(no subject)

[rusty_halo]

So, right now I have two kinds of pairing categories on my website: romantic and friendship. Romantic is signified with just the character names separated by a slash (example: "Spike/Fred"), friendship is signified with the same followed by the word "friendship" (example: "Spike/Fred friendship"). This is a rather awkward way of doing things, because it's both long and imprecise. I'd like to separate it into romantic pairings and non-romantic pairings, because "friendship" is not the correct word for non-romantic pairings. These pairings may not be friendly at all; they're just about the characters relating in some way. A conversation between Spike and Giles set post-"Lies My Parents Told Me," for example, is neither romantic nor friendly. But the story does focus on the relationship between those two; it's a non-romantic pairing.

So, how do I signify this? It needs to be short, because it's listed under the summary for each story. Some sites just use a comma instead of a slash, but that doesn't work for me because it's already listed in a row with a whole bunch of comma separated items ("Post-School Hard, Rated NC-17, Spike/Drusilla, Spike/Angel(us), 2187 words"). I could just make up some symbol to separate the names ("Spike~Giles"), but that might be hard to understand--I want it to be something intuitive. I could replace the word "friendship" with "non-romantic", but that sounds kind of off-putting, doesn't it?

Any ideas? Preferences?

I also keep meaning to address that whole friending policy issue that's going around. I'm much too lazy/busy with other things to have a friending policy. Sometimes I remember to look and see who has friended me, sometimes I don't. Occasionally if I'm in a good mood I'll friend back automatically, other times I won't. Sometimes I'll choose not to friend someone if, in a quick glance over their entries, they haven't talked about anything I'm interested in, or if their spelling and grammar leaves something to be desired. But really, it's very random and imprecise. I don't keep track of who comments on my journal or not, or of whose journals I comment on. It's really random. So please don't be offended by some imagined insult, because it's very, very unlikely that I intended anything rude. And if you're not sure, you're welcome to ask, rather than assuming I hate you or something.

Comments

[ww1614.livejournal.com]

If someone is pissed off because you haven't friended them, does that make them "offriended"?

[snoopygirll.livejournal.com]

Bwahaha! Good one!

[bubonicplague.livejournal.com]

I suppose you could say "Spike/Giles interaction". Might sound too clinical, though.

[wesleysgirl.livejournal.com]

I don't really know what to recommend -- on my recs page I just don't worry about it, as I have the stories categorized by pairing. I put a disclaimer saying that not all of the pairings are shippy, and left it at that. If people complain about it, they haven't done it to my face. :-P

Could you use "no ship" instead of friendship? Or would that signify that there was no FRIENDship as well? "Not shippy?"

Beats me.

Hope you can come up with something you like. :-)

[onetwomany.livejournal.com]

It might be easiest to just use a comma: Spike, Giles. Signifies both are main characters or whatever. That's all I can think of at the moment. Interesting problem!

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

See, that's what I'd normally do, but it would look weird the way I list story info. Say there's three pairings, Spike/Giles friendship, Spike/Xander friendship, Spike/Dawn friendship. It would end up looking like:

Post-School Hard, Rated NC-17, Spike, Giles, Spike, Xander, Spike, Dawn, 2187 words

Which just looks weird when they're all listed together.

Hmm ... still thinking on this.

[indri]

Post-School Hard, Rated NC-17, Spike, Giles, Spike, Xander, Spike, Dawn, 2187 words

Use commas and full stops?

E.g.
Post-School Hard. Rated NC-17. Spike, Giles. Spike, Xander. Spike, Dawn. 2187 words.

[shadowlass.livejournal.com]

I think a comma sounds like a good compromise. If it's several people, just listing Spike, Scoobies might solve that.

[rahirah]

I don't suppose you could just have something like "Characters: Spike, Giles, Xander, Dawn?" I know a lot of people use ship as a determining factor in whether or not to read a story, but if there's no ship per se, do you really need pairing information at all?

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

I can't. See, my whole site is driven by a database, so whatever pairings are listed under the story summary are also the pairings under which the story is listed on the pairing page. I like to have it so that when you click "pairings" and then "Spike/Giles friendship," you get every story on the site that has significant Spike/Giles non-sexual interaction. If I just listed "Spike/Scoobies" or "No Pairing," it wouldn't appear under the necessary categories. I'm very thorough and particular with the categorizing. Because, y'know, maybe someone is really interested in the relationships and parallels between Spike and Willow, or Spike and Faith, or Spike and Clem. It's nice that they can go to that page and see every story that features the relationship they're interested in, sexual or not.

[saussy.livejournal.com]

How about "Spike and Giles"? "Spike + Giles"?

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

That's a good idea. The "and" or maybe the ampersand suggested below. Probably not the + though, because it makes me think of that recent "Romeo + Juliet" movie.

[miggy.livejournal.com]

The Star Trek fandom has extremely specific guidelines for how it labels stories, which was very helpful when sorting through the daily listings of alt.startrek.creative. If I'm remembering correctly, non-romantic or sexual interaction used an ampersand between the names. It was fairly intuitive and allowed for very specific description of stories (K/S, K&Sc, U&S to make up a random example of what a story could look like). I think that'd work here.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the X-File fandom was quite specific as well. It was it's own category. The assumed base state was friendship. If it went beyond friendship it would then be classified:

There was R -- which denoted romance
there was UST -- which denoted "unresolved sexual tension"
there was RST -- which was "resolved sexual tension"
there was PWP -- Plot? What, plot? (aka Porn without Plot)


Therefore you could get M/S -- which was friendship. Or MSR -- Mulder/Scully romance

[elz.livejournal.com]

Maybe an ampersand instead of a slash? Spike & Giles vs. Spike/Giles?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jems_/]

The only thing I could come up with was &. So a story could be "Spike/Buffy, Spike & Dawn". Maybe not the best solution, but it's one possibility.

[roquelaure.livejournal.com]

NR = Non-romantic? You'd probably have to list that in your site info. Example: "Spike/Buffy, Spike/Xander NR"

[roquelaure.livejournal.com]

You'd probably have to list that in your site info.

I speak only in vague terms today, apparently. What I meant to say was, you'd have to list an explanation for the term 'NR' in your site information.

Gah.

[ahedonia.livejournal.com]

I think I'm going to put this post in my Memories section, under the heading "Exactly how I feel about/deal with the Friending situation".

:) You're not alone.

[flaming-muse.livejournal.com]

I definitely support the Spike and Dawn or Spike&Dawn vs. Spike/Buffy. I think that it's pretty clear and isn't too wordy.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

I wouldn't use an ampersand because you'd have to code each one! So put me in the 'Spike and Mr Gordo' camp. But you'd still have the problem of silly little twerps who don't read the site info and don't notice the difference between a slash and the word 'and', who would then come bleating that they were expecting hot fluffy toy action and just got Spike having tea with a stuffed pig. Maybe 'Spike and Mr Gordo, nonsexual' would be clearest.

[snoopygirll.livejournal.com]

I like it just the way it is. 'Friendship' leaps off the page at me and nothing at all for romantic - so romantic is automatically assumed. It's brilliant - I don't have to look to see if it's one or the other, which your new system would have me doing.

Not a big deal at all - change it and I obviously won't have a problem with it. I'm just saying that imo your set-up now is perfect. :)

[abbylee]

what about colour coding them?

ie Spike/Buffy, Spike/Dawn,

or Spike/Buffy, Spike & Dawn,

Bolding relationships and keeping friendships regular might also work, but wouldn't work well with the font size you currently use on your front page.

ie Spike/Buffy, Spike/Dawn

or Spike/Buffy, Spike & Dawn

Also, all your database pairings include Spike, don't they? So, really, you don't need to store the information that Spike is included. It would require changing how the database works, which you obviously may not want to do (and I probably shouldn't suggest in a public forum), but there's no reason you couldn't store it like this:

Story #818976
friendship -> Dawn
friendwhip -> Giles
relationship -> Buffy

on the front page it would then display as:
Spike/Buffy, Dawn, Giles
it would also show up under Spike/Buffy, and Spike/Giles friendship and Spike/Dawn friendship.

Does that make sense? Help?