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I'm ia rn but fuck it: kpop fandom and the ready-made ensemble cast. Let's talk about bts vs. fictional bts shall we?
The wonderful, incredible thing about fanfiction and fanart is that they're mediums that build and expand on existing media and material, taking the canon and characters of a property and reinterpreting it beyond the original creator's scope
This all becomes very tricky when you enter the realm of rpf because the universe that you write in, play in.....is our own. Unless you're writing about them living day to day as idols, something is going to have to change and characterizations will have to be used to fit it
This creates a culture when writing in kpop fandom is built on creating situations, dynamics, and roles, that band members can neatly fill in a work. It's ship based, it's trope filled. It has its own developed set of genre conventions and expectations from the reader or viewer
If stanning idols already has the inbuilt problems of dehumanization, visual stanning, projected fantasy, and adherence to stage personas, fanworks take that a step further
The easiest writing you can do is writing where the characters are already established, that's how fan creators can be so prolific and loved. We recognize names, faces, and are immediately willing to believe in the reality they construct as well
The problem comes when you blur the lines of what is fan generated and what's reality. If our "canon" universe is treated as loosely as it would be in fanworks of traditional media, aka needing fixing or fundamental changes, then you lose all touch with actual reality
Idol groups ARE a ready-made ensemble. They are a set of names, faces, quirks and voices that are easily adapted to fit new and exciting au's. They inherently lend themselves to m/m shipping by default, they have a lot of visual material generated
These are the hallmarks of media that tend to inspire a greater volume of fanworks. I have the highest respect for fan creators, and all I want to say is that when working in RPF never let the people who inspire your works become characters to you, because they're not.
There are a million and one versions of each member that lives in our minds influenced by how we interact with the music, with fandom, hell, hyyh makes them their versions of canon fictional characters. But there are only 7 that are real.
Traditional fanfiction and fanworks exists because the canon is finite, the movie ended, the final book was published. At some point the creator fully fleshed out the character as far as they would go and fans are left to fill in the gaps. The same cannot be said for RPF
