May. 9th, 2011

edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
I am writing this post because of A History of Handcrafts (Because a Sweater Equals Love), also known as my unexpected remix.

My story is based on Spock's Sweater, a lovely drabble by MelayneSeahawk, which I am going to copy-paste here for analysis purposes. (If you like it, please follow the preceding link and tell her so!)

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ExpandSpock's Sweater, by MelayneSeahawk )

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Here is the information that accompanied the story:

1. That it was written in response to the following prompt: "Spock's Grey Lumpen ManSweater of Dubious Fit"

2. This header line: "Spock's Sweater | G | 100 words | complete"

That header line is also the only information provided for the story in MelayneSeahawk's master list of her Star Trek: AOS fanfiction.

So far, so good.

Now we hit the problem area -- namely, I read the story as gen. Because I read it as gen, I wrote a remix that included Spock/Uhura as a background romantic pairing, used Kirk/Gaila as a background sexual pairing, and only had Kirk and Spock interacting as friends. The thing is, MelayneSeahawk wrote the story as shipfic -- I know this because she commented that I had changed the pairing, which cannot happen unless there was a pairing to start with.

How did that miscommunication happen?

ExpandThere is nothing in the header information to tell me the story is not gen... )

...

In brief, this is why summaries and detailed header information are good and useful things: they will help give people the contextual information to read stories the way you intended them, instead of completely missing what you consider the main point.

Also, gen friendship is awesome and in no way inferior to shipfic, but that is a different argument for another day.

(This post has been edited for clarity since I first posted it, but the gist of the explanation remains the same.)

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edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
Elizabeth Culmer

July 2025

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