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

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

No, you're not the only one. I don't have an issue of it appearing in the same spaces, but I want it labelled, definitely. I'm surprised how little I like actor RPS. Somehow I'm always thinking it's the character dynamic bleeding over, a thing you don't get in popslash where there is no character (or rather if there is one the source text *is* that character performed in RL). But more than that, I think, it's my marriage squick. I didn't like Joey slashed all that much, esp. after baby and marriage, and I don't want to really se JF slashed.

I'm not sure how the newsletter's handling it; I'll check. SPM newletter which has a shitload more RPS (I think it must be the RPS squick being set off by the incest squick :-) separates the two clearly.

[trobadora]

Here via metafandom.

Also nice quandary: How do you categorise masturbation fic? *g*

The mixing of FPS and RPS is strange, I agree - I like clear labels, and these two most certainly are not the same. Do you mind if I ask where you've seen that? Because if I saw it I absolutely didn't notice, and I't rather expect I would.

[partly-bouncy.livejournal.com]

I always thought they were two seperate fandoms. They are treated that way in Lord of the Rings, Blake's and Star Trek. I think Highlander had terms like Twincest for stories that crossed between an actor's two shows...

Worst comes to worse, just write an article for Wikipedia clearly delineating one from another like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Real_Person_Fic and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Slash_fiction as a lot of fandom seems to hold those up as great sources.

Getting more on track, I'd be curious to know if the reasons that RPF and media fandoms are getting confused label wise is due to the growth and acceptance of RPF as a legitimate part of the greater fan fiction community. As people accept it and include it in their internalized definitions of fan fiction, they are more likely to overlap. They might not see a need to maintain what might feel like artificial boundaries that older, not with it fen are demanding?

[lydiabell.livejournal.com]

Like, does Draco/Dementor counts as slash? gen? het?

I've been wondering that about John/Atlantis.

I haven't noticed that SGA RPS is being categorized solely as SGA anywhere that I frequent, but I will join you in a "yikes".