I'm laughing, because LOL at the snuff porn romance, but also, I think part of the confusion stems from the fact that the gen fic/ship fic distinction simply doesn't neatly match onto literary genre terminology.
Romance doesn't equal ship fic, and case fic doesn't equal gen fic because those are different modes of distinction.
Ship fic is by definition about a ship, which implies romantic or sexual interaction/attraction, but it doesn't say anything about whether it's romance, tragedy, or straight-up porn.
Gen fic is *not* about ships, although I'd agree that fandom has always been divided on whether gen fic can have background ships or not. I don't have an strong opinion on this, but generally I'd expect gen fic to be about friendship, character development, worldbuilding, etc. But gen fic can also be a variety of literary genres: it can be tragedy, it can be comedy, it can be mystery ... it cannot be porn or romance, though, because [see above].
Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions
Romance doesn't equal ship fic, and case fic doesn't equal gen fic because those are different modes of distinction.
Ship fic is by definition about a ship, which implies romantic or sexual interaction/attraction, but it doesn't say anything about whether it's romance, tragedy, or straight-up porn.
Gen fic is *not* about ships, although I'd agree that fandom has always been divided on whether gen fic can have background ships or not. I don't have an strong opinion on this, but generally I'd expect gen fic to be about friendship, character development, worldbuilding, etc. But gen fic can also be a variety of literary genres: it can be tragedy, it can be comedy, it can be mystery ... it cannot be porn or romance, though, because [see above].