fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5254 ]

[ SECRET POST #5254 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5254 ⌋

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

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Wow this is honestly a good discussion on the issue and I thank everyone that this hasn't devolved into mindless hate so far.

To elaborate more on what I was trying to get across,

I guess what I'm trying to point out is the hypocrisy of RPF hate. I just think it's weird that professionally made biopics are given a pass by fandom but RPF that maybe 1000 ppl max are going to read is considered horrible and invasive when they're pretty much in nature the same thing.

I mentioned the crown and the Judy garland film because both of them are probably the worse offenders of this and in many ways are worse to me than the most depraved RPF fanfic written because:

1. People are actively profiting off of your story and traumas

2. You can't control the narrative of your history and it may contribute to a sizable public believing some untrue things written in the show/movie for dramatisation.

3. Those celebrities in question have to be confronted with it publicly and asked about their opinion by news stations/paparazzi (aka revisiting tramatic events).

Imo it's worse to have something so public closely mirror your reality that large chunks of the public now believe are true/could have happened Vs I dunno insert your worse most depraved fanfic that like 99% of people are not going to take seriously and maybe 1 or 2 crazy people think are true.

Heck at least the fanfic is usually locked to the site (thus the likelihood of the actual person coming across it extremely rare/nonexistent) and are actually prefaced with - this is a piece of fiction. I may be remembering incorrectly, but I read somewhere that the royals actually tried to get "the crown" to preface their show with that line and failed.

Ultimately, the issue is that RPF is a lot more nuanced than people are willing to concede. People have a knee jerk hatred of RPF that isn't really fair on the intent and scope of the creators.

I don't think it's totally accurate to say that RPF is only gonna have a thousand people max reading it. For reference, the most-viewed RPF fic on AO3 has 2,009,719 hits.

I think there are just a few things that people really have a problem with when it comes down to RPF - one, people think writing pornography (not just explicit sexual scenes but pornography) about real people is wrong. Two, the idea that someone who's not a towering world-famous celebrity can have RPF written about them feels like an invasion of privacy because it's disproportionate to their fame. And three, toxic fandom dynamics - parasocial relationships, tinhatting, and showing pornography to the people that it's about.

And... well, none of those are quite as pronounced with a biopic. It's almost always going to be about someone who is world-famous. It's almost never going to be hardcore pornography. And the toxic social dynamics aren't going to exist as much because people are reacting to a specific creative work.

Is it annoying that people can get the wrong idea about what actually happened, and the paparazzi exist, and all the rest of it? Yes, absolutely. But people getting the wrong idea about real events is something that happens constantly all the time, and if someone has a really defamatory depiction of you, you do have the ability to sue them over it. And paparazzi obviously already exist outside of biopics. So it just feels like a less pronounced problem.

I do agree that peoples' reaction to RPF is pretty disproportionate to the actual problems with it though. FWIW

Fair points you brought up here. I never thought of it quite so succinctly.

I think biopics to me are always going to be more harmful than any RPF just because there exists a real tangible ability to change public opinion on a more massive public scale than RPF ever will.

Realistically there are fans that are incredibly creepy and probably hound the actual real people with their fantasies but I always think of them of as fringe groups that don't really have as much real life consequence than biopics do.

The crown is prob the biggest one that has and is swaying public opinion on the real people. I can only just go and see the YouTube comments on the latest season and see massive amounts of hate piled onto Prince Charles over Princess Diana to know how much influence it seems to have, not to mention the latest drama in the family with Meghan markle and Harry.

I just can't imagine how shitty it must be for prince harry and William to see their parents drama publicized once again and critiqued. I mean yes it's historical fiction but it reopens all these tramatic events all over again that still affect the real people in question. When I think of this and when I think of RPF I just can't see RPF ever gaining this amount of publicity, even the most popular ones.

Im not trying to argue moral standpoints of RPF here that's always going to be murky, but if we're looking at actual real life problems resulting from either it doesn't really compare.

Not OP and this isn't directed at you but at whoever reads this:

Ultimately, I feel that this first point should boil down to a discussion of sex and pornography that can't equate to and much less be summed up in RPF. See, I enjoy RPF in a sense but I never wrote porn about real people and I did read some, but they're little more than words in a paper; I don't take fanfic seriously in general and I treat RPF with even less gravity. I don't like porn in general, unlike... most of fandom, so I think it's valid to be creeped out by porn of real people. But those same people don't think it's valid when, say, real children are creeped out by porn involving fictional children. And of course the people in the fic are NOT the real people (do we have to keep saying it like it's news?) so why should it be any MORE uncomfortable or serious?

As for the second point, well, I guess people can get creative about anything. I don't see what's wrong or scary about it, honestly. As long as they're not... being hurtful or hateful in their creativity, I see no wrong. Even if they are, well, I guess most people see no wrong too. (See: anti-antis arguments.)

As for the third point, well, I hate toxic fandom dynamics in any situation as well so maybe this is why I don't see this as an issue that should be summarized in or represented by RPF. Honestly, some of the warmest fandoms I've been into are/were also full of RPF - but people were very respectful in general and the personalities were more likely to laugh about it than go No Homo!.

The only argument I'd take seriously is that RPF isn't good because people take it too seriously, but this goes for biopics in the same way. And well honestly - hate paparazzi as well, for that matter.

At the end of the day I just agree with OP's points a lot. I take a movie a lot more seriously than fanfic - let's be honest, you can sit down and write a dumb randomly inspired fic on your own in less than one hour ; you can't do this with a movie, it takes time and a team and it's creepier to me that nobody ever went "hey, maybe we should... NOT do this?" - and I guess it all boils down to this. I see some people here take fanfic VERY seriously, even because some are professionals who had their start with fanfic or whatever, and I don't, even because I am not that fluent in English. So people come from different places and have different reasons. It's all fine. But if you're going to be hard on me just because I said this TV personality inspires me to write or just imagine something about cute relationship dynamics, really, I have every right to be hard on you as well.

I think RPF is vastly preferable to biopics of living people (and dead people) because it doesn't pretend that it's real.

The royal family and Judy Garland, to use your examples, were done far dirtier for more profit, by the gossip-profiting press, for decades.

Though I dislike family members of celebs and kids in particular being mentioned in RPF, there are also disclaimers about the fact that they are actually works of fiction. Weird J2 fans aside, nobody who runs across RPF on a fanfiction site are going to believe that Jared Padalecki is Jensen Ackles' sex slave.

because it doesn't pretend that it's real.
Oh, my sweet summer child...

I really want to know what kind of RPF y'all are reading or maybe what y'all are smoking. Whoever said RPF is real? (I'm being serious here, maybe my fandoms are Too Chill though.)

i mean, it's actually pretty notorious? im not even in the one direction or supernatural fandom and ive still heard a lot about the tinhatters

AYRT - Some fandoms are probably damn crazy, but to assume that every RPF fan is like that is... eh. Kinda prejudiced.

I mean, honestly, 1 and 2 are also true for RPF with the notable exception that the RP in question have little legal recourse against largely anonymous fic authors and they have a shit-ton of it against, for example, HBO.

3 is not true for RPF, but also the paparazzi have never needed a TV series to repeatedly ask celebrities intrusive questions about traumatic events.

When I wrote 1. I meant in the sense that people are literally making money off of the actual people's history. RPF fanfiction doesn't have people getting money out of it to my knowledge.

As for 2. The scopes are different. Even if we take the largest most read public fanfic that account for a couple million, it doesn't match up to the amount of people watching the crown or insert biopics that are watched by several times nor the very public nature of those shows. Not to mention fanfic is largely not taken seriously for the most part while in many ways biopics blur the line between fictional and real. It's not unrealistic for a casual watcher to come away with a misconstrued view of an actual person after seeing a show vs. fanfic where like maybe you have some 1 or 2% fringe crazies think it's true.

True on number 3 though. Though it does make for issues that should have stayed in the past easier and more socially acceptable to talk about though.

Actually, they don't have much recourse against HBO if they're "public figures". People like, say, any servants depicted might, but for the public figures in question it has to be really egregiously harmful lies while they're alive for it to have a chance in court.

My understanding is that this is something that depends massively on what jurisdiction the public figures would be able to bring their case in

I want to say something intelligent but honestly you've managed to put everything that I feel but can't explain when "RPF antis" go Punisher on RPF writers/fans into words like I'd never, so a big "THANK YOU" is all I have to say.

Okay, so can I write RPF about you and how you're fucking your brother or something

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #5254 ]

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