hmpf

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I've signed up with Archive of Our Own (AoOO - kind of an unfortunate acronym, isn't it? Sounds like a wolf howling, or something), and decided to post 68 Wives there as my first story (don't have much time at the moment, but I do want to test the interface, even if I'm probably only going to post the rest of my stories much later).

The problem is this: Is it gen, or is it m/f? It's all about marriages, 68 of them, but as every wife only gets one sentence, and in most cases those sentences are not even about sex, it's not exactly explicit. There is one sex scene, though, but that's also not very explicit. Still, does that make it gen? I'm not sure what the definition of m/f is, nowadays (is it the same as 'het', for that matter, or is it more explicit? Less explicit?)

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Tori Amos: From the Choirgirl Hotel

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From:

svilleficrecs.livejournal.com

I've seen a lot of people writing it as AO3

From:

hmpf.livejournal.com

Think I'll adopt that.

From:

kimboosan.livejournal.com

Yes, I was going to say that myself. AO3 is pretty much standard, from what I've seen (and doesn't look quite so odd...)

I try to look at classification less from the angle of "What IS it, really?" than, "what are reader expectations?" You are talking about relationships, so it's not "gen"; the majority of them are m/f, and even the m/m is GENDERED as m/f, right? If it were me, I'd label it as m/f and then include a tag indicating the m/m gender issues pairing. But that's just me; I tend to avoid the "multi" tag because while it IS accurate in some cases, it doesn't tell a prospective reader much of anything.

From:

hmpf.livejournal.com

I've chosen 'Other', now. Feels best to me, even if it may technically be m/f or even multi or whatever.

(Honestly, all my fic actually feels like gen to me, even if there's relationships in it - even if there's *sex* in it! - so obviously my ability to determine these kind of categories is not the best... *g* On the other hand, you've seen what happens when I write slash. Essentially, everything I write *is* gen. On some level. *g*)

From:

unovis-lj.livejournal.com

I'd say it's m/f (explicitness doesn't matter in that classification; the ratings cover that) -- but doesn't that story have one m/m pairing, too? I think that makes it "multi."

Since the story focuses on relationships, I wouldn't call it Gen.

From:

hmpf.livejournal.com

male by sex, but female by gender (or Methos wouldn't think of that person as a wife).

Does that make it non-m/f?

(My god, the more you think about classifying that story, the more complicated it gets. *g*)

From:

hmpf.livejournal.com

as the story's category, of course.

Or none, as it's not a required field. Hm.

From:

unovis-lj.livejournal.com

Avoiding a specific classification would be good, I think. The title gives some information about the subject matter, after all, and his m wife was a nice thing to come upon naturally in the story.

From:

beccatoria.livejournal.com

I tend to think of it as a Methos character study, but I'm weird like that. Probably I'd classify it m/f then mention in the summary/notes section, if there is one, that it mainly functions as a character study and, if you like, note that there's some passing m/m stuff.

Honestly, "other" might suit best? I agree with

unovis_lj that it was nice to just happen upon that in the story and specifically mentioning it might change reader expectation and colour their response to the story.

From:

hmpf.livejournal.com

with relationships. Lots of relationships. And even some sex. ;-)

I've chosen 'Other' as the category now, because I agree the story can't be pigeonholed that easily.

From:

franzeska

*wanders by*

I tend to think of "Multi" as the category for shippy romance epics that include a central m/m pairing and a central m/f pairing or something like that. Though I too have a pretty broad view of what constitutes gen.

From:

hmpf.livejournal.com

a central m/m pairing and a central m/f pairing. That would be easy. ;-)

It's a short experimental fic spanning 5000 years and 68 marriages (plus one almost-marriage), all of which involve the (male) main character and a female-gendered person (in all but one case also female-sexed, probably - and yes, it's a different woman for each of those marriages), in just seventy sentences. And the transgendered person is just one among the masses of wives (#43, to be exact *g*), s/he's not the point of the story. Just a throwaway line in a story that consists entirely of throwaway lines. (For all I know there's more people of ambiguous gender in that story, but the male main character only remembers one central fact about each wife in the story, so it's quite possible that gender identity would not be the central memory he'd have of some of the other wives. It just happens to be the thing he remembers about #43.)