(One of those intellislash-type ramble-queries)

[petronia]

keieru de retour online notes (well, notes on her real blog) that lotrips has de facto exploded. And I blinked and went, "Huh. She's right, it has," because people keep reccing stuff that's been written, like, 36 hours previous. Rampant productivity of the type that depresses me, as I'm doomed to plod along at my own stolid pace no matter how enthusiastic I may feel. ^^;

Not to say that UML and its ilk have eaten my brain, but I think I need a boundary condition test suite for RPS. I used to have one for slash in general, comprised of ten or so questions of the "Does [foo] count as slash?" format, which I'd go around asking people. (Values of foo: OC/OC, f/f, fic written for a canon m/m pairing, yaoi dj, original june, m/f where one/both participants are canonically gay, RP/RP, etc. The typical answer to some of these changed as time passed, which is of course the interesting part.) The purpose was to obtain a definition by statistical consensus, and I would've done it too, if it weren't so obviously work designated for someone who's made it her proper field of study. *g* Anyone in need of a research project?

Anyhow I was thinking about this because I found a half-hour movie on my David Bowie disc, in the continuing tale of my DVD!wank (what is it that Golitzinsky says? "Shake once, that's hygiene. Shake twice - now you're just playing with it"), which was basically one of the PMVs extended to include storyline. And while watching it I thought in my boredom and depravity, "Would it count as RPS if I slashed this?"

...Which question went unanswered in and of itself, because Bowie was one of the people who invented popmusik meta, and he's three steps ahead of you. But still. If I wrote fic about one of Gackt's PMV scenarios, in which he's obviously not "himself" - supacat's done this - am I writing AU RPS or am I writing plain old slash for a 5-minute-long film? Does it depend on what names I use? My intent when I sit down at the keyboard? ...And it's more complicated than the slash test suite, because more telling than the question of Whether These Are Real People is the question, does this bother (or at least affect) you the same way as RPS normally would. One can't really dispute that Keats/Shelley is RPS, but does it honestly squick anyone to the same extent as (say) Damon/Affleck could? What if I wrote fic for The Osbournes? Popstars? What if I wrote fic in which nothing happened but Brian Molko meeting Tori Amos at a party?

Urr. Talk to me, people. XD

Comments

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I'm very dubious about Lotrips as a whole, though - it doesn't seem to have the same consistent quality as boyband RPS. And you know you love the *nsync trivia. ^_^

It seems to me about equivalent, but I haven't read very much of either. Mostly I just read it if the story rec makes me curious. I'm not very good with names<->faces, so it's uphill for me.

I must say, though, award shows are more fun if you view all the people as ficcables.

Re Moon Child, I think we're back to the 'is gorillaz slash rps?' question.

Oh, so this has been done to death already. *g* What was the consensus? Or did the discussion go down in flames?

Although self-insert and Mary Sue RPF certainly runs up against all of my squicks. It feels like the writer is colluding in their own exploitation, or something - buying into the whole package of Pop Star As Perfect Boyfriend wholesale, writing out and publishing fantasies that would better be kept mental: in the light of day, they're grubby and embarrassing. And somehow worse than FPF self-insertism.

I think it's because society as a whole has a name for self-insert RPF that it doesn't for the rest of fanfiction: "embarrassing pimply-teen fantasies". Most of us learn early indeed that such scenarios are better left mental. At least RPS has a sense of controversial subversiveness going for it.

wasn't it you who said they had no idea what the members of 'nsync looked like, which messed with their ability to think about the slash (or, indeed, care)?

I said I didn't. I should hope the writers do, though it may not be a sure thing. ^^;

It's wierd, but I've come across FPF written by part-time RPS'ers where I was convinced that their characterisation of [fictional character] was dangerously like the fanon characterisation of [rps'ed celebrity]

Their own characterisation in particular, or fanon in general? Because if it were the former, it could just be due to the knack certain authors have for making all their characters of a "type" sound the same. (Also, torch mentioned the other week how she thought RPS had a "house style", and I think she's right. That could be bleeding over.)

As for Keats and Shelley, surely RPS'ing them [...] has far less impact on their posthumous personae than the latest book on Byron, which claims homosexuality, does on his?

Is what I think. It's like there's some sort of statute of limitations - once a fella's been dead long enough he may as well have been fictional. God knows I've read enough novels in which Oscar Wilde hobnobs with Sherlock Holmes.

[metempsychosis.livejournal.com]

I think my sense that boybandslash is in general better might be because I have a very definite, and large, group of preferred writers in SDBfic, and barely ever need to throw myself on the mercy of recs, which are so very subjective. In Lotrips, I'm rec-dependent, and therefore more likely to come across stuff which twitches me.

There was no consensus on Gorillaz slash - I think the conversation petered out (after I compared it, in the grand scheme of vanity projects, to Weizz Kreuz. Heh). I still hold that 2-D was quite blatantly Damon Albarn (he even looked like him, dammit), and the whole concept of slashing /him/ made me punctuate, merely because if you were going to, wouldn't you choose Graham Coxon? (My mates had these - actual! published! - novels in which Alex James was slashed willynilly, which I'm sad to say I never read.)

Somehow, though, "embarrassing pimply-teen fantasies" seem worse when they use real people rather than fictional characters. This is either a double standard of mine, or the fact that I can't remember the last self-insert FP fic I read (in fact, I'm not sure I've read any, except of the thinly-disguised kind or in the context of ficbitching, where everything is greyed out by abuse).

I said I didn't...

'They' is my generic ungendered singular pronoun, and in this case meant 'you'. :p

Their own characterisation in particular, or fanon in general?

The latter, oddly enough: and what's more, a characterisation that author doesn't tend to use in their own RPS. I think that's what confused me so much: it was this person's fic, and this particular fandom, but somehow also a different set of writers' RPS portrayal of [celebrity].

...Oscar Wilde hobnobbing with Holmes? Now that is just wrong.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I think my sense that boybandslash is in general better might be because I have a very definite, and large, group of preferred writers in SDBfic, and barely ever need to throw myself on the mercy of recs, which are so very subjective.

Know how that works. I'm cheerfully convinced at this point that HP produces uniformly superlative writing, and if you point me toward ffnet I'll stick my fingers in my ears and sing Lothlorien Rhapsody loudly. *g*

I still hold that 2-D was quite blatantly Damon Albarn (he even looked like him, dammit), and the whole concept of slashing /him/ made me punctuate, merely because if you were going to, wouldn't you choose Graham Coxon?

...True. Very true.

Somehow, though, "embarrassing pimply-teen fantasies" seem worse when they use real people rather than fictional characters.

This is... It *is*, and it's not a double standard, but I have to think before I pin it down. ^^; Possibly it's because wishing one could meet Julius Caesar or Madame Bovary falls entirely into the realm of abstract speculation, whereas wishing one could meet Tom Cruise is the more pathetic because strictly speaking it is possible. "Yeah, you and me both. Now go picket his next L.A. premiere and stop bothering me with your lack of a life."

Possibly it's because people are just people, famous or not, and fictional characters optimally are bigger than just people. They're archetypes, or metaphors, or representatives or placeholders. Telling me of your reaction to a Jungian archetype is less cringe-inducing than telling me of your reaction to a celeb you hallucinate is a Jungian archetype.

what's more, a characterisation that author doesn't tend to use in their own RPS. I think that's what confused me so much: it was this person's fic, and this particular fandom, but somehow also a different set of writers' RPS portrayal of [celebrity].

Perhaps on some level they thought, "Well, [set of traits] makes for an interesting character, albeit not in line with the way I think of [celebrity], so let's graft them onto someone else"?

...Oscar Wilde hobnobbing with Holmes? Now that is just wrong.

It was at one of Dr. Von Helsing's lectures. I kid not, sahib; I never kid.