RPF/FPF
This page is about Fictional Person Fiction as it differs from Real Person Fiction. For information about first-person shooters, see First-Person Shooter.
| Synonyms: | FPF, FPS, Fictional Person Fiction, Fictional Person Slash, Fake People Fiction. "People" is often used instead of "Person". |
| See also: | Fan Fiction, RPF |
| Click here for articles related to this term on Fanlore. | |
Fictional Person Fiction (FPF) is fan fiction about fictional characters. The term is a retronym [1] created to acknowledge a distinction from Real People Fiction. FPF broadly covers works that could be gen, het, and slash; Fictional Person Slash (FPS) is also often used. As with RPS, it can be used for all three types of stories, although it is most commonly applied to slash.
Nearly all fan fiction written until the late 1990s was about fictional people: characters in books, TV shows, or movies; initially the taboo against writing 'actor or musician slash' was so strong that the authors of RPF stories disguised their source by giving the characters different names. (For example, Tris/Alex fandom was actually a thinly disguised Robert Plant/Jimmy Page.) Later, fans started writing stories about bands (see popslash, for example), and other real people in the public eye using their real names (see the page on RPF for more information).
The use of the term becomes particularly important in fandoms which have a large amount of both RPF and FPF fan fiction written; including this classification on a story tells the reader whether the story is about real people or fictional characters.
For example, in the Lord of the Rings fandom, the Library of Moria accepts both FPS and RPS (i.e., both LoTR and LoTRiPs fanfic). In Supernatural fandom, an example of FPS would be Sam Winchester/Dean Winchester, the two main characters in the television show, while an RPS pairing would be Jared Padalecki/Jensen Ackles, the two actors who portray the characters on the show (a pairing fandom known as J2).
