Whither the Squick

[yourlibrarian]

This is clearly the week to be discussing RP fic. Just as I was finishing the very enjoyable RPS AU Restraint by darkemeralds, a question was posted on writingthewall about RPF and original fiction, what distinguishes the two and "Should more RPF 'cross the line' and be turned into publishable original fiction?" And of course this was also the

Comments

[withdiamonds]

This is a very interesting post. I apologize in advance, I have very...blunt opinions on RPF, no doubt born of years and years and YEARS of arguing about/calling it rape discussing it.

Right up front I have to say I have very little patience left for people who are squicked by it. That's just me.

I've been in the SPN fandom since late 2007, and I came from almost a decade in poplash. I still write or read the occasional popslash story. And I've been thinking a lot about the differences in popslash, which is of course by definition RPF, and J2/CW RPF.

First off, since I spent my time in the pop world on the NSYNC side of things, I have to say that I've never seen anyone's lives so well documented, for years on end, as those boys' lives were. Everyday, we knew what they were doing and where they were every single day. Not every minute of every day, though, and that's where the stories came from, those undocumented moments. We examined real events, we examined them as real people, and the canon was unlimited and amazing.

Of course there were many "bubble" stories written, in which it was as if they were the only people in the world. On the bus, in the hotel, at the venue. Someone got sick, it never occurred to anyone to notify their parents, it was just the five guys. No matter that in reality their buses were full of friends and families and pets, to us, in our stories, they were in their own bubble.

Not all the stories were/are like that, of course, but a lot were. Any fandom has their bubble stories. I started in X-Files, where I'd guess 75% of the stories took place in Mulder's apartment. :)

There weren't a lot of AUs written in popslash. Some, certainly, but nothing compared to J2 AUs. What with people training to be cosmonauts and coming out on the cover of People magazine and commiting wardrobe malfunctions, canon gave us plenty of material.

With Jared and Jensen, you have two nice guys with almost identical background who go to work at the same place everyday, come into contact with the same people everyday, and who both got married at pretty much the same time. They obviously get along wonderfully and are total BFFs. And that's about it.

So stories get written where Kripke is on set every five minutes, and it doesn't matter. A lot of J2 non-AUs are bubble stories. And all those other folks like Chad and Tom and Mike and Sera get pulled in because there needs to be more than two characters.

I am amazed by the amount of J2 AUs in existence. I read them, I've written a couple, and I understand it's an alternative to Wincest. But let's be honest, they're mostly original fic using characters we're familiar with. When I find a non-AU that's more than a PWP, I'm ecstatic. I think Jensen and Jared are adorable, as are Sam and Dean, I'm just not sure they're as interesting.

Here's where we disagree, though, and it's part of my impatience at the whole RPS hand-wringing thing. I think if the protagonist is Jared Padalecki, whether he's an actor, a pilot, a circus performer or an accountant, if he has a sister, her name is Megan. To me, if a writer names her Katie, or Monica, that's a cop-out. Either write RPF or don't, but if (the general) you do, own it. You can't have it both ways, and if it bothers (the general) you to use Megan's name, don't write RPF.

And I think I have a lot of other thoughts on the difference between popslash and J2 RPF and all those AUs, but they're not very organized and they don't even touch on other RPF fandoms, mostly because I have no knowledge and experience with anything other than these two.

Good post.

[yourlibrarian]

I know where you're coming from, in part, since while Trek was my first fandom, my next two were music fandoms as well. The documentation issue was very different though, both because of the era and the available technology. Plus, I think with musicians, self-promotion has become an integral part of the business in a way it isn't with actors, because who pays actors is not who watches actors. With musicians, the wallet and the audience are the same. So there's a lot more incentive to do consistent documentation with musicians. And, of course, with small name acts fans may actually be doing that work for the artists these days.

I found your "bubble stories" discussion interesting because I see this happening a lot in SPN fic and it always annoys me. There's a difference, I think, when the fandom acknowledges the difference between canon and their stories and when it pretends that no canon even exists. That, to me, is the huge difference between media fandoms with RP components and RP fandoms and I've always found it disingenuous.

When I find a non-AU that's more than a PWP, I'm ecstatic. I think Jensen and Jared are adorable, as are Sam and Dean, I'm just not sure they're as interesting.

Their stories, one would hope, are less dramatic. However, I feel the same way which is why I rarely read set fic these days. When I first began reading RPS in SPN, there were quite a few stories, some quite long, that were non-AUs, or which were, at least, alternate timeline stories. My impression is that they've become rarer and rarer though. At the least, I'm not seeing them recced. I don't know if this is because canon has gone somewhere that people don't want to work with, or because people feel that not enough has changed and that most of what could be written already has been. I've noticed that, in general, the longer a fandom goes on the crackier the fanfic starts to get, probably in hopes of breaking new ground.

Regarding things like the family names, I understand that in many cases it may be a cop-out that instigates the change. However, you may want to read the post that follows this one regarding the whole issue of AUs. I do think that when it comes to them, there's no more reason to be faithful to the family life than there is to the professional one, particularly since, in this particular case study, the actual influence is ahrd to know.