Well, I was a Spike/Buffy shipper way back, and I tended to like more of the fic when it wasn't canon. Now you can't turn around without stepping over bad Spuffy.

Then I'll be naive. Incest!fic squicks me, and I won't read it happily. If I do read it, I go away with a bad taste in my mouth.

Be careful with the grand statements, RL. Plenty of people have reasons for their squicks, and calling them naive for them isn't recommended.

I'm sorry, Suela; I said "seems". I had meant to be clear that that was how it was *in my head*. And I, like everybody here, knows that I'm often wildly out of line with everybody else....

No. I'm saying it again. Maybe it's being young & stupid, or maybe I'm just a freak, but I don't have those exact barriers in those exact way.

The Lost Boys fic I read a while ago. That's an example. Gorgeously-written-- I mean gorgeous. And very much incestfic. And I was terribly disturbed and freaked out because it was hitting me in a very painful-squick place, but it was *beautiful* and hot and moving, and it was throwing me around mentally until I was nearly shaking.

It was, I thought, because of this, very successful art. In the way that Patricia Smith's poem "Skinhead" (I'll find a link if you like), which is (I thought) fantastically technically skillful and intensely lyrical, but also POV this intensely horrible man who says intensely horrible things... in very beautiful ways. It's push-me-pull-me sympathy (in the technical term) with the reader, and it left me scared and grinning the first time I read it. It's an amazing poem, and it's my favorite illustration of the technique of antihero.

Er, did you really say this, in a post in which you also said you read almost no fantasy or sci fi?

I don't *really* read fantasy or sci fi, I said; it just doesn't occur so much in my life. (Plaidder's WOF being a huge big ol' exception.) I read the fiction that passes by me at work, which, of course, is generally craptastic; and I read the fiction I read for fun, which tends to be the sort of thing I already know; and I read the fiction I read for school. But I wasn't saying it was *bad*. I was just acknowledging I don't know that much about it and its histories. And I'm sure there's brilliant, beautiful f/sf out there I'm just not seeing. That's a shame; but I don't have enough time to read and research it in my spare time-- I don't have enough time to read and research all the brilliant beautiful *lit* fiction out there!

ita resumes her confusion at the still undefined genre of "literary fiction"

ita resumes her confusion at the still undefined genre of "literary fiction"

Oh, easy. You tell by what the cover illustration looks like. Or where it's shelved in the bookstore.

That's you?

(From earlier, blinks)

Err, yes? Sorry?

(Runs and hides under rock.)

(No, really. It's a nice rock, all mossy and comfortable.)

I feel like I need to disclaim that I find incest fic EXTREMELY squicksome ordinarily. Why there's this vibe with Connor that drives those particular bunnies, I don't know. Hell, I'll own that the Wes/Connor has been stymied by my own squicks.

But--I didn't go into the Connor thing (as a viewer) looking for a weird sexual/competitive vibe from Angel and Son. It just hit me last season and made me want to scrub my brainpan. This being non-NAFDA, I won't go further than that, but suffice it to say, the bleach didn't work.

cereal:

-- but seriously? I said that about not knowing much at all about f/sf because I know that there's that genre divide recognized in the industry & when I look with that divide in my eyes, that sort of literary movement and those sort of literary styles are things I know less about. If that sentence parses at all. But the f/sf I have gotten to read, I thought about & judged exactly as I did, or do, lit. As I do fan fiction.

It's all prose; or ought to be. Unless it's fan poetry. In which case it's all writing.

[& shiny numberslut.]

How does the industry define it, RL? I still really don't have a clue.

t puts on the hat of Talking About Things Other People Know More About

The publishing machines behind the two halves, as it were, recognize themselves as very different. The f/sf, so I've heard from Plaidder's tales of trying to get herself published

[btw? If you haven't read www.plaidder.com/wof Women On Fire yet, even checked it out, please please please do so because it's really lovely. Ignore the ugly-ass webpage. It's good and it gets even much *better* from that first chapter.]

is much more conscious of itself as a big old corporate thing. The lit world is to some degree more coy.

Plus there's the whole small-press-movement thing; but that's not really quite applicable to the question. Because it really is marketing, and the aesthetics that grow out of (are forced out of) that.

Okay, so that's the definition I've heard before -- but it's not a definition. I still have no way of telling what's literary fiction, what's fiction, and what's science fiction.

I'm not sure I get the distinction between "literary fiction" and just plain "fiction." I've seen some bookstores that have a "literature" section and a "fiction" section, and the distinction seems to be that "literature" is stuff that's commonly assigned in high schools, but I don't really get how "literary fiction" is a genre, or how it's defined.

t x-post with ita