wondering about RPS

[ratcreature]

I'm curious, for those who read actor RPS pairings or are familiar with that section of fandom, is the RPS pairing usually based on or derived from a fictional one? So that the two kinds seem somewhat interchangeable? I'm asking because recently I came across a community that for my fiction reading preferences is really inconvenient and counterintuitive, but I'm wondering whether it's common for RPS.

I was browsing for SW slash and came across a number of links to posts in ewan_hayden. I would have never browsed that community on my own, unlike the communities called sw_slash or starwars_slash etc., because from its name I'd assumed it to be purely RPS about the actors. And while I'm not squicked by RPS, I don't care about it at all. I mean, I can't even remember the full name of the actor playing Anakin Skywalker in AotC and RotS. However it turns out that the community is for both RPS about the actors as well as FPS about their characters, and now I'm wondering whether that is common, and whether readers who like RPS usually equally like the fictional pairing, so that for them it makes sense to make no difference.

For me OTOH it is really inconvenient when Anakin/Obi-Wan slash is mixed in-between actor slash, because the characters for me are very much separate from the actors, and not just because in the case of SW there were several actors for the characters, as well as comics, novels and such. To me the fictional setting and character background is really important.

On some weird level I find myself vaguely annoyed that RPS and FPS is mixed like that, which I'm aware isn't quite rational, because obviously that kind of mixed community seems to work for a lot of people, like the 900+ watching ewan_hayden. And yet--

Perhaps it feels vaguely "wrong" to me (I don't mean "morally wrong" or anything, just like "wrong" as in mixing two things that don't belong together, like having a combined humor/torture archive for example doesn't make much sense), because in my "fandom socialization" RPS was very much separate and (at least initially) still controversial? I'm now wondering whether the "real" vs. "fictional" character boundaries in fandom are even still perceived as such by a majority.

Comments

[bethbethbeth.livejournal.com]

Well, as far as the "mixing" goes, I suppose if you're going to write RPS, it makes sense to write about actors/singers who've worked together, so you have some plot to hang your stories on. And for performers who've worked together a long time (the guys in *nsync or Matt Damon and Ben Affleck), it's probably even easier...and more logical than, say, Peter O'Toole and Bruce Springsteen. *g*

Regarding the "boundaries" issue, though...I have too many friends writing RPS to get all up in arms about it anymore, but apart from a joke story (like the one I wrote a couple days ago as a birthday fic for one of my friends), I can't imagine being interested in writing RPS and posting it in public even now.

[bethbethbeth.livejournal.com]

Oh wait...that RPS community allows Star Wars fic too? Hunh. Weird. *g*

[ratcreature]

Yeah, that was my thought. I'm really not bothered that people read/write/post RPS. It's just that for me SW and SW actor slash or LOTR and LOTRips etc. are very much separate fandoms, so for me it's just a hassle that now in that kind of community there's actor slash mixed in-between the Jedi stuff, and my first impulse was to assume that the situation would be similar for people who are into the actor slash, that they don't care that much about all those Jedi trappings and continuity problems, since they probably prefer worry instead about movie production details and such. But that doesn't seem to be the case. I mean looking in the memories of that community there's almost as much Obi-Wan/Anakin SW slash posted to it as RPS. And I just don't quite get this mixing.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

with you on that...while i'm obviously not against RPF, i do still have mild weirdness feelings when seeing the actor/character slide. not sure whether that's ingrained from years of taboo thinking or whether there seems to be less of a performance aspect there. I.e., when i read JT, i *know* it's JT as performer whereas reading Ewan as stripped of his SW character seems to get a little too close to the actual person??? which is why it's differnt yet when we see actorsdo reality shows like that motorcycle thingy or ben affleck very clearly performing his life and his friendship publically...not sure if it's canon concerns or reality sqwuicks, but i want to see the RL/PR performance rather than the slide from fiction into real life....

and hey ratcreature! how *are* you??? and will you be around more??? (b/c then i need to move you from my people who rarely post and whose posts i do not want to miss filter into my regular default one :-)

[ratcreature]

You know, I think what I find weirdest is RPS/FPS crossovers with both the actor and the character, like stories that are Ewan/Obi-Wan or Hayden/Anakin. I haven't brought myself to try to read one of those, because I really don't read RPS (well I've read, like, two popslash stories, that were mentioned in discussions, so it's not absolute, but still), but I find the idea, not to mention the logistics of such crossovers hard to get.

About the frequency of my posts and such-- I have been around on LJ and participating more or less regularly in discussions and giving feedback for fic again the last couple of weeks, though I'm not posting really frequently to my own LJ, but I've given up on making promises as to my online presence. It just doesn't work, I mean, I never intend not to post for months at a time, it just sort happens.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

did you read flambeau's post on actor attributes affecting characterizations a while back? i think for me it's a little bit like that. somehow the fact that there *is* a fictional level makes the real one more "real"...and yes the weird real/fiction xovers are definitely bizarre, though my theoretical pomo side loves the idea (while my leftover RPS is ecil side cringes :-)


hey, no pressure :-) justneed to remember to check my rare poster list a bit more frequently :-)

i missed you!!

how is your health?

[ratcreature]

Yeah, the FPS/RPS thing sounds like it'd fit with pomo theories. That may explain why I'm less than thrilled... *g*

WRT my health, my right eye was quite the nuisance, since while the OP itself was okay, it took a long time to heal, and it didn't heal quite as hoped, i.e. my doctor was telling me something about the scar tissue putting strain on the retina and stuff like that, and it had to be monitored really closely. (Not to mention that now my right eye lid is slightly lower than the left, thanks to them mucking around with the eye. *grumble*) After the last exam a few weeks ago though he told me that now the retina seemed to have stabilized at least, so now the exam intervals are like four months apart instead of really often, and I hope it stays okay. I mean, it's not like it was a debilitating illness or anything in the first place, or I'm threatened by imminent blindness... still, it all sort of sucks a lot.

[navia.livejournal.com]

I get your confusion over ewan_hayden, and I think it's justified. Maybe I can clarify some things about it, at least the way I see it. (I apologize in advance for any incoherence due to sleep deprivation.)

However it turns out that the community is for both RPS about the actors as well as FPS about their characters, and now I'm wondering whether that is common, and whether readers who like RPS usually equally like the fictional pairing, so that for them it makes sense to make no difference.

No, I don't think it's common for an FPS pairing and its corresponding RPS pairing to have such a huge crossover audience. I know I usually have zero interest in the actor RPS for any movie or TV show; I'm pretty sure E/H is a first for me.

Basically, there is a large group of Obi-Wan/Anakin fans who, through exposure to mass amounts of SW press, have discovered they rather like Ewan, Hayden, and/or Ewan and Hayden's friendship. I think it can happen with any movie, but when you have actors who have developed a close friendship due to working together for a long period of time, fans pick them up as a viable RPS pairing (see: the LOTRPS phenomenon).

is the RPS pairing usually based on or derived from a fictional one? So that the two kinds seem somewhat interchangeable?

The pairings are not equal or interchangeable, and I don't think most people (with a grasp on reality) consider them to be. Really, they could not be more different -- they don't even look alike.

For me, Ewan/Hayden is just a lighthearted pairing that I enjoy b/c it contains two likeable actors who like to kiss each other in public. I read maybe half of the E/H posted, and I enjoy it, but I could give it up at any time. Obi-Wan/Anakin is the pairing I'm really interested in, the one I look forward to reading. I'm sure there are people on the list who feel the opposite is true for them.

Thankfully, I haven't seen any LOTRPS-like Believer insanity yet, though I'm sure it's lurking in the fandom somewhere. For good measure, I ignore any stories that try to awkwardly combine the two pairings, because no.

in my "fandom socialization" RPS was very much separate and (at least initially) still controversial? I'm now wondering whether the "real" vs. "fictional" character boundaries in fandom are even still perceived as such by a majority.

I think RPS is mostly still separate (e_h being the exception not the rule), but I don't think it's very controversial anymore. Anyone who wasn't taken down by popslash was taken down by LOTRPS, it seems. I do think, however, that real vs. fictional character boundaries are still in full effect. I don't personally know how one could successfully merge the two, nor am I interested in ever finding out.

(I don't mean "morally wrong" or anything, just like "wrong" as in mixing two things that don't belong together, like having a combined humor/torture archive for example doesn't make much sense)

The community is convenient to its members b/c information about both pairings often intersects in the media (e.g., a behind the scenes documentary on RotS will have O/A insights as well as E/H content), and e_h can act as a one-stop shop. It truly is as simple as being for people who happen to enjoy both pairings, separately but in one place, no weirdness implied.

I do understand why it would be annoying for anyone who is uninterested in one of the pairings, especially since it seems most of the O/A fanfic and all of the E/H fanfic produced is posted there, sometimes exclusively. The only suggestion I have is to check the memories (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=ewan_hayden), which are separated conveniently by pairing. Otherwise, starwars_slash is your best bet.

[ratcreature]

Thanks for this explanation, it *does* make it clearer why such a community is convenient for some fans. Personally while I like Star Wars, it's always been something of a "secondary" fandom for me, and I've never paid attention to any kind of production details or media coverage. Actually even in my main fandoms I'm rarely interested in the "behind the curtain" aspects, so with very few exceptions I completely ignore interviews, documentaries, and articles about/with actors, directors, writers, artists, designers or anyone else involved in the production process.

What I meant with the FPS and RPS pairings being "interchangeable" wasn't really that I thought some fans are confused about reality in a creepy way, or anything like that, but I wondered whether for some the main focus might be something like "the two guys look pretty together regardless of the setting", so that they use the SW/Jedi setting as a background without being a SW fan as such, but rather use SW as "prop", and perhaps wouldn't be into SW without those two actors. So that if maybe sometime in the future both work together again in movie XY, they'd write movie XY FPS, instead of SW FPS. So the fictional universe as itself wouldn't really matter.

[navia.livejournal.com]

I'm rarely interested in the "behind the curtain" aspects, so with very few exceptions I completely ignore interviews, documentaries, and articles about/with actors, directors, writers, artists, designers or anyone else involved in the production process.

That's usually me too, but SW has hooked me. I get the secondary fandom thing, though.

I wondered whether for some the main focus might be something like "the two guys look pretty together regardless of the setting", so that they use the SW/Jedi setting as a background without being a SW fan as such, but rather use SW as "prop", and perhaps wouldn't be into SW without those two actors.

Oh! That's interesting; I hadn't considered that. I would say, with inevitable exceptions, that's not usually the case. I'm pretty sure those that are only E/H fans and not SW fans (I haven't seen them, but they must exist) just ignore SW altogether. A popular time period to write about is during their training before filming and during filming, b/c it's the most convenient, but I haven't seen a lot of SW as prop beyond that.

I doubt anyone is writing the FPS as a direct result of being into the RPS, if that's what you meant. If anything, I would say the opposite is true, that people become interested in the RPS through-- well, not through the FPS, but through SW fandom in general.

So that if maybe sometime in the future both work together again in movie XY, they'd write movie XY FPS, instead of SW FPS. So the fictional universe as itself wouldn't really matter.

Actor chemistry does influence character chemistry, so if the actors of an already popular RPS pairing worked together in a film, I wouldn't be surprised if a popular FPS pairing resulted from it. I don't think that necessarily means that the FPS pairing would be secondary or frivolous to the people writing it. The fictional universe always matters, unless you're writing badfic.

[sparklebutch.livejournal.com]

I think it depends. In some cases, characters have good chemistry *because* the actors have good chemistry that also translates in their "real lives" - cons and interviews and the like, since we don't really know their actual real lives. In other cases, the characters would have a doomed relationship on the count of one of them's dead, psychotic, or both, while the actors are nice and friendly and very much sane and alive.

I don't really get into RPS much, but I get why people want it - although it makes more sense to me when it comes to musicians and the such, rather than people who write a confused merged versio of actor/character.