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kennahijjaSome interesting results from the 'Define Gen' Poll I ran recently:
The result which surprised me most was certainly that a full third of pollists (or is that pollees?) would classify HBP as 'het' (34%), while 66% would go with 'gen'. I'd love to know whether that's due to a great interest in 'canon ships' or to a rather strict definition of 'gen'...
When it comes to personal preferences, over 75% percent prefer to label a not-romance centred plot with a somewhat backgrounded relationship as 'gen', with an interesting difference: if the backgrounded relationship is slash, 24% prefer a 'slash' instead of a 'gen' label, while only 13% prefer a 'het' instead of a 'gen' label. This different approach to slash and het will come up again.
The results show that undisputed 'gen' are stories where romantic relationships are either absent or firmly backgrounded, and which have no serious sexual content. The presence of a romantic relationship in a non-romance-related plotline on PG level is regarded as 'gen' by 81% (het), respectively 77% (slash), while the same on an R-rated level are down to 56% (het) and 33% (slash). When it comes to foregrounded romantic relationships in non-romance-centred plots, only 20 to 25 percent of readers would accept those as 'gen'. The same goes for romance that is only talked about, but not shown.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
a_t_rain illustrated the point of focus in a fic with a wonderful example: "I'd say that if the central conflict concerns romantic relationships (e.g. "Will Stan Shunpike choose Tonks or Mundungus?"), it's slash or het, and if it concerns anything else ("How will Stan and Mundungus, who incidentally are lovers, break out of prison?"), it's gen". According to the poll, however, people's readiness to accept 'incidentally lovers' as 'gen' sinks with the amount of sexual interaction.
Talking about explictness, there's another interesting aspect: while *consensual* explicit smut (NC-17 content) is considered unquestioningly het/slash, only 2/3 of participants saw *non-consensual* NC-17 material as such.imkalena pointed out in this respect that non-con is driven by violence, not by sex, which would make it technically gen. While that's a fascinating (and very true!) observation, I still find that adult content is one of the things I'd not expect to find in a gen story - especially since I've never found a story rated NC-17 for violence either... Non-explicit stories dealing with the aftermath of a non-con encounter are overwhelmingly considered 'gen': 84% for a het encounter, 74% for a slash.
The results show a considerable difference between het and slash content. Throughout, a not-romance-centred plot with a male/male or female/female relationship is more likely to be classified as slash than a story with male/female content will be regarded as 'het'. This is most evident in stories involving married couples - over 85% of participants would classify those as 'gen' in a het couple, down to 53% for a slash couple (with almost the same results for pregnancy versus mpreg). In order to explain this discrepancy,lazy_neutrino pointed out that 'het' is still (statistically speaking) the social norm, which would make it less noteworthy than the relatively new (and not yet universally established) institution of gay marriage/union. And melannen cured me of the misconception that mpreg was automatically linked to slash :). With links! It seems that despite a general awareness that there's no real 'value' difference between slash and het, there is a greater need to point out ('warn') for slash, which plays into the tendency to accept less slash content in genfic.
A fascinating point made frequently in the comments was that the 'canonicity' of a pairing influences its acceptability as 'gen' -mad_maudlin differentiates between 'canon pairings' (i.e. Lucius/Narcissa), 'pseudocanon pairings' (i.e. Harry/Ginny), 'fanon pairings' (i.e. Neville/Luna), and 'contracanonical pairings' (i.e. Ron/Draco). The former are less 'marked' (noteworthy) and therefore easier to 'slip into' a 'gen' fic than the latter, which need more background and are more noticeable (and therefore less likely to feature as 'gen'). The full comment (very worth reading!) can be found here.
Though I did also run a follow-up poll on 'Favoured Genres', it pretty much bore out my suspicion that I have a rather slash-loving f-list, but I'm pretty sure it's not representative :).
Thanks very much to everybody who participated in the poll and the discussion! I learned a great deal from it.
The result which surprised me most was certainly that a full third of pollists (or is that pollees?) would classify HBP as 'het' (34%), while 66% would go with 'gen'. I'd love to know whether that's due to a great interest in 'canon ships' or to a rather strict definition of 'gen'...
When it comes to personal preferences, over 75% percent prefer to label a not-romance centred plot with a somewhat backgrounded relationship as 'gen', with an interesting difference: if the backgrounded relationship is slash, 24% prefer a 'slash' instead of a 'gen' label, while only 13% prefer a 'het' instead of a 'gen' label. This different approach to slash and het will come up again.
The results show that undisputed 'gen' are stories where romantic relationships are either absent or firmly backgrounded, and which have no serious sexual content. The presence of a romantic relationship in a non-romance-related plotline on PG level is regarded as 'gen' by 81% (het), respectively 77% (slash), while the same on an R-rated level are down to 56% (het) and 33% (slash). When it comes to foregrounded romantic relationships in non-romance-centred plots, only 20 to 25 percent of readers would accept those as 'gen'. The same goes for romance that is only talked about, but not shown.
a_t_rain illustrated the point of focus in a fic with a wonderful example: "I'd say that if the central conflict concerns romantic relationships (e.g. "Will Stan Shunpike choose Tonks or Mundungus?"), it's slash or het, and if it concerns anything else ("How will Stan and Mundungus, who incidentally are lovers, break out of prison?"), it's gen". According to the poll, however, people's readiness to accept 'incidentally lovers' as 'gen' sinks with the amount of sexual interaction.Talking about explictness, there's another interesting aspect: while *consensual* explicit smut (NC-17 content) is considered unquestioningly het/slash, only 2/3 of participants saw *non-consensual* NC-17 material as such.
imkalena pointed out in this respect that non-con is driven by violence, not by sex, which would make it technically gen. While that's a fascinating (and very true!) observation, I still find that adult content is one of the things I'd not expect to find in a gen story - especially since I've never found a story rated NC-17 for violence either... Non-explicit stories dealing with the aftermath of a non-con encounter are overwhelmingly considered 'gen': 84% for a het encounter, 74% for a slash. The results show a considerable difference between het and slash content. Throughout, a not-romance-centred plot with a male/male or female/female relationship is more likely to be classified as slash than a story with male/female content will be regarded as 'het'. This is most evident in stories involving married couples - over 85% of participants would classify those as 'gen' in a het couple, down to 53% for a slash couple (with almost the same results for pregnancy versus mpreg). In order to explain this discrepancy,
lazy_neutrino pointed out that 'het' is still (statistically speaking) the social norm, which would make it less noteworthy than the relatively new (and not yet universally established) institution of gay marriage/union. And melannen cured me of the misconception that mpreg was automatically linked to slash :). With links! It seems that despite a general awareness that there's no real 'value' difference between slash and het, there is a greater need to point out ('warn') for slash, which plays into the tendency to accept less slash content in genfic. A fascinating point made frequently in the comments was that the 'canonicity' of a pairing influences its acceptability as 'gen' -
mad_maudlin differentiates between 'canon pairings' (i.e. Lucius/Narcissa), 'pseudocanon pairings' (i.e. Harry/Ginny), 'fanon pairings' (i.e. Neville/Luna), and 'contracanonical pairings' (i.e. Ron/Draco). The former are less 'marked' (noteworthy) and therefore easier to 'slip into' a 'gen' fic than the latter, which need more background and are more noticeable (and therefore less likely to feature as 'gen'). The full comment (very worth reading!) can be found here. Though I did also run a follow-up poll on 'Favoured Genres', it pretty much bore out my suspicion that I have a rather slash-loving f-list, but I'm pretty sure it's not representative :).
Thanks very much to everybody who participated in the poll and the discussion! I learned a great deal from it.
