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

[trobadora]

I once had to sort a masturbation story that didn't involve any fantasy partner at all. It's not gen, it's not het, it's not slash... and those were the categories available on the newsletter. I don't even recall what I did with it! But you're right; that's a rather rare case. *g*

I could see SGA RPS as a subcategory in SGA fanfic, but I'd still expect it to be separated - it's just not the same thing at all. But I guess it depends on the fandom; in SGA I've noticed that stories involving the actors' other roles, RPS, and "ordinary" SGA stories are in much closer proximity to each other than in any other fandom I've been in. But I wouldn't have thought people did away with the separation altogether! I'll have to watch out for this in the future.

[ratcreature]

It's my impression (I didn't do statistics or anything, but it feels like that to me) that there's this trend to consider actor RPS for a show or movie as something like a subsection or just another aspect of the same fandom. Still clearly labelled, like you'd label for other pairings or warnings, but in the same fandom space, like communities or newsletters. Like I said in other replies, in SGA actorslash seems rather small, but it happens also in fandoms with more of it, like in SW or SPN. And it just bothers me because for non-RPS fans like me it's essentially like what used to be fandom specific resources and spaces me now often are only sort of fandom specific in that there's the actor stuff lumped together with it, and that doesn't interest me at all. I mean, I see how it's practical for RPS fans of the actors who are into the shows, but for me, not so much, as I see it as two fandoms squished together and I'm only into one of it.