wneleh: by Mirnell (Default)
wneleh ([personal profile] wneleh) wrote in [personal profile] jmtorres 2010-02-18 11:20 am (UTC)

I'm of many minds about this.

The fandom I write the most in (though don't read much in these days) is The Sentinel. I'm almost entirely gen-focused; for many reasons, I don't slash Jim and Blair. About half of what I write, though, I think could be read as slash; and half just couldn't, because even when you're eating burgers, there are ways you behave with someone you're having sex with and ways you don't.

So all my TS fic gets labeled gen; I view it as a public-service warning so that people looking for slash can trot on by. OTOH, I do sometimes think about putting some of the nothing-demands-this-is-gen fic in the slash archives.

I do have Jim and Blair react to women in my stories in a way that reflects them being people interested in them, but have not labeled anything het because of this sort of interaction.

OTOH, when I write in SGA - well, I view John Sheppard as gay, with Rodney the center of his world, and when I write John, whether he's the POV character or not much in the story at all, I write him thus. I've only labeled two or three of my SGA fics slash, though, because only a couple have been about - well, I wouldn't even call it romance. Boundaries being crossed that John would only cross with a potential lover (boundaries I have Jim and Blair cross all the time in my TS gen, but they're different people). Sometimes I think I should label any fic of mine that involves John and Rodney slash, but I don't want to do false advertising.

So... my take-away is that, if a story is about a couple, even if they're eating burgers, it's only polite to label it slash, but stick on a G, or "no sexual content" warning. You don't need to lay out everything about a character, though - "In this story, Ronon will argue with McKay a bit; so I think I need to tell you that, in my personal canon, Ronon once had a dream about McKay that he found troubling."

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