Yuletide reveal

[dbskyler]

Yuletide is over, and I've posted my fic to my journal. The fandom was Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, which was a fandom I did have to think about before deciding to offer, as RPF is one of my squicks. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I really was completely fine with writing Five(ish) Doctors fic, because the characters are so obviously not meant to be the real people. (I'm pretty sure that John Barrowman is not a closet heterosexual.) Ironically, AO3 disagrees with me, and my fic is officially tagged as Doctor Who RPF, and although I did send a ticket to support about it, the wrangler refuses to change it. I guess, coming from the RPF side, Five(ish) Doctors feels like a cracky RPF sub-genre? I wouldn't know since I'm not familiar with the RPF culture at all. Anyway, hopefully the people who actually like Five(ish) Doctors will still manage to find it, and either way it's a Yuletide fandom, so the readership is bound to be small.

Once I got assigned Five(ish) Doctors, I had a blast writing it. (Well, except for the times when I got stuck, but that goes for all my fic.) My recipient gave me a great prompt, and told me to have fun, and I really did. And it's something I would never have written if not for Yuletide, which for me is a large part of the exchange. Even if it was once again Whoniverse-related, like almost all of the rest of my fic.

This time around, my fic actually was recced by someone on my flist while it was still anonymous, which was an interesting experience. Basically, I discovered that it didn't make any difference. I guess I've always felt that when I get a rec from someone on my flist, it's not because I'm the author, but because they really like the fic, and the only thing being on my flist contributes is that they're more likely to have seen the fic. So my reaction to the rec was feeling happy, but not at all "I can be sure they're not pretending to like it just to be nice because they don't know I'm the author." In other words, I don't think anyone on my flist is ever just being nice? ; ) But I mean that in the best possible way.

Comments

[paranoidangel]

Ooh, that was my favourite Fiveish Doctors story!

It annoyed me too that it was in the Doctor Who RPF category because at first I thought there weren't any Fiveish Doctors stories in there at all. I only found them by accident because I'm not interested in Doctor Who RPF.

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

If I hadn't had a fic in that group, I never would've found them. I always skip over RPF.

[thisbluespirit]

Are you saying I'm not nice? ;-p And I must be terribly needy - I love being read when I'm anonymous - I know that nobody's prejudiced against me because of other awful fics, nor reading to be kind. It's just the words.

As for Five(Ish) Doctors, I know what you mean, but it is RPF really - it's fiction about real characters as written by Peter Davison. Crack or sensible doesn't really alter the essential category. A lot of RPF is wildly AU and there are some other things that play by the same sort of rules as Five(ish) Doctors. If I write serious historical fanfic, I'd label it as the relevant century RPF. If I ever write that cracky Elizabeth of York vampire slayer fic I have in mind, I'd still post it to 15th C Hist RPF (even though I don't think that Richard III actually wound up as Dracula).

You just need to blame Peter Davison for writing RPF and causing you to do the same. He's a terrible person!

You could try asking for it to be its own sub-fandom within DW RPF & then it would be more obvious to find - but on the other hand, there probably isn't a lot of Peter Davison fic to narrow it down from in the first place.

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

I admit to not really understanding RPF. To me, there's a huge difference between Five(ish) Doctors and actual RPF. It's like the show "Episodes" -- have you heard of that? It's a show about the television industry, and Matt LeBlanc plays the actor Matt LeBlanc on it. Except, the character of "actor Matt LeBlanc" is not really Matt LeBlanc. In fact, the real Matt LeBlanc won a Golden Globe for playing the character, and was nominated for an Emmy, so others out there must think he was acting and not just being himself on the show. (Besides the fact that he has lines to learn and everything.) Would his role in that be RPF, even though everyone else on the show is a completely fictional character, and he interacts with the fictional characters in entirely fictional ways?

If I don't understand RPF, then I really don't understand cracky RPF, or AU RPF. If you want to write about real celebrities, and imagine them doing certain things and having relationships with each other, fair enough, but if you start changing things around and treating them like fictional characters with AUs and crack, then surely you now have fictional characters? A vampire Richard III would be fictional, just like Shakespeare on "The Shakespeare Code" was fictional. (That wasn't RPF, was it?)

To me, you're either writing your fantasies about real people, or you're writing fictional characters. Five(ish) Doctors Reboot was about fictional characters, and so was my fic.

[thisbluespirit]

Well, that's the thing - RPF stands for Real Person Fiction not Real Person Facts. It's a difficult line to draw, especially when you didn't just write your own cracky versions of some actors, but Peter Davison's cracky versions of some actors, but it's still fundamentally RPF, at least in terms of how AO3 works.

Any historical fiction I wrote and posted there would be RPF, no matter how fantastic. Cracky RPF is just cracky RPF, not a different category, just the same as if someone wrote cracky or OOC DW fic. It might not be something you'd want to read, but it'd still just be DW fanfic. If I wrote fic for someone else's DW fanfic, it'd just come under DW (unless a lot of people all wrote fanfic for that fanfic, in which case it might eventually get made a sub-fandom under DW). Ditto all those coffee shop/zombie apocalypse/high school aus.

Where the line does blur is that if I was writing fic for someone else's historical novel (their RPF!), I would be in the books & lit category, though most of the characters in AO3 terms are just the RPF version shared between all such fictional fandoms (as indeed is Shakespeare in DW - he's just the RPF Shakespeare tag shared with DW, so yes, in AO3 terms, that is RPF), although sometimes there are disambiguated versions (subtagged to the RPF character) if the wrangler feels there's reason enough. So it isn't straight forward with Five(ish) Doctors, I agree, because you yourself are writing fic for a fictional thing - but the fictional thing itself was unquestionably RPF (again, at least in archive terms). (Episodes would be similarly blurry, but with only one 'real/not real' character, it probably falls into TV Shows. Whether or not they just use the normal RPF Matt tag, or a disambigged one, I don't know. But it could be either.)

So, I'm just saying, if you're feeling frustrated about that, but the wrangler's decided against it, you might get somewhere with a request for it to be its own sub-fandom under DW RPF (possibly with its own disambiguated characters), so at least you could see it on the fandoms list & not have to wade through any DW RPF that you don't want to see to get to it. Even if you'll always rather it wasn't in RPF at all!

[thisbluespirit]

Ack, I should never try to reply too early in the morning. I think that last reply splintered into two things, which are:

1. Your definition of RPF is much narrower than the AO3's, and while you#'re entitled to that, the AO3 is entitled to its wider definition as well. (My vampire Richard III would totally count! ;-p)

2. You're right about Five(ish) Doctors, because it occupies a grey area where there are valid arguments on both sides and precedents both ways about how the archive handles such things. FiD itself would be RPF had Peter Davison published it there instead of via the BBC, but when it exists itself as a fictional source, what that makes your fanfic for it is arguable (although it is some sort of RPF, really).

So, depending on how you feel about it, you can either shrug and move on; go back and insist that while Peter Davison may have written RPF, you wrote fic for his TV episode and it should be counted as such, just as if you wrote fic for a historical TV series or novel, though given the wrangler will have had to justify their stance in some depth to respond to your original complaint, it probably won't get you far. Or, you could ask if it can at least be made its own sub-fandom of DW RPF, and then it will show up as itself in the Yuletide collection and can be found more easily when searching or going through the whole fandoms. Again, there may be other reasons, but I don't see why a wrangler shouldn't agree to that much.

It's a tricky one, basically.

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

Your definition of RPF is much narrower than the AO3's

Hmm, yes. And it sounds like it's narrower than that of many people who write RPF. I don't read RPF, and I've been assuming that I don't care for it, but perhaps there actually is some RPF out there that I would enjoy. Certainly vampire Richard III sounds interesting. ; )

The official word back from AO3 support was: "At this time, [the wranglers are] still viewing it as RPF - officially sanctioned and written RPF, but RPF nonetheless. As such, they're choosing to not create a separate subtag at this time. Your input has been recorded, though, and if the issue comes up again in the future, it will be weighed in accordingly!"

I'm not quite sure what constitutes "the issue coming up again in the future" -- more people complaining?

[thisbluespirit]

I don't read RPF, and I've been assuming that I don't care for it, but perhaps there actually is some RPF out there that I would enjoy. Certainly vampire Richard III sounds interesting.

I used to be the same, but then I noticed historical RPF being a thing for yuletide, which I thought should really just be original fic, but since then I've come round to the idea that if "history" or specific subsets can be a fandom and treated in the same way as other things, as can other sorts of RPF. And then I've wound up wrangling some stuff. I have to say, I don't usually see things I want to read in top level RPF or British Actor RPF, but Historical RPF is a whole other thing. And some RPF is fanfic for things like panel shows and Time Team and Top Gear, and it's just fanfic again, except the fandom is technically RPF. And some of those can be huge fun too. I suppose it's like anything - a lot of people from the outside think the whole of fandom and fanfic is just loads of Shades of Grey stuff. And while there is, of course, a whole heap of slash and pr0n, we know there's plenty more going on.

And, LOL, I don't know if I'll ever write that fic, but I did start it, because, you see, there is a book series called "Tudor Vampires" and I was very disappointed to hear that it was about people who fought vampires in Tudor times and not the Tudors themselves being vampires, which would have been far more entertaining (well, possibly), and then somehow wound up with Richard being one instead & merging with taking Henry VII fulfilling the Matter of Britain literally. Mind, in my WIP notes I also have stuff about people breeding giant snails in France, so I don't know what I was on at the time!

And there was a fic in the NYR collection just now that was a fusion of 19th C Historical RPF and Have I Got News For RPF (a long-running satirical UK topical panel show), which was awesome. So, yes, it's the stuff like that that makes RPF worthwhile for me!

I'm not quite sure what constitutes "the issue coming up again in the future" -- more people complaining?

I'd think so - they do take every complaint seriously, and whatever you got back from support, behind the scenes, the wrangler will have had to explain why it is the way it is, and not the other way before support goes back to you. It's not always satisfactory, of course, but they do take things seriously & you weren't the only one who contacted support about that one.

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

Oh, and about the anonymous stuff -- yes, it was really interesting, because I discovered that it didn't make a difference, and I would have thought it would. Maybe if I curried a reputation, and was in a circle of friends who were all expected to like each other's work, I would care more about anonymous comments? Not to say that you do. It must just be a personal thing. But I don't know what you're talking about in terms of other awful fics. One of the reasons I guessed right about the Press Gang fic was because it was good!

[thisbluespirit]

I just have moments where I get a little paranoid about my fic. One worrying point in 2010 when my health & mental health was deteriorating, I did actually get paranoid about it - my fic is awful! Anybody commenting nicely is making fun of me! - so I suppose, even though I don't feel like that any more, a bit of anonymity for an exchange is both fun and reassuring - well, provided at least somebody likes the fic!

And your fic was awesome, and I don't rec things unless I like them, anonymous or otherwise, you're right! I'm not nice. ;-p

And, aww, thanks! ♥

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

Aw, I hope you're over the paranoid feeling, even if it is still nice to get the anonymous feedback.

And even thought I don't believe that you're nice ;p, it was fun to have you rec me without knowing it was me. :D

[thisbluespirit]

The better I get, the more rational I get again, don't worry, so yes! And at least I know now that it's me being weird if it does happen, and then just wait for it to pass, or read past nice comments or recs or something. ♥

[pitry.livejournal.com]

Oi, a rec is awesome! And I can only speak for myself, but all of my recs are honest. Being nice and making the day of someone on my flist is just icing on the cake!

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

It was indeed awesome! And I've always believed that your recs are honest. : )