...it occurs to me now that this sounds like I'm making light of your squick, but mine was definitely never as bad as what you described in your post so me getting over it =/= you getting over it. It's hard! Take your time. I'm just happy you're getting there :D

The first RPF fics I read (you know, discounting historic RPF which is... its own category) were scrunchy's old pundit round table fics, because I had read all of her SGA fics and all of her Sports Night fics, and this was all that was left if I wanted to keep reading her stuff! And it was just these super cute gen stories about Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert hanging out and they could barely even be considered real people at all, and I didn't even know the other two dudes they hung out with (Anderson Cooper and Keith Olberman) so it was like half fiction anyway, and stories like "five times they celebrated Stephen's birthday" were so cute and funny and harmless! And so it started.