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Girls who like Boys who like Boys – Ethnography of ... - Yuuyami.com

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keeps very busy. Once back at home with free time (and sometimes without<br />

free time, for the sake <strong>of</strong> procrastination) she goes through her email<br />

periodically.<br />

Mel’s currently active fandoms in which she reads slash fanfics are<br />

the shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer (or BtVS), Angel (1999), and Smallville<br />

(or SV; 2001), as well as Harry Potter (HP) and the Japanese anime-based<br />

Gundam Wing (USA 2000) (also seen as GW). Though she has written fic in<br />

the past, she now mainly betas for other people. A beta-reader is a fan <strong>who</strong><br />

reads authors’ fanfiction before they get published, and edits, critiques, and<br />

<strong>com</strong>ments on it. There are four recent fics Mel beta-ed. The first was a Buffybased<br />

Xander/Spike oneshot (or a fic which does not have several chapters),<br />

second was a short Harry Potter story with only a few chapters, third was a<br />

Gundam Wing fic, and lastly one in the Lord <strong>of</strong> the Rings RPS fandom (or<br />

LOTRIPS for short). RPS is an acronym for “Real People Slash” and is used<br />

for fandoms in which “Real People,” as opposed to fictional characters, are<br />

slashed. 11 LOTRIPS, for example, is a variation on the Lord <strong>of</strong> the Rings slash<br />

fandoms. It bases itself <strong>of</strong>f the movies, but primarily deals with the actors as<br />

they are in real life. If the LOTRIPS fic deals with the movies, it will<br />

11 Fans <strong>of</strong>ten debate whether popslash, or slashing pop boybands, falls into the RPS category,<br />

or whether the characters presented in the media are purely fictional and are not reflective <strong>of</strong><br />

the real life person. The fact that some fans are popslash fans, but do not feel <strong>com</strong>fortable<br />

with RPS in general and LOTRIPS in particular only serves to fuel this debate. Most <strong>of</strong> the<br />

people I have worked closely with do not feel that there is such a gap between popslash and<br />

RPS. Another interesting bit <strong>of</strong> information regarding RPS is that it sparked the use <strong>of</strong> a new<br />

word FPS or Fictional People Slash; since real people are used in RPS, and since RPS is a<br />

form <strong>of</strong> slash, one could differentiate between these two forms <strong>of</strong> slash by using the two<br />

acronyms. I have seen the term FPS mostly used when juxtaposed to RPS.<br />

75

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