EXCHANGE INTERFACE

A distraction. Sometimes we just need a distraction.

--

AO3 Title Meme by china_shop

Of the 20 most recent titles of your AO3 works:

( fic title meme )

I'm not very good with trilogies.

The ones I write, that is. I always get to the end of Part II and then never finish Part III.

( it's like a graveyard of half-finished trilogies behind me )

I understand the principle of the thing:

het: male/female relationship
slash: male/male relationship (sometimes term includes female/female relationship)
femmeslash: female/female relationship
gen: no relationship

However, actually defining a given story in terms of the relationships within it seems...limiting. Especially when the story isn't focused on a specific relational outcome.

I once read a story that was labelled with about six or seven different pairings - and yet there wasn't really anything in there that I'd even class as UST. It was just interactions. Maybe it's just a function of fandom - where the most popular pairings are those characters that interact the most (anyone familiar with the Harry Potter fandom and the Harry/Hermione vs Harry/Ginny phenomenon?), but have we really fallen so far that we're reduced to what I see as a mentality of "They looked at/spoke to each other! It must be love!"?

Then there's some confusion about what 'gen' actually means. Back in the mists of time, 'gen' meant non-slash, and everything het below an R-rating. These days - at least in Stargate fandom, it seems as though 'gen' is defined as "something we would see in the show" - which is always difficult since different people see different things in the show.

( rubber hits the road: practical examples )

How do you perceive the genre labels and their accuracy in defining stories and character relationships?