jmtorres | slashgen or preslash

Some people don't like the label preslash, but I love it for just that reason. There should *totally* be a different label for "X loves/likes/lusts after Y but nothing happens yet" as opposed to, well, something happening.

I've taken to using slashgen. Largely as a "nothing happens in this story, something could, the chances of me writing a sequel in which they do sex are kind of nil, so, you know, have fun thinking whatever about their relationship in *this* story." Preslash really only works for me as a promise that slash is forthcoming.

Oh agreed on the preslash only if there is actual slash coming, but even *that* usage is unpopular in certain circles. I still think it is a useful label to have, though.

I dislike it really a lot. I find it -- honestly, it's the double-standard that drives me up the wall. If non-explicit het subtext can be called gen, then non-explicit slash subtext can be called gen too. I tolerate slashgen better because, well, at least it's calling itself gen in there somewhere.

But it's probably relevant that I hate the usage of gen that is no-romance, myself. It's insane to argue that romantic human relationships don't, you know, happen all the time. If the focus isn't on the pairing, honestly, it's gen.

This is just me, though. I speak for no one but my own damned self.

I like it not as a "You must put this label on it to save poor straight people from seeing it!!!" thing, but more as a useful "I would like slash subtext, thank you for telling me I can find it here".

Like, is preslash gen? Yes, yes it is. But it is a species of gen which perhaps a slash audience would particularly like and would like to be made aware of.

I certainly prefer it being called preslash to being called slash. If nothing happens, there is no slash!

a useful "I would like slash subtext, thank you for telling me I can find it here".

*nods* When it comes to certain fandoms and pairings, I definitely have a preference for slash-friendly gen. And I always like it when I know an author shares my shipping preferences. Even gen can be written through the lens of an OTP -- shipping is about more than overt sex and romance. It's also about which character serves as another character's emotional lynchpin. And reading genfic where the wrong character is Character's A Most Important Person, or where there's obvious UST between characters who's relationship is enjoyable when platonic but would be squicky to you-the-reader if sexual (because the characters are siblings and you have an incest squick, or because mentor/student relationships squick you, or some other specific-relationship-dynamic squick, or because you'd really like to never be made to imagine character X having sex) can be as jarring as reading something where there's a textual, consummated romantic/sexual relationship that you don't ship.

Whereas gen that has a nice helping of slashy subtext in the flavor you prefer is often just as satisfying as fic with actual sex scenes.

Oh yes this. I think I've used "romantic gen" before to describe this - I assume that readers will figure from the other header info if it's m/m or m/f or f/f. But - as a reader! - I want a word for it, because so often that's what I really want.

I agree with

jmtorres: using the prefix 'pre' implies that the slash is going to happen, that the subtext will become text and the UST be resolved at some stage. I think that has problems vis-a-vis false expectations and obligations and I probably wouldn't use it for that reason.

It might be fun to explicitly state "slash subtext" to inform potential readers that it's there if they look, but part of me's saying that subtext pointed out to the reader is less fun for all involved. It's like listing the characters in a header when one of them's being there is supposed to be not only a surprise, but the crux of the mystery plot you've been building up for three chapters. Etiquette and 'advertising' (for want of a better word) seem, sometimes, to be at odds with quality of writing/reading.

Every writer can choose to do as they wish. But on the other hand, sometimes it is nice for people to know *why* they might want to read your fic and it helps the fic find the audience that would like it.

I know. It's a weird little conflict of interests, though, don't you think? Especially if the knowing-why-to-read actively counteracts the actual story by self-spoilering.

Well, it depends on whether the writer and the reader feel that it *does* counteract the story. For that matter, why does anyone ever list genre or pairing? Because many readers want to know and many writers want to let them know. Not everything is about the surprise.

It isn't for every story or everyone, but there are cases where it is a good option.

Not everything is about the surprise.

Particularly romance, in some ways -- there's rarely any surprise about who the heroine's Designated Love Interest is going to be in a romance novel, and even in a series where there is some question (Will the heroine choose guy A or guy B?) it's generally a choice btween two characters who are both introduced as potential romantic leads early on in the series. If you get to book six and the heroine suddenly goes off to live happily ever after with guy C who's just appeared in this instalment, there's usually reader outcry (dieMicahdie. Diediedie and take the ardeur with you).

I think a lot of the appeal of certain kinds of romance plots for some readers is knowing the who from the get go and concentrating entirely on the how and the when. Not "will they fall in love?" but "when will they realize that they're in love?"

I dislike "pre-slash" as label too, but much of it is indeed focussed on the pairing and not gen. Much like I don't see in X-Files Mulder/Scully UST as "gen" just because there is no sex, it's MSR het.

I'd prefer if those stories labelled themselves as slash with UST if there is significant UST and pairing focus but no sex, and plain gen if it is all in the author's head, but I don't see it as a reader as more than friendship. That way it's clear what is/isn't happening, for slash just as for het.

I've noticed the universal tag Unresolved Sexual Tension on A03. It seems useful for the promiseless, gen-like variety.

True, though it would need some kind of modifier or pairing tag or description to advertise the precise *flavor* of UST.

Yeah, UST is a good old fannish standard, but I maintain that it's not exactly present in two people eat burgers. Seriously. Burgers. Burgers are gen, damn it.

I've read a lot of "preslash" where the pairing was written with no subtext, just good friendship, but my enjoyment of the fic is diminished by the subtext that's apparently there, whether I want it or not, I'm just too blind a reader to see it. Grr. There is nothing wrong with gen, people; a gen story can continue in any direction, gen or slash, but still be gen for the length of the story written.

I just posted a fic (different fandom) that I labeled as gen despite there being off-screen sex because the relationship wasn't the point of the fic. Wasn't even close to the point of the fic and I felt labeling it as het would be disingenuous. It is without a doubt a gen fic that happened to feature part of a canon relationship.

I mention this because it's an unusual thing to do and I thought about it a bit because so much focus in fandom is placed on ships. Gen fic gets less readers, everyone knows that, so I wonder if people aren't afraid to label their fics as gen because it'll decrease their readership. Even if their fics are gen except for squint and you might see it subtext.

I've also noticed that in Supernatural fandom there is less labeling of fic as 'squint and you might see it subtext' or 'there if you want it UST' or even 'can be read as preslash' then I've seen in other fandoms. And all of those are the closest I usually see to gen fic being mixed with pairing fic. I think part of the problem is the idea that gen=no romance rather than gen=fic focuses on things other then the pairing, but the pairing may be present, perhaps because that's a bit of a mouthful.

IDK, just some thoughts.

I think part of the problem is the idea that gen=no romance rather than gen=fic focuses on things other then the pairing, but the pairing may be present

See, yes and no? Like, a lot of the stuff I've been reading, it's about the relationship these two characters have, there's no other plot to the story really, however, there's nothing in the story that specifies it as a romantic relationship rather than a platonic friendship. Seriously: they eat burgers. Sometimes that's all it's about. And the burgers are not a metaphor. The pie is sometimes a metaphor. But not the burgers.

I wrote a White Collar story that I labeled slashgen because I felt there was no confirmation/consummation from the couple in question, though the subtext was such a living, breathing thing that another character in the story called them on it. Is the witness right or wrong? Yes, therefore it's slashgen.

Frienship!fic is another vanishingly rare thing in fandom as of late. Or at least the label of friendship!fic.

Really? I actually run into that label a lot. It tends to be used more in overtly anti-slash circles, though, I think (I know I've seen it used that way often enough to have developed an automatic flinch reaction to it, anyway).

This, undoubtedly this. Most of what I write is gen with subtext and UST out the proverbial wazoo, and it bothers me that the label 'gen' has that "opposite of pairing" association. I've never explicitly labelled anything as gen, probably because of that - I'm not going to lie and call it slash to get readers, but I'm not going to label it as gen and invite skipping either.

It's a delicate balance. I label a fic gen when I think any relationships are sufficiently backgrounded. As long as it's not the point of the fic or a major focus of the fic, then I'll label it as gen. For the most part.

One thing I just decided is awesome about the AO3 is that I can label a fic as gen and still put a pairing on it as well. Perhaps a bit confusing, but covers my purposes perfectly.

I've also noticed that in Supernatural fandom there is less labeling of fic as 'squint and you might see it subtext' or 'there if you want it UST' or even 'can be read as preslash' then I've seen in other fandoms.

Huh. My experience with SPN has been the exact opposite. I don't see it as often anymore, but "Wincest if you squint!" is one of my pet peeves, mostly because I feel like it's a way to grab two sets of not-necessarily overlapping readers (i.e., gen people who don't want Wincest and Wincest readers) that ends up alienating both, because the gen folks who don't want Wincest often really don't want it, and stories labeled that way re typically not Wincesty enough to merit the label in the first place so they're disappointing to a lot of Sam/Dean shippers. Basically, I don't feel the need for the author to tell me whether I should be seeing subtext or not.

Now I see a lot of "Dean & Castiel (or Dean/Castiel if you squint)" labels in the spn_gen community, but since I don't like Castiel and the pairing squicks me, I don't know how it shakes out in the actual reading.

So I guess I find the preslash thing kind of annoying as well. I mean, if I ship the pairing already, I'm going to bring that to a gen story regardless (every story in HP is a Remus/Sirius story to me, for example), but if I don't see the characters that way, even if nothing happens in the story, that label is probably going to keep me from reading it.

I don't know how it shakes out in the actual reading.

They eat burgers a lot. I am not kidding. *G*

See, and I don't read Wincest so it could just be a pairing divide. Thinking back a few years to when I did read Wincest I remember getting annoyed at the number of fics with the 'Wincest if you squint' label. Because they often had less subtext then the show did. And anything with incest gets extra tricky because it is so very squicky to so many people.

I think if something is labeled with a subtext tag then the author needs to really make sure the subtext is there. (But that probably requires more self awareness then most authors have, sadly.) It's likely that people use it in the way you've mentioned, an attempt to get more readers and ending up with fewer.

I actually get almost all of my gen reading from recs (and they tend towards Sam and Dean being awesome brothers together) so I wasn't aware of that trend in Dean-Castiel fics. I like the & in general though because it (for me at least) says friendship and I like friendship fic. It's a bit of a neglected genre because it's still focused on the relationship between the two people, but without the pairing part and you get people who don't want to label it as pairing or gen.

I used to like the preslash label, back in my SG-1 days, but I've grown less fond of it the longer I'm in fandom. Nowadays I really only think it's appropriate on longer fics where the slash will eventually develop.

I think, sometimes, people aren't aware that a slash indicates romantic or sexual pairings, and they just label the story X/Y because all of the other stories are labeled X/Y. There don't seem to be as many easy-to-find guides to fic headers and other fandom etiquette as there used to be, so a lot of newer fans end up guessing at protocol, and, when no one corrects their mistake, they continue to use it.

On the other hand, some people intentionally...over-label, I'll call it. I know I do from time to time, because I know some people in my fandom are bothered by the pairing I write. If there's anything in the story I think could be construed as 'shippy, I slap the pairing label on it. In the grand scheme of things, I'd rather disappoint the people looking for the pairing than squick or annoy the people who want to avoid it.

Edit: I see the conversation upthread, and I should say that the pairing I over-label for is het, not slash, so it's not a case of protecting the delicate sensibilities of straight people.

Edited (For clarification.) 2010-02-18 07:28 (UTC)

I think, sometimes, people aren't aware that a slash indicates romantic or sexual pairings, and they just label the story X/Y because all of the other stories are labeled X/Y

I've run into this in numerous fandoms, most recently in Full Metal Alchemist, and it's invariably O.o inducing. I always have this urge to leave a review telling the author that "parental Roy/Ed" in their summary reeaally doesn't send the impression they think it does. Unless they want people to click on their fic in hopeful expectation of Roy/Ed slash with daddykink.

Eek. I've never seen that, although I have seen "X/Y friendship," which makes my head hurt. It's like telling an artificial intelligence, "This statement is true. The previous statement is false."

Something similar happens with Yuletide requests, where people specify which characters they want to read about, and said characters' names are all displayed with "/" between them, so you can get "characterA/characterB/characterC/characterD" as if someone's asking for an orgy fic, followed by, "requester prefers gen."

Some people really care about gen fic being non-romantic. But it's so hard to tell how to describe the spectrum of relationships, I wish there were more subtle ways to label things.

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."

Here via Metafandom. This is interesting to me, because I've just started reading Dean/Castiel fics (and Dean & Castiel fics). And I've been trying to figure out what the preferred labeling system is. Gen, gen (but subext if you squint), preslash, etc. There do seem to be stories that have no more subtext than the show has, yet they're labeled as something besides gen. Do you think gen stories are labeled as subtext or preslash to get more readers? I'm going to read either way, but I'd like to know what I'm getting.

Here also via metafandom.

I find this interesting because I occasionally write a pairing that while het is something that I generally feel a need to warn for, because the concept of those two characters ending up together is more than a bit cracked.

I actually ended up splitting the index of a pairing project (stand-alone pieces in one contiguous narrative) I was doing into Gen, Hint, and [Pairing] sections, complete with separate tags, because I didn't want people who didn't want to read the pairing starting at the beginning and thinking they were going to be able to read the entire project, and also wanted to be able to say 'this part is pairing free backstory' and 'this part is just friendship fluff' so I wasn't misleading anyone about what particular pieces actually were by themselves.

And it felt weird doing it, especially for the Hint category because there isn't usually a 'gen heading towards a relationship' label. Just Gen, then Het or Slash as the case may be. Like you said, it's usually the ratings that are the only guide to relationship stage after that.

There's always "Bob." :)

I tend to use "X'n'Y" in headers/tags when the two characters are clearly a unit, but not in a specifically shippy way. So a header might say "Characters/Pairings: Alice'n'Bob, Carol/Dawn, Eddie."

The connection that leads to that kind of labeling can include anything from "closely-knit professional partners" to "pairing subtext" to "strong family-like bond" to "kind of stalkerish obsession" to "whatever you call the relationship between a Doctor and a Companion when you firmly believe that romance is not a factor."

I'm writing friend-shippy stuff at the moment- a lot of it is more h/c and snuggling than explicit relationship, but I'm of two minds as to whether it should be labelled friendship or pairing. A lot of this is the lingering squick I got from reading really wonderful deep-and-meaningful h/c friendship fic and then being told in the author's notes that 'of course it's not slash, because I'm X sort of Christian and that sort of relationship is wrong'.

So perhaps I should label things for friendship or gen rather than pairing, but I want the potential to be allowed to be there.

As someone who has the same squick -- I'd go for a "gen" label as opposed to a pairing label but avoid using the term "friendship," because "gen" just means "no overtly sexual/romantic relationship happens in this fic," but leaves the interpretation of whether or not such a relationship *could* happen up to the reader, while "friendship" as a label is so often used to explicitly shut slashy readings that it often carries that vibe even when the author doesn't intend it to.

echan, above, explains her dislike or preslash labels with "my enjoyment of the fic is diminished by the subtext that's apparently there, whether I want it or not", and I often feel much the same way in inverse about "friendship fic" -- my enjoyment of the story can be diminished by the author's insistance that there *is* no subtext, whether I want there to be any or not.

I think maybe it's an issue of the way different people see gen? Some people want it to provide an explicit absence of subtext/romance, whereas I prefer to see it as a blank slate that I can either project my own shipping preferences onto or not, whichever I feel like when i'm reading.

That is interesting, because from my perspective and the fandoms I've been in, I've never got that vibe from the term "friendship fic". In SG-1, at least, the Jack&Daniel friendship writers were often slashers as well, or at least hung out in the same spaces as them. The focus on their relationship as the core of the show over-rode whether you thought their feelings were platonic or romantic. I've seen the same thing in SGA, though the nature of LJ meant that I simply didn't see as much gen.

What friendship fic on a gen story tells me is that it going to be about the relationship I'm interested in, rather than disguised het, or some alternative interpretation where the characters don't like each other very much.

But then, as much as I love slash, I'd much rather read a story where my OTP are the close friends I see in canon even if those feelings aren't romantic, than a slash story that messes with that dynamic.

It seems to depend on the fandom - I haven't gotten that vibe much in most of the anime/game fandoms I'm in, but friends vs slash is a really big contention point in certain Sherlock Holmes circles.

I think you might be right.

I wonder whether it's the difference between the kind of fandom that does only have two many characters, whether it's Sherlock Holmes or Sentinel, and the kind that has other focuses of attention.

If everyone in the fandom is assuming the relationship, the nature of that relationship is probably the most important line to split along, whereas in a fandom like SG-1, where there are other characters and other possible pairings, the division is more likely to come between people who are interested in various different relationships.

Yes. This. :)

slashgen or preslash

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