finally tripped on the carpet
a. sometimes i wish there were more moments in life like the last ten minutes of major league II, where rick vaughn comes out of the bullpen for the last out of the ninth, and he's wearing the leather jacket and the plastic frame skull glasses. i mean, don't we all?
b. oh, hey, this one's an oldie but a goodie: if you write something where a real person appears in a fictional setting, it is called real-person fiction. if you write something where a real person appears in a fictional setting, and there are sexy bits with other people (real or fake!) of the same sex, it's colloquially called real-person slash. the end. whether or not that's edgy or dirty or ethically dubious or wrong or naughty is, i suppose, still up for debate (the debate being: is there anyone close by who can hit this person over the head with a brick?), but whether or not stories that depict characters that do double-duty as real people are real-person fictions is not up for debate oh my god.
anyway, it seems to me that the real problem is that the increased acceptance of RPF = the increased likelihood that people write RPF about fandoms that don't have enough canon to support them. the two largest and most successful RPF fandoms in last five years were popslash and the lord of the rings movies, both of which had weird and unique circumstances that contributed to their popularity: boy bands were ridiculously, wildly famous celebrities, which meant that there was a market for, say, a 60 minute fox family television special that mostly consisted of lance and joey grocery shopping and getting fake tattoos. the lord of the rings actors were a cast of unknown and only slightly famous actors caught in a ridiculously, wildly successful franchise, who went along with being filmed for enough behind-the-scenes footage that there's probably more hours of DVD extras than there are hours of some short-lived fandom-loved television shows.
there's no difference when it comes to writing television show actor RPF, it's just that you don't have nearly the vast amount of canon resource as the RPF fandoms mentioned above. but if you end up writing an actor-character that's such an extrapolation of what little you know about the actor that you don't even think it counts as RPF anymore? you're still writing RPF, you're probably just writing RPF with unintentionally poor characterization.
c.
dear assigned author mine,
i requested (1) a book series that, to my knowledge, has never had fan fiction written about it ever, (2) a movie that has a teeny, tiny fandom, but none of it focuses on those particular characters and (3) a television show with a small to non-existent fic-based fandom. so really, anything you do is going to be great. i feel strongly about the requested pairings in (2) & (3) but would be fine with gen if that's not your thing. if you want more specific thoughts on (3) i've posted some mostly nonsensical reactions under my tv-watching tag.
xoxo,
throughadoor
d. i keep saying that i think i'm in a rut. the kind of rut that lends itself to making poor decisions just to create some variety, such that i now have one B- on my epidemiology midterm, two scraped knees and three months backlogged client case progress notes.
b. oh, hey, this one's an oldie but a goodie: if you write something where a real person appears in a fictional setting, it is called real-person fiction. if you write something where a real person appears in a fictional setting, and there are sexy bits with other people (real or fake!) of the same sex, it's colloquially called real-person slash. the end. whether or not that's edgy or dirty or ethically dubious or wrong or naughty is, i suppose, still up for debate (the debate being: is there anyone close by who can hit this person over the head with a brick?), but whether or not stories that depict characters that do double-duty as real people are real-person fictions is not up for debate oh my god.
anyway, it seems to me that the real problem is that the increased acceptance of RPF = the increased likelihood that people write RPF about fandoms that don't have enough canon to support them. the two largest and most successful RPF fandoms in last five years were popslash and the lord of the rings movies, both of which had weird and unique circumstances that contributed to their popularity: boy bands were ridiculously, wildly famous celebrities, which meant that there was a market for, say, a 60 minute fox family television special that mostly consisted of lance and joey grocery shopping and getting fake tattoos. the lord of the rings actors were a cast of unknown and only slightly famous actors caught in a ridiculously, wildly successful franchise, who went along with being filmed for enough behind-the-scenes footage that there's probably more hours of DVD extras than there are hours of some short-lived fandom-loved television shows.
there's no difference when it comes to writing television show actor RPF, it's just that you don't have nearly the vast amount of canon resource as the RPF fandoms mentioned above. but if you end up writing an actor-character that's such an extrapolation of what little you know about the actor that you don't even think it counts as RPF anymore? you're still writing RPF, you're probably just writing RPF with unintentionally poor characterization.
c.
dear assigned author mine,
i requested (1) a book series that, to my knowledge, has never had fan fiction written about it ever, (2) a movie that has a teeny, tiny fandom, but none of it focuses on those particular characters and (3) a television show with a small to non-existent fic-based fandom. so really, anything you do is going to be great. i feel strongly about the requested pairings in (2) & (3) but would be fine with gen if that's not your thing. if you want more specific thoughts on (3) i've posted some mostly nonsensical reactions under my tv-watching tag.
xoxo,
throughadoor
d. i keep saying that i think i'm in a rut. the kind of rut that lends itself to making poor decisions just to create some variety, such that i now have one B- on my epidemiology midterm, two scraped knees and three months backlogged client case progress notes.