more ficdom ramblings

[soobun]

i’ve had too many real life obligations lately so to decompress i want to yap about something that doesn’t matter. i saw someone on twitter the other day say something like (paraphased, i don’t remember exactly) “isn’t rps just entirely headcanons?” and it was right before i got into the shower, so naturally i spent the next 20 minutes thinking about it.

in terms of the shipping aspect, yeah, obviously if the people aren’t together irl then anything about that ‘relationship’ is your headcanon, but the nature of the characters’ interactions, their dynamic, and of course the individual characterizations are (generally) going to have some root in the ‘canon’ (real life, lol) and aren’t just going to be entirely made up. and when your rps turns into rpf, you have to make real decisions about How you’re going to go about it. this made me think about how /i/ approach rpf and also the various ways i see others (in &team fandom, in broader kpop fandom, and in other rps spaces) approaching it. my thesis is essentially that there are 3 different modes in which fans characterize (and thus write) their rpf (but that these modes also intersect and overlap.)

mode i. the idol is a vessel.

i’m not sure if i would say this mode is The most prominent in rps, but i think it’s what op who said ‘it’s all headcanons’ must subscribe to - that there is essentially no “truth” or “correct characterization” that writers should be trying to understand & evoke. so, the title: the idol thus becomes a vessel for the author to write in whichever way fits their preferences/the narrative/whatever else.

i think fic, a lot of times, begins in one of two ways. (1) a desire to explore (a) character(s), and so you put them in Situations to expand on this, or (2) a desire to see a certain situation, trope, etc. with your favorite character(s), so you place and alter them in a way that fits. both involve imagination and making shit up, so i promise this isn't a value judgment. i think most people who utilize this second entryway are subscribers to the ‘vessel’ mode, because if the character is essentially Up To You instead of already existing out there, fully formed, then it’s both easier and (maybe?) more fun to create them yourself. take their appearance, a handful of personality traits, and the rest can be morphed, because it’s all fake anyway, right? this is understandable, and, arguably, the healthiest way to view rpf.

i think this is inherently an AU mode - there’s really no reason to write canonverse if you’re viewing the idol as a vessel (unless you’re just writing porn with no other care LOL.) i’m mostly focusing on kpop rpf here but i think it’s true in general; i see the same thing when i read sports rpf or actor rpf or whatever else. in my experience, kpop rpf as a whole tends to be way more Of this first mode than other rpf types, which i think is why it leans more towards AUs, too. i just checked: in the BTS tag, under ‘additional tags’, the general AU tag is 5th most common (and the college AU tag is #7). in the NCT tag, college AU is the 3rd(!) most common tag (above anal sex, if you can believe it.) for &team, too, college AU is #3. then i checked: hockey rpf (no AU tags in the top 10), formula 1 rpf (general AU tag is #9), and both US and british actor rpf (no AU tags in the top 10 for both).

my point with these stats is that i think kpop rpf-heads and other rpf-heads (on average) tend to view the “point” of rpf slightly differently, i.e vessel vs exploration. but i also think “exploration,” despite being my general MO, is not an inherently wiser or nobler pursuit, because, at the end of the day, these are all public figures with public images. how does one know what they’re really like, well enough to write about it? is it even possible - is it something we should even be striving for?

this leads me to the next mode:

mode ii. the idol is who they say they are.

so, then, if the character is not a vessel for you to fill in, and you truly care about portraying them “accurately” (whatever this really means) - where do you start?

i think anyone into kpop would agree that image-making is a huge part of it, and that there’s a distance we have as fans that is not always there with other celebrities. but there’s also a huge range of 'honesty' between different idols - there are those who share their every waking thought on bubble (i use this as an example because it’s not really ‘required’, so the assumption is that stuff like this is more genuine than interview answers or whatever else, but obviously who knows) vs those who, really, seem more to me like singing and dancing robots.

so those who subscribe to this second mode are taking all of this at (generally) face value. the guy who's overly affectionate in dms, the mood maker, the fanservice king who keeps trying to kiss his bandmates - that’s really him! fansign repos are truthful, vlogs parallel real life, whatever is shown is whatever is true. these rps-ers are Compilers, and every moment acts as a data point for a character that is being observed & built up. sometimes i do feel like this, and i don't think it lacks merit entirely.

the issue with this, i think, is: what do you do when you come across contradictory information? it’s almost always going to happen. examples: cravity’s seongmin loves to tell fans that he was a total loser in high school despite the fact that he had a literal fanclub, nicholas often portrays himself as quite masc/confident/self-sufficient & then another member will give us a deeply omega-ful anecdote that skews this perception, and… don’t even get me started on the huge ball of contradictions that is byun euijoo. if you've read anything i've written then surely you already know.

at the end of the day, these aren’t characters. these are real people who are sometimes (often, probably) hiding things; these are people, inherently paradoxical. it’s impossible to gain a full picture of another human being (even one you know intimately), much less an idol, a stranger. a hundred bookmarks of clips, interview translations, and lore notwithstanding - with rpf, it’s never going to be the same as characterizing a fictional character “correctly,” because you’re never actually going to be in their head. there’s just no way to know.

so then what?

mode iii. the idol is not who they say they are. (= mode i?)

so you’ve become disillusioned by the fact that you’re never going to truly understand the person/character you’re trying to write about. instead of trying to stick perfectly to the image you’ve been served/built up in your head/etc., you start veering left. you think: there’s no way he’s actually that nice. no way he likes [character b] that much. actually he’s probably super dominant bc of xyz. his ‘secret’ that fellow member C referred to is probably [etc etc etc] you could do this all day.

so how far do you take it? the character (often without the author’s conscious awareness) begins to morph based on their perceptions/biases/extrapolations. examples: nico’s confident persona is a front and he’s actually deeply insecure (i’ve seen & have maybe even verged on writing this), ej’s gentle, kind persona is a front and he’s actually cold and harsh and maybe even cruel (see above), on and on and on until -

the idol becomes a vessel again.

the modes are an ouroboros, a snake eating its tail; the final stage of mode 3, essentially, brings you back to mode 1. you’re still making the character yours, you’re still filling up that vessel - you’ve just arrived via a different path. there is, arguably, no real "truth" to be found.

this is not me saying that any attempt at understanding is impossible, and i do generally think that there is something of a nuanced middle ground in between these modes, but my point is like… i think it’s so easy to “get it wrong,” and everyone is going to have their own perception of what the point of rpf even is, (my own bias: i do think the ‘vessel’ of mode 3 is more valid than mode 1, essentially by sheer virtue of effort expended, but i also recognize that Basically Who Cares) and at the end of the day we’re all playing with dolls that we’re assigning varying levels of sentience to.

i try to pay a lot of attention to characterization because it’s the most important part of how /i/ view rps/rpf, and so my knee jerk reaction to people saying it’s all headcanons and no one interpretation/portrayal is more realistic than another, is to recoil and basically feel like No One Gets It. but then i thought about it for a while and all my attempted rationalizations began to feel like eating my own tail. all attempts at "realism" are inherently subjective, and there is probably never going to be a perfect middle ground. though i do still think that rpf, for me, is an attempt to find it.

i realize i'm not saying anything particularly profound - i also don't know how the hell this got so long - essentially i just wanted to write this out bc the Urethra! moment i had when i realized this discourse (that i made up in my own head) was all basically just a circle was kinda fun to me. if anyone has thoughts i’d love to hear…

Comments

[soobun]

helllooooo my friend how nice to see you here! always nice to read your thoughts - i love hearing from people who approach rpf (or writing, or really anything) so differently from me. i really respect the way you can write characters that simultaneously feel connected to the "canon" (real life) but are also very clearly Yours. it's impressive! and i get what you mean about not wanting to worry about the plot that the original author wrote for anime etc fic if you just want to write your own story. i think that's probably why kpop rpf feels like a big draw for a lot people, bc there's a lot of space for making things your own.

i think i'm inherently... Not a storyteller in the way that you are, and if i had to pick my own strength it would basically just be psychoanalysis (and on a good day, the ability to string together a half-decent sentence) but it'd be fun to one day try to write something in that first mode, or even just original fiction. i think it would be really difficult!! and god forbid i attempt comedy...........

but anyway yes i agree, and i also want to say thank you again for writing such great &team fic....<3

[strayion]

https://strayion.dreamwidth.org/22383.html#cutid1

I was going to reply but then it got so long it became its own post T_T