RPS and Me
I have no idea why I am so obsessed with LOTRiPS. I know some of the elements, mostly too personal to discuss. I did want a hobby. I like reading well-written stories, about everything from friendship to romance to heavy-duty erotica/smut/porn. Apparently I wanted to be creative. I've written more fiction in the last six months than ever before in my life.
Tolkien FPS does not do it for me. I read LOTR when I was twelve, and I know it's not perfect, but I love it anyway. So most slash stories using those characers make me deeply uncomfortable.
I can read a little bit of other fanfiction: Harry Potter, Faculty, Pirates and POTC RPS, Sharpe. Most of the rest I find uninteresting, partly because I am not interested in those bits of pop culture.
Once I found LOTR RPS, I also found a fabulous bunch of new friends, mainly at LiveJournal, centered around the Fellow_Shippers community. It feels like the best of many worlds. I love my friends, and the stories still strike a huge cord in me. Very odd.
The Ethics of RPS
I'm not really sure this is defensible.
I'm writing stories about real people. The stories are about what I find interesting. A lot of that is sex
I'd be deeply weirded out if someone mentioned that they not only speculated about my sex life, they wrote about it.
And yet... and yet. The stories I read are so good. I know they have only a tenouous connection to real life, and that's fine with me. I have no clue about the personal or sex lives of these people.
I'm very clear that the stories I write are entirely fictional.
I hope they either never find out, or take it in the spirit intended, which is, in my case, cheerful appreciation. I will never tell them about it, that's for sure.