Let’s Talk About Real People

Yep, it’s RPF discussion time, because this is a blog by a fangirl who has spent a good deal of time over the years reading fic, and given that’s the case, this is one of the major issues that comes up over and over again (as evidenced by the delicious ‘rpf’ tag for metafandom).

At its heart—if you happen to be a fic-reading fan who lives under a rock or a non-fic-reading fan who doesn’t really know what I’m talking about—the issue I want to get at here is the ethics of reading/writing stories (or viewing/making art or vids) that create fictionalized relationships (usually of a sexual nature) between real people.  Hence RPF.  Real Person Fiction.  As opposed to FPF, or Fake Person Fiction.

I have to include a couple highlights from Wikipedia’s timeline of RPF, because some of them are kind of genius and some of them make me want to laugh and some of them fascinate me as events in fandom history.

From 1977 to 1983, Led Zeppelin slash fan fiction begins to circulate in fanzines. The early zines used the names Tris and Alex, or Allyn Sterling/Derek Quinn instead of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.

Early 1980s – Star Wars stories are published in which Harrison Ford meets Han Solo.

1984 – Elliot Roosevelt published the first of his detective novels starring his mother Eleanor.

Late 1990s – Inspired by t-shirts showing Clinton and Gore’s heads on embracing twink bodies, a few Clinton/Gore stories are written.

On December 28, LOTR_RPS appears, the first The Lord of the Rings real person fiction community.

I (fondly) remember my Lotrips days (because LOTR RPS was simply too many syllables and fen love nothing more than shorthand names), including my own subscription to the LOTR_RPS yahoogroups list from issue #1, and though I think the 90s boybands are where RPF started as a major subset of fandom, I give Lotrips the credit for taking RPF from a subset into a fandom force to be reckoned with.

Me, I come down squarely in favor of RPF.  I have no problem with it whatsoever.  As far as I’m concerned it’s fantasy, and as long as people clarify that what they’re creating is intended as a fictional scenario, then I say live and let live.  There’s nothing different to me about fantasizing about a made-up character or a real-life person.

The truth of the matter is that even if your character of choice shares a name and a physical appearance with someone who’s out there living and breathing and acting/singing/dancing/doing something you get fannish about, when fan material is created about that person, he or she is still just that.  A character.  A character formed from observations of a real person’s public behavior, yes, but hell, if all of my public behavior was observed, I can’t imagine the conclusions people would draw about me as a person would be totally accurate.  And that goes even more for public figures who, one imagines, have crafted personae to show the public that may or may not have much to do with them in their private lives.

Of course, there are the crazy people and tinhatters out there who jump on the RPF train and then claim that no, really, Elijah Wood and Dominic Monaghan are really gay for each other and madly in love.  (True story of fan nuttery summarized over here.)  And the people who have no sense of boundaries, like the one who saw this Q&A post on Ian McKellen’s official site:

Q: My fellow yahoogroup members and I all respect you, the cast, crew, and movie itself. Most of us indulge in a hobby called ‘fanfic.’ A great deal of us write (or read) ‘slash,’ and a few members write ‘RPS’  (Real Person Slash.) What are your thoughts on such things? Do you consider them slanderous to your good character and/or to the good character of any actor/movie/etc?

A: I am not well acquainted with slash but find nothing harmful in sharing fantasies about favourite characters or their interpreters. Within the context of such sites even Real Person stories seem unobjectionable as they are clearly fictional.

and responded by printing out some of that (sexually explicit) slash and giving it to Sir Ian at a public event.  *facepalm*

I’ve got to say, though, those sorts of occurrences seem to thankfully happen fairly rarely.  For the most part, I give fen the benefit of the doubt and happily observe us keeping RPF safely where it, in my opinion, belongs.  In the realm of fantasy and well away from the people who inspire us to create and consume it.

Please feel free to jump in and debate this one.  I know there are lots of opinions about RPF, and I know a lot of them contradict my own.

Meet the Fangirls

I am historically quite nervous about meeting people in real life that I first encounter online, especially fen.  For all that online fandom is a fantastic way to bring people together around canon sources, internet communities have a marked tendency to be, without mincing words, full of weirdos.

I’ve witnessed it a whole bunch of times myself, most especially with a former friend who used to habitually have real-life meet-ups with other fen, almost all of whom were really unable to a) carry on much of a conversation at all and b) include anything non-fandom related in their conversational attempts.

I’m always reminded of a conversation from Metafandom a few years back (I’m not linking to the discussion specifically, so I don’t end up pointing fingers at specific fen) that began with the following:

Why does everyone call life away from the computer “real” life? (as in this)

What exactly do you think life is? Any time where you’re not dead? Is real life. What do you think the internet is, a big fantasy? Because if you don’t consider this “real”, then what is? All of the “fakeness” that people complain about online? You can find in a bar, in your house, with your friends, in a classroom, whatever. There is no difference. There never has been a difference. If you have life that’s not “real” life, then what are you doing with it?

Discuss.

Personally, I don’t completely agree or disagree here, and there were a lot of interesting responses that covered the spectrum.  But there was one theme that showed up pretty commonly, and I will summarise it by quoting from one of the replies.

Oh, definitely! I was talking in chat with some folks one day and they were like, well, how do you interact with people offline, and I’m like uh, I don’t. And it’s not because I work at home. When I was at school or when I had an office job, I just didn’t talk to people any more than necessary. I read a book or did my own thing or whatever. My mom and me are complete opposites in that regard, as she is the type who will talk to anyone. Like she’ll be in line at the store or in the elevator and just start talking to people and I’m like omg don’t! I just…gah! Just thinking about it makes me uncomfortable.

And the best, best, best thing about online interaction? No one telling you you should look people in the eye!

Here is where online communities make me sad, because to my mind, that reply is a sign of social anxiety issues that should be addressed in the non-computer-based world, not enabled by impersonal online interaction.

But I’m digressing from the point of this post.

The point of the post is that yesterday, I sucked up my own anxiety over meeting ‘internet people’ and went to a meet-up of a bunch of Supernatural fangirls.

And if you’re still reading through all this boring old text, here, I’ll give you a wee giftie of an image to enliven things and to give you a hint at one reason why we’re fannish over this show.

That would be the stars, Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, and I’ll say no more about how they look at each other.

Aaaaanyway, despite my nervousness beforehand, I was enormously ENORMOUSLY pleased to spend the afternoon with this group of 20 fangirls who were delightful and clever and shameless in the best sort of way (vocal public discussion of gay porn was actually one of the tamer activities).  And fully socially functional, which might not sound like much of a compliment, but I swear it is.  There was talk about fandom and real-life (which, yes, I do mostly think of as being the non-computer activities) and the show on both giggly, squeeful and serious, thoughtful levels.  We had drinks and ate and played games and exchanged little gifts, and it was a wonderful afternoon in wonderful company.

So thanks to those ladies for letting me mark a check into the Cool column of the ‘Online People I Have Met’ tally I keep in my head.  It does me good to see that there are fun, engaging people out there behind the usernames.  People who aren’t the stereotypical maladjusted internet addicts, who, let’s face it, do exist.  Just not at our little gathering yesterday, for which I am grateful and happy.