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]

See, from what you say it seems you have the theory that actorslash that's not widely popular gets just lumped together with the fictional stuff for convenience sake because interests are likely to overlap for those who like it, and for those who don't it's not much bother because the numbers are so small, and once it gets popular there'll be separate communities. And I don't think it necessarily works that way, because I suspect that LOTRips is special in that people interested in the RPS often aren't much into LOTR slash so the interest/disinterest overlap of RPS and non-RPS fans was symmetrical.

In most other cases I've seen it seems more that almost everybody into RPS for a show will also read for the fictional side, but vice versa it's not true. So you get RPS fans for whom it's convenient to treat it as one fandom (with one newsletter, mixed RPS/FPS communities etc and just a RPS warning label like you'd warn for any other thing), even if the RPS fanbase was large enough to sustain fully RPS-based communities, and non-RPS fans who'd prefer RPS-free spaces, but will in the end sort through the mixed communities to read the show-based stuff of the RPS fans.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

Hmm...I feel like I'm somewhere in the middle between you and the folks who do that. I.e., I don't read it (or rather, don't like it), but I have enough interest in the actors to read them in other roles or read news about them. But then, I think, that's always been a part of any fandom. I mean, it's old school fans who'd probably scream if you suggested RPS who run the actor fan sites, etc., right? Actors at cons have been the staple of sf/f long before RPS became even remotely acceptable...

I guess you'll have to treat the newsletters like you do anything...if there's a category you're not interested in, ignore... [The alternative would be two newsletters which seems less practical to me, even in a fandom like SPN where the RPS definitely holds its own but I doubt that there are SPN RPS fans who aren't SPN fans, so it's a subset...like icon fans or various pairing fans in other fandoms]

I *get* your general issue, but to me practicality wins out... (which doesn't mean that there isn't an issue or tht you shouldn't complsin that/if it bugs you if that makes sense)

...and yes, you're probably right that ewan/hayden or whatever the SPN boys are will stay closely connected...HP RPS did as well. lotrips *is* special! otoh, if it gets big enough to warrant own communities etc somefolks might separate it a bit more (if you only have one lonely fic you may put it in with the FPS, if it's 5 or 10, youmight make them a page of their own...)

totally OT, but i adore your RL icon!

[ratcreature]

Well, it's really more of a no-RL icon... ;)

I have to admit if I wouldn't see the names in fandom I probably wouldn't even recall the actors' names (even less than I do now that is), seeing how I usually fast-forward through the credits, so I'm probably on the extreme end of "not interested in the actors", e.g. I don't read/watch interviews with actors, I don't look for their other appearances etc.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

And I was actually wondering if your comic fannishness might be related to that. I.e., when I fall badly for a show, the actor interest kind of comes with it (for better or worse, b/c many a bad movie has been watched b/c od that :-). And it seems like that with a lot of other fans (even when they, like I clearly maintain the RL/fiction separation and really don't care about the actor qua person but do care about his/her roles etc.). Now I'm really curious how the percentages look like in actor interest...

..this calls for a poll!!! :D