sholio | Curious Sholio is curious

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Curious Sholio is curious

Hmm, so in light of some discussion elsewhere ... a poll!

I had always thought that "pairing" was a fairly straightforward and commonly accepted fannish term that most people define similarly, and it was a little startling to me to realize that there actually is a lot of variation in the way that individuals use it. (Heck, even the way *I* define it is a little more flexible than I'd realized -- there are some situations that I always thought were pretty clear-cut, but the more I think about it, the more I'm not sure.) So now I'm curious if there is a general consensus.

The poll is set so that only I can see who gave which answers.

Poll #10781

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 34

For characters X and Y, how many of the following would you consider an X/Y pairing in a fanfic?

UST - X feels attracted to Y (and perhaps vice versa), but they don't act on it
28 (82.4%)

Romance - X and Y date, kiss and perhaps have sex as part of a relationship
34 (100.0%)

One-night stand - X and Y sleep together, but don't expect to do it again
34 (100.0%)

Prostitution - X pays Y to have sex with him/her
30 (88.2%)

Sex for the camera - X and Y are both paid to be filmed/photographed having sex with each other, but have no other connection
26 (76.5%)

Blind or accidental date - X and Y go through the motions of dating, but aren't actually attracted to each other
17 (50.0%)

Non-con - X rapes Y
19 (55.9%)

Non-con - X and Y are forced to have sex by an outside agency (and don't want to)
22 (64.7%)

Masturbation - X masturbates while fantasizing about Y
24 (70.6%)

How many of the following do you think are significant factors in whether a particular sexual or romantic situation might be considered X/Y or not?

Whether X and Y end up together at the end of the story
9 (29.0%)

Whether the relationship is consensual
16 (51.6%)

Whether X and/or Y are OCs
3 (9.7%)

Whether X and Y have a sexual relationship in canon (even if it's different from the one depicted)
9 (29.0%)

Whether the relationship is a tiny part of the overall story, vs. making up the bulk of the story
21 (67.7%)

How you personally feel about that pairing (i.e. if you ship them or not)
4 (12.9%)

Whether the sex is written to titillate or in a clinical, non-sexy manner
6 (19.4%)

Whether X and Y have feelings for each other or are having sex and/or a relationship for other, non-romantic reasons
13 (41.9%)

Would you apply a different standard if the story was in an X/Y pairing fest rather than just being posted generally?

I would be more strict - if it's in an X/Y fest, it needs to be clearly and unambiguously X/Y
20 (60.6%)

I would be less strict - if it's in an X/Y fest, it's X/Y by definition
5 (15.2%)

I think I would apply the same standard
8 (24.2%)

This poll also exists on LJ.

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Already we are looking in different directions, because I realized that I generally consider "pairing" to mean two characters who either hook up physically (however that happens) OR two characters in an acknowledged relationship. UST doesn't count.

Mostly, I think this is because I have generally given up on reading truly long, plotty, action-adventure genfic that features characters I enjoy most. (My faves never seem to be the fandom faves.)

*nods* I think your definition is similar to mine except that I'd also include UST (probably because I feel that it works the character dynamics in the same way that the consummated relationship does -- in other words, I'm likely to find the same character dynamics in a fic with John/Teyla UST as in a fic with the actual relationship).

What prompted this poll is that I'd been having a discussion with someone elsewhere that made me realize that my own personal definition of "pairing" as including both romance and sex is not universal -- there are definitely fans out there for whom "pairing" covers romance but not no-strings-attached sex. And I went "hmm" and began wondering how common that is.

Edited 2012-06-09 00:32 (UTC)

The only place I hesitated in question one was the non-con, but I feel like it's pretty common to say "X/Y noncon" in your pairing list, and I know what that means, so I ended up ticking it.

Lately, due to writing all the threesomes, I have started putting "relationship(s)" instead of "pairing(s)" as a header on some of my fics. Which makes it even fuzzier, because on Tangled I think I put, like, "relationships: Abed/Annie, Troy/Abed, Annie-Troy friendship."

Yeah, non-con is the really fuzzy one for me, too. Actually that's one of the areas where I thought I knew how I felt and then I wasn't sure. I was pretty sure that I didn't consider X/Y noncon to be X/Y at all, but then I got to thinking about some of the fic I've read where it's pretty clear that, consent issues aside, the sex really is written to appeal to X/Y fans even if the relationship is nonconsensual and totally would not be X/Y in real life, so ... aargh. *g*

I like your solution with a "relationships" line rather than "pairings"! I might consider doing that on some of my fics too.

I didn't check any boxes in the second question, because none of those are a factor to me. I wasn't sure if you meant they are things that I would consider or fandom in general would consider.

As for the third question, I did say I would be more strict, but mostly the thing I would be strict about is, say, not having one part of the pairing end up with someone else. I think UST is okay, pining is okay, even them breaking up is okay, but I would feel bad about writing a story for a, say, John/Rodney fest, only to have John and Rodney break up for other people. If they just broke up because it wasn't working, I would still post it. ^_^;;

Yeah, the second question is probably not worded very well. What I meant, I guess, is something along the lines of ... if you were looking at two fics that contain two characters having sex, and you would consider one of them a pairing fic and the other one not, what are some of the factors that might be making you choose differently between them? But it's difficult to stuff that concisely into a poll question. *g*

And yeah, for the pairing example, that's pretty much how I feel.

Yeah, then just for myself, none of the listed options would make me consider it not pairing fic, since I consider all of the stuff in question one to be pairings. :)

i answered your poll as given, but I had to skip the non con questions, because to me there are additional factors that weight importantly to me that were not covered in your poll

To wit:

If X and Y are never going to be reconciled, and if one of them is a canon Bad Guy, and if the non-conc is not presented as a non-con fantasy but as actual horrific non-con, I would not see them as a pairing.

For example, Harry gets raped by Lucius, or Daniel gets raped by Ba'al.

These are not pairings. They are violence that is sexual.

That is not to say that those same pairings cannot be spun for fantasy catharsis.

So I think the non-con aspect is actually quite complicated and your poll did not reflect that.

ETA: Sexual contact does not automatically equal pairing. In short. Other narrative factors impinge.

ETA2: Sorry for the additional edit. Actually i think my opinion is probably the diametric opposite to anniemous! :)

Edited 2012-06-09 00:25 (UTC)

*nods* This makes sense to me. Personally I have trouble considering X raping Y to be X/Y fic no matter what the extenuating circumstances, but like I said in a comment above, I can imagine circumstances under which that might be the case. I hadn't really thought about distinguishing in the poll questions because to me, none of it is X/Y, so I wasn't really thinking about gray areas. (Out of curiosity, how would you have set up the non-con parts of the poll questions?)

Well, the best I can do is refer you to some classics I'm aware of, like "Sinners Grove" by Martha or some other classics of enemy slash, or pon farr fic from Star Trek, where the rape is definitely not about the violence but about how the two people involved can reconcile or "come back" from this extreme situation.

if you're searching for what people mean by "pairing", it's not going to hinge on sexual attraction or sexual contact PER SE.

it's going to be more complicated than that.

Some noncon events result in pairing. Some do not. It's plot dependent. I don't know if that helps?

I guess I generally am thinking of how to tag something when I think of pairings, so I would list any set of characters who had any type of sexual contact, romantic relationship, or any relationship in which the characters in story define themselves as primary partners, regardless of their sexual or romantic feelings for each other. I generally only list pairings that have a substantial part in the story, because I figure that's what people are looking for and not the one sentence of A/B in the background, though I, myself, would still think of A/B as a pairing.

Let's say this fictitious pairing story is about Elizabeth/John. My subject line would look like this for all the contingencies in the first question

SGA Fic: Title; Sheppard/Weir; Rating

Now, I would add unrequited before the first one and non-con after the ones that would apply to.

I have trouble with polls because I always end up confusing myself. I have to think about it, then I think about it too much, and then I don't answer.

I think I count any romantic or sexual attraction. So, pining/UST and one-night stands would both apply.

It gets more complicated when you bring in prostitution or people going through the motions of a relationship without feeling any attraction. It really gets to the heart of your questions: what is a "pairing?" Is it just the physical act of sex or dating? If White Collar 3x12 were a fic, would one label it Diana/Peter? They act like a couple, however briefly.

I think that however I define pairing, if I were creating a fic header, I'd lean towards ensuring people knew what was happening. So, even if I don't define prostitution as being a pairing, I would probably list it as such. Just in case "Character A, Character B (prostitution)" wouldn't be clear enough. The only area I get iffy about this is in the case of rape/non-con. I feel pretty strongly that that isn't a pairing. I'm not certain what I would do.

Of course, sometimes the problem goes the other way: I worry that by listing two (or more) characters as a pairing, I've created expectations that will not be fulfilled. I have a Neal/Alex fic that I've been holding off on in case S4 completely Josses me, but it's not so much "Neal/Alex" as it's "Neal and Alex think about, vaguely attempt, but in the end completely fail to have a relationship." Few Neal/Alex fans are going to find that satisfying.

I also try to express if a pairing is one sided or not. Because, yeah, I consider it a pairing even if the feelings are only on one side, but it's not the same. There are some pairing that I only want to read as unrequited, and others that I only want to read as reciprocated.

I'm finding this all a challenge in my voyeurism/exhibitionism series. If Mozzie is watching Neal and Kate have sex, but he's not sexually or romantically attracted to either of them, what's that? I couldn't call it Neal/Kate/Mozzie, because it's really not a threesome, and it's the act of watching that's getting Mozzie off, not the participants. But to just label Neal/Kate doesn't express the dynamic. It only gets more complicated from there.

And in regards to the last one, I'd say I'm more strict when it comes to fests. You know what people are going to want, and you know what's expected. That doesn't mean we can't run into problems, due to multiple interpretations, of course. If I sign up for an A/B fest, and I write a friends with benefits thing, then someone who feels that to be a pairing, a relationship has to involve romantic feelings isn't going to be satisfied, and I wouldn't be satisfied with A/B rape.

Sorry, I do ramble.

I have a Neal/Alex fic that I've been holding off on in case S4 completely Josses me, but it's not so much "Neal/Alex" as it's "Neal and Alex think about, vaguely attempt, but in the end completely fail to have a relationship."

Just poking my head in to say I would totally read this.

(There are pairings where I like to read happy endings. And then there are pairings where I can't imagine the relationship ever actually working, but I love watching/reading about all the interesting ways it could fail to work, and Neal/Alex is one of those for me.)

If Mozzie is watching Neal and Kate have sex, but he's not sexually or romantically attracted to either of them, what's that?

IMO, that would depend on whether Neal and Kate are aware of this - if they are, I'd lean more toward labeling it as a threesome, since they're involved, sort of? If not ... I don't know.

(I'm trying to figure out if a fic involving a flashback scene with Neal and Kate quoting poetry at each other could possibly count as gen. It started as gen, but it's sliding further into S2 Kate angst the more I write. The plotbunnies have minds of their own sometimes ...)

The one thing I don't consider a pairing is, for example, "Sophie/Nate by way of Sophie/Eliot" and Sophie/Eliot is listed as one of the pairings. If you're only using Sophie/Eliot as a vehicle to get Sophie and Nate together, it does a disservice to fans of Sophie/Eliot to do anything other than disclaimer it "Pairing X by way of Pairing Y."

Do you mean that only the final pairing in a fic "counts" as the pairing, or is it a specific type of set up where the previous pairing is bashed to get the final pairing together that you wouldn't count?

It's a specific type of set up where the previous pairing is bashed where I wouldn't count it. Like, for example, I read a story marked as Elizabeth/John, Elizabeth/Rodney, and John/Rodney. Which was dumb of me, but stories with Elizabeth? I'm quite fond of them. As it turned out, both Rodney and John were both sleeping with Elizabeth (and letting the other know it) because they weren't ready to admit their ~feelings~ for each other, and she was also a cold, cold bitch who was just using them for sex. But they got together in the end, and could stop using Elizabeth as a proxy.

Which. Just. While I'm not a fan of McShep, I'm a fan of all three of the characters, not to mention Elizabeth/John and Elizabeth/Rodney (I have about a dozen favorite pairings in SGA, of m/f, f/f, and m/m persuasion, plus favorite poly ships, so this isn't some 'ew slash' thing), and the idea that Elizabeth they were all using each other in this fashion until True Love came along grossed me out. I thought that there should have been a warning that the other pairings were solely in the service of getting John and Rodney together.

And then I would have ran the other way fast. Especially as I watch the series and see three characters who respect each other and love each other (though on the actual show, it's more a platonic sort of love, true) too much to use each other like that.

Tl; dr, I know. I feel like the other pairings in those ship-A-to-get-ship-B-together stories are more like proxy pairings, or halfway pairings, but we don't have a fannish convention or labelling tradition for something like that. It's a big gray area for pairings (or shipping).

Oh, okay. I would definitely feel icky about a fic like that and consider it bashing Elizabeth for the sake of John/Rodney, but I would still consider the Elizabeth/John and Elizabeth/Rodney to be pairings.

Oh yes, very good point. I agree.

I admit that I really don't know how to classify a number of things. I tagged my recent PG BSG'78 "Cassiopeia/Starbuck & Athena" story as both gen and pairing, because I couldn't figure out where it belonged.

I feel a certain personal nostalgia for old-fashioned "gen" as the counterpart (opposite?) of "erotica," as opposed to today's "gen" as the counterpart (opposite?) of "pairing." There was more room in it! And it was more like canon, if you know what I mean. Back then, UST was gen, and canon relationships were gen (unless erotica). Now...

Tangential pet peeve? I personally detest "One True Pairing" supplanting "One True Love." Among other things, the agency in OTL is the characters'. OTP is all about the fan.

OTP is all about the fan.

That's what I like about it. When I say character A/character B are my OTP, I'm only making a statement about what I like. Proclaiming that that B is A's One True Love seems like a surefire way to start ship wars. And it's not as if A or B care what I write--they're not real.

Hello, Valeda K. I am not, of course, advocating ship wars.

As Sholio knows about me, I am very interested in canon in all my fandoms, and am primarily a gen fan. I enjoy analyzing and exploring canon as it exists; canon is tremendously fun to me. I do not enjoy deviating from canon or dismissing it; indeed, most AUs and "reboots" are squicky to me, which is how "One True Pairing" became a personal pet peeve. "One True Love," when it was a common usage back in my day in my fandoms -- in slightly different and much more limited applications than today's "OTP" -- was properly a defensible product of close canon analysis. "One True Pairing," as you note, has nothing to do with the original story text. The classifications are different. I personally got more fun out of the old one.

I am aware, yes, that I am peculiar. :-) Luckily for me, as it is your privilege to ship whomever you like, it remains my privilege to revel in canon analysis. :-)

Hmm ... You know that I'm basically a canon girl myself (I do read non-canon pairings and AUs, but it always circles back around to canon for me; it's pretty much my be-all and end-all). And yet, this phrasing rubs me the wrong way also. I suppose at least partly because I can't think of very many shows that actually have anything I think could be described as this without imposing a shipper's lens on it (and in a particularly unpleasant, "my reading of canon trumps your reading of canon" kind of way). In a romantic movie or a Disney cartoon, I think you could make a legitimate case for something like this, but most TV shows don't really do relationships that way -- I'm thinking here of shows like Forever Knight, Highlander, the Star Treks/Stargates, etc.

I suppose that I also have a knee-jerk reaction against this terminology because it doesn't fit with how I see the world anyway -- I don't believe that everyone has one of these, and I tend to feel cheated by shows/movies/books that push the True Love Trumps All Other Relationships agenda anyhow. I can think of a handful of shows that do actually display relationships this way (Fringe, for example, where Peter and Olivia are unambiguously Made For Each Other and Meant To Be Together in canon) and my reaction to that sort of thing is usually rather negative -- I guess that I can imagine using the terminology "One True Love" to talk about Peter and Olivia, but mostly in a negative way ("This show keeps pushing the One True Love agenda to the detriment of Olivia's character", for example).

On the other hand, I come from a different fannish background than you do -- I didn't get into Western media fandom 'til the mid-2000s, when terminology such as OTP was already well established. So I don't have any idea how this phrase was used, back in the day. I admit that I have a hard time imagining it being used in a way that wouldn't be a subtle put-down of other ships ("Natalie is Nick's One True Love, so his love for Janette is less pure" or some such nonsense). On the other hand, I've never seen you do anything of the sort, and like I said, I've never actually seen this used, so perhaps I am unreasonably prejudiced against it. How would one use the phrase One True Love to talk about canon?

You said just about everything I was thinking, but said it more eloquently.

I can think of a handful of shows that do actually display relationships this way...and my reaction to that sort of thing is usually rather negative

I have this problem while watching Once Upon a Time. Being based on Disneyfied fairy tales, True Love is not surprisingly a big thing. Which creates a problem when the show keeps telling me that, for example, David and Mary Margaret have True Love, but gives me no reason to root for their relationship.*

*Personal opinion, naturally.

Luckily for me, as it is your privilege to ship whomever you like, it remains my privilege to revel in canon analysis. :-)

Honestly, I like to do both. I don't consider it a zero-sum game, you know? I can analyze canon until my brain twists, and I can squee over my favorite ships. Often at the same time.

To elaborate on #1, I find UST to be something of an in-between. When I rec a UST fic I often classify it as Gen with the additional "X/Y UST".

As to non-con, I don't consider it a pairing, but I also think it is not Gen, either. It's its own category.

For me it makes a difference whether it is just a story content label, or whether you use it as a genre. I answered the first two for story content label, and there anything where they have sex or think about having sex I'd label X/Y for content, and none of qualification really factor into it. It works like an allergy warning in that trace amounts are enough to warrant a label.

If it is supposed to be a genre, it has to be the main thing in the story, and an actual relationship with sex, that is then I use pairing more or less like "ship". So for the X/Y fest, I'd assume the X/Y to be meant as genre. Then a number of the points above matter.

Edited 2012-06-09 08:49 (UTC)

Yeah, I was thinking about that, too. If you were asking me to pick one pairing that defines a story, say, in a story where John and Rodney are with other people and then get together, or a story where John is pining about Rodney while having sex with someone else, I would say those are both "John/Rodney stories". But I would still use the word pairings to describe the other encounters/relationships.

You already know much of what I think, but....

This poll could really be a prompt list: I kept reading, picturing "How would that work?", and then nodding because, yeah, I could write that. It's all doable, and it can all be believable....

The problem with labels is that they are both the author's way of being honest about a story (Cam rapes John, so gen and not Cam/John) BUT they are also the indexing/advertising function in fandom (I want readers! can I post to a John/Cam comm?... better not, eh; should I use an archive pairing tag so people who read John/Cam will get the RSS notification? erm).

And as Varda said, what about when relationships change? You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. People who ship McShep and loathe Keller won't want a fic where Rodney dumps John for Jennifer, so obviously tagging it "Sheppard/McKay, McKay/Keller" is out as it's McKeller and John ends up sad&lonely!... but what about the McKeller fans who don't even want a HINT of McShep? For them, you HAVE to add "Sheppard/McKay" to let them know to avoid it....

I do feel that there's kind of a one-drop rule regarding UST/mourning/past relationships. If in a 200,000 word fic we get even one line, "Teyla sighed and stared wistfully at her picture of Elizabeth, remembering their epic love as her heart ached", then there's Teyla/Elizabeth in it. Though... (points up to first paragraph) I can think of ways in which a character's unrequited love could still work in a gen context (admittedly, it might be played for wry laughs, think Rodney's passion for Sam, which could be in a gen fic, I think).

*nods*

Yeah, one of the reasons why I posted this is, basically, I just wanted to get a read on how people feel about it and what other people think. There's been a lot of really interesting food for thought for me in the comments, both here and on the LJ side. One thing that's come up in a lot of the comments is that it really depends on circumstance and context, and I think that's an excellent point -- basically I was trying to come up with some kind of grand unified theory of pairings and it doesn't really work that way.

Also, I really hope this post doesn't come across as -- I don't know, some sort of swipe at you behind your back or something? I really appreciated our discussion and it made me think about these things in a different, more nuanced way than I had before. :)

(For that matter, while I'm at it -- and because I often truly suck at commenting, so I may as well say it sometime *g* -- one thing that I have always loved about your stories is that they are sort of genre-defying and don't conform to the usual standard tropes in the pairings you write. A lot of writers in fandom are incredibly predictable, and you're not -- I never quite know how your stories are going to turn out, and yet, your affection for the characters is still very evident. I just like that a lot about your writing, even though I've sort of moseyed off to other fandoms these days.)

Edited 2012-06-09 09:11 (UTC)

(I love meta, and I adore a good meaty discussion *g* Also, I'm very relieved to have the discussion moved off the official comments page for an author whom I'm quite fond of and who's unable to comment....)

I think if we are going to grand-unify things it's going to look a lot more like Homestuck pairings: names of characters + some marker/indicator qualifying the relationship. Obviously, our friend the "/" is carrying too much of a load. Sex? Love? Hate with sex? Rape? Wistful one-way gazes across a crowded room?

In a perfect world, you might see something as explicit as:
Relationships: John:UST->Larrin, tentacles:noncon->John, [main]Radim:asexual est. rel.:John, [minor]Radek:pining->pigeons, [minor]Ronon:hatesex:Todd

instead of:
Pairings: John/Larrin, John/tentacles, John/Radim, Radek/pigeons, Ronon/Todd
Warnings: noncon, hatesex **no bestiality really!**

Of course, some might argue that that takes away a lot of the surprises in the plot... but I'm sure for others that would be a pretty good advertisement ("ooh tentacles and pigeons in the same fic? *___* ")

(I think maybe I think about these things overmuch because I tend to write things which don't fit neatly into comms or categories. I started out writing both Snape/Lupin and Lupin/Black; it's a bit like yoga, in a way!)

I'm dying at the Radek pining for pigeons and "no bestiality!" XD XD XD

Also I'm really curious now about what started this?

It was a discussion about a particular story in sga_genficathon. I agree with

busaikko that it really isn't fair to drag the story and the author back into it -- that situation is pretty much resolved at this point, and the specific issue that intrigues me right now, anyway, isn't whether or not that story is gen, but whether there's a fannish consensus on what it means when people talk about a "pairing". I'd written the original genficathon guidelines with the assumption in mind that "pairing" meant the same thing to other people that it does to me, but that discussion made it very obvious that there was a wide range of opinions on the topic, which made me come over here to fish for opinions among my flist and find out just how widely that definition does vary. The impression I'm getting is "quite a lot!" -- and also that context matters a lot, too.

Their love is pure like the snow!

I guess that for me, 'pairing' has always meant a relationship that has a sexual and/or romantic component (even if only one-sided), and considering that a relationship can be any which way - antagonistic, agonistic, wrought, stuff-of-dreams (whose?) etc, then I'd say I find that all variations mentioned in the first question apply. For the last question - I'd say any fest mostly calls for more specific guidelines, to avoid misunderstandings when people's definitions don't match up:)

Oh wow this is a TRICKY ONE. And I definitely answered question 2 in ways that are in opposition to my answers to question 1, and yet I still stand by both, so yeah -- TRICKY.

My general thought is that if a fic's main focus is on two characters and their relationship with each other involving feelings and/or sex then the fic is that pairing. It might not be a HAPPY fic about that pairing, but it can be labeled as such. Though I always reserve the right to say otherwise in specific cases -- pairing is, imo, one of those things that is an "I know it when I see it" thing and cannot be quantified.

And for a lot of the things in question 2 that I checked, really it's a "yes this is a factor in my consideration but it is entirely possible that it can point EITHER direction depending on how the story treats it." Because it's not about the facts, I think, it's about...the perspective, I guess, about what the story treats as important.

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Curious Sholio is curious

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