Gen Fic, for SCIENCE!

[ratherastory]

This is something of a follow-up to a conversation in my post about the hypothetical Gen Big Bang, in which I discovered to my shock and dismay that not everyone agrees on what constitutes gen fic!

Thus I am conducting a poll for SCIENCE!

Please spread the word, I am really curious to hear opinions on the subject.

[Poll #1666301]

Comments

[ariadnes-string.livejournal.com]

The one that always gets me is established relationship fic (a fandom pairing, not canon)--in which the main characters are sexually involved, have been for a while, but because of the circumstances of the story, don't have any explicit sexual contact with each other, or even talk about sex (though they might talk about their relationship).

I don't write Wincest, but I've run into this with Holmes/Watson. It's hard to know how to label a story like that, because you feel like if you label it "gen," people will be annoyed that it has an explicit slash pairing at its center; but if you label it m/m, people will be annoyed that there's no sex....

The other one, for me, is UST-centric fic, where there's no explicit sex, or even discussion of sex, no pairings actually take place, but sexual tension is clearly the whole point of the story....Clearly, this one isn't gen, but I never know whether to rate such things PG--for what actually happens--or R--for what is implied....

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

I've never had that problem personally, but I can totally see how that would be an issue.