Talk:Figure Skating RPF

Where is the Japanese RPF?

This article could definitely use more information about RPF written by non-English and non-Russian figure skating fans. I'm especially curious about Japanese RPF. Figure skating is more popular in Japan than anywhere else. At first I thought the 125+ Chinese fics in the AO3 tag were Japanese, but there aren't any posted. It's possible that there isn't any, but given the amount of Japanese fanart I see via twitter and instagram, I would guess that they do. --Caitiedid (talk) 07:00, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

This is an excellent question! I know Japanese fanartists are quite active and much gorgeous art has been produced. Some of this is definitely transformative. Also there are tons of skating banners. I have seen Western Actor RPF listed at doujinshi markets, but I don't know about Sports RPF. I know people stanning skaters can get very protective, so it may be a challenge to find fic that may be stigmatized by many sports fans. --WhitedSepu (talk) 18:55, 11 Oct 2019 (UTC)

1990s info

The article could obviously use more information about the 1990s/early 2000s era of figure skating RPF.

Private Ice is referred to as a "fanfiction" site in several places, but in a comment posted to Fan History the owner of the (now defunct) site says only one fanfiction was posted there, and the rest was original fiction. Perusing the SkateFic Yahoo mailing list s/he mentions, it seems that skating fans in the 90s used "fanfiction" to refer to amateur fiction by figure skating fans about their own original characters and story lines set within the skating world. However there are many discussions speculating about which characters were avatars for which real life skaters:

Naaahh.... Etienne's gotta be Candeloro... the whole bit about skating

to "Braveheart" in a skirt... who else could it be?

One author admitted that her main character was based on Ilia Kulik, 'but only for about eleven days' (paraphrased from memory) before he became her own original character. The more I write about this the more I think "skating fiction" by fans may deserve its own article. In fact, when I checked Wattpad to see if fanfic was posted there, it's a similar situation with the vast majority of the stories being original fiction about characters who are figure skaters. Scrolling through 216 stories, I only noticed three that were RPF and a handful of alternate universe One Direction fanfictions. ANYWAY. --Caitiedid (talk) 07:00, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

winterkinkmeme

Apparently figure skating prompts moved from winterkinkmeme entirely, at least according to this from TV Tropes:

It got so bad the kink meme ended up divided. Skating had to go to a separate community just to accommodate the volume of skater fic (though that's partially due to a missing mod at the winter games meme).

I can't figure out what community they mean, though? --Caitiedid (talk) 21:27, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Current Size of FS RPF Fandom

Hello! I'm new to Fanlore and wanted to discuss updating portions of this page, since we are over a year out from the PC Olympics and especially after this season will be next heading towards Beijing 2022. Many changes have happened to the fandom since the 2015-2016 season and, as you already know, FS itself is so dynamic that many are related to changes in the sport itself. One proposed minor change I wanted to suggest is to amend the opening sentence about the size of the fandom: "Figure Skating RPF is a small sports RPF fandom". FS RPF has grown so much since early 2016, likely because of a mixture of the sudden huge popularity of Yuri on Ice (aired Fall 2016) and the epic Olympic season that began in the fall of 2017. The question proper:

"A question I have after looking over the RPF timeline page, is whether there's a guideline for describing fandom size. You'll note that some fandoms are labeled with a general size descriptor (small, medium, huge) and that FS is called "small" on that and its main fandom page: https://fanlore.org/wiki/Timeline_of_RPF and https://fanlore.org/wiki/Figure_Skating_RPF I'm wondering if FS RPF should now be considered a "medium" fandom, based on the size of the fandoms labeled as medium on that page? To compare, the current number of Works alone in FS RPF is 4800+, vs. LotR RPF (4900+), American Idol (3200+), and Star Trek (2300+). All of these have another 1000-2000+ bookmarked works, so they are roughly in the same bracket. Hanson is called "medium" as well, but has just under 1,000 Works." --WhitedSepu (talk) 22:43, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Since I've seen no objections, I will proceed with this minor change. (talk) 21:38, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Updating the FS RPF Article: Structure

Considering how this article is structured, I wonder if 1) the "Present" section should be integrated into the Sochi Olympics section and 2) a new section covering the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics should be created to bring the content up to the early summer of 2018 (end of Olympic season). Perhaps an additional section could be created, such as "Looking to 2022 Beijing", that updates to the present (currently early 2019-2020 season), but I am open to other options. --WhitedSepu (talk) 06:32, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

I think the page could absolutely use updating and restructuring if you're up for it! I think most of the current content should probably be under a "History" heading, and I'd love to see some information about popular tropes added to this page. It could also use a more robust list of fanworks, resources/meta, and archives/communities. I'll try to pull together an archives/communities section based on what's already on the page, but I'm not in this fandom so I'm sure there are some that are missing, especially more recent ones.

Also, if you're up for a more in-depth rewriting, it would be cool to see more quotes and fan perspectives quoted directly on the page! I really like the ones in the 1990s section. If doing so makes the page too long then we can always eventually move the majority of the history section over to its own page. - Hoopla (talk) 17:50, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your excellent input! I like your suggestions re: additional sections, which make me wonder if we'll eventually need to separate out some of the fan reactions to a "Attitudes towards FS RPF" section, but I think I'll concentrate first on restructuring the aspects of a "History" section I mentioned above and adding to the fanworks and other sections you mentioned. --WhitedSepu (talk) 08:47, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

UPDATE: Since there were no objections, I have taken Hoopla's (talk) suggestion regarding putting most of the entry under a new major section header "History" and converted the decades and Olys sections to minor section headers.

My next steps will be to 1) play around with the Sochi Olympics section. I might move the "post-Sochi" and current "Present" material to a new minor section for the Pyeongchang Olympics and then update the PC Olys section to cover the seasons 2016-2017 and 2017-2018. "Present" would then contain history beginning with the 2018-2019 season. These changes would be based on how the other Olympic quad-centered sections are strutured; each section seems to cover what happened in the seasons leading up to the specific Olympic Games and the immediate fallout of those Olympics. If anyone feels there is a better option structure-wise, please let me know. But at the moment I do like keeping the decades structure for the earlier periods about which less is known and Olympic-quad-based sections for the later periods, given that each Olympics is a central focus for the fs community and a time when new people are drawn to the sport.

2) I can also add in some fanworks including fic and fanart.

After taking care of these I will turn towards the additional suggested changes. WhitedSepu (talk) 22:18, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

The early 1990s comments on Virgule-L

I was thinking about the Virgule-L comments, and about how over-whelmingly negative they were. Regarding the ones that talked about the "characters" being boring, or lacking personality. It made me think about how, before the internet, that one had to be pretty invested in tracking down written articles, photos, and video about the skaters. That meant "casual" fans didn't have a lot of access, either by choice, or reality, in the wealth of information that fans today have about celebrities and athletes.

Of course, that didn't stop them from pursuing transcripts, photos, clippings and what-not about television and movie actors. Or maybe those things for actors were more accessible?

Also, regarding "cute butts," stories have been written on far less in a lot of other fandoms!

- Just brainstorming, MPH.

I'm Canadian and I remember back in the 1990s there was a fairly large fan following for first Kurt Browning and then Elvis Stojko (this might have just been a Canadian thing, I don't know). This wasn't transformative fandom, I wasn't really aware of sports RPF, but more fans who followed the broadcasts and tracked their careers. Figure Skating in general must have been somewhat popular, because the CBC broadcast all the major competitions, including ones that were not Canadian based (this was before the takeover of the major sports cable channels). I do remember that getting photos of the skaters seemed hard at the time, unless you were subscribed to one of those specific sports magazines (regular sports magazines rarely covered Figure Skating unless it was around the Worlds or the Olympics), or you were lucky enough to go to a live event/show. The one and only picture I had on my wall of Kurt Browning I cut out of my parent's TV Guide. I don't know if that helps any, but I thought I'd share my perspective -- Kingstoken (talk) 17:16, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

I grew up in the US during the late 1970s and 1980s and have a few vague memories all tied to the Olympics and its aftermath. For example, when I was in elementary school Dorothy Hamil was popular to the point where my Mom had a hair stylist give me a Dorothy Hamil haircut, which I loathed (I wanted my hair long even if it was too hard for me to take care of myself). Hamil also appeared on a Wheaties cereal box, another sign of her fame (and I suppose another way to find an accessible image of her). I agree with Kingstoken that most people accessed competitions via TV (I've a vague memory about the commentator(s) celebrating the first or early appearance of) the triple Axel. I think my Mom watched competitions during the Olympics, but as she loved ballet, she might have occasionally watched other competitions via broadcast tv. She also took my brother and I to ice shows that toured locally (OH) in the 1970s like Ice Capades. Famous skaters appeared at these shows, but alas I don't recall who I watched. I never heard of RPF or transformative fannish activities being connected to sports until the 2010s and only accessed fs via tv or possibly the occasional newspaper or magazine.WhitedSepu (talk) 06:22, 15 June 2023 (UTC)