welcome to the master plan

Slashing in this fandom is so very different than anything I've done before. First off, there's the competitive aspect. The other RPS I've been involved in - Daily Show/Colbert Report, Whose Line - has been about friends, co-workers. But in tennis, it's all about the competition. Any pairing with Federer will be colored by the man's dominance over everyone else in the field - they've all lost to him. It's interesting, too, to be in a fandom so heavily influenced by real-life events, constant new material, like they're writing half the story for us. I keep seeing events that I remember from life pop up in the fic - the Wimbledon final, Rafa's withdrawal in Cincinnati (which I saw live), this year's US Open. It gives a strange sense of half-truth to it all that's quite novel to someone used to slashing extremely fictional characters in static, fictional worlds.

There's also the worldwide aspect of it all. With fictional characters, they pretty much speak the same language. But the tennis greats are from all over the world, and their language abilities vary widely - from Roger's very good English with just a hint of accent to Rafa's barely useable English, heavily accented and peppered with words and phrases of Spanish. The idea that they must use a language not native to either speaker to communicate with each other is something I want to explore more. It makes the voices so very strong, too - in good fic, I can hear them saying the lines, and they sound distinctive, like themselves and no one else.

There are a few things that bug me, though, about this rather small fandom. Why must all the fic about each pairing be so very similar? Why must Roger/Rafael be full of angst all the time, while Roger/Andy is always silly, verging more toward PWP than anything with real emotion? What if I want to read a little R/R drabble about tickling or a R/A epic about long denial and eventual surrender? I wonder if this is merely a result of a smallish fandom or if it's something more - that writers are less willing to take creative risks with people that feel so very real, even moreso than actors. I hope the former, but I fear the latter. I find myself wanting to write fic that goes against the grain, and see what kind of response it gets from the fandom.

This fandom has latched onto my brain more tightly than anything has in a long while. Perhaps it's the result of making my way through the fandom and seeing so much left unexplored. Even Heroes, which I absolutely love and will participate in forever, didn't have this kind of hold on me. I watched the show, I read the fic, I was satisfied. There's so much amazing Heroes fic out there that my craving was satisfied with what's already been done. In this new fandom? I've seen just enough to take the edge off my desire, but not nearly enough to satisfy it. I may have to get writing once the season begins again....

And a slightly off-topic note: Look! There are people who take fandom just as seriously as me - maybe even moreso! Link: http://www.transformativeworks.org/