I know the exact point of BBM was sex, but so much of the point of Captain Jack is sex with whoever, that I can see calling same sex stories with Owen or Tosh or Gwen (apart from their respective canonical same sex outings) or even maybe Ianto, slash, but not with him, because he's macking on someone, probably male, just about every episode.

I've never heard of the bob label. Huh. I suppose lemon, lime and orange are strictly a popslash thing?

I think the citrus stuff comes out of yaoi originally.

Also, only a small number of people latched onto Bob. Like, a dozen of us, maybe. But at the time, I think half that dozen posted here.

I do not know of the citrus.

So, what do we call same-sex canonical 'ship fic (or anything with Jack)? I mean, clearly not het. Not gen or bob, either. I would default to "slash", but mostly out of laziness, as I think relationship-to-canon is an important bit of what "slash" is.

I don't get why it has to be so labeled. It's all fic. The pairing, rating, and summary should be a pretty big hint about what you're getting.

Also, where on earth does "bob" come from? Does it stand for something, like an acronym?

I don't get why it has to be so labeled. It's all fic.

To be honest, I've thrown my mental hands up in the air about it, at least for tonight. As far as Delicious goes, since that's all user-defined I can label as I please. Anyone who wanders in off the internets and gets confuzzled, well, that's their problem. I'm primarily setting it up to make sense to me although I was hoping it might be legible to other people too.

I remember that this conversation came up (on lj, I think), and someone (I don't remember who) said, "Look, we need a word for when there's romantic relationships between characters, but it's not the point of the thing (unlike with slash/het in general). I don't care what we call it. We can call it Bob." And that's where it came from, you know, only with citations and crap.

Well, as you know, Bob...

I remember that this conversation came up (on lj, I think), and someone (I don't remember who) said, "Look, we need a word for when there's romantic relationships between characters, but it's not the point of the thing (unlike with slash/het in general). I don't care what we call it. We can call it Bob." And that's where it came from, you know, only with citations and crap.

Either Suela or Nutty's, I think. Recalling the conversation.

Gen, Slash, and Het all serve as genre categories. Yes, if you go granular, the pairing could tell you what you're getting (most of the time but not always), but you also need categories for archives, newsletters, recs lists, etc. And like all genres, you've got people who only read in their genre. You've got genre expectations, genre-specific tropes, cross-genre warfare...

The lines, as ever, are fuzzy around the edges, but the buckets serve a purpose, even if things slop over them.

I don't get why it has to be so labeled.

As a recovering member of Stargate fandom, to "slash" male or female characters was an abomination, and slashers were outcasts amongst the "mainstream" SG fandom and het/gen fic sites in the early days of SG fandom.

Until slashers jumped ship to form their own lists and write stories and discuss slash in peace, slash fic had to be clearly labeled as M/M or F/F slash with proper warnings and enough vertical spacing in the summary post to protect the more sensitive members from exposure to Teh Gay.

That fandom never distinguished canon vs. non-canon slash. They've also used terms like "noromo" (no romance) in addition to gen, but my favorite is "curtain fic".