I tried reading one of those RPFs, but it's really hard to do with your eyes mostly closed so I gave up. I think my squick cuts in SO fast that I can't go anywhere with it -- most subject matter squicks can sneak up on you, or appear after you're already hooked by style, or preceding content, or something.

My poor brain just screams "THAT'S BILLY BOYD!!!" and I can't see a damned thing else.

Which I wholly respect.

The paragraph is delicious; but why does it have to be written about a real person? Is it less delicious if it's being written about, say, Lex? Or an original fictional character?

Huh. Yes. It's true. I didn't look at those sites yet, because I'm on the other computer and don't want to take notes if I can't save them directly to the hard drive; but that snippet

He likes lollipops. They just - they're *comfortable*, and he likes rubbing his tongue against the sharp sugar edges, pushing it into the little razorblade air bubbles to touch the unwarmed crevices inside. This one's cola, and tastes as tacky and July-ish as blackjacks or ginger beer.

is lovely like a lovely, lovely thing, even context-less like that; and when I consider it being supposedly from inside Lex's head, my brain goes ooh, and when I consider it being supposedly from inside Orlando Bloom's head, my brain slams back down. Yes. This is very interesting.

The paragraph is delicious; but why does it have to be written about a real person? Is it less delicious if it's being written about, say, Lex? Or an original fictional character?

Well, I think a better question to ask is, what *makes* there be a difference between real-people characters and fictional-people characters? And, for that matter, your-original-fiction characters and someone-else's-fiction characters? I think I can articulate reasons *why* I've got these blocks in place.

Well, for me, on some level every writer's got the same right to decide what's inside Lex's head. (I know there are arguments to be made there as well - I'm less comfortable with fanfic about single-author creations, for instance - but you take my point.) There isn't a right answer. No one knows how Lex feels about lollipops, because Lex isn't real. Once you're writing about someone who you know actually exists, there *is* a right answer.

That's a good point, Katie. I seem to be following you around saying that. Real people have real feelings and thoughts and relationships. And, I'm groping around trying to articulate this, it somehow diminishes them to attribute feelings and thoughts and relationships to them, that they haven't had. It's like being misquoted on a massive scale.

Katie and Elena are speaking for me. In a non RPF way, that is.

Though, of course, my having secret relationships with them is okay.

But thank you, Fay, for sending me back to waxjism.net, where the best shit is, because I'm halfway through [link] and reeling with the hot, and the good writing, and the hot, and the hot. It's The Faculty fic-- I'm coming to it as though it was original, though, because I've got absolutely *no* idea about the premise of TF or anything.

[edited several an hour later because I realized there were random letters missing from this post]

I need some Buffyverse recs. Argh!

Too much kind-of-eh being recc'd all over the place. I would like to read something where I don't feel like doing a line beta and pointing out canon errors and characterization flaws, thank you very much.