the difference between 'g' and 'gen'

[cimorene]

at the moment, owing to a lot of time spent del.icio.us- and rec-surfing, i'm seriously distressed that fandom is full of people who can't tell the difference

"g" is a rating according to the mpaa standards, you know, the ones that a lot of people are too afraid of lawsuits to use anymore. it means "appropriate for general audiences", or in other words, "containing no material that would be objectionable for showing to small children". romances can be rated 'g' if they don't have any violence, any dirty words, or any innuendo that people wouldn't generally show to children. slash can be rated g, although i realise some people disagree with that on the grounds that the mere existence of teh gay is shocking and inappropriate (but fuck that is what i say).

"gen" is a categorisation and it means "general" as opposed to slash or het or femslash. romances cannot be gen. slash cannot be gen. het cannot be gen. gen is basically like "other", or "no significant sexual/romantic content". it's a mystery, or a thriller, or an adventure story. it's probably like a missing-episode kind of deal. if it's a mystery story with a subplot of gay sex or a subplot of non-canonical het relationships, it's not gen anymore.

Comments

[special-trille.livejournal.com]

The thing that distresses me most when I go surfing for recs is being linked to badfic ANYWAY.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

well, naturally, that's a background annoyance, but i'm more used to it now. recs have always included plenty of bad.

although i think it's fair to say not nearly as much bad.

on the other hand i've been surfing sga recs for months and reading for more than a year before that, so i have a long list of authors to avoid...

[cimness.livejournal.com]

as much bad as reading straight from the slushpile, i mean.

[special-trille.livejournal.com]

oh no, definitely recs are the way to go! The other way is insane and leads to bleeding from the eyeball.

I remember discovering rec pages when I was a wee young n00b. I kept trying to tell people ("omg REC PAGES omg!") and they kept nodding and saying "yes, we know, SHUT UP."

[cimness.livejournal.com]

actually because i'm kinda ocd i feel compelled to go wading systematically through the slushpile. ._. this isn't possible in sga but i'm happiest when there's one or a couple of big archives and everything's alphabetical, and i can look at every single header and decide whether to try to read it. that way i don't worry that i've missed something good.

but i've adjusted to recs-surfing for sga, cause there is JUST NO WAY, you know? the slushpile's too huge.

[special-trille.livejournal.com]

see, and that's why your eyeballs bleed.

the slushpile's too huge.

hmmm, I think I could keep on track of what's being posted now (though omg not the 3 years of fic already posted) using the sga newsletter. if I didn't have anything else in my life. and never took a day off.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

yeah, alas, i don't have QUITE that much time for reading fic.

[aynatonal.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank God. I just read an SGA story labeled "gen" that had a John/Rodney relationship smack dab in the middle and I was like, "Wait! This isn't gen! Unless fandom has shifted terms on me *again* which would be just like them, the bastards!" But it's good to know that you're holding the line.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

it might be in sga that this misuse is proliferating most rapidly - i could conjecture that the fandom's more full of noobs (or noobs to mainstream media fandom, or noobs to big fandoms) trying (and partially failing) to just jump in and figure it out as they go along. because it's certainly in sga-rec-surfing that i've been picking up on it the most, but that could also be a coincidence.

but i'm determined to cling staunchly to the actual meanings of these two terms, since they serve two disparate and BOTH QUITE USEFUL and even necessary purposes.

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

Did you tell the author? Nicely? Because she's not going to know if you didn't.

[aynatonal.livejournal.com]

I didn't, because actually I don't think she's new or anything. Further complicating matters is, going back to check, I see that the actual label is "team gen" which it *still* isn't, if John and Rodney are screwing, but it does muddy the waters a bit.

It's especially annoying because, on the strength of the rec, I'd geared myself up to read gen, you know? And then it turned out that there was J/R! And I was thrown! Because really, there was no reason for it and it was kind of handled in an offhand manner--it actually might have been a better story without.

[elfiepike.livejournal.com]

i think that's probably the most annoying thing about sga fandom. yeah, okay, sometimes i want nothing but john/rodney or whatever. but sometimes i just want the team being the team AS THEY ARE, and it's important to know the difference. :/

[special-trille.livejournal.com]

Of course, I hadn't realised that people didn't know the difference between g and gen. So now that probably distresses me the most.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

just don't go delicious-surfing, and you may be able to forget again.

[mirabella]

Dude, are you me? I was just going to rant about this, having gotten fed to the teeth with it last night.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

either i really am you or fandom has been getting markedly more ignorant about this lately, because it seems like i hardly turn around without bumping into something labelled "character/character, gen!" i wish these people were publishing in the newspaper so i could mail them their column cut out with nasty red pen all over it.

[mirabella]

Hee! Well, there's probably something to be done with Photoshop, anyway.

[copracat]

In general, people who fuck this up will write something like category:"gen" and warning:"slash" on their headers, or "gen" and put something in the pairing field so you know they are a. merely befuddled or b. actually really truly believe that gen = g and that's how they are genuinely using it and fuck you and your old-fashioned, jurassic fandom domination of the jargon, bitch.

Or, you know, not.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

it's kind of ante-diluvian, in a way, trying to insist that words keep meaning what they actually mean instead of whatever someone's personal interpretation ascribed them...

[jain]

I occasionally label fic "gen" on my del.icio.us page that I also assign a pairing. I tend to do this in one of two circumstances. The first is when the author labels a story as Fujicest, for instance, when I consider the story to be gen. That way, anyone following my link to the story won't get a shock if she reads it the same way the author does, but I also don't confuse myself when I'm browsing my page for something to reread.

The second is when a story has a strong friendship between two characters that I read as potentially leading to romance, but isn't there yet. This is different from what some people (inaccurately, imo) call pre-slash, because the story itself doesn't contain any hints of sexual interest, romantic yearning, etc. But when I'm looking to read a certain pairing, these stories fulfill that need, despite the fact that I consider the stories themselves to be gen.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

in the first case i tend to let my opinion override the author's for tagging though i might make a note in the comment field. but in the second, yeah, i do the same thing, if a story is nominally gen but i contains an incontrovertible basis for regarding it in the light of a certain pairing. this is usually a gen story about a relationship that's already close or intense in canon, focusing so firmly on that relationship, even if in an arguably 'passionate/intense/loving but platonic' way, that labelling it 'gen' alone would seem misleading when you wanted true gen (and that, yes, people looking to read slash for the pairing wouldn't want to miss it). i guess it's a matter of making your tags serve their helping-people-find-things function as efficiently as possible.