What you said about RPS failing for you at a basic level because the actors/singers seem so ordinary goes for me too.
For me, the life of an actor or singer, no matter how celebrated, pales into insignificance compared to the life of an Immortal, or someone who is on a starship exploring the galaxy, or that of a Canadian Mountie who just happens to have the ghost of his dead father hanging around, or that of a CI5 agent, or of the heroes who have to destroy the One Ring etc.
By comparison, someone in a BoyBand just doesn't cut it. However, from talking to other slashers who like RPS at least one said that she likes it because it allows her to explore ideas that she loathes in character slash. For example, a genderfuck story in character slash is not her thing, but if it happens to a member of NSync then this leads to te consideration of contemporary issues that she would like to explore in that setting. Which I though was interesting, but not sufficiently so to tempt to to read any RPS. I remain disinterested.
But I'd happily read a story about Byron/Shelley or Keats/Shelley. Part of it is that a good story of necessity should explore the mores of the time, and as I'm always interested in the historical perspective, that would be interesting to me in and of itself. I think that such stories are, strictly speaking, RPS but once people are dead they're fair game for any old thing you want to make up about them and I suspect that they wouldn't give rise to the same objections that some character fanfiction slashers have to RPS.
I also agree with your comments about the members of BoyBands projecting semi, or even entirely, fictional personas. I think it does make them rather more fair game regarding the publication of fictional stories about them than some poor bugger who is simply a working actor.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Ditto
Date: 13 August 2002 11:23 (UTC)For me, the life of an actor or singer, no matter how celebrated, pales into insignificance compared to the life of an Immortal, or someone who is on a starship exploring the galaxy, or that of a Canadian Mountie who just happens to have the ghost of his dead father hanging around, or that of a CI5 agent, or of the heroes who have to destroy the One Ring etc.
By comparison, someone in a BoyBand just doesn't cut it. However, from talking to other slashers who like RPS at least one said that she likes it because it allows her to explore ideas that she loathes in character slash. For example, a genderfuck story in character slash is not her thing, but if it happens to a member of NSync then this leads to te consideration of contemporary issues that she would like to explore in that setting. Which I though was interesting, but not sufficiently so to tempt to to read any RPS. I remain disinterested.
But I'd happily read a story about Byron/Shelley or Keats/Shelley. Part of it is that a good story of necessity should explore the mores of the time, and as I'm always interested in the historical perspective, that would be interesting to me in and of itself. I think that such stories are, strictly speaking, RPS but once people are dead they're fair game for any old thing you want to make up about them and I suspect that they wouldn't give rise to the same objections that some character fanfiction slashers have to RPS.
I also agree with your comments about the members of BoyBands projecting semi, or even entirely, fictional personas. I think it does make them rather more fair game regarding the publication of fictional stories about them than some poor bugger who is simply a working actor.