And in other news
Jan. 2nd, 2003 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaI keep trying to write a long analytical entry on RPS, and giving up for lack of caring. XD
No, really... I've been poking at the idea for a long time, trying to figure out the whys and wherefores of the thing - because it's not at all as simple as one might think. (Have you ever wondered why no one thinks to slash Neil Gaiman, despite the fact that a surprising number of people write fic for Good Omens, and an even larger number of people - some of whom I know personally - not-so-secretly think the man is adorable? No, you haven't wondered. I know. I do all the reckless wondering around here.) I've gotten to the point where I'm groping at the edge of a theory, but my own reaction to the stuff is counterintuitive. And it may be worthwhile (for me, not necessarily for you) to ramble on a bit about that.
1) I am not good with the suspension of disbelief. This is bad.
It's not just that I'm a canon weenie. I am, but I try for my own good to keep those impulses in check. If you watch a series or read a book and develop a bold new interpretation of some character, or go all out with the angsty high-school vampire slut AUs... well, I take that at face value. But with reality. RPS isn't writing a series one's watched, as it were; it's more like writing fic based on spotty online summaries done from memory by people who're pushing their own interpretations of the characters. Which doesn't mean the story can't stand up in objective terms, but one feels those extra filters of Hype, Rumour, Legend, Journalism and Public Relations. They make RPS more interesting on an intellectual level, actually, but they're detrimental to fiction-as-fiction.
2) I have trouble caring. This is sometimes bad and sometimes good.
Boyband onchi. I have mentioned this, right? ^^; The trouble is probably that I don't find all that many celebrities attractive. The celebs I do find attractive usually fall into one of two categories: a) embarrassingly inappropriate, or b) can't think why the rest of the world isn't crushing too, but if they are they're certainly going about it quietly. (There are a good number of celebrities I'm intrigued by but *not* attracted to. Gackt, astonishingly, is one of these last. I think of him as a sort of living, breathing, walking quattrocento Old Master. With a sense of humour, I grant you, but.) OTOH if I care at all - i.e. know anything much about the celeb in question - point #1 usually raises its head with a vengeance. ("You don't know this! You weren't there!") So I cheerfully read stories about people I don't care for a whit, and hardly know what they look like, because most of this stuff works no matter whom you picture. Which is kind of the genre's fatal fault and saving grace both, really.
3) I love the meta. This is good.
Or maybe it's not the meta. But I can't think what else to call it - you know when people say they're writing a crossover when what they're doing is slashing N'SYNC and BSB? That makes me giggle. Or a fic rec that runs "a wonderfully angsty and tense story about the Mouseketeers". How can that not make my day? XD And then you have the fictional characters coming in, people slashing Orlando Bloom with Methos, like. If I could die happy of meta, I would've already.
4) When all else fails, sex.
This is the most counterintuitive part: the RPS stories that feel to me least transgressive are the 100k-ers that are essentially nothing but one big epic sex scene. Because it takes the thing away from the libellous realm of making up events and conversations and emotions that didn't happen, and into the realm of happy fantasies of having sex with one's celeb crush. Which is - TMI, but this entire post skirts TMI - not actually something I engage in, but I've always been given to understand that the majority of people do. It's not a concept that's shocking, to me or anyone else. And (TMI! TMI!) I don't fantasize in the first person. I just don't. Never. The closest I get to it is a sort of romance novel-esque perspective switch. So it makes perfect sense to me that these narratives would be in the third person about two other people, because that's just how it's done.
...So, well. No discussion of the ethics involved. Because I'm just that "..." about it - I don't care enough to have a proper stance on the matter, and that's the long and the short of it. ^^;
No, really... I've been poking at the idea for a long time, trying to figure out the whys and wherefores of the thing - because it's not at all as simple as one might think. (Have you ever wondered why no one thinks to slash Neil Gaiman, despite the fact that a surprising number of people write fic for Good Omens, and an even larger number of people - some of whom I know personally - not-so-secretly think the man is adorable? No, you haven't wondered. I know. I do all the reckless wondering around here.) I've gotten to the point where I'm groping at the edge of a theory, but my own reaction to the stuff is counterintuitive. And it may be worthwhile (for me, not necessarily for you) to ramble on a bit about that.
1) I am not good with the suspension of disbelief. This is bad.
It's not just that I'm a canon weenie. I am, but I try for my own good to keep those impulses in check. If you watch a series or read a book and develop a bold new interpretation of some character, or go all out with the angsty high-school vampire slut AUs... well, I take that at face value. But with reality. RPS isn't writing a series one's watched, as it were; it's more like writing fic based on spotty online summaries done from memory by people who're pushing their own interpretations of the characters. Which doesn't mean the story can't stand up in objective terms, but one feels those extra filters of Hype, Rumour, Legend, Journalism and Public Relations. They make RPS more interesting on an intellectual level, actually, but they're detrimental to fiction-as-fiction.
2) I have trouble caring. This is sometimes bad and sometimes good.
Boyband onchi. I have mentioned this, right? ^^; The trouble is probably that I don't find all that many celebrities attractive. The celebs I do find attractive usually fall into one of two categories: a) embarrassingly inappropriate, or b) can't think why the rest of the world isn't crushing too, but if they are they're certainly going about it quietly. (There are a good number of celebrities I'm intrigued by but *not* attracted to. Gackt, astonishingly, is one of these last. I think of him as a sort of living, breathing, walking quattrocento Old Master. With a sense of humour, I grant you, but.) OTOH if I care at all - i.e. know anything much about the celeb in question - point #1 usually raises its head with a vengeance. ("You don't know this! You weren't there!") So I cheerfully read stories about people I don't care for a whit, and hardly know what they look like, because most of this stuff works no matter whom you picture. Which is kind of the genre's fatal fault and saving grace both, really.
3) I love the meta. This is good.
Or maybe it's not the meta. But I can't think what else to call it - you know when people say they're writing a crossover when what they're doing is slashing N'SYNC and BSB? That makes me giggle. Or a fic rec that runs "a wonderfully angsty and tense story about the Mouseketeers". How can that not make my day? XD And then you have the fictional characters coming in, people slashing Orlando Bloom with Methos, like. If I could die happy of meta, I would've already.
4) When all else fails, sex.
This is the most counterintuitive part: the RPS stories that feel to me least transgressive are the 100k-ers that are essentially nothing but one big epic sex scene. Because it takes the thing away from the libellous realm of making up events and conversations and emotions that didn't happen, and into the realm of happy fantasies of having sex with one's celeb crush. Which is - TMI, but this entire post skirts TMI - not actually something I engage in, but I've always been given to understand that the majority of people do. It's not a concept that's shocking, to me or anyone else. And (TMI! TMI!) I don't fantasize in the first person. I just don't. Never. The closest I get to it is a sort of romance novel-esque perspective switch. So it makes perfect sense to me that these narratives would be in the third person about two other people, because that's just how it's done.
...So, well. No discussion of the ethics involved. Because I'm just that "..." about it - I don't care enough to have a proper stance on the matter, and that's the long and the short of it. ^^;
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no subject
Date: 2003-01-02 07:53 pm (UTC)...when I started reading RPS, I didn't actually know what the members of *nsync looked like; and definitely not which boybander was which. Ahh, those halcyon days.
Anyway. My personal theory about (western) RPS' attraction, to a writer, is that it's one of the few slash fandoms which are set in the present and in a non-fantastical world (as far as a non-famous person's conception of What It's Like To Be A Popstar Or Actor can be said to be non-fantastical). Most slash fandoms that I've come into contact with contain at least a few elements of scifi or fantasy - cue essay ramble on why this might be so - but, beyond AUs, RPS deals in your average NAmerican slasher's 'real' world. Which could go some way towards explaining why boyband RPS had a definite group of people who'd been in Sports Night slash beforehand - wasn't SN non-fantastical? If you want to write about fit blokes lying on a couch all day, playing FFVII, drinking beer and having pop-kultur conversations while angsting about whether their buddyfucking constitutes a relationship, pop- and actor-slash is one of the very few fandoms where you credibly can.
And that's the only theory I've managed to develop about RPS, and I offer it up to you. Unasked-for. ^_^
(And I'm not developed enough to have ethics about it, myself; only about the people who seem to think RPS is actuality, who I pronounce to be 'rude'.)
no subject
Date: 2003-01-03 08:33 am (UTC)I did think about that... Then I followed the train of thought into Popkultur As Narrative, and how celebrities are essentially elected "major characters" by popular consensus. In my conception anyone who's famous enough to be in the media is on some level a character created to fit within this ur-narrative (and whenever my family lands in the media I realise how completely jarring this is - like watching a film of oneself). The question is, how much of each individual's role is as Creator, and how much is Creation? My pet theory du jour is that the more people (subconsciously) perceive a celebrity as Creation, the more they'd be tempted to write about them - essentially hijacking the ur-creative process in order to inject their own brand of meaning, in the same way one would do to any series with which one was not completely satisfied. Writing about Creators levitates the affair to a level of meta that's too rarefied for any but the most jaded appetites (like the people who do slash-the-slashers XD).
Anyhow it's a theory. And I got it down to one paragraph too.
(And I'm not developed enough to have ethics about it, myself; only about the people who seem to think RPS is actuality, who I pronounce to be 'rude'.)
People who think RPS is real are missing the point. I think it's not so much delusional thinking as a lack of the imaginative faculty that allows one to picture alternate universes. Everything has got to be on the same level. Like the people who can't read or watch SF/Fantasy because "it's not real". Well, touché, it's not real, as opposed to all those other Hollywood films and novels...