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

[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.