[ SECRET POST #3168 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3168 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.
[Criminal Minds]


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03.
[Community]


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04.
(Harry Potter, Yu-Gi-Oh)


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05.
[JerryC]


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06.
[J.K. Rowling/Harry Potter]


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07.
[Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance]


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08.
[Hatfields & McCoys]


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09.
[Proof]


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10.
[Brooklyn Nine Nine]


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11.
[Scarlett Johansson]


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12.
[No Escape]











Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 065 secrets from Secret Submission Post #453.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, so many people are being judgey and old-school about RPF in this thread.

Personally, my feelings about RPF are:

1. NO bringing RPF to the attention of the real people your characters are based on. EVER.

2. ALWAYS include an easily visible disclaimer that lets readers know your fic is FICTION.

3. NO eroticized rape of real-person characters. No torture porn of real-person characters. No writing real-person characters as rapists/torturers if they're not proven (or at least soundly accused) of these crimes in real life.

4. THINGS THAT ARE GENERALLY IN POOR TASTE: Incest RPF. RPF implying that a female character's child is secretly the child of her male costar (or whatever) rather than the child of her spouse. Omegaverse RPF and other AUs that could easily be viewed as body horror. Any RPF that obviously delights in tearing down a real-person character who "comes between" one's ship. (So like, you wanna write BC and Martin Freeman getting together, that's okay, but if you write Sophie Hunter as a conniving bitch who ends up broke and wretchedly miserable, alone and hated by everyone who knows her, then I'm going to think that's pretty low, and creepy, and in poor taste.)

I guess the bottom line is that there are some things which hit so intimately and/or disturbingly at a person's life/identity, that even just tying a real person's name to said things feels wrong (i.e. potentially damaging and deeply insensitive).

All that said, this whole black/white view of RPF is just plain irrational when so many popular and critically lauded movies and books are RPF. Like, unless you think The Social Network is disgusting and deserves condemnation, it's pretty hypocritical to claim you're against RPF. The critically acclaimed TV series Masters of Sex is RPF which deviates wildly from reality and depicts its characters in some very intimate and ethically questionable situations. Should it be condemned? What about an award winning novel like Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates, which is RPF of Marilyn Monroe? Or that movie where Helen Mirren plays the queen? I mean that is literally RPF about the CURRENT QUEEN OF FUCKING ENGLAND. So is that a problem, yes or no?

I think people have a tendency to presume the very worst of RPF, often as a fairly knee-jerk response, when in reality it varies broadly in tone, intent, quality, content, commercial viability, and just about every other aspect.

[(Anonymous)]

This comment wasn't judgey at all.

[(Anonymous)]

Glad we're in agreement on that. :)

[(Anonymous)]

I think there's a difference between writing about a factual, historical event and rpf. I've not watched or read any of the things you mentioned but if Masters of Sex deviates from what is historically accurate, yep I condemn it. Along with everything else you've mentioned.

[(Anonymous)]

This view is so rigid and out of touch with the times - hell, out of touch with any time in which art has been created - that I don't even know what to say.

[(Anonymous)]

Damn, that's the first time I've been called rigid! I'm okay with explicit torture porn, omegaverse, and whatever else fandom cooks up, but disliking rpf makes me rigid. That make two of us who doesn't know what to say.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, you could start by attempting to rebut my suggestion that your opinion of RPF is "out of touch with any time in which art has been created." If you think you're up to it.

[(Anonymous)]

lmao but I don't care if my opinion is ~out of touch~

[(Anonymous)]

Which brings us back to my initial impression: that there's nothing to say because you are completely disinterested in reason with regard to this particular topic. You have your opinion; it's not rational but you don't care. End of the line.

[(Anonymous)]

lmaooo now you're getting it~

[(Anonymous)]

SA

Oh but I figured out rpf that I like! There's an animu called Mirage of Blaze that portrays historical figures as reincarnated super melodramatic, super gay, teens and young adults who have psychic abilities and weirdo, terribly explained powers.

So there you have it, anon. I like some rpf, if it's clearly ridiculous, over the top AU. I'm sure you're glad; you seemed pretty concerned about my artistic well-being, or something like that. :')

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, I don't give a damn about you anon, just the people whose fandom enthusiasms you're condemning for your own irrationally moralistic reasons!

[(Anonymous)]

oh nooo :'(

I actually don't hate rpf at all; there's some mcr that I quite like. But damn, there are few fans who get as het up about their interests as rpfers. it must be that little bit of tinhat y'all all got in you. :D

[(Anonymous)]

I actually don't hate rpf at all

So when you said, and I quote, " I condemn it," what you actually mean was that you...are totally fine with it? Kay.

it must be that little bit of tinhat y'all all got in you.

It's true that some RPFers are tinhats, I'll give you that. Every group has its zealots; water is wet; news at eleven. I, however, have never written RPF and I barely ever read it. I have no personal stake in this issue whatsoever. I'm here arguing with you for no other reason than because you're wrong.

[arcadiaego]

It's funny, because I thought the disgust was New School. When I was an internet nipper, there was a *lot* of bandom going on, so lots of RPF. Now it's basically akin to admitting you like fic about child abuse.

(I do think there are morality problems with the stories you mention actually, but not by default, just because I think they told things from a perspective I don't agree with.)

[(Anonymous)]

It's funny, because I thought the disgust was New School

I think maybe it can be seen as both? Back in the late 90s and early 00s RPF was VERY frowned upon in most fandom circles. Then there was an RPF boom and it became a lot more pervasive and talked over, and therefore a lot more normalized and accepted by most. I was unaware that there was this anti-RPF backlash taking place, but the amount of anti-RPF sentiments being expressed in this comm definitely makes a case for your "New School" theory. Either that or F!S is just ridiculously conservative about RPF, in a never-left-the-90s sort of way.

[arcadiaego]

Ah, I would have been really getting into fandom in that 'boom' time you mention, so that would explain a lot. I'm not sure what caused the backlash, though. I don't write and very rarely read RPF so I don't really have a horse in this race, but it's hard to adjust to the new morality.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm actually in the same boat; I don't write and rarely read RPF either. I just find people's objections to it to be, by and large, so reactionary, ill-considered, and...weirdly moralistic? In the sense that it's irrational to be against RPF if one is not also against like a third of the movies in Hollywood. Yet hardly anybody actually takes such a hard line when the RPF is sanctioned by a team of professionals - despite the fact that movies based on real people reach far bigger audiences, and are often quite irresponsible in how they blur the lines between fiction and reality (The Imitation Game and it's casual depiction of treason springs to mind). Hell, it's often in the best interests of all involved to take liberties by adding in some fictional spice, so that audiences will be more entertained and more money will be made. I'd call that a pretty deep-running conflict of interest between the ethical side (tell the truth about a real thing) and the practical side (make money).

Meanwhile, none of this is true of RPF.

It's really all lines in the sand, of course, including my lines in the sand (no putting real people's names on characters who are committing rape/torture). But at least my lines in the sand had some rationality behind them. Which is to say that when an RPF character is depicted as doing something so bad or socially taboo that, if it were mistaken for true it could destroy their entire life, I think that becomes something that's not okay to attach a real person's name to.

[arcadiaego]

I agree with everything you've said think there are definitely *forms* of RPF I don't agree with (and The Imitation Game - because I do consider that sort of thing to be fanfic - did actually deeply offend me due to the suggestion of Turing even temporarily covering up Cairncross - as if the poor guy didn't have enough done to him!) but it's the idea that it's wrong in principle that I find reactionary.

(In fact usually when a relative objects to a film's portrayal of their family, the fandom opinion usually seems to be that they are 'more sensitive' because of their subjective personal involvement.)

[(Anonymous)]

Additionally, anybody who has ever paid money for a tabloid has, IMO, done something that is ethically worse than writing/reading RPF. Not only do tabloids spread falsehoods and unfounded speculations about famous people's personal lives, they often pry into the actual person's life, they publish their falsehoods, they profit financially from them, and they claim their falsehoods are true. That, to me, deserves to be condemned.

RPF, on the other hand, is FIC-TION. It's based on the fanon characterization constructed from a public persona created around an actual person. Yes, it's still thinly tethered to the concept of a real person, but less so than say, the main characters in most roman a clefs.