(no subject)

...I don't think I quite understand why anybody's surprised when the HTML color quiz gives them an accurate description. You essentially do describe yourself for them, rather than the usual quiz-business of answering selected questions. I'd be worried if the writers couldn't come up with a moderately accurate description, or rather, at least one the quiz-taker could agree with.

I'm feeling very bugged by a sentiment I encountered recently which essentially goes, "We're slashers. If we weren't interested in the interpersonal, we'd write gen." I pointed out that while gen includes solo stories, it also includes the wide range of interpersonal relationships that do not begin, progress, or end through romance or sex. The original poster acknowledged this -- half the reason the sentiment startled me was in fact that she'd just given platonic examples of some of the various... rather romance-oriented story-types previously discussed. She also pointed out, however, that since gen (unlike slash or, unmentioned here, het) is defined by what it does not do, the other is easier to say, and that gen is still where people would fall who are interested in the non-interpersonal.

Which I suppose is true. And much of that can also be very interesting, for that matter. For that matter, as predominant as eros-derived fanfic is, "gen" may be a negative definition but is also a fairly good, "Hey! Something different!" signal. Even in comics-fandom, to some degree -- though I don't see it that much here. Presumably this has something to do with Te's insistence that comicfic is much more gen-oriented than anywhere else (even as she tries desperately to shift the balance) but even there.... Actually, what I'd say about comicfic is that at least in what I see, there's more of a tendency for a story that includes or even develops a romance to have more story to it than that, and when that happens for the romance not to be the entire focus in most readers' minds. I think at some point Minisinoo mentioned someone expressing surprise about her calling An Accidental Interception of Fate a story about a romance when there was so much more to it. By contrast, on the HPGen list -- which needs more action, by the way -- I think at least one person expressed the opinion that a truly "gen" story shouldn't have any variety of romance involved, and it certainly seems generally to imply that any romance is not an important part of the plot unless the story is really long.....

I think I've forgotten what point I was trying to make, except that the whole thing still leaves me feeling oddly and probably irrationally dismissed. I don't really want to argue over the validity of the het/slash/gen classification or otherwise describing fanfics based on strange and untransferrable content categories vs. more standard ones that might be more or less informative vs. length and whether anybody's likely to change their terminology or not; I definitely start feeling spooked at the idea of trying to agitate for extra interpersonal-relationship-based categories!

Presumably, therefore, I just felt like chattering.

I'm also participating in the attempt to get "quixotic" on the top moods list. ;)