labels, het, and queer canon

[schmerica]

Yesterday, while I was working on Let Me Go On, I was talking to several people on yahoo messenger while I was working on the revisions. I mentioned to both Nifra and Dira the weird sense of discomfort I felt about labeling the story het.

Now, granted, the story contains noncanonical sex between two characters of different sex and thus every requirement of the het label -- but somehow my brain still insists on thinking about it as gen, I said.

Dira and Nifra both gave that the doubtful lack of response it deserved.

The interesting thing, though, is that it's not as though I'm opposed to het. Um, duh, I love het; the fact that all of my OTPs are slash does not change the fact that I find male/female relationships appealing and interesting and try to make people write them for me whenever possible.

So my antipathy toward the label is a matter of this specific instance, and not anythign more general. And during the discussions with Nif and Dira, it occurred to me what the sense of discomfort probably is mostly derived from, which is this:

I feel really weird about making a canonically gay male character have sex with a girl.

Now, obviously, in the case of this story, the het sex is all backstory, done as a teenager (not to mention that it's not, you know, good). It's not like Duck is falling madly in love with a woman and dedicating his life to her.

Besides, I think one of the main things that makes slash interesting to me is that I think sexuality is a fairly fluid and flexible and unpredictable thing. If I think a character who's only been attracted to girls in the past may fall in love with a guy -- hell, if I think it's possible I might fall in love with a girl someday -- then the other side of the coin is there, too, isn't it?

None of that really does anything to offset the profound discomfort, though. Because the flexibility of sexuality aside, the idea of writing het about gay characters comes across as just straightening them up and denying their queerness. It's automatically something political, rather than "just a story," and the politics involved are disturbing.

Honestly, I'm not sure I would click on a Wilby Wonderful story marked as Duck het. In Buffy, I totally judge those people who ship Tara with male characters. I'm pretty sure the situation would be the same if I read in more fandoms with canon queer characters. The exception, of course, is that it depends on who's writing it. I don't trust fandom in general enough to read this specific kind of het blind, but if I trust you as an author? I'm going to take the chance. Hell, I might even anticipate it, if I think you're going to do it well, go through all the implications, and not be generally stupid about it.

But, really, that's another one of those fandom truths: there's nothing I won't go along with, if I trust you as an author; too many bizarre or stupid things get pulled off in amazing ways.

Comments

[katallison.livejournal.com]

Hm, interesting -- see, I read this story as being an affirmation of Duck's queerness. And, yeah, it doesn't feel like "het" to me, which is a tag I reserve for stories that are focused on a romantic/sexual relationship between opposite-sex characters. There *is* sex in here, yeah, but it functions to underscore that this is a friendship story, not a romance. And friendship stories in which some sex occurs can still certainly be seen as gen, at least by me.

(And it's a lovely story! Which I should have said earlier!)

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Hm, interesting -- see, I read this story as being an affirmation of Duck's queerness.

*nod* And that was definitely part of my intention, with this specific story -- which, yes, is another reason the label felt wrong to me.

I think really part of the problem is that the het/slash/gen labels are broad enough that different people have very different uses for them. There are people who want to know if there's even the slightest bit of slash or het content in a story (whether it's so they can avoid it or so they can seek it out), and there are people who just sort of want the general tone and theme, perhaps, of the story. So it depends on the definitions you find useful for yourself; the fact that there's sex in there makes it het, or the fact that it's not a pairing-based story and it's really about the non-romantic relatinship makes it gen. It's ambiguous.

(And thank you so much! Your feedback always make me feel all warm and fuzzy.)

[serialkarma.livejournal.com]

I agree with Kat. For one thing, I kept flashing back to friends of mine in college, who were figuring out their own sexualities, and a lot of them--maybe most--ended up doing something like this, having sex with a girl (or a guy) as a way of, you know, trying things out.

Also, while I was reading this I wasn't--well, i actually wasn't labelling it at all, come to think of it. I've tried to move away from labelling most of my own stories, apart from giving the specific pairing occasionally, because what it comes down to is that most stories in my head are about the specific people involved, and sometimes they're gay and sometimes they're bi and sometimes they're straight. Ultimately, though, I feel like the point (one of the points?) of what we're doing here, is showing that those labels don't really mean much when it comes down to it.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

I think labels are possibly in the same category as warnings, in a lot of ways -- there are plenty of readers who want and demand them, but as an author, they can just feel limiting or frustrating. Not to mention they make you just want to be contrary and fuck around with them.

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

Yes, randomly commenting in your journal. Apologies.

This is kind of the same problem I was having when attempting the ten pairings meme. I'm not that naturally pairing oriented, and het/slash/gen and pairing labels generally don't mean that much to. I find them restricting.

Personally, when I'm writing, I'm not writing the pairing. I'm writing a story about a character or characters, and if there happens to be a pairing in there, then so be it.

I think that the difference for me is whether the character has been written about through the pairing, or whether the pairing has been written about through the character.

To me, if you're writing the pairing(s) through the character, then gen/het/slash labels are restricting, because it's a story about the character, not about any particular pairing. Of course, I have no preference for gen, or het, or slash -- people who eschew one or another confuse me a little, because I just want to read well-written stories.

This could just be because of the way I tend to write, of course. I hate putting pairings or labels on my stories, even though I know that this is quite probably lowering the number of readers I get. (That and the silly pen name, which in my own defence I picked at the age of 15.) What I see as RayK/Fraser, others might see as gen, or preslash. What I wrote as gen, others might interpret as sneaky slash. For example, I wrote this one story called "Like Some Strange Shadow (http://www.livejournal.com/users/cherryice/115181.html)", which I ended up labelling as RayK/Fraser; but there was RayK/Fraser, but there was also RayK/Stella, and RayK/OMC, and RayV/Stella. More than anything else, it was a story about RayK.

I don't want to make these calls for people -- when something is a pairing, if the pairing is relevant -- I want them to process these things on their own. There are things I leave deliberately vague, or times I deliberately use imagery instead of words, because I want people to interpret these things in their own way. After all, we write fic because there are things we saw differently, or things that grabbed our imagination.


I don't generally meta. Hopefully this made some sense.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Dude, if I didn't want people to comment in my journal, I wouldn't post, you know? And, yeah, I don't meta much either, but I think what you're saying makes some sense.

Most of the time I think I don't, really, mind the pairings or labels so much -- usually it's sort of clear in my mind, at least, what the story is, and I don't mind that so much. Whether other people agree with me is up to them, really. I mentioned one of my Firefly stories in my comment to marginalia below -- I consider it incest, and i mentioned that when I posted it to my lj, but on my site it doesn't have any direct warning, and I've had plenty of readers who interpreted it otherwise, and I have no problem with that. I don't think it really matters whether someone reads the WW story and thinks of it as gen or het. I guess it's a matter of making it easier for people to decide what they want to read, in a way -- except, obviously, the labels don't tell you as much as we act like they do.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Do you have to label it as het/slash/gen? Can't you just put the characters in the heading and that's it? I've never labelled any of my fics as slash or gen or het (though the only het fic I wrote was about a gay guy who argued about coming out with his boyfriend and then went and tried to sleep with his best (female) friend and failed miserably) and never knew I was expected to.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Also, what fandom is this story in? It sounds interesting.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

No, I don't -- and actually, whether I actually mark a genre when I post the story is sometimes there and sometimes not. I think I have the sort of mind that's automatically prone to organization and categorization, though, and in this case, I was talking to people about the story on IM and went to say "I'm writing a gen fic about so-and-so" and realized I wasn't exactly sure what I meant by that. Which leads me, at least, to wonder about the labels in general and whether the sort of the characters we're talking about make a difference.

(Oh, and the fandom was Wilby Wonderful (http://imdb.com/title/tt0383717/).)

[marginalia.livejournal.com]

*weeps* but tara/oz is so interesting!

but i don't ship them, so please do not hate me. i don't know if i particularly ship anyone outside of remus/sirius and aubrey/maturin and those are both canon (hey, they are in my head anyway). and i certainly don't write them as an attempt to straighten tara. (i don't know if it is possible for me to emphasize that enough). i write them because the potential those two people have for character interaction is interesting to me. which is the main reason i write slash, of course, that i like exploring what two characters might be to each other. am all about character.

of course, my definition of a pairing is amazingly fluid. for me a pairing is really just the two main characters in a story, and not any sort of guarantee that they will each see the other in a romantic light. really, i am just all about the angst and often about one side of the pairing being solidly friendship and the other side hoping for something more that will probably never come. sometimes i go back and forth on whether a pairing should have a slash or a comma between the names.

(this is all half-formed because i have not yet had coffee. must fix that.)

[marginalia.livejournal.com]

oh, and i usually stick with the slash for the truly pathetic reason that i expect more people will read it that way. and i am not fond of labelling things, and i am -very- wary of the term "pre-slash" (as mentioned in the comment above) because to me it is starting to imply that it is slash only if there is sex. and i have strong issues with that. but that is possibly a tangent.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

oh, and i usually stick with the slash for the truly pathetic reason that i expect more people will read it that way. and i am not fond of labelling things,

Heeee. Honestly, I think that was another reason I felt weird about the het label for this particular story. Like het + Duck = judging me in that same way and assuming the story is sucky and skipping it over.

[raveninthewind.livejournal.com]

And to me "pre-slash" means, "I'm thinking of writing the sequel to this where they actually shag like bunnies--whether that sequel ever gets written or not.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

*grins* See, that goes back to the trusting the author thing, right? You are one of the people whom I totally would trust to do the Tara/m thing well, not one of the people I randomly judge and assume it will make me gouge my eyes out.

And actually, the thing about pairings is I'm usually fairly broad on what I consider a pairing to be. There are stories of mine that I do consider het or slash where the pairing is, really, just as subtextual as the canon source (some of my Simon/River, for example, can totally be read as gen if you choose to, but in my head it's definitely incest). So I'm not sure what that does to the topic, as well. Besides, you know, again showing the frustration of the labels in general.

[gloss]

I feel really weird about making a canonically gay male character have sex with a girl.
Yeah, me, too. Same, as you note later, with Tara/m ships. I'm all for the fluidity of gender and sexuality, but there's another dimension of what we're choosing to represent that always bugs me on an abstract level.

*babbles because I don't know Wilby*

[gloss]

Tara/m ships
Except marginalia's Oz/Tara, but Oz, like Jaci, is an exception to everything.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

*grins* There's always exceptions. That's the number one rule, I think.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

No, that's exactly it. On the one hand, it should be parallel to slash in same ways, but on a really immediate level ... it really doesn't feel that way.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_divya_/]

Not for nothing, but holy shit, I watched the commentary of that movie and thought of you. I had a whole omgGloss moment. o.O I should tell you in email, if I tell you at all, since it could be considered spoilery for the end and really shouldn't be left lying around on the internet. But if you're interested in seeing the flick, like, ever, I won't tell. I'll just sit here and vibrate. Vvvvvvvv.

[gloss]

a whole omgGloss moment
EEEE! I love those.

Mail me? Please? *puppy eyes*
I'm going to see WW, but not for awhile, and I'm willing to be spoiled if it means Di!mail.

[thete1.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's a thorny issue all right. One of the reasons -- not the main one, but still -- I tend to avoid fandoms with canonically gay characters is that I know I *will* write het for them if I see the subtext. And I don't really HAVE slash glasses so much as subtext glasses, you know?

And that's uncomfortable as HELL... especially when I flip the switch a little. After all, it's not like tons of the characters I write are canonically straight -- as opposed to just/"just" only dating people of the opposite sex -- but some of them *are*.

If I ignore that for the subtext, I *ought* to ignore canonical homosexuality... if only to avoid hypocrisy. And yet...

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

If I ignore that for the subtext, I *ought* to ignore canonical homosexuality... if only to avoid hypocrisy. And yet...

That's exactly it, dude. It's just -- I think most slash writers can and do write slash where it's not presented as a rejection of heterosexuality and that queerness is the only valid way to live. But it seems like doing the same thing with queer characters automatically brings up the disturbing subtext.

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

In Buffy, I totally judge those people who ship Tara with male characters.

But Spike's magic penis can do *anything*!

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Obviously conversion to necrophiliac heterosexuality is not beyond its powers. I don't know why I doubt.

[moireach.livejournal.com]

Okay, so, I haven't read the story in question (and don't know the fandom), but I'm curious if the backstory teenager sex was queer, would you label the story slash or gen? And if it's the former, then are you just using gen as a catch-all term for a label you're not comfortable applying? I love gen (which I define as fic which is neither romantic or sexual) but it gets misused from time to time, as a sort of default term.

You're right, it's really interesting how writing gay characters as straight has totally different connotations than writing straight characters as queer; I'm all about doing the latter, if the story's good, but I do feel a little like I should put in a little note about how I'm not being ANTI-gay omg. It can be so interesting or so propaganda-y.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Okay, so, I haven't read the story in question (and don't know the fandom), but I'm curious if the backstory teenager sex was queer, would you label the story slash or gen? And if it's the former, then are you just using gen as a catch-all term for a label you're not comfortable applying? I love gen (which I define as fic which is neither romantic or sexual) but it gets misused from time to time, as a sort of default term.

See, that's pretty much exactly the reasons why I was doubting my motives so much in this case -- because I am pretty sure if it was queer sex I would label the story as slash without even thinking about it. So basically my brain is being completely inconsistent, which is one of the reasons I was trying to explain what it was thinking.

...Also, you are also one of the authors I'm pretty sure I would trust to write het about queer characters, because you'd think through all the implications, etc, and not just have it be "YAY, [dick/pussy, choose one]!"

[coneyislandbaby]

Here via metafandom

I read this and wonder - *are* there writers who would write het about canonically queer characters and *not* think through the implications and *then* write?

And then I think of all the slash writers who do *exactly* that in some fandoms (only of course it's writing canonically straight/assumed to be straight characters as queer in this situation) and I realise that, sadly, yes, there are writers who would do that. And maybe once in a blue moon they'd succeed through good writing, hitting the reader on the right day, playing to a particular kink...but usually? They wouldn't succeed at all, because generally, unless there's a good reason, I personally don't grok fic that ignores canonical preferences without at least a nod to them. Considering that I can take a nod as one line, not really too much to ask.

But then when there's subtext or possibilities for het *even with* canonically queer characters that *isn't* just "put canonically queer character with partner of the opposite sex"? I wish there *was* more fic about it in my fandoms.

[proserpina-kore.livejournal.com]

When it comes to your stories, I ignore labels and pairings and just read, because I know I'm going to be in for a treat.

So, I didn't really take any notice of the label. But I read the story as being about that awful, confusing, hormonally driven teenage time of life when (in my experience) we're so confused by our hormones that we make dumb decisions. (Being an adult now, of course I never make dumb decisions any more!) I really didn't take any notice of the label, because it's a story about Duck and Sandra and what happened to them. And thinking about it now, the fact that we know Duck is gay because WW tells us so, means that (for me) this was not so much about his journey, as Sandra's, and the possibility that she discovers when Duck hugs her.

Putting labels on stories is a hard one, because so many readers do want them. But then, it's your story, so I personally feel that you should 'label' it how you please. iibnf has developed a system of 'angry wombats' to classify her stories, which I find extremely apt - but this may not help you here :-)

Gorgeous story btw! I didn't have a chance to comment earlier.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

I really didn't take any notice of the label, because it's a story about Duck and Sandra and what happened to them.

Which is totally it, of course, and that's more accurate than any of the labels could be. I do think, in theory, labels serve a useful role, but ... it's complicated. Muchly so.

(And thank you so much!)

[claire.livejournal.com]

See, I totally thought your story was gen, too. Not het. Because it was a story about Duck and a story about Sandra and a story about the beginning of their friendship, not a story about DuckAndSandraTrueLoveOMGWTFEleventy!!!one. Err. You know what I mean.

I see the story more of an affirmation of the character of Duck. How, even though he is a teenager, he's still more grounded and centred than his peers.

And I haven't yet seen the movie, so I probably don't even get half of it.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

See, I totally thought your story was gen, too. Not het. Because it was a story about Duck and a story about Sandra and a story about the beginning of their friendship, not a story about DuckAndSandraTrueLoveOMGWTFEleventy!!!one. Err. You know what I mean.

*nod* See, that's really true, too, definitely, and I was thinking about that. But like I was saying to moireach above, I do think that if it was m/m sex or f/f sex, I probably would have marked it as slash without even stopping to think about it. I'm not sure what that inconsistency quite says.

[wearemany.livejournal.com]

there are a lot of really good points here, and i'm smack in the middle of writing an nsync story that is Lance/straight couple that is bringing up all the same issues, too. because he's really pretty gay, and that doesn't change through the course of the story just because he sometimes enjoys sex with women, too.

but here's one thing i haven't seen mentioned, because this is how i am: who gives a flying fuck what labels readers want? it's your story. label it, don't label it, summarize it, don't, lie to us like the WB about what is actually going to happen -- this is the part you get to control. they'll decide both if they want to read and how they'll react, but you can't really do anything about any of those parts.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

but here's one thing i haven't seen mentioned, because this is how i am: who gives a flying fuck what labels readers want? it's your story. label it, don't label it, summarize it, don't, lie to us like the WB about what is actually going to happen -- this is the part you get to control. they'll decide both if they want to read and how they'll react, but you can't really do anything about any of those parts.

*grins* This really is an excellent point, yeah. I find that sometimes I feel just the way you're saying there, and in a lot of my stories, I do try not ot give that much information or categorize them, just leave it out there for whatever readers want to do with it. Occasionally, though, I do care -- in that read me! I'm making it as easy for you as possible! way.

[raveninthewind.livejournal.com]

I posted a bit of my own meta about what exactly is gen:
http://www.livejournal.com/~vamplover84/261505.html

In it Shrift comments that she goes with the author's categorization, even if she doesn't agree. IF i disagree, I say so. I do think Amorette's SS/HP story is gen. If she were to write more in the series, and if I were rec it again, I'd label it pre-slash.

I read your story, and I think if I had to categorize it, it would be het, not gen, because they actually had sex. If it had been a kiss, and Sandra had that epiphany, I'd say gen.

Why does the sex make such a differnece? I dunno, it just does.

If this had been a m/m story with a kiss, I'd also say that would be gen, not slash.

I did like your WW story--but my feedback will go on that post.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Why does the sex make such a differnece? I dunno, it just does.

Hee. Yes. It's hard to get a more tied-down reason than that for any of it, right?