The thin line between gen and shippy fic
Sep. 25th, 2020 07:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redfiona99When I posted The cradle of our renaissance, I was faced with a problem, does it count as gen or not? Or rather, I wasn't, because to me, it's obviously, blatantly and completely gen, but I grant that there's enough background Bruce Wayne/Selina Kyle to make other people disagree.
The reason I think it's gen is that nothing about Bruce's journey is affected by him being with Selina. There's another possible version of this, where it's Alfred that Bruce escapes Gotham with, and there's almost no changes. The story beats remain the same. They pretend to be father and son rather than husband and wife, and it's a crown green bowls match that some jerk gets trounced at but the shape of the story's the same. I can even have Bruce running into Selina in Florence, which they're visiting for Alfred, and the temptation of what you have and hold vs the past is different in that version, but the basic thing is still the same, so to me, it's a gen story.
There's a Priest (the vampire one) fic I am planning, and even though the main character, and the character who is doing the describing, is Alan Dale's Monseigneur, and, in fact, one of either the Priest or the Priestess, doesn't even appear* but it's so heavily based on Priest x Priestess, that I wouldn't dare call it anything but f/m, because the fic falls apart without that central core.
So to me, the line isn't that thin, but I am also aware that where I put the line might not be where others do, so occasionally I have these moments of uncertainty when I tag fic.
*when I say planning, I mean some time in the far-flung future, and I am just sketching ideas at the moment, hence vagueness. Whichever one isn't in the fic is off organising the food supply, I know that much.
The reason I think it's gen is that nothing about Bruce's journey is affected by him being with Selina. There's another possible version of this, where it's Alfred that Bruce escapes Gotham with, and there's almost no changes. The story beats remain the same. They pretend to be father and son rather than husband and wife, and it's a crown green bowls match that some jerk gets trounced at but the shape of the story's the same. I can even have Bruce running into Selina in Florence, which they're visiting for Alfred, and the temptation of what you have and hold vs the past is different in that version, but the basic thing is still the same, so to me, it's a gen story.
There's a Priest (the vampire one) fic I am planning, and even though the main character, and the character who is doing the describing, is Alan Dale's Monseigneur, and, in fact, one of either the Priest or the Priestess, doesn't even appear* but it's so heavily based on Priest x Priestess, that I wouldn't dare call it anything but f/m, because the fic falls apart without that central core.
So to me, the line isn't that thin, but I am also aware that where I put the line might not be where others do, so occasionally I have these moments of uncertainty when I tag fic.
*when I say planning, I mean some time in the far-flung future, and I am just sketching ideas at the moment, hence vagueness. Whichever one isn't in the fic is off organising the food supply, I know that much.
