Denial, you're doing it wrong...
Oct. 20th, 2007 04:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
graculusI'm doing this from memory, so apologies if I miss stuff out, since I'm sure it's a poor representation of the views expressed - please feel free to correct/add stuff since I'd like the following account of my con panel to be as accurate as possible before I cross-post to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
connotations:
Is there a difference between gen and pre-slash [aka smarm: please, you're so far in denial the camels are complaining].
In hindsight, I'm not sure whether we covered the ground the person who suggested the panel intended, but there you go... ;)
We started with a brief survey of who read/wrote what, with most of the people there admitting that they read gen in at least one of their fandoms at least occasionally, if not regularly.
We then went on to look at some definitions of the key terms involved: in this case those would be gen, pre-slash and smarm. All of this with the caveat that denial in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing, as many of those present were in denial over entire seasons or movies, let alone little things like genre.
Gen was roughly defined by those present as being episode-like, character-driven, plot heavy, not involving a romantic aspect. I noted that in some fandoms you might well see some disagreement over what 'gen' entailed as they would consider some m/f activity (particularly 'canon' activity) as not being outside of the realm of a gen story. This wasn't, however, a view particularly shared by those present, probably because we were all slashers. I think I may have commented (if not then, then certainly later on) about those archives which used to differentiate between slash and het in that even pre-slash would get an NC-17 rating while a het writer would have to work hard for a similar rating based on the content of their fic.
Pre-slash was felt to be applied to stories where the writer was trying to set up a future romantic/sexual encounter, which might or might not get written in a subsequent story. It was as much or more focussed on 'thinky thoughts' about the other character than on events going on around them.
Smarm was a term that a number of people present had come across but which was something alien to others, since it just wasn't a label used in their fandom. Fandoms in which it was used were those such as The Sentinel, and to a lesser extent Due South and Stargate SG-1, or those fandoms to which smarm writers had moved from there. A smarm story was characterised by emotionally charged acts between two characters who were not sexually involved with one another - examples were given of characters who were otherwise portrayed as straight males showering and sleeping together.
The point was made that to most of the people present, the term 'smarm' was likely to be seen as pejorative - this, I theorised, might be a cultural issue rather than a fandom one, as the use of the term may call up the term 'smarmy' to us Brits, which is an unpleasant association.
There was then a discussion about why people might write a story that fit one of those labels more easily than the others: there was some consideration of whether labelling a story 'pre-slash' was a bit of a cop-out on the part of the author. This might be particularly the case in a fandom where slash was prolific and had a larger readership than gen, so a story might be labeled 'pre-slash' in order to give that writer an 'in' to that coveted readership and thus increase their potential audience. There was also something of a feeling that it was harder to write both good gen and good slash, so a pre-slash story might be easier to turn out.
I asked whether it was possible to have a fandom that was completely without gen stories, but even in the case of both Torchwood and Queer as Folk, where the sexual component of storytelling was likely to be intense (particularly in the latter), there was still gen, even if some of the gen in Queer as Folk was apparently about making the guys straight?
I then went on to talk about authorial intent... did the people present often come across stories labelled as gen which were slash (or vice versa) and, if so, did this matter? It was felt that people wanted to know what they were getting and that a story's category should accurately reflect its contents, but that sometimes people didn't get it right when they labelled. I suggested that perhaps, as slashers, we were happier to actively subvert what we were being told by the creators of fiction if we felt it was mislabelled (or they were deluding themselves), because that was what we were used to doing with source material. As a sub-culture, were we more willing to look for/accepting of different readings of what we're coming across, rather than just taking what we're told to?
Note to self - there was a mention of the Sith Academy during the panel, but I can't quite recall where it fitted in... anyone?
connotations:Is there a difference between gen and pre-slash [aka smarm: please, you're so far in denial the camels are complaining].
In hindsight, I'm not sure whether we covered the ground the person who suggested the panel intended, but there you go... ;)
We started with a brief survey of who read/wrote what, with most of the people there admitting that they read gen in at least one of their fandoms at least occasionally, if not regularly.
We then went on to look at some definitions of the key terms involved: in this case those would be gen, pre-slash and smarm. All of this with the caveat that denial in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing, as many of those present were in denial over entire seasons or movies, let alone little things like genre.
Gen was roughly defined by those present as being episode-like, character-driven, plot heavy, not involving a romantic aspect. I noted that in some fandoms you might well see some disagreement over what 'gen' entailed as they would consider some m/f activity (particularly 'canon' activity) as not being outside of the realm of a gen story. This wasn't, however, a view particularly shared by those present, probably because we were all slashers. I think I may have commented (if not then, then certainly later on) about those archives which used to differentiate between slash and het in that even pre-slash would get an NC-17 rating while a het writer would have to work hard for a similar rating based on the content of their fic.
Pre-slash was felt to be applied to stories where the writer was trying to set up a future romantic/sexual encounter, which might or might not get written in a subsequent story. It was as much or more focussed on 'thinky thoughts' about the other character than on events going on around them.
Smarm was a term that a number of people present had come across but which was something alien to others, since it just wasn't a label used in their fandom. Fandoms in which it was used were those such as The Sentinel, and to a lesser extent Due South and Stargate SG-1, or those fandoms to which smarm writers had moved from there. A smarm story was characterised by emotionally charged acts between two characters who were not sexually involved with one another - examples were given of characters who were otherwise portrayed as straight males showering and sleeping together.
The point was made that to most of the people present, the term 'smarm' was likely to be seen as pejorative - this, I theorised, might be a cultural issue rather than a fandom one, as the use of the term may call up the term 'smarmy' to us Brits, which is an unpleasant association.
There was then a discussion about why people might write a story that fit one of those labels more easily than the others: there was some consideration of whether labelling a story 'pre-slash' was a bit of a cop-out on the part of the author. This might be particularly the case in a fandom where slash was prolific and had a larger readership than gen, so a story might be labeled 'pre-slash' in order to give that writer an 'in' to that coveted readership and thus increase their potential audience. There was also something of a feeling that it was harder to write both good gen and good slash, so a pre-slash story might be easier to turn out.
I asked whether it was possible to have a fandom that was completely without gen stories, but even in the case of both Torchwood and Queer as Folk, where the sexual component of storytelling was likely to be intense (particularly in the latter), there was still gen, even if some of the gen in Queer as Folk was apparently about making the guys straight?
I then went on to talk about authorial intent... did the people present often come across stories labelled as gen which were slash (or vice versa) and, if so, did this matter? It was felt that people wanted to know what they were getting and that a story's category should accurately reflect its contents, but that sometimes people didn't get it right when they labelled. I suggested that perhaps, as slashers, we were happier to actively subvert what we were being told by the creators of fiction if we felt it was mislabelled (or they were deluding themselves), because that was what we were used to doing with source material. As a sub-culture, were we more willing to look for/accepting of different readings of what we're coming across, rather than just taking what we're told to?
Note to self - there was a mention of the Sith Academy during the panel, but I can't quite recall where it fitted in... anyone?
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no subject
Date: 2007-10-21 12:21 pm (UTC)Within SG-1 we had the dubious pleasure at one time of a bunch of shippers who were adamant they were 'right' about their particular pairing of choice (and got a lot of strokes from TPTB to support their theory, thus perpetuating the attitude). They also often portrayed one of the other male characters (and the actor who played him because he didn't wholeheartedly support 'their' pairing) in a very negative and pejorative way - always getting the team in trouble, never following orders, always thinking he was right even when it was obvious he wasn't, yadda yadda...
That attitude seemed to be a little infectious at times, and led to supposed gen stories where character A (usually the one perceived as being 'in the way' of the pairing, or at least part of the main slash pairing) would get everyone in danger because of his actions and character B (part of the het pairing) wouldn't be all that worried because the woman he loved was safe and that was what was important. So it wasn't so much always the characters' actions as it was attitudes, if you see what I mean?
I also think it shows a fundamental lack of respect for your readers. If they're expecting gen then that's what they should get, with no added extras - I wouldn't do that as a slash writer because I know that some people just don't see the characters and their relationships that way, so those of us who don't 'see' the het pairings (no matter how hard TPTB try, at times) should also get the same consideration.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-21 03:38 pm (UTC)But, like I said, I like plotty adventure stories where some of the characters may just happen to be involved with each other.
And I've written slash stories with background implied het, where shippers of the het pairing have debated whether it was subtext or text in that particular story.