alixtii | Enter the 'ship: het, gen, and WIP's (Reply)

There's a discussion over at

fanthropology about fandom identification vs. slasher identification. In a comment, I argue that:

When compared to het writers and femslasgers, m/m slashers are more likely to identify primarily as slashers rather than as members of any particular fandom. (Remember I'm talking about trends here. Mileage may vary.)
Gen writers are even more likely than het writers, femslashers, and m/m slashers to identify primarily as members of fandoms rather than gen writers as such.
Canon whoredom increases the likelihood of a fan identifying as a member of a particular fandom, since it is indicative of an increased investment in the continuity of that specific fandom.
Het writers who identify primarily as het writers rather than members of particular fandoms are likely to be drawn to fandom by types of narrative experiences they cannot find in the mainstream, i.e. the soi-disant "queer het."

As for myself, I am a Buffy/Angel (or Firefly/Serenity or West Wing or Star Trek or whatever) fan first, a het writer who dabbles with femslash second, and invested in specific ships in a strictly tertiary capacity. I'm also a proud member of the canon bordello, so maybe I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was that so many of my stories are actually gen. Maturity, Not Really Here, Funeral, Witch-Mother, That Old-Time Religion, Olympus, The Legacy of St. Stephen, and Watcher's Burden--in short, anything which isn't a WIP and wasn't written for

buffyverse1000--all fall into this category.

Which is all well and good. I like to think I write at least decent gen. Neither do I think that the het and femslash (see the index if you really care) I did for

buffyverse1000 is really all that horrible. But the genres are different, at least in part because the audiences. Het/femslash will attract people looking for "teh hawtness," while gen will attract more of the canon whores (if you accept my reasoning above). (Of course, the two groups of people are not mutually exclusive.) Different levels of suspension of disbelief can be assumed, then, depending on whether a story is gen or 'ship. (At least, I tend to set the bar at different places depending on what I'm reading. I'm the strictest when reading gen, moderately strict when reading het, and the least strict when reading femslash.)

(N.B.: This should in no way be construed as carte blanche to ignore canonicity when writing a 'ship fic. Nor ignoring the power of various passions when writing gen.)

The problem is that while most of my fic can be easily divided into 'ship and gen, the WIP's cannot. Blurring the line is pretty much an inevitable result of their length: while they resemble gen in their overall structure, there are plenty of scenes which contain 'ship elements. In particular, I'm currently revising/completing Divine Interventions (I'm not providing a link because I plan to post the revised version from the beginning once I finish it) and have hit the place where, after a couple of days of frantically running around the world like chickens with their heads cut off (well, chickens with their heads cut off who can fight evil and can use magic), the characters can finally relax and have sex. (The spectre of impending doom is looming large over their heads, but that only increases the sex drive in true Darwinian fashion.)

But for 18,000 words I've written what was basically a gen fic. It feels like a gen fic. So by that point a reader has the expectations of a gen fic, and I need to meet the standards of a gen fic. Not that she or he won't want the sex, but s/he'll be less willing to sacrifice continuity to get. So I need to get my characters in bed with them, all while keeping them in character to a degree far greater than found in my 'ship fics to date. It needs to be uber-believable.

At the same time, I need the sex. Many of the Buffyverse characters (I won't specify which so as not to spoil the fic) are emotionally unstable. Having them engaging in hot kinky sex is a way of not letting Mary Sue-ish super competent versions of themselves steal the fic.

When I started this post, I was planning for asking for advice, suggestions, and/or help, but the cathartic process of organizing my thoughts and writitng them down has made it clear there's only one solution: I need to make the sex believable, and I can only do that by sitting down and thinking out exactly why the characters are having sex (within the story reasons, I mean). It's like acting: I need to figure out their motivations. It's not as if there's really any shortcuts.In the the longterm, this is a good thing: believable sex can only make my fic that much better. Just excuse me as, in the short term, I go over to the corner and pull out my hair trying to make this damnèd thing work.

On a related issue, if anyone wants to beta Divine Interventions, I would love them forever.

ETA: I've started a follow-up discussion on longer works and their place in a fandom driven by erotic preference over at

fanthropology. There's quite a good discussion going!