The Coalies & Other Stories

[coalcube]

I will not read them in a Canon-Divergent AU.
I will not read them in Third Point-of-View.
Not in a Crossover! Not in Genfic!
Not in Shipfic! You let me be!

I do not like them in Fanart.
I do not like them even in the Fic of My Heart.
I will not read them in fic of my NOTP.
I do not like them with my OTP.
I do not like them here or there.
I do not like them anywhere!
I do not like my DNWs!

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Assignment Deadline: Friday 18 December
Collection Opens: Friday 25 December
Author Reveals: Friday 1 January, 2021

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Comments

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

Romance is its own genre with its own genre expectations, and it's unreasonable to expect everyone to be able to write it, just as it is unreasonable to expect everyone to be able to write horror or mystery. So if you prefer a badly-written romance to a well-written gen story, go for it :) I definitely won't default and forego my own gift just because you tried to railroad me into writing shipfic.

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

NA

While I do indeed prefer badly written shipfic to well-written gen - generally speaking - I don't think shipfic and romance are necessarily identical. I would say that most (all?) romance is shipfic, but not all shipfic is romance. I do agree that it's unreasonable to expect your writer to write a specific genre, but I have trouble wrapping my head around the concept that all shipfic is the same genre. To go with your own examples, shipfic can also be horror or mystery, just like gen fic!

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

In Romance, the relationship is the center of the story - dealing with it IS the plot. Unless your characters are caught in a wretchedly abusive relationship, I don't see how it can be Horror. Genres exist for a reason, and they're not all the same mush.

If the focus of the story is on paired characters escaping a monster, or solving a case, it's Gen (Horror or Mystery, respectively), but not Romance. If you request A/B without any Gen prompts, it sorta implies that you want the focus of the story on A and B dealing somehow with their relationship, not with some other, non-relationship plot problems.

If 'shipfic' means that A/B EXIST in the story, but the story can otherwise deal with a non-relationship-centerd plot, I can understand your confusion. But blurring the lines of genres in this way isn't helpful, especially in the context of exchanges. FWIW, Gen main plot + Romance subplot, or Romance main plot + Gen subplot are also options. It doesn't have to be purely one or the other.

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

You're still conflating romance and shipfic. Yes, romance and horror rarely (though not never) co-exist.

But, again, not all shipfic is romance. Shipfic can also be, for instance:

- straight-up porn (including things like noncon that have absolutely ZERO overlap with romance)
- slice-of-life fic about an established couple or about two characters sharing UST
- the ship (established or not) going on an adventure or solving a mystery together
- angst/drama about a characters stuck in an abusive or bad relationship
- two characters pining for each other
- a couple breaking up
etc.

Obviously, not all of those are things you should gift unprompted! But that doesn't mean they aren't by definition shipfic and wouldn't fall under the romance umbrella.

When people ask for shipfic, it means asking for a / relationship. What form that story takes depends on the fandom/ship, on the recipient's prompts and on what the writer is willing to write. But by your definition, someone who asks for "Dungeon Monsters/Servant Girl" in a ship matching exchange like Canon Ball or a HTP pairing is asking for "romance". I assure you, that's very much not the case.

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

bookriot.com/horror-romance-books/amp/

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

NC

This definition is completely out of line with how fandom works. It's not even really true of original books, but it is definitely untrue of fic. People read all sorts of genres underneath and through their ships. Shipfic can be a way to tell a horror story, a casefic--all sorts of things. This is obvious by even a brief perusal of ao3, but also the tags that people choose for freeform matching, non-smut exchanges.

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

You have never actually paid any attention to romance, have you? Most have a B plot.

The A plot is the romance, the B plot can be anything - horror, fantasy, contemporary, historical, whatever.

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

+1 I can't write romance, but I will happily write someone shippy horror or shippy fluff or shippy action.

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

Gen is when my ship isn't together at all.

A mystery where my ship are together but the plot is about investigating is not gen.

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

it's sort of both? The plot is gen, but it contains a ship. And many people who would DNW gen would consider that insufficient, because they want to read something ship-focused.

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

da

The plot is gen, but it contains a ship.

That's not how this works. A fic can't be both shipfic and genfic. Either it has no ships, then it has gen, or it has ships, then it's shipfic.

It's not brain surgery.

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

And it's not a thing on which there's universal consensus.

I mean, if you consider a story where your ship is together but the plot isn't focused on their relationship to be shippy enough, that's great, because it's the kind of shipfic that a writer who mostly does gen is likely to be more confident writing for you. But you and I both know that that people do not agree on this. Gen is not only a rarefied thing where no one's in relationships ever.

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

What? A fic having a ship isn't shipfic. Shipfic focuses on the ship (either getting together or the relationship progressing, etc.). A fic that has a ship in it but the ship isn't the point (e.g. a married couple solving a mystery together but the fic doesn't focus on them as a couple and the fact that they are a couple doesn't influence the fic) is not a shipfic.

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

nobody thinks this

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

Nobody thinks which?

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

You are incorrect.

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

The conclusion this thread is leading me to is that the "shipfic/genfic" dichotomy is fundamentally the wrong way to think about it.

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

Yes it is. The deciding factor whether a story falls on the Romance or the Gen side of things IS its plot - because 'what's happening' is the focus of the story. And with 'Gen' meaning 'anything else that isn't Romance', solving a mystery as your main plot makes the story Gen.

If the main plot of your story is A and B getting together, and the mystery is just the context of how they cross paths, or a complication that keeps them from getting together, it's Romance. If solving cases is the main focus of the story, and not just a backdrop to them working out some relationship problem, it's Gen.

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

with 'Gen' meaning 'anything else that isn't Romance'

So... the gangbang porn fic I read this morning is gen? Good to know!!!!

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

I see porn as a subset of romance, since it's about the physical side of a relationship between people. If you write your gangbang as a crime that your detective has to solve, it's Gen, however.

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

Man, at this point I can't even figure out if you have a super weird definition of romance, a super weird definition of ship/gen fic, or if you're just trolling.

But if you seriously think something like snuff porn where the hero gets gangbanged by his enemies and is killed at the end is romance unless you bring in a detective to solve the murderer which then magically makes it gen, I'm not sure what to tell you.

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

Sometimes it's about the physical side of a relationship between an eldritch tentacle horror and a person.

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

No.

All of my ships are non-canon, so any fic featuring my ship is a shipfic unless they are minor background characters or something. Even if the relationship isn't the focus at all, if they are the leads and they are together, it cannot be gen.

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

Man, this is so fanfiction.net and so not LJ or AO3.

Re: Unpopular Yuletide Opinions

[(Anonymous)]

This could also be solved by not offering a romance, horror, or mystery canon if you can’t write it and are put off by people expecting a fundamental part of the canon.