru.livejournal.com]

So Buffy and Spike aren't macking on each other, or engaging in a little canoodling in the castle courtyard while searching for the Sword of Whoseit, but are just mentioned as an established couple and that turns gen into het? Although, they aren't actually partaking of any explicit hettish behavior? The mind boggles.

[spikendru.livejournal.com]

Er . . . I meant to type Buffy and Xander, but my fingers automatically went to the S - P - I - K - E letters after the "Buffy and". Oopsie. It's subliminal, I guess.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

LOL. Then yes, that's exactly it. I dare you to make sense of it.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Buffy/Spike falls under the "(what they consider to be a) canon pairing" exception--although given the timultuous nature of Buffy/Angel and Buffy/Spike in the fandom, I wouldn't be surprised to hear people recommend warning for these as well. So Buffy and Spike can canoodle all they like (in some gen fans' formulations, up to and including NC-17 explicit sex) and it's still gen, but if Buffy and Xander are so much as briefly mentioned as having gone on a date, that's het.

Boggles, the mind does indeed.

[spikendru.livejournal.com]

So who makes up these definitions and does everybody-who-isn't-me know about them? I've just been operating under the assumption that a fic labeled "het" is going to contain some actual incidences of sexual behavior between a male and a female, a fic labeled "slash" is going to contain actual incidences of sexual behavior betweeen two males, and "femslash" for two females, and a fic labeled "gen" is a general fic in which people probably aren't going to actually be getting groiny with each other, but doing other things. Although they may be an established couple (Willow and Tara practicing spells) or a non-canon couple (Xander and another person searching for the Sword of Whoseit). If while they are searching, Xander happens to have some romantic thought about the person, but there is no acting on it and the other person isn't aware of his feelings, does that make it not-gen? (Xander having romantic thoughts about Buffy is canon; his having romantic thoughts about Willow is canon; his having romantic thoughts about Giles isn't canon - to my knowledge - while searching for the Sword of Whoseit). If what they're doing are general things, I always considered it gen. I may be wrong.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I've just been operating under the assumption that a fic labeled "het" is going to contain some actual incidences of sexual behavior between a male and a female, a fic labeled "slash" is going to contain actual incidences of sexual behavior betweeen two males, and "femslash" for two females, and a fic labeled "gen" is a general fic in which people probably aren't going to actually be getting groiny with each other, but doing other things

But that would make sense and utilize Earth logic!

If while they are searching, Xander happens to have some romantic thought about the person, but there is no acting on it and the other person isn't aware of his feelings, does that make it not-gen? (Xander having romantic thoughts about Buffy is canon; his having romantic thoughts about Willow is

The idea that reasonable people could disagree on whether a pairing was canon is something that we just couldn't get our gracious interlocutors to see. Is Spike/Angel canon? (I think so.) Is Giles/Ethan? Mal/Inara? Simon/River? One response was that if there was any possible doubt at all, then it wasn't canon. (Bwah?) But this was the argument that frustrated cathexys and me the most I think--the way they kept conflating canon with their gen-goggled interpretation of it.

If what they're doing are general things, I always considered it gen. I may be wrong.

That's the definition I've been defending the last couple of weeks. I certainly don't intend to change the way I use it.

[that_mireille]

One response was that if there was any possible doubt at all, then it wasn't canon.

Okay, that tends to be the definition I use--if the fact that there is a romantic/sexual relationship is open to debate, then I don't call it a canon pairing. (This coming from the Giles/Ethan fan, and yes, I apply it to pairings I *like*, too. *g*) I tend to call things like--well, it's past one a.m. and I'm tired, so let's stick with G/E as my example-- "pairings with strong canon subtext," or something of the sort.

I don't care that *other* people call them canon, but if I were writing a fic that contained, for example, Giles/Ethan, Buffy/Riley, Xander/Anya, and Willow/Tara, I would probably say it contained, "Giles/Ethan plus canon pairings from S5."

On the other hand, I don't think that having a pairing, canonical or not, in the background makes it *not gen*. It may make it something I don't want to *read*, depending on the pairing and whether it hits my "DO NOT WANT" buttons, but that's totally different.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Okay, that tends to be the definition I use--if the fact that there is a romantic/sexual relationship is open to debate, then I don't call it a canon pairing.

But cathexys and I are post-structuralists (mostly), and the way we see it, everything is open to the debate--how can it not be? So by that standard, if nothing which is open to debate is canon, then nothing is canon. We (and I think I can speak for her on this) distrust so-called "common sense" because we see it as little more than disguised ideology. Thus our dissatisfaction with tying the definition of gen to canon, or to saying that one should warn for all noncanon pairings.

(I bristle at being told to warn for all pairings at all, but the request is at least coherent even if I have no intention of implying. But the demand to warn for noncanon pairings only isn't even coherent without a clear understanding of whose reading standards are going to be used to interrogate the text in order to make decisions about canonicity.)

One doesn't even have to go all that radical, I don't think, for this point to make sense. If Spike saying "There was that one time" about him and Angel doesn't make it canonical, then what does? The presence of debate is a lousy indicator of canonicity (or the lack thereof) because it ultimately has more to do with us and our prejudices than with what is in the text.

Outside of a community of readers, texts don't mean anything because they don't communicate, they just sit there. Within a community of readers, the text's meaning (whether two characters are in a romantic relationship or not, for example) is radically contingent on the reading practices of that community.

The problem with saying that what is open to debate is noncanon is that it still just goes back to what fan X thinks is open to debate and what isn't, and thus priveleges their interpretation of canon as canon over and against those who interpret canon differently. It doesn't actually free us from the problem at the heart of things.

[that_mireille]

Well, there are points that people can agree on when dealing with a source, and they tend to focus on actions and words without any analysis of deeper meaning behind them. (In other words, I think you could get at least the vast, vast majority of people to agree that Spike said, "There was this one time--" even if we didn't agree on what he meant by it.)

And I'm used to--my fannish pedigree is such that I am used to discussions where actually, getting people to recognize that what they're talking about did not happen (There was never a scene where A said that line of dialogue to B; C and D were, in fact, never in the same room, etc.) was often an important step in debating things with people.

(It must be said that this was pre-DVD, and pre-an official videotape release of the series in question, too, so it's not that people were unusually stupid. It's that it was harder to *check* that kind of thing, and memories get iffy.)

So my definition of what is and is not canon, and my labeling nearly *everything* that most people label as "canon" as "plausibly supported by canon" instead is more of a sign of when and where my own working definitions got developed. And since I don't insist that anyone else use my definitions--and in fact, rarely debate the point; I tend to keep my disagreement about the word quiet, because it honestly does not matter that much to me *g*--it's not a big deal. I'm not trying to change your use of the word, and I'm not interested in changing mine.

But considering that my point is that it's possible to hold a very rigid definition of canon and still think it is insane to insist that any brief mention of a pairing, canonical or not, in a story that is not, in any way, about romantic love or sex, makes it automatically not gen, all of the above? Completely beside the point.