RPF & Why I Write It

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Title:	RPF & Why I Write It
Creator:	Flourish Klink
Date(s):	February 11, 2016
Medium:	Tumblr post
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External Links:	Flourish's Blotts RPF & Why I Write It, Archived version
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RPF & Why I Write It is a Tumblr post by Flourish Klink.

An Excerpt

Real Person Fiction is a tense subject in fandom. When I joined in the Metazoic era mid 1990s, reading about The X-files, everyone knew that people wrote RPF about Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny, but nobody wanted to admit they were into it. It wasn’t just suspect, it was bad, rude, because you were speculating about people’s actual lives. These days, basically everyone on Tumblr is down with Gillovny. I’ve had the same transformation of opinions as the rest of fandom (these days I’m into One Direction). So here are some objections to RPF that I used to have, but have gotten over.

The objections that Flourish discusses:

• "RPF is just about lusting after real humans, which is creepy!"
• "RPF is not accepted anywhere in the world. Socially, we have a contract not to write RPF."
• "What about when the subjects of RPF find stories about them? What about how they feel?"
• "But wait, you’ve said before that you stopped writing Sleepy Hollow fic when you hung out with the cast. How does that match up with all this?"
• "So does that mean I should write stories about you? How would you feel then?"

Some Comments

[garet-the-3rd]: While I’m not really into RPF, I did think about the moral implications a few years ago, and my conclusion was much like the one above. As long as you keep in mind that you are writing about a fictional persona, every thing is cool.

[asimplecord]:One of my very first fandoms as a kid was an RPS fandom (Savage Garden popslash yo) so it got normalized for me pretty early. Shortly after I joined that fandom, LotRPS became a thing, and I was in there, and then CW RPS a few years later, and then bandom. In bandom I did actually get to meet/know some of the people I was reading and writing about and it did change my preferences for what I read, but it never made RPS 100% off limits to me.

[cameoamalthea]: Yes, in general I’m against outright bans without nuance and that if something is banned is has to be for articulable reasons. We have to get to the core moral issues at play in individual cases and not making sweeping statements of condemnation or approval. Consent and expectation of privacy are both important to weigh.

Someone like SuperMaryFace has clearly stated she does not consent and is not such a celebrity as to reach the level of “public figure”. Someone like The Militiamen in Oregon are public figures because they’ve chosen to do something with the intent of making news. If we’re free to criticize them in the papers, then we should be free to write parodies about them. Anita Sarkesian is also a public figure, so if someone were to make an SNL skit about her it wouldn’t be morally questionable. The issue with GamerGate is not all of them were public figures (didn’t it start when a disgruntled ex-boyfriend decided to bad things about his ex - it seems like classic libel or at least false light or invasion of privacy since it was a personal matter). Gamergate ostensibly became about matters ‘public concern’ but I’m not sure if all the women involved were public figures and at some point the reactions crossed the line from fiction to things meant as threat. Sending people descriptions of them being raped of killed would probably fall under intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Sometimes there is a balancing test and we have to look at the rights involved. I support freedom of speech, but I do think at times we must weigh other considerations when it could hurt someone else or impact their rights. Generally the limits on freedom of speech are where it could cause harm which is why actual threats, words meant to provoke imminent violence or a violent response are not protected and why we have laws for defamation and privacy concerns. If speech is harassment, your right to free speech doesn’t trump someone else’s right to avoid harassment. And it is possible for some works to be considered obscenity if they lack all artistic merit. but these things are all a test of weighing factors rather than a categorical X activity is bad. The fact is IRL live action porn parodies exist about real people “Whose Nailin’ Palin” and Sarah Pailin is probably aware of it but like SNL skits mocking her, there is room for parody under freedom of speech.

In regard to non famous people in RPF, like families or crew, since those people aren’t the draw of the fic why not just create a fictionalized family and fictional everyone else. If you’re not trying to write a fictionalized account of real events (The Social Netwrok) why bother including IRL relatives, friends or workers.

I think with memoir you have a right to tell your own story, so long as it’s truthful. There’s no libel is your claim is true. However, if you’re writing to get vengeance on someone and writing to portray them in a false of bad light, they have grounds to sue.

My concern would be if I write a memoir (and I’ve had literary agents tell me I should) would that make it ok for people to write fan fiction about me, something I would not be comfortable with at all. If I write a memoir and it’s popular enough that people feel they know me, my story, if someone wants to make a movie based on it and I say yes, do I give up rights to say I don’t want people rping as me or writing fanfic about me. It goes between that line between public and private. But then, I could also avoid knowing, but by that logic so could anyone. Was it from for someone to alert SuperMaryFace that someone was rping as her, knowing the information would upset her or should they have just reported the person themselves to get tit taken down. (it violated the TOS of instagram)

[teaberryblue]:I don’t write RPF; it holds no interest for me, and I don’t read it either.

I was interviewed a few years ago for a journalistic piece on fanfiction, and the interviewer asked me a number of questions about RPF. I got the sense that she was trying to get me to say there was something wrong with it, or that those fans were weirder than me.

Finally, she asked me flat out, and I told her no, it wasn’t any weirder, that almost no one who writes RPF actually thinks there is truth to what they are writing beyond an interest in portraying the characters as believably as possible, and that RPF is essentially a type of fanwork where creators use celebrities like stock characters in their stories– it’s no different, in this sense, than mythologies and folklore that have their roots in the actual contemporaries of the writers. Plato’s Symposion is RPF, guys.

I am actually one of those people who explicitly avoids things like picking up People. I had a couple friendly acquaintances with celebrities when I was younger and the way I saw them treated in the media left me with a strong distaste for any speculation on the lives of celebrities. I couldn’t even watch a popular TV show loosely based on real events because the subjects were friends of friends and it weirded me out. I’m not even entirely comfortable with people posting candid photos of celebs on tumblr, but I realize that’s on me, not on them. So I’m in that very, very tiny percentage of people @flourish​ is talking about, and I don’t think RPF falls even remotely in the same bucket. There’s only a few exceptions where I think RPF writers (not RPF as a concept) can and have been disrespectful toward their subjects, and those are all instances like the kind @flourish mentions, where people have posted RPF in inappropriate places or sent it to their subjects, or infringed on the privacy of their subjects or subjects’ families in some way that would be inappropriate whether or not they were writing fic about it. And that’s got zero to do with the writing.

Anyway, I just wanted to tack on a little note to this that the whole attitude that some fannish creations are “good” and some are “bad” is exactly what other types of fans do to fan creators. We have to get out of this mindset of defending our own ways of interacting with our fandom, but looking down on what other people do. Why are we interrogating other fans and trying to judge whether their contributions to fandom are “acceptable” when we could be interrogating the rest of the world about why they’re judging fandom at all?

[bookshop]: RPF is totally mundane. It’s the oldest and most common form of fanfiction there is, and the amount of shame and shock and scandal around it in fandom is absolute nonsense. RPF ALL DAY EVERY DAY.