Gen vs. Ship: My opinion

Okay, so because I'm a cultural anthropology geek, and because my main culture these days is that of the media-fandom reader/watcher/lurker, I've got metafandom on my friends list. Every so often, big debates get noticed on the community, they post links to them, and occasionally, I check it out on my own (or my friends' list explodes about the huge drama). Recently, they linked to a post about gen vs. ship, and what makes something gen and what makes it a ship story/vid/art, etc. My friends list hasn't exploded, per se (not like during the "warnings" debate--any one of like, six, that I've seen since listing metafandom, or the BNF thing), but there's still been enough discussion of it that I feel like making my own response.
( My Response )

Now that my gen warnings thing is finished, I do have one thing I'd like to see more of: people using the LJ tags for their fan works! Because if I read one of your stories and I loved it, I want to be able to easily devour the rest of your entire body of work and leave you adoring comments about temples and love children and sending you cookies if only you'll write more. And if you use the tags, I can do so. (If you don't use the tags, I'm forced to resort to stalking you, and nobody really wants that.)