(no subject)

[speaker_to_customers]

I've just amused myself by running what I've done of my watchersdiaries ficathon story through The Gender Genie (gacked from agilebrit this time around, although I had seen it before): the result was
Female Score: 5197
Male Score: 3824
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!

It's written from a female POV (Slayer!) so I suppose that's a good sign. Right?

I'm rather regretting having offered two stories for the ficathon. This one is going really well, but I'm not sure about the other. I've decided to make it a lot shorter than "The Cloak of Mist" is going to be, as otherwise I'm going to be tied up on this for far too long, and I'm not sure if anything will come of the project to co-write a story with ezagaaikwe. Turning my vision into something coherent that I can pass on to her is proving to be remarkably hard.

My posting date for the watchersdiaries is to be February 11th. I plan to be finished with them well before then and get back to the WIPs. However, I fall into the category "mice and men" so my plans gang oft agley. We'll just have to see how it goes. There will be a new chapter of "Life in Shadow" on February 19th whatever happens.

Well, not whatever happens. There are many things that could prevent it; asteroid impacts, nuclear wars, terminal computer failure, supervolcanic eruptions; but I won't let common or garden distractions stop me.

There was a point to this when I started but I can't remember what it was. Oh, yes. Thanks to megan_peta, evilawyer, and zanthinegirl for your valuable assistance. Your thoughts have been a big help to me.

Comments

[shadowscast.livejournal.com]

Oh, hee, the gender genie.

I played with it a bit a year or so ago, and found it consistently scored my academic writing as male and my creative writing as female. I have a feeling this tells us more about the Genie than about my writing.

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

Probably. I might have been a little worried if it had scored a female POV score as strongly masculine, I suppose, but I doubt if it would be terribly relevant to a fic about a Slayer in the Viking Age even if it was totally reliable for works with a contemporary setting.

[shadowscast.livejournal.com]

I don't think setting matters particularly. Did you look at the paper the Genie is based on?

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

Yes, including the 'men talk more about things and women talk more about relationships' bit. Setting does have a bearing on that, e.g.

"Olaf, burn the church. Sven, load the gold plate into the longship. Tostig, slaughter the monks. I shall ravish this attractive Saxon wench."

"Wait, oh Viking chieftain. First, let's talk about our relationship."

[shadowscast.livejournal.com]

But you'd get the same thing in a contemporary action-adventure sequence, right?

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

You could get a paraphrase of that conversation in a modern action-adventure comedy (something along the lines of "Romancing the Stone", for instance) and it wouldn't be total parody as it would in a historical setting.

However my main point is that genre will affect word usage more than gender.

[shadowscast.livejournal.com]

Genre, yes, for sure. Which gets back to my original observation about academic vs creative writing, I think.

Seriously, the Gender Genie just bugs me. And also amuses me, because everyone I know who's run their writing through it has managed to trick it. Which really makes me wonder about the legitimacy of the original research...though to be fair, they say the online version is a simplified algorithm.

[sanda56.livejournal.com]

Female Score: 560
Male Score: 782

The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

No I'm not! *sob* Perhaps I confused it by submitting slash! ;)

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

I think that would confuse it fairly thoroughly, yes.

[ezagaaikwe.livejournal.com]

Re: I'm not sure if anything will come of the project to co-write a story... Oh, well -- we'll always have Paris.

As long as there'll be more Life in Shadow, I'll be happy. I'm glad you're prolific. When I enjoy an author, I'm glad there's more to ferret out, sites here and there, and new stuff to look forward to.

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

I haven't totally written off the idea - but I'm beginning to think that by the time I have it down in coherent form there won't be enough time left for you to provide your necessary input. So unless I make a breakthrough very soon we'll have to give up on it. I'm just finding that "The Cloak of Mist" is soaking up all my brainpower at the moment.

[waywardchilde.livejournal.com]

Gender Genie huh? Lets try this out. (Submits new Spike/Fred story.) Female Score: 2355
Male Score: 2033

The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!

(Scowls) I knew I wrote like a nancy boy. I'm going to go watch an action movie and eat some beef jerky.


Yay! New chapter for Life in Shadow, more then a month away, but still. Can't wait for the new chapter, and the new stories.

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

The algorithm assumes that blokes aren't going to write love scenes and lasses aren't going to write about throats being ripped out. So, your lovely little Spred piece registers as female and the bitey fics of the Bloodshed Bitches (all girls) register as male.

[quinara]

Apparently, my Watcher POV is female. Still, you can't have everything.

I've got until Feb 16th, but I still haven't worked out what's going to happen in the main bulk of the story... *bites nails*

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

Actually it's logical that a Watcher POV fic would register as female, even if the Watcher is male, because the Watcher will be constantly referring to the female Slayer and feminine pronouns will be cropping up all the time. The algorithm seems to assume that men write about men and women write about women.

[quinara]

Well, that makes me feel better.

That sounds a bit odd though, because I always thought that women would be mostly giggling about men and men would be posturing about women (if we're going to put things in their simplest possible form).