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

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

My personal definition of gen pretty much goes like this:

no explicit sex, but canon relationships (or, say, tendencies for one-night stands) are kosher as long as they're not the main focus of the fic. You might say I'm going by what COULD be canon compliant, so it'd vary depending on the source text. If I were more into fringe fandom, I could totally read a story involving Peter/Olivia's relationship issues, as long as it wasn't the focus...much like an episode of fringe would. (E.g. extraordinarily creepy case, followed by Olivia having a well-earned freakout over the fact that someone stole her life, and even when she got it back, everything felt tainted, including her relationship with him).

It also means that I'd be pretty cool with whatever is acceptable on network broadcast TV being called gen, though according to convention, I wouldn't refer to it as such.

Oh! And I also would consider *any* canonical pairing gen, as long as the sex wasn't explicit and it wasn't a romance-focused story*. (I know that some people would still call canonical same-sex pairings 'slash').

*Well, unless the focus of the original text was romantic. I'd have to think of that one some more. I mean, if we were talking about fic based off a romantic-comedy, I think I might call it 'gen' as long as it was within the bounds of the original story? And without the explicit sex?

TL;DR My main definition seems to be 'canonically-based' and 'non explicit'.