I can safely say I have never ever read any Freebatch fics and I doubt it will ever happen. However, I have in the past read tons of RPS in another fandom and loved it. Which leads me to believe that it all depends on the actors in question and their slashability because I cannot say that I had some kind of moral epiphany that made me give up RPS (although I also think that I possibly grew out of it, to a certain extent).
In my previous fandom, my RPS OTP were the actors who portrayed my FPS OTP and many themes from the fictional world also happened to fit the real world characters. We all felt that the actors had an equally strong bond as the characters and shared a lot of character traits. The actors also talked a lot about each other in interviews in ways that made it hard not to slash them (I mean, if Martin ever said that holding Benedict in his arms was a sacred experience and then went on to wax lyicral about his eyes, I might change my mind about Freebatch...) And then there were the RL kisses (yes, plural!), well documented in pic and vid. *swoons* :)
My first reaction to discovering RPS way back when was a clear 'no, I'll never read that' but somehow it just felt so right when I did read some fics. (Of course, you always need to make a distinction in your head between the actors as real persons and the actors in the fics - they are not the same, but some people get too invested in the fictional side and that's when a tinhat is born...)
I don't see a similar connection or bond between Martin and Benedict and maybe that is why I never felt the urge to read Freebatch. All I see is two people who get along very well but I'm not even sure they are good friends privately.
What made the RPS-reading a lot more trouble-free back then was that both actors from my OTP said publicly that they are fine with being slashed. So the situation is very different from what we have in the Sherlock fandom with Amanda's quite hostile and awful comments (especially considering she was making Johnlock innuendo-filled tweets in the early days!) - and Benedict seems very uncomfortable with the whole idea, too, although I strongly suspect he doesn't really understand slash (possibly that is true for Amanda as well).
One thing that I find important about RPS fandoms is that they adhere to the old saying of "what happens in the fandom stays in the fandom". That makes things easier for everyone involved.
So, to cut a long story short - if there isn't a clearly visible bond between the actors, why slash them? I mean, I'm into Johnlock because I can see they have something - it may only be platonic love or just a very strong friendship but there is something there. And if that's not existent between the actors, there is little to build a pairing on.
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2014-06-30 07:17 pm (UTC)I can safely say I have never ever read any Freebatch fics and I doubt it will ever happen. However, I have in the past read tons of RPS in another fandom and loved it. Which leads me to believe that it all depends on the actors in question and their slashability because I cannot say that I had some kind of moral epiphany that made me give up RPS (although I also think that I possibly grew out of it, to a certain extent).
In my previous fandom, my RPS OTP were the actors who portrayed my FPS OTP and many themes from the fictional world also happened to fit the real world characters. We all felt that the actors had an equally strong bond as the characters and shared a lot of character traits. The actors also talked a lot about each other in interviews in ways that made it hard not to slash them (I mean, if Martin ever said that holding Benedict in his arms was a sacred experience and then went on to wax lyicral about his eyes, I might change my mind about Freebatch...) And then there were the RL kisses (yes, plural!), well documented in pic and vid. *swoons* :)
My first reaction to discovering RPS way back when was a clear 'no, I'll never read that' but somehow it just felt so right when I did read some fics. (Of course, you always need to make a distinction in your head between the actors as real persons and the actors in the fics - they are not the same, but some people get too invested in the fictional side and that's when a tinhat is born...)
I don't see a similar connection or bond between Martin and Benedict and maybe that is why I never felt the urge to read Freebatch. All I see is two people who get along very well but I'm not even sure they are good friends privately.
What made the RPS-reading a lot more trouble-free back then was that both actors from my OTP said publicly that they are fine with being slashed. So the situation is very different from what we have in the Sherlock fandom with Amanda's quite hostile and awful comments (especially considering she was making Johnlock innuendo-filled tweets in the early days!) - and Benedict seems very uncomfortable with the whole idea, too, although I strongly suspect he doesn't really understand slash (possibly that is true for Amanda as well).
One thing that I find important about RPS fandoms is that they adhere to the old saying of "what happens in the fandom stays in the fandom". That makes things easier for everyone involved.
So, to cut a long story short - if there isn't a clearly visible bond between the actors, why slash them? I mean, I'm into Johnlock because I can see they have something - it may only be platonic love or just a very strong friendship but there is something there. And if that's not existent between the actors, there is little to build a pairing on.
Hope any of this makes sense to you!