it started with work then went to interpretations of canon--I have no idea how

I'm going through a depressing country music phase, where I want to listen to breakup and death songs. My music tastes are almost constantly at odds with what I want to read. Lemme tell you, anytime the rotation includes one song about murder, two Johnny Cash, and this? There's something odd going on with the playlist.

Currently on the rotation--What Hurts the Most, Rascal Flatts. The video is wrenching as hell.

Work

I had an interview on Friday. It was kind of bad, in that way that bad romantic comedies are bad. They told me one, but teh calendar said two. I assumed that meant they'd changed it--it was Friday, people go to a late lunch. It's the state. It happens. But no, it was one, leading me to run desperately to my computer and print out the calender function off Outlook and shoving it into the interviewer's cubicle with a desperate expression. So the interview went off at two, and the question and answer portion was fine. I'm good with those.

Then came the practical.

I want to give you an image. Let's go with a Stargate image, because hey, it's my lj, I can do that whether it's relatable or not.

You are given a series of copies of something in indistinct patterns written in Ancient and told to creat a spreadsheet from all twenty something pages. Some of the time they black out the name and claim number, sometimes not. Those two things are the only parts of the entire damn thing you understand. MBI number? Account? (Okay, I know what account is). A dizzying variety of acronyms. Some things that refer to money. Some--you have no idea. There are dates. You look at them like they're nuts.

It's STAR and STAR+ and Medicaid related, in case you're curious. You're probably not. Unless you work the programs, I cannot imagine a more boring topic of conversation. God, you should hear our jokes. Even I sometimes shudder in horror when I realize I'm laughing hysterically when someone makes a Medicaid/Medicare misnamed acronym joke. On the other hand, if you work with the implementation, you find yourself feverishly interested in the monthly policy updates, changes to providers, and being deeply and personally invested in whether or not you need prior authorization for non-generic medication.

Okay, what I said above would be very funny to one of us. You see why I don't really talk about my job much anymore.

Anyway, the pay is nice. The fact I'll be doing something new is nice. I had a horrific moment of comprehension today when I broke into my boss' office to reorganize all the personnel files that are about six months to ten months behind, or basically stopped being updated since I was his admin. I am that bored. The height of entertainment....

Wait. I was talking about the interview.

Well, the best part was, we had forty-five to do the spreadsheet (were they *fucking with me*?), the questionaire, and a letter that--God, okay, a letter to a clinic's owning company explaining why we wont' cover something. No, really. I have this--weird and strange need to--do the hardest thing first. I did the questionnaire really fast, but the spreadsheet fascinated me. I had never seen so many sheets of paper in legitimate English composed of such nonsense. Contextually, they were rejections of billing due to third party insurers--I can see people's eyes glazing already, but seriously, this is the height of chic social chat at the office--but mostly, they were long rows of acronyms with monetary value assigned. I read through it all in horror, worked out I was looking in the face of hell, and went back and looked for commonalities.

I'm good at pattern recognition--this is why I interview well for the state. I can usually figure out what they're looking for by paying attention to the wording of questions. This is why I was a good caseworker. That's all pattern recognition in policy. The problem was, it's pattern recognition of a foreign language. And some of the commonalities--like name and claim number--were blacked out on some and not others. I pulled everything that appeared on every sheet, named it something that sounded like I knew what I was talking about, and set up the spreadsheet. I was half way done when my interviewer came over at the thirty minute mark and asked if I would be willing to do the rest on Monday.

I almost laughed. Sure, I said, because seriously, it's not like I'd figure this out without a character map even if I had the whole weekend. I did hte rest today. Didn't finish the provider letter. Didnt' really care. I wasn't qualified for this job when they asked me to interview. No, really. So that I got the interview at all was a surprise. Mostly, I tend to rest a lot of my value on the fact that I'm always good at my job. This isn't bragging. This is boredom. If I'm not good at it, the days pass a lot longer than they should. Being good is being given a lot to do, and look at that, five comes fast.

Work II

Short version--in 2005, the state sold off a lot of their social services to a private contractor, Accenture, better known under another name as the people who worked with Enron. No. I'm not kidding. I kind of want to cry, but this is typical of the current administration, so whatever. This included caseworker jobs. I was one of those, and changed jobs before they could start pink-slipping us. Well, as predicted, they made a mess of it. A huge mess of the CHIP program, the Medicaids, the--well, name it, they fucked it up royally. Tuesday last week, my mom called me while I was resting my feet in Millennium Park to tell me that the contract had been severed.

I won't try to explain my glee. It's hard to describe without going into strange, surreal comparisons to the Rapture, but suffice to say, there's a level of joy going on here that defies description. It's like--I don't know. I'm ombudsman--I know the level of fuck-upedness going on in the state due to both Accenture and the fact that the state, in prep for the rollout, started pink-slipping like crazy and we lost the best and brightest of our caseworking staff. The tenured. The ones that knew policy backward, forward, and sideways. The ones that coudl do the work. Leavingn the entire state with underqualified trainees in temp positions--so we weren't getting, in some cases, the best people. We were hiring people who knew how to read. Maybe.

Just suffice to say--I am very pleased with the universe.

Fandom

I had this thoughtful topic on gen, slash, and het, but I'm still overthinking my instinctive response to the treatment of non-canon slash and non-canon het unequally, which was hostile. I'm less comfortable with diametrically opposing points of view than I really thought I was. Over-emotional reactions to stories, sure, I know I go places there, but that at least makes sense to me--it's *fic* and the point of fic is emotional engagement. A sudden hostility to a meta surprises me. I got over it quickly, because above and beyond that, it was interesting and thoughtful and brought up some questions I've been asking myself on the blurry lines between slash, het, gen, and the canon that rules them all.

Here abyssinia4077 talks about het, slash, gen, and labeling stories.

A part of this the way I set up my flist; I keep myself fairly isolated from things that really annoy me, so I'm unused to being highly annoyed unless I'm linked or someone points it out to me. A part of me does wonder if we lost something in switching to lj and being able to, in essence, pick our mailinglist mates, instead of having to deal with the annoying people daily and building up a certain level of tolerance for it. Or it could be just me; I'm getting more fixed in what I'm willing to deal with and what I'll blow off because I just am not willing to listen today. Etc. Etc. Etc. Which is a sign of either creeping intolerance or sheer laziness. I'm not sure which. I think I prefer the laziness.



The thing is? The thing is Sleeper and Instructional were written as slash that hadn't happened yet. So was Timeless. So was What I Look For On the Sides of Mountains. The Difference was pre-het and established relationship background slash. All were labeled gen, either by me or someone else, but the gen was in the text only; the slash was the intention and the subtext. I'm the author--I can confirm that, though it can totally be read against my intentions. The first two and Like Running Through Water, my first slash in the fandom, are in continuity with each other unofficially, with wildly different tones and styles.

So I think the problem I'm having isn't the labeling, but the way we label the source itself.

Okay, for example. We have canon, but canon's violently interpretable. Sure, we can do it very literally, but that ends up being a dry history of *events* and visible actions, not people. To make canon work, motivation has to be assigned for every variable, and that's when things get tricky. Everyone comes in with their own motivation. My personal favorite is still the wild and hysterical justifications for Rodney in Irresistible--oh come on. Who didn't snigger through the fic with the long drawn-out description of how much John sucked and deserved for Rodney to mind-whammy him? Or the ones that explain in detail how John's really really a sociopath really pointing to The Storm or the really awesome ones about how Rodney really really loves kids, honest, just not any of the ones we've seen because they all suck?

Right. I'm just saying--I think these are *nuts*. But they *are* interpretable canon--motivation assigned to canon action. So I think they're nuts, but within the strictures of canon, they all--okay, not all work for me, but they are there and can be cited using canon. Motivation can't be proved canonically--canon is a purely visual and audio medium. Which is--not a departure from the above. Just roll with this.

Canon is fluid by its very nature. John flew into a hive ship. That's canon. His emotional state when he did it is negotiable. Rodney blew up Doranda is canon. His reasons are negotiable. Carson is doing genetic experiments. That's canon. His ethical and moral spot is ambiguous at best. The only absolutes we actually have are what exactly is seen on-screen, with unassigned or in a really weird twist if you wanted to go here, on-screen verbally assigned motivation at best. John and Teylas unrequited--thing. I can see the same scene as someone else, I see potential, they absolutely don't. It's always fluid.

So with motivation--someone sees a Sheppard/Teyla scene (the ones we've had so far) and says *chemistry*. They can also see a Sheppard/McKay scene and say *chemistry* and it's equally legitimate within the strictures of canon. There's no canon backing at this time for pretty much any pairing besides Sheppard/Chaya, Sheppard/Teer, Weir/Simon, McKay/Alina (sort of), McKay/Brown, Carson/Cadman, and Carson/that chick from the first season. And that chick in The Tower, which was when we all realized John really needs to get out more if naked women showing up in his room does not clue him in.

I'm--going somewhere with this. I guess a part of me doesn't see how to use canon to decide the label of gen, slash, or het, whether or not the pairing involved is canon or not. I'm not sure there's even a default we can go to in labeling gen, slash, or het other than to say "active relationship in the text", which would start excluding a lot of fic from the gen label with a background pairing of any kind. It's actually a weird grey area I found during my del.icio.us tagging, because seriously, more fun than a barrel of *monkeys*, when I have a story that's--okay, say, a conversation between two men with a background relationship between one of them and someone else, but the romantic relationship is basically a given background. Or stories that start off gen and go to het or slash, or involve a friendship with a background earlier and/or later pairing with both together or both with other people.

I think I just spent several paragraphs explaining why I'm starting to think the het, slash, and gen labels may be getting outdated in fandom. Hmm. I'm not sure I even believe that, but then again, using my own fic as guidance, I'm not sure how to label some of them.



Singing along to Buffy the Musical soundtrack. God. It's so good that no one is close enough to have their ears start to bleed.

Comments

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

I had a helluva time coming up with definitions of acceptable material for comics_genfic -- canon pairings of any flavor, non-canon pairings of any flavor, naughty bits, no naughty bits... and finally decided to ignore entirely the canon basis of any relationships (and adopt MPAA ratings -- i.e., anything but straight porn -- no to 'X', yes to 'NC-17', which is a distinction not really made in fanfic). I cited movies for examples: if the original Terminator was a fanfic, it would never have done well if it had been labeled 'het' because of the sex scene -- and it's not about the Kyle/Sarah, anyway. Is The Full Monty slash for having a gay couple or not slash because it's a canon gay couple -- and who really cares because that's not what the story is focusing on?

I'm with you on suspecting that the Gen/Slash/Het label is no longer worthy of primacy... but I don't see them being replaced by anything else any time soon. With so much material out there, shortcuts need to be taken -- only reading authors you know, only reading characters you like, only reading {fill in the criteria} -- and, as irrelevant as the Gen/Slash/Het label may be, it's still accepted as a viable shorthand. People still choose their reading by those labels -- and, more importantly, by the stereotypes that are affiliated with each label -- and a chunk of the fandom (any fandom) would rather read shite in their type (slash, het, gen) than the best gems in another since they believe that there can be no good fanfic in OtherType.

And, well, a lot of people just read fanfic for the porn. Which is why the boundaries around RPS, incest, underaged sex, pick-the-taboo fall so easily before the stampeding masses.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I cited movies for examples: if the original Terminator was a fanfic, it would never have done well if it had been labeled 'het' because of the sex scene -- and it's not about the Kyle/Sarah, anyway. Is The Full Monty slash for having a gay couple or not slash because it's a canon gay couple -- and who really cares because that's not what the story is focusing on?

Good call. And interesting thought, too--I forgot you ran that community and deal with this kind of issue pretty much all the time.

I'm with you on suspecting that the Gen/Slash/Het label is no longer worthy of primacy... but I don't see them being replaced by anything else any time soon. With so much material out there, shortcuts need to be taken -- only reading authors you know, only reading characters you like, only reading {fill in the criteria} -- and, as irrelevant as the Gen/Slash/Het label may be, it's still accepted as a viable shorthand.

Yeah, I don't see it so much replaced as--phased out? At this point, everyone seems to be either pairing based or non-pairing altogther rather than attracted to a story *just* because it's slash. I mean, I read Sherlock/Watson slash, but that was because it was Sherlock/Watson, with these two particular people, not because any slash in the fandom would do. So the slash label for a story, to me, is fairly meaningless, because the first thing I look for is either pairing codes or lack thereof to decide whether to re-read.

God, *could* there be other slash in the fandom?

Which is why the boundaries around RPS, incest, underaged sex, pick-the-taboo fall so easily before the stampeding masses.

I really do wonder about the next taboo to fall. I really, really do.

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I'd say 'everyone' is going by pairing instead of type yet -- there is definitely, absolutely an evolution in that direction. The Balkanization of Fandom for the 21st century is the proliferation of eighty billion pairing- and character-specific communities (and the accompanying rise in cross-posting hell). But I am still getting enough feedback that starts off with "I never read gen" or "I am usually only a slash reader..." that I don't think the transformation is complete just yet. Give it another year.

As for the next taboo: bestiality. And SGA is going to lead the way -- someone's going to turn John or Rodney into some other kind of animal and neglect to turn them back again before the andthentheyhadsex ensues.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

someone's going to turn John or Rodney into some other kind of animal and neglect to turn them back again before the andthentheyhadsex ensues.

*sinks in chair* ....I may have done that. But werewolves? Totally do not count.

Hmm, I mislabeled. I would say more that the majority of fic writers and readers seem to be moving toward a pairing or non-pairing based way of reading adn writing text rather than a differentiation between whether the fic involves a heterosexual relationship, a homosexual relationship, or no 'ship at all. So to speak. I could be wrong on that, but as there are Sheppard/McKay writers who also write John/Teyla and loathe say, John/Ronon, it feels like less than going after the slash or the het as opposed to relationshi or no relationship in the fic. If that makes it--somewhat clearer.

[trobadora]

I think that has always been around, but with LJ and the lack of segregation-by-topic it's becoming more and more visible and therefore more and more accepted.