Boy Band Slash Doesn't Suck

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Title:	Boy Band Slash Doesn't Suck
Creator:	Jane
Date(s):	December 2000
Medium:	online
Fandom:
Topic:
External Links:	online here, Archived version
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Boy Band Slash Doesn't Suck is an essay posted to Citizens Against Bad Slash by Jane.

It has the summary: "Boy Band Slash Doesn't Suck: Here's Why."

It has the subtitle: "Boy band slash: (or "They sing, they dance, they fuck like minks")"

Excerpts

I have a confession to make. There was a time, not so long ago, that I thought all RPS (real people slash, using the actual celebrities, not characters) was stupid. I'd read a couple of really bad Mary Sue fics involving some actors who unwittingly made it into the author's fantasies, and the stories were thinly disguised masturbation material. It was like reading someone's wet dream. A couple didn't even bother to disguise their Mary Sue-ness, the author using his (or her) name outright in the story where he gets it on with a popular actor. Most of them were poorly written, perhaps because authors assume right off the bat that any RPS is going to be campy anyway and there's no real point in making it believable or grammatically correct.

Another problem I had with it was that the celebrities in question were almost always molded into perfect people. They were beautiful, rich, smart and, most importantly, down to earth. What makes RPS so interesting, to me, is writing an erotic story about someone who is Hollywood, taking into account the personality flaws that come with celebrity and still making them interesting character studies.

Then I got turned on to boy band slash, from here on in known as BBS. And I like it. So shoot me.

I also feel there is a very real difference between standard RPS that pairs up, say, David Duchovny and Nick Lea, and BBS. Celebrities are often turned into fictional characters of their own. They become glossy images with very little depth outside of the influence of the characters they portray. Boy bands, however, are a whole new ball of wax. They are that element times 100. They are essentially media tarts, people with no real depth to us because we will only ever be able to see what their marketing people want us to see. They evolve into fictional characters of their own. The media influence and the hype turn them into something no ordinary human being could possibly live up to, and they are assigned roles and stereotypes designed to be a quick way for the audience to relate to them. Think of the Spice Girls (sorry to take you there) and how they were all given a stereotype - Sporty Spice, Posh Spice, etc. Their marketing machine knew that in the face of intense media exposure, pop stars become as fictional as Kirk and Spock, reduced to glossy, watered-down and less-detailed versions of their actual personalities so that their media images eventually, to the general public, become their personalities. BBS, in some ways, allows more latitude for fiction. You are given the basic outline of a personality and can use your imagination to fill in the blanks, provided you follow the template. You can write just about anything about Sporty Spice, for example, as long as you make her sporty. It is for this reason that I feel BBS is not only different from garden variety RPS, but it is almost the ultimate slash experience. This also explains the huge draw toward wrestling slash. It's the same deal - stereotypical characters fleshed out into real people by authors doing what they're supposed to be doing - using them to fuel the imagination.

I know, I know. How would I feel if someone slashed me? Justin Timberlake and friends are never going to read 'N Sync slash. Even if their legal eagles do, the odds of them trying to shut down every single site out there with 'N Sync slash are slim. But I propose that BBS is the core of the very purpose of a boy band. It is instrumental to what makes boy bands what they are - speculation, fantasy and fiction.

What I don't get, however, is the surge of Metallica RPS. Have you guys seen that band?