quandaries you only get in fandom...

[ratcreature]

Like, does Draco/Dementor count as slash? gen? het? See, I'm still tagging LJ art I come across for the LJ art link list, and you can't see the Dementor's private parts in the picture in question (whatever those may be--not that I particularly want to see Dementor genitalia). I went with slash in the end, but once again these categories show their drawbacks.

On another labelling issue: What is it with SGA RPS being simply categorized as SGA on rec and fiction pages and such? A couple of times now I've looked at SGA recs and the RPS was mixed among the SGA FPS as if it was the same fandom. I commented before that for me as a strict FPS fan it's inconvenient and counterintuitive when communities just mix the two categories like that there's plenty of SW fiction on ewan_hayden, even though I realize that it is convenient for people interested in both the actors and their shows/movies to combine the too when creating a forum, but on a recs or fiction site that has separate fandom sections I find it just wrong somehow that SGA and SGA RPS are put in the same section and that then is just labelled SGA not even "SGA & SGA RPS" or something.

Am I the only one who's so anal about such labels to be bugged by this? Also, I'm wondering whether this is like a growing trend in fandom, that the RPS and FPS for a group of actors are coming to be considered as the same fandom?

Comments

[ratcreature]

I don't think there's actual confusion about what RPF is. Maybe that was not clear from my post, but on the sites I had in mind the individual stories or recs are still labelled with a pairing, so it's not like anyone could mistakenly land in a RPS story. What bugs me is things like that a page has separate sections for different fandoms, yet SGA RPS is not treated as a fandom separate from SGA.

I think this mixing may be convenient for people who like both actorslash and slash with the characters, and just use the same space, especially if there's really just a few "Joe Flanigan/David Hewlett" stories inmidst a lot of McShep, so that it's seen as unnecessary to have an extra section for it, and they may reason that those interested in the actors are more likely to check out SGA fiction and see the RPS than check an "other fandoms" section for odds and ends. However for me it complicates things, especially in fandoms where interest in the actors is more or less equal with interest in the fictional characters. For example when I was looking for SW Anakin/Obi-Wan slash, it never occurred to me to search for it at the ewan_hayden because from the name it clearly looked like an RPS community to me. Eventually I found a bunch of links to SW stories there and it turns out that the community is about half FPS, half RPS, and seemed one of the more popular and active places to post Anakin/Obi-Wan not just RPS.

For me that is inconvenient, I would have probably friended the comm to follow WIPs and such if it wasn't half-devoted to a fandom I'm not into. Just like I find it tedious that the Supernatural newsletter announces both SPN fic and RPS, depending on the editor of the day sometimes in separate newsletter sections sometimes just distinguished by the "Jensen/Jared" pairing label.

[partly-bouncy.livejournal.com]

I'm not talking about confusion as to the definition of RPF bust just that RPF is now more closely defined as fan fiction, where as in the past it was the bastard child to be stomped out, not defined as fan fiction or not seen as a legimate part of that community. Aspects of crossing over even different characters played by the same actors was considered some what taboo in places. As RPF becomes more accepted and part of the community for all of fan fiction, those other barriers between actor and show probably begin to break down and people just define them the same way...