#I don't normally do historical RPF but

[marzipanandminutiae]

you know what I stand by my decision to write Charlotte Canda (1828-1845), 17-year-old polymath prodigy and carriage accident statistic, as the queen of a vampire coven with a secret high-tech lair under her own self-designed Gothic grave monument, in my attempted 2015 NaNoWriMo project

I should write that more actually

I feel it's a fitting tribute to what I know of her

[jejushipbracket]

Is your ship JeJu? Let us know!

Sometimes you think about unhinged love. And then you realize that perhaps whoever wrote Judas and Jesus (from the bible)'s interactions was perhaps the world's most famous fujoshi and/or fudanshi. This is what that is. Not afilliated to JeJu Hater Polls who I Will Not Name.

RULES:

For a ship to be JeJu, it must fit at least one of the following criteria:

Person A betrays Person B to the point it leaves a lasting impact. Either to the person, narrative or real life.

Person B outshines Person A to the point some hatred or ill will is left behind. Maybe leads to point 1.

Person A and Person B know each other but one (or both parties) know that their relationship will not end well.

Person A and Person B are doomed to hurt one another not only in a toxic way but also in a biblical way (for example, prophecies, foreshadowing, etcetera)

Person B is literally a god and Person A is a mortal who knows that they are powerless next to B (simillar to 2).

Person A and Person B are quite literally JeJu/JeJu parallels.

If you make a really convincing point not on here on why a pair is JeJu I might add it too.

Pairings must only be queer in nature (mlm or wlw or NB/F-M-NB). Straight pairings are NOT allowed!!!!!!!

No real life people and/or avatars of real life people (VTubers, Youtubers, Band Personas a-la Daft Punk, MCYT). For the sake of this argument, the bible counts as fiction due to it's improbable nature and also because I say so. I will not argue about this.

As an addendum, arguably historic stories (mythos, old folk tales, etcetera.) are allowed as long as you can convince me about it. The RPF rule is mostly about currently alive people, people who have living relatives, and whatnot. I'll let you history majors fight it out, sure. Also don't be weird about it.

Ha//rry P////tt/er and H/zbin H/t/////el/ are not allowed in the victinities due to discourse. I will also not argue about this.

No incest or pedophilia.

Depending on submissions that's how we're going to decide the bracket size. Do be ready for any changes in the ruling depending on how it all goes! Poll is projected to end on NOVEMBER 30TH. For fun.

Amen.

[lonelyroommp3]

u dont have to answer this but i was wondering if u could elaborate on ur opinions about rpf -- bc i kind of agree with you that it's like, it's fine and it's not morally wrong or anything but it def is a little weird? idk ive never been able to rly explain my feelings about it so im curious what u think

honestly my main view on rpf (whether of the y/n self insert variety or the gay shipping variety) is it's literally fine as long as you're not putting it anywhere the people involved are going to see it. like when you boil rpf down to its bare essentials it is just fantasising about a famous person (or multiple famous people, in varying combinations), which is something human beings have been doing in their brains since people first started becoming famous. and i think expressing those fantasies through creative outlets like fic, art, 2013 polyvore outfit boards about going on a yacht trip with harry styles, etc is an entirely natural progression of that impulse

and in that way i sort of view it as similar to any other fantasy you might have about another human being: it is totally normal and essentially morally neutral, i hope you'd agree, to daydream about a person you fancy, whether those daydreams are PG-13 or heinously X-rated, whether they're a friend or acquaintance or stranger or celebrity. where it would become weird is if you went up to said person completely uninvited and said "hey, would you like to hear in elaborate detail about the things i thought about you doing to me while i was masturbating last night?" - and so i think the same applies to rpf. like obviously don't send your rpf to the person in question, don't show up with BLINK TWICE IF THE BABY IS FAKE signs to a louis tomlinson concert, archive lock your rpf on ao3, don't proudly post about it on websites that the people in question are active on especially in this age of algorithm-based social media where unless you lock your account you have no real surefire way of ensuring they'll never see it, etc etc. every time i see people talk shipping in the comments of an official f1 post a part of my soul dies

i think another big thing about rpf to me is that all celebrities are essentially playing a fictionalised version of themselves. no matter how authentic they seem to their fanbase, when you combine things like media training + PR/marketing obligations + building a Persona + the pressure of competing in a sport (for athletes) + the level of code switching inherent to being in what is essentially a public facing job, we as fans & observers are not seeing the real harry styles or taylor swift or charles leclerc or whoever else. we are seeing the version of that person that they want us to see (or, in the case of historical rpf, you're writing about a ghost reconstructed from fragments distorted through the lens of missing evidence, potentially biased historians, potentially even more biased first and third party accounts, etc), and so i don't really view rpf as inherently invasive because you're not really writing about the real person, moreso the constructed image of Celebrity Of Choice.

of course, that is not to say that rpf can never become invasive: the clearest example would be ship truthers harassing the people involved due to what they perceive as "evidence" of some great forbidden love story, but i'll be real there is a lot of F1 rpf specifically that i side eye from a distance because of how it will use drivers' intensely personal real life trauma as a plot point, which is a line i'm not really comfortable crossing with real living people, especially not when it comes to dangerous sports lmao. but i think that is an issue with some rpf enjoyers' boundaries and not an inescapable root problem with the very idea of rpf imo

[antimony-medusa]

honestly yeah u make a really good point in ur mcyt rpf post. i was Also the person bemoaning how mcyt defaults into vbrpf tags and that there isn't a separate set, but then i realized like. i spent Years writing fic about the roosterteeth crew, which all fell in a very similar gray area like mcyt. like looking at shit like fake ah crew fic, the characters written about there are very obviously separate from the real life people, but also they are intrinsically linked. the characters don't exist without the people. and even though we were all in fandom talking and writing about them like playing with dolls, it was still like... yeah okay this fits under the rpf umbrella still. i never questioned it then, or was bothered about it not being a separate tag set, because it didn't feel necessary. which is really the same situation with mcyt!! its just that for any number of reasons, mcyt fandom in particular tends to have a very loud and very vehement group that think rpf as a whole is abhorrent and doesn't even want to be clocked anywhere close to it. which like honestly thats a personal issue at that point, thats not on everyone else to deal with, and certainly not on ao3 to sort out.

Yeah like I think RPF has a bad reputation because of some very obvious bad actors who've behaved badly in the past that the whole internet knows about, and especially because MCYT was kind of the butt of the joke and hatred for a lot of social media sites, a lot of people were eager to emphasize that they weren't behaving like that, it was fine, they were being totally normal (and they had the creator's permission, hence the boundaries discourse and the twitter cancellations for anything "weird"), and nobody should hate them cause they totally weren't like those weirdos.

And that's a really understandable reaction to try and do, I also have gone into the comments of bracket polls and seen hate, but that also ignores that the vast majority of RPF is a) not actually hurting anyone b) is not any more egregious in its content than any other fandom c) Is not inherently weirder to the creators than anyone who avidly follows their social media and shows up at their meet and greet and like— tts them stuff. We've all seen people TTS stuff that should NOT have been said in view of the creators, but the vast majority of it is perfectly fine. I very much think we shouldn't be showing RPF to the creators, and because the boundary is thin for MCYT I extend that to thinking that there's a WHOLE bunch of stuff that we shouldn't be showing to the creators— from gore to shipping to nsfw to aging down family dynamics to stuff about people they've lost— but I don't think that reacting with a horrified gasp to anyone saying "oh yeah rpf" is actually necessary. Or heck, if you were watching twitchcon vids and you want to straight up write tagged-as-RPF, go with god, I don't think that's inherently any weirder than people who go to twitchcon to meet streamers. You like them a lot and you want to rotate them mentally and get a picture with them, that's like, fine. As long as we keep it in fandom spaces and don't make the streamers feel weird cause we're showing them it, you're just doing what people who got really into polygon videos over the pandemic did, or historians who write historical RPF about their ancient blorbos, or whatever. it's fine.

Particularly cause what I write is mostly aus, I've had to wrestle with the question of if what I'm writing is RPF, and I think it's (usually) not, I can tell in my head when I'm thinking streamers or when I'm thinking characters, but like, we're talking *really* fine distinctions at points. If someone thinks that it's RPF it's not an insult to me, I can tell how they get there, and me reacting like it IS an insult is kind of rude to my fandom neighbours who are writing Gamechanger RPF where they design their own challenges cause they just have so much fun with the show, you know?

Some of this is just that I'm in my 30s and I'm tired of fandom policing, I can coexist with a lot of shit if you just tag it appropriately so I can filter it if I need to. For the holiday exchange last year we had no RPF as a rule not because I had an issue with it, but because the form to get the information for it would have been literally two hundred checkboxes long and I didn't want to do that to my spreadsheets.

I kind of drifted from your point there, but yeah, I think MCYT is legitimately in a blurry spot when it comes to if it's RPF or not, but that's not something I think we need to get all up in arms about, and we certainly don't need to, as I saw someone recommend we all do, file a ticket with Ao3 to remove MCYT tags from Video Blogging RPF.

[astradyke]

💙 cheers, dear 📺

mare (or astra is fine) • they/she/he • 19 • US • arab • muslim

asexual lesbian who would risk it all for phil lester

i follow from violexides <- my main acct is disinteresting so you can follow ofc but i don't follow folks with my main in mind

identify not as a dyke who could fix the phouse, nor as a dyke who can conduct statistical analysis, but rather as a dyke with "aspirations", including chronicling every time phil lester wears the WAD hat or writing thousands of words analyzing 90 seconds of a texting video. we have fun here.

until death do us part web weave | sister daniela web weave

astra.meta is my tag for long analyses/compilations, a bit of a bastardization of the term but they all slot together (wip)

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!! im a normal guy engaging w d&p in good faith, they can do whatever they want & be whatever they want & its none of my biz. i am not personally affected by their relationship, i simply hope they r happy & like having a little laugh on tumblr dot com. though they could stand to talk about their freak sex less (<- example of a joke i make)

^ i post 18+ content about dan and phil. i believe strongly & passionately in a dissonance between dan and phil as Real People and dan and phil as performers with 'characters' absorbed into RPF. i do not care at all about their actual real sex lives. if i make a post about their sex lives, i am either joking (which they also do) or referring to them in an RPF context. this is in line with what they themselves have okay-ed and encouraged. do not send me/talk to me about any nakedbooth content.

+ d&p are both rich white men that have historically said/perpetuated some microaggressions. i don't discuss this here much, but i implore you to support phannies of color + understand that anything ick they've done does not negate the good; vis versa.

. i try to ID most posts for accessibility, but i do not write alt text. if i miss a post and you would like it ID-ed, please reach out to me. as a general rule, posts made during live-blogging & web weaves are unlikely to have IDs.

` i will reblog my own web weaves and occasionally metas a lot. these are mostly tagged 'srb'. i try not to be annoying with it, but i care a lot about what i create/write and see no shame in recirculating it within reason.

| i am really verbose which means both that i'll write like 2k words about one silly thing but also that i am a complete over-explainer of my own intentions. if anything here confuses you please lmk but i'd love if we can approach things in good faith

banner // icon

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[echobx]

oh I'm ranting again. but ig by now you guys know that I can't keep my mouth shut. so to add to the list of all the apparently unpopular opinions that I have...

I don't actually think role play (rp) (and real people fanfic (rpf)) is bad, not if it's characters, and also not if it's celebrities.

"How can you say that? What's wrong with you?" I mean, there's plenty wrong with me but not here. Especially not here. I'm aware of my "controversial" takes when it comes to fandom, but honestly, the only reason you find them controversial (if you do) is because you haven't been in fandom long enough. Which, I will grant, is difficult if you are 1. not old enough to know better 2. are in a fandom that is rather young, like OBX is. But telling people what to do and not to do, simply based on you not wanting to see it, is simply and clearly an act of censorship. Now I'm not saying that it equates to the censorship our governments are trying to put on us in online communities (especially in the US recently) but it lays a ground for the politicians to base their argument on. Because when you go and spread around that some things "shouldn't be done" and "shouldn't be written" and "shouldn't be drawn" that creates a base layer of what politicians will take and say "see, they want us to censor them" and that is never ever good. bc it might at first be role play and "dead dove, do not eat" types of content, but it will really quickly lead to the banning of queer content, and I won't fucking stand for that.

so, yes, you might cringe at RP and other things, but you also have the possibility to simply block those accounts, to block the tags to filter your own online experience, especially on tumblr since it's the only truly user friendly social media site that we have left.

and on the fact of people bringing up Chappell Roan in this discussion. Chappell very clearly said that she feels uncomfortable irl bc it happens IN HER REAL LIFE. if she cared about people just talking online about her without any irl reason for it, she would've said that. but she didn't. she was rightfully pissed that people approached her irl and didn't take no for and answer and only after that they went online and talked shit about her. this is entirely different to RP. (it also reminds me how straight people forced Kit Connor to come out and then blamed queer people for it, when no queer person ever made him feel the need to come out because we accepted him even when he was in the public closet)

RP is clearly tagged as such, the people who do it are very much aware that it's a game, and not real. if you can't make that distinction, that's on you. not the person who RPs or the people who interact with the RP.

side note: if RPing is bad, why are you watching historical dramas based on real people? why is it okay for the industry to make bank on the lives of dead AND living people, but a normal person can't do the same without getting paid? maybe you should also think about that, because it's literally the same. y'all watched Elvis and Bohemian Rhapsody and The Crown and so many more shows and movies that are based on real people but aren't what actually happened 100% and that is okay, but when fandom does it you want it to be wrong and a moral failure? get a grip.

there's a clear line between fiction and reality and it's not the creator's fault for you to go and blurr that line because you don't understand the rules. RP and RPF have been part of fandom culture since the beginning, and just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it will go away, because there's nothing wrong with it.

just do with RP/RPF what you do with more important things in our daily lives, more serious matters. Look Away. bc clearly you are good at it any times else.

[johnradams]

not gonna lie if you're going to leave a comment like "I looked this up as a joke but it's actually good" or "I hate historical rpf but this was good" on my fics I would rather you just not comment.

There is a difference between saying 'I don't normally enjoy this genre' and literally saying 'I think the genre you write in is a joke, I normally scream and cry about any RPF' in someone's comments. I actually don't care if you do not enjoy historical fiction based on real people. My work isn't for you.

Also - I personally find it rude to comment that there are inaccuracies in a historical fic without 1) asking if the author is down for concrit or 2) providing details. You are LITERALLY just saying "you're wrong" and leaving which is helpful to no one.

[obsessive-bear-walking]

This is a very black and white question that I don't personally feel has a simple answer. Because, do I personally find posting some rpf morally wrong? Yes. I've seen sexual fanfiction of the kids from Stranger things when they were still young minors posted online freely for anyone to see, including the kids themselves! As if we weren't nasty enough to those poor kids.

However if it comes down to "Should we ban rpf because it makes people uncomfortable?" My answer will always be no for several reasons including the fact that Fandom discourse tends to forget that a lot of things people do in Fandom is normalized in mainstream media and the antis condone or ignore it. To ban rpf means removing all fictionalized versions of real people from the media landscape.

Here are some examples of "Real Person Fiction" in mainstream media that wouldn't exist if it were banned out right. These range from normal biopis to the most unhinged shit you've ever seen:

Walk the Line (2005) is a biopic but things were embellished to make a "good story".

Julie and Julia (2009) which the woman the movie is about has said wasn't totally on the mark.

Abraham lincoln: vampire hunter (2012)

Hidden Figures (2016) and of course an article explaining things that were embellished for the film.

Real People on the Superhero Scifi show on Legends of Tomorrow (Spoillers!) One clip, a second clip, and a list of the people featured. There are also references to real people existing in other arrowverse shows in smaller ways. Jesse Quick says that Beyonce is a senator on her earth upon seeing a video of her performing on earth 1.

Author Xiran Jay Zhao (they/them) has two books with historical figures as well. Including Zachary Ying and the Dragon Empiror and Iron Widow. I must have exceeded the number of links I can add to a post because both those books were hyperlinked, oh well, Google is feee :3

Any true crime OR paranormal activity show with reenactments.

Omg I cannot believe I forgot about the Bill & Ted Franchise that too.

There is real person fiction in mainstream media that a lot of people overlook and it and in my opinion, it needs to be considered and not ignored. You don't want people writing rpf at all? Okay, then we will never see even a fully accurate biopic again. You can't ban one part of a thing without banning all of it.

a genuine question since I’ve seen this being debated a lot

feel free to give your reasons / thoughts on this but please also remember to respect other people’s opinions

[olderthannetfic]

I try to be pro freedom of fiction, but there's one genre I find hard to swallow where I find that the anti arguments often make more sense to me than the pro arguments, and that's RPF. It's fiction, I know that, but I wouldn't want anyone to write smut about me either, especially not me as a kid, so it sits wrong with me as a genre. It just feels repulsive and intrusive to treat real people as fictional characters. Any idea on where I can find more nuanced takes on this subject?

RPF anon, I'm not sending this in to admonish anyone for writing it or to tell them to stop doing it, and I'm never gonna interact with that content anyway, but it does elicit a reaction of "Ew, oh God why" in me and I was curious to know what makes this type of content fine to write about real people. Looking to learn, not change anyone's mind.

--

Well...

First of all, disgust is not a moral compass. Sometimes, what we find disgusting does line up well with things we think are logically unethical, but sometimes, it's just a visceral reaction based on personal taste or learned hatred. So we'll set that part aside for now.

Now, on to your real point, which is that RPF could upset its subjects. That does make logical sense on the surface. I can see why it's an attractive argument.

Here is the problem I have with it:

1. Yes, you would not like RPF written about you, but how do you know that this applies to other people? Every time this topic comes up, somebody asks me "How would you like it if someone nonconsensually wrote RPF about you?" and my answer is that this has happened to me. I felt slightly weird about it, but I didn't ask them to stop. We're still friends 20 years later.

We have examples of celebrities who were flattered or amused. We have examples of celebrities who asked people not to do specific things like shipping them with their ex but who did not care if people wrote violent porn about them.

It is simply untrue that everyone objects to RPF, even pornographic and squicky RPF, about themselves. I am not a celeb, but I genuinely do not care if someone writes graphic pedo fic about me as a child. I don't even care if they jerk it to photographs of me as a child. As long as they aren't fucking actual kids or sending their fic to me, I don't care what they do.

Your next point is going to be something like "Okay, but what about a celeb who has said they hate it?" My answer there is that many individual fans will not want to write fic under those circumstances, and I get why. However, the second problem I have with anti-RPF arguments is:

2. What makes RPF so special? Plenty of actors identify very closely with a character they play and object strenuously to fic about that character, especially anything they find gross or creepy... and yes, historically, this has meant m/m more than it has meant death or rapefic.

Why should an actor's genuine feelings of disgust and hurt be invalid when a fic is about a character they play rather than their public persona? What gives them the right to tell fans how to fantasize in either case?

Authors are even more notorious for freaking out about fic of their work. They've thrown hissy fits likening it to cheating with their spouse, to rape, and to white slavery. (Fuck you, Diana Gabaldon. Never forget!) I know fans who think fanfic of books in general is an invasion and that only fic of tv/film is normal and okay.

Fic can cause genuine hurt feelings, yes, but all fic can do this.

--

Those are my logical arguments for why all RPF is acceptable--or at least no different from other fic. But I also think it's important to recognize how RPF operates in practice.

In this era of youtube celebrities, we are seeing a bit more RPF of people who are relatively accessible and maybe not that famous. However, most RPF is still about the public personas of famous people. It's more likely that a rando will have a boundary-tresspassing friend write them into an original novel than that they'll get RPF written about them in a fandom context.

Typical RPF looks more like some AU where fanon personalities and faces of BTS are grafted onto a bunch of wizards running a magic shop. This is so unbelievably fake I don't even know where to start. Even if it isn't an AU, idol groups are some of the fakest celebrities there are. Their images are heavily manufactured. The people being written about might as well be characters they play.

Moreover, their images are manufactured to make fans fantasize.

Music groups have always done this. It has been normal since way, way back to have fan magazines with stories about "You win a date with [guy]". The only difference is that people now write a fair amount of m/m in addition to m/ofc.

I just don't think it's reasonable to tell fans how to fantasize or to ask your audience not to have an imagination. Fic on AO3 is far more boundary-respecting than people gushing over their crushes on twitter, a site plenty of celebs actually use, but they're both okay as long as people aren't rubbing the subject's face in their fantasy life.

Even the favorite example of Dan and Phil is complicated. Yes, fans were pushy and obnoxious at them--directly at them--but they also stoked the fires of shipping because it was good for clicks. They rode that type of fan fantasy to stardom. People writing fic are at least engaging in overt fiction and fantasy, unlike the people harassing the actual dudes for info about their personal lives.

Anti-RPF rants tend to treat this as some innocent passerby minding their own business and then some pervert jumping out of the bushes to tell them about their wank fantasies, but that's just not the reality of most RPF writing. It's generally inspired by people who seek fame through encouraging that kind of fantasy. It's not RPF that invades celebs' space: it's people demanding a stop to RPF who are invading fans' space.

And there's a special circle of hell for those pathetic suckups who show other people's fic to their faves hoping to get their fandom enemies in trouble and curry favor with their idols. Those are the people with no boundaries who deserve our wrath.

--

Original writing is full of RPF, from basically all historical novels to ripped from the headlines stuff speculating about celebrities. I find some of this tasteless or Too Soon, but it is seen as completely normal by society. Most 'young woman meets her male celeb crush' stuff is normalized.

The reason RPF comes under fire is that the less socially acceptable sexual fantasies of young women are always under fire.

I absolutely do think there are issues with teenagers seeking internet fame and finding it's more than they bargained for. If you object to fanfic about teenage youtubers, you should object to there being teenage youtubers.

I also think there are issues with child stars. But is somebody's Stranger Things fanfic on AO3 really more of a problem than all the things that went on on set? Than the epic quantities of creepy fanmail? Ultimately, if you're bothered by RPF of underage actors, you should be against underage people being in movies at all. The biggest sources of harm aren't coming from fic.

[fourohfourlifenotfound]

RPF History: DNP vs DNF

I'm someone who has existed at the generational divide in fanfiction communities. I'm old enough to have started on ff.net and young enough to see fic recs for my Fandom on tiktok. Today I'd like to rant about how much RPF has changed in the last decade or so.

For those who don't know, RPF stands for real person fiction. Famously one direction falls into this category. I'm going to be comparing the two rpf fandoms I've existed in: Dan & Phil and Dream SMP.

Dan and Phil's peak on the internet fell into place with the first generation of youtubers. This generation went from nobodies making videos in their bedrooms to celebrities in an age where fame came from money or more traditional media. The difference between YouTube and traditional media was the focus on relatability. These were normal people, just like their audience. And as a result, a lot of boundaries got crossed.

Specifically in the case of Dan and Phil, there was a lot of shipping. Two nonmasculine emo guys living together for many years? Yeah, a lot of people had suspicions about their sexualities and relationship status. This isn't uncommon today: everyone looked at Dream and George in 2020 and thought the exact same thing, despite them living an ocean apart (this is likely a hallmark of the pandemic: the idea of love existing through screens and despite physical barriers).

The difference was that Fandom back then didn't know how to interact with creators. There were no norms for boundaries. This went far above and beyond awkward questions. People zoomed in, took screenshots and did analysis of everything. If one mentioned buying a fan to use on his bedside table while he slept and it was spotted in the background of a visitor's vlog in another room, then people flipped out. And there were things even worse than this deep cut analysis... if you were in this fandom, you might remember the fallout from the vday video. It was the wild west out there, and it hurt a ton of creators.

Dan and Phil also existed on the internet during a revolution in the fanfiction world: people stopped being afraid of legal consequences for writing fanfic. As a result, fandoms got louder and prouder about their fanworks. It became a lot easier to find. Dan and Phil, who have openly mentioned being on tumblr frequently, ran into it easily.

If you watch enough of their content, you can see Dan and Phil struggling to navigate their position as the subjects of one of the biggest rpf ships of the time. I distinctly remember Dan brushing off shippers at some points and then joking in a video about not caring if you wrote smut about him and Phil so long as you got his favorite Pokémon right. As time goes on, you see less vlogs as they learn to keep more of their privacy.

This fan-creator relationship now looks wildly different, from both ends.

You see creators learning from their predacessors to keep more of their privacy early on. Ranboo and Dream and Corpse are prime examples for not revealing their real names or their faces.

You also see fandoms respecting the boundaries of their creators far more. I can google the name of any dsmp member followed by "boundaries" and get a complete up-to-date list of everything that they are comfortable with their fans doing, from shipping to smut to art to names to pronouns. I've seen Ranboo fans being supportive of him keeping his privacy and not pressing for a face reveal after he expressed his discomfort; in fact, I've seen people weirded out at the idea of knowing what part of his face looks like because they're more used the idea of him keeping his privacy.

But despite all of this, I would say that rpf subjects haven't distanced themselves from shipping and fanfic; they've embraced it and gotten closer to their fans.

Heatwaves was historic in that it was the first fanfiction to go truly mainstream. It caused the popularity of its titular song to skyrocket and it got recognized by every content creator in that space. The author was uncomfortable with the ccs finding it initially, and rightfully so given the past boundary crossing of fandoms and reactions from creators. But they did find it, they made an account to read it, and they were okay with it.

Wilbur Soot is the first instance I've seen of a writer with a work that has an established fan base posting original content for that work to a fanfiction website.

And this week, Dream called himself a "toxic shipper" in a tweet. About shipping himself with his friends. This is very new for the world of rpf.

New Fandom: I want you to understand what it used to be like, where we came from. The norm used to be really bad for both creators and fans. I want you to think of this and keep improving upon what's been built.

Old Fandom: I want you to see how far new Fandom has come. They may not understand how to properly tag things or keep content where it's supposed to go, but they've made leaps and bounds in terms of establishing a fandom-creator relationship.

[chickenlessbonewing]

Rpf, horrible new craze or unacknowledged genre that's always been here?

We have so many well known movies and books and shows that are just rpf, like:

Shakespeare in love

Our flag means death

Velvet goldmine

Anastasia

The great escape

The sound of music

Dante's inferno, purgatorio, and paradiso

Abraham Lincoln vampire hunter

Hamilton

Any time Cleopatra shows up in anything

Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar

And that's barely scratching the surface!

Every single piece of media that's "based on a true story" or falls under "fictionalized biography" is rpf. You've read, watched, and enjoyed it whether you want to admit it or not.

Shipping irl people is nothing new. Whether you write about it or post about it or not, everyone's done it at some point, even you, and you'll do it again. Can you honestly tell me you've never wondered if two of your friends had feelings for each other or thought they'd make a cute couple? Or read about historical figures and thought the same? How is that moraly different?

Yes there is a problem when people make it their whole personality and become obsessed to the point of harassing the people and their families, but that isn't exclusive to rpf and you can engage with rfp without doing that.

I don't consider the characters in my fics equal to the people they are based on because in my fics they aren't real life people, they are characters. The closest they could ever be are vague imitations of the real people they're based on. Like a painting or a statue of a historical figure, they are them in name and appearance only.

Now, this isn't me condoning fic that promotes toxic or genuinely harmful ideas or tropes, that's a different discussion entirely. What I'm focused on here is, why is rpf only bad online when it's extremely common and normalized in literature, movies, and interpersonal circles?

[rotisseries]

list of viable red flags of mine

had a hamilton phase. i literally went to see it in january. i stand by my statement that i've never had a cringe fandom phase because usually my fandoms weren't cringe and the cringe ones i WAS into i was normal about and not severely embarassing. (such as reading historical rpf. i've never done that i'm not gonna do it i SWEAR i just liked the music) nevertheless hamilton fan in any form is cringe

i'm homeschooled

mixed up percy jackson's birthday with my dad's. confidently stated the wrong birthday at the dinner table when asked if i knew my dad's birthday i'm not joking this one is bad

i get headaches when i get too emotionally invested in fanfiction. i think it's the combination of staring at a screen and getting too excitable but it's fucking weird what the hell

i watched. and enjoyed. my hero academia. wasn't in the fandom beyond reading fic but. it's mha

had an hp phase forcibly thrust upon me by my family

ellie is not my favorite character in the last of us series. she's a very close second. i do think there is something fundamentally broken in me for this one it just sounds wrong as i say it like it's literally the ellie series to me she's the main bitch i love her why is she only my second fave

i was never a superwholock fan but i knew way too much about it via tumblr posts i saw on google images. almost a superwholocker by proxy. borderline

expanding on that. i wasn't allowed to have any social media (not even pinterest😔) so i experienced it solely through screenshots on google images. i'd be like "funny tumblr posts" "funny tumblr posts about [current fandom]" and then i'd just scroll to the end of the results

my family knows that i read fanfiction they just don't know what it's about. i was asked at the dinner table if i read fanfiction about mike and will from stranger things. this was an awful experience. also my dad used to have my email set up to forward emails i got to him when i was younger, and i didn't know this and signed up to ff.net and subscribed to plenty of pjo fic that were definitely very bad and in hindsight knowing he saw the update emails i got is just awful. god. killing myself

i'm gonna have to come up with cringe facts about myself to share so sara @willelfanpage has a fighting chance aren't i

[twbingo]

The Rules! & FAQ

The list of the rules and FAQ are under the cut for keeping this as neat as possible. Each section has an update date listed on it. If you have any questions, email the mod at twbingomod@gmail.com or submit an ask.

The Rules

The most important rule of all, don't be an asshole!

All participants must but 18 or older. If you are found to be a minor, you will be banned and blocked.

All pairings/characters will be allowed outside of RPF.

Warnings must be given for all content in fic from this list: Bestiality, Cannibalism, Child Abuse, Graphic Violence, Incest, Major Character Death, Rape (non-con, dub-con), Sexual or Domestic Abuse/Violence, Slavery, Torture, Underage (for this meaning under 18)

Each fic/piece of art can only contain one prompt from a bingo card. So the minimum amount of fics or pieces of art that need to be made is 4.

For Fic: Minimum Word Count is 1000 words, there is no maximum. You have a year from 07-01-2022 to 06-30-2023 to write and post up your works.

For Art: If you are creating art of any kind (of which there is no limit on what that means, if you call it art, we call it art), there are no rules. Obviously, Tumblr bans the really, really fun stuff so if it's NSFW, please host elsewhere and then do what you normally do if you share to Tumblr.

Your card can be used for art, fic, or a hybrid of the two.

You may combine fills for this bingo with another challenge as long as their rules do not break ours and it's within our posting period.

What is a bingo? Well, it's pretty simple. There are nine types we will be accepting 1-Diagonal Line. 2-Straight Line Down, 3-Straight Line Across, 4-Postage Stamp, 5-Outside 4 Corners, 6-Inside 4 Corners, 7-Outside Diamond, 8-Inside Diamond, 9-Blackout. If you are unsure what these are, please search online.

When you pick your card, you cannot swap a prompt for another but you can use your free space for any of the other prompts that are not already on your card or a second try at another prompt if you just wanna do another story for that Stripper AU.

You can sign for a bingo until 06/01/2023, so that you have a month to complete a bingo if you take it on the 06/01/2022.

Updated 6/30/2022

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can I have two cards? A: Only if you complete a blackout, you can ask for another card upon submitting your blackout.

Q: Do I have to post to Tumblr? A: No! You can post your works anywhere. A post will be made here on Tumblr for your bingo so that others in the community can see and read the fics but that will be done by the mod.

Q: What counts as an AU? A: Well anything really. If you wanna have Derek and Stiles being roommates after the show has ended, that works. Obviously, some AUs like Historical, Western, etc are hard to do within canon confines but if you make it work, we think it works. The challenge will not be heavily policed. If you call it a Royalty AU, we will take it.

Updated 6/30/2022

[delusion-of-negation]

you know what, anon, fuck you. first of all as I hate formatting, which I gotta do now so I can post this with adequate tws for mentions of csa, and second of all because I'm not obliged to add an "uwu pedophilia bad tho" at the end of every post about unrelated sexual stuff.

[edit: rpf stands for real person fiction, btw]

"While I normally don't care to a large degree about RPF's, as long as they are not openly accessible as mentioned. I gotta say there's kinda a line,"

so, you imply that what I said was inoffensive - although you say and imply, respectively, that I said that things have to be inaccessible and that there's no line, neither of which I said in the relevant post. I said that the best bet is to make it so a conscious decision is required to view, ie a click, and I explicitly said that you can post said link publicly. and, the more I think about it, the more I actually think that I was too rigid in that post - not all rpf is slash, or even shipping or fandom in any way at all, and I was very tired at the time, and the post nut clarity hadn't hit, and I was thinking in terms of comfort, but fiction does not exist to make you comfortable. political cartoons, historical fiction, dramatisations of events, all of these are forms of rpf that can be mass advertised and put in newspapers, and should be. I take it back, I literally do not give a fuck at all.

but nevertheless, you still feel it appropriate to show up in my inbox, to drag a trigger into this, for absolutely no reason at all...

"and that line is when real minors, teens or children are used in a NSFW fic."

I'm disinterested in that line of questioning. I wasn't talking about that. the only cases I've ever even seen that were at all vaguely like what you're talking about were minors online getting harassed for having crushes on, and writing or drawing other, comparably aged, minors in scenarios so vanilla even granny wouldn't blush (and I have a commanding presence, but even I can't convince teenagers not to be horny for celebrities). idk if you're an anti or some proship dude who found a nice tasting anti dick to suck, but I have to assume it's one or the other because there's zero other reason to go there. there is not a pandemic in fandom of adults writing graphic sex betwixt them and real children, or posting it for those kids to see, it doesn't happen. and thus I do not care to be called upon by total strangers to discuss the ethics of shit that isn't happening land. I don't care to qualify every single fucking post, which had nothing at all to do with minors, with "but uwu pedophilia bad", because your immediate response to someone talking about adults is to go "hmm yes but what if those adults are attracted to children". my guy, nobody here was thinking about that.

anons respect csa survivors' wishes to not have triggers sent to them, and stop bringing children into every unrelated convo challenge.

"Even if it's not directly NSFW, just "hinted" there's something... iffy about it,"

wow okay. so I said I didn't want to go down this bullshit line of questioning about a thing that doesn't happen, but who defines a hint? you literally read multiple things into my post that 100% weren't there, and sent this shit, I legitimately don't trust your judgement. what about non-explicit (ie hinted) vent art that I made as a kid about what I went through? it's about a kid (me), so was I being naughty?

"especially when the pairing is an adult person, either someone they work/interact with, or "OC's" (self inserts especially)"

again, this literally doesn't happen. but why? your standards are absolutely nonsensical. if the (understandable, albeit totally unrelated to my post) premise is that seeing such a sexualisation of themself can be harmful to kids... none of this matters. the amount of sexualisation there doesn't change if it's two kids written about or an adult, and whether that adult was a self-insert or not is equally irrelevant. it has no bearing on what's been done to the kid because what I, up until these parts, assumed you take issue with is the kid's exposure to such description of themself. an oc wouldn't make it any more descriptive of the kid in an inappropriate way. if anything, two kids is the worst of the lot, that's twice the potential for kids exposed to such description.

this line changed it for me - I was already not joyful about you making my, again, not at all about minors comment about minors, but this made it clear that you didn't just see my post and go "hmm I'm worried about a ridiculous hypothetical", you saw my post and went "but pedophiles". harm to kids wasn't the priority, the priority was being grossed out by the most pedoy pedo you could dream up and sending that to me to demand that I also be grossed out. I know that because you think a self-insert is the worst objectively - however, if I write "and then my self-insert bungley mcscrumple, the leprechaun with twelve heads, banged [idfk any celebrities, let alone underage ones]", that is a stupid sentence that hurts not a single soul who read it, while a detailed description of [well if I don't know one, I definitely don't know two underage celebrities] doing the do, with constant comments about their bodies... well? that's not how you were thinking though, bungley is a self-insert who did a pedo thing, therefore the writer is a pedo, therefore that's worse. you're not thinking with portals, anon, you're barely even thinking with braincells.

anyway, my stance on rpf involving kids is case by case - I can't act like political satire, which I failed to consider in my initial reblog of that post, can't ever involve real kids, who the post and my initial reblog had absolutely nothing to do with. as for sexual rpf involving them, I didn't want to talk about it, but since you've forced my hand, I now think that it should be a requirement in job interviews to submit rpf of bungley mcscrumple, the leprechaun with twelve heads, passionately making love to at least two underaged celebrity boys. why not.

and for future anons, yeah sure I endorse any and all bullshit scenarios you dream up that assume inoffensive posts are offensive if they don't also express an opinion on idk pringles.

[tired-fandom-ndn]

I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on RPF, if you’re willing to share? /gen

RPF is a very complicated thing that I have varied thoughts on?

RPF is, honestly, not about the people themselves. It's about their public personas, characters that share their names and some things with the people they're based on. We don't actually know anything about the celebrities that we write about, only what they choose to share (and how much of that is true is up to them).

(Disclaimer: I'm using a general "we" here. I do not write or read RPF.)

RPF is actually something that people have been writing for centuries, about royalty originally and then shifting over to over public figures. It's not like it's something new or surprising or even particularly weird.

With that being said, the way we approach RPF now has radically changed because we lack the distance between ourselves and these figures. We can interact directly with these people, and often do, through things like twitter and those people can access the things written about them if they choose to. Some writers send those people their RPF directly.

That lack of distance means a lack of privacy and personal boundaries. People ask their favorite celebrities invasive questions about their relationships and personal lives, try to pressure them into coming out as [insert identity], pick apart every interaction they have with other people, and have a direct impact on their relationships.

You could argue that this is normal, that fans are interacting with the persona rather than the person, but that about internet celebrities? Youtubers and podcasters and the like, people who are just chilling and doing their own thing and having fun? They're not real celebrities, they don't have PR teams or people managing their social media or anything like that. Many of them are still active on sites like tumblr or part of fandom spaces themselves.

We're at a point where we as fandoms need to really sit down and rethink the "rules" we've had for RPF because things are changing and we can't continue this way. Many of the internet celebrities people are writing about are minors, some of them related, and I'm worried for their health and safety with people treating them like they're characters.

Historical RPF is both more simple and more complicated than modern RPF for different reasons. The privacy issues aren't relevant here, but what about the social messages we're sending?

When we write stories about slave owners being so uwu cute, or turn people who orchestrated the deaths of thousands of Natives into a fun cartoon character, what are we telling the people directly impacted by those things? Is it ethical to write funny stories about a man who was known for raping slaves? What about someone who used biological warfare to commit genocide? In this age of civil rights movements and rising prejudice and the revival of white supremacy, can we afford to do anything that sanitizes the actions of those before us?

Don't write about school shooters. No, I don't care what your reasoning is. I don't fucking care. Those people still have living victims. Their dead victims still have grieving family members. Many of those families are still being harassed and accused of faking their loved ones' deaths. Have some fucking compassion.

[bangtide]

i don’t normally add to posts like this, but since i’m a gnarled veteran of rpf and the discourse surrounding it (of all natures) at this point, i thought i’d share this time.

ao3cotd covered the basic premise that’s most important to understand. most rpf is not actually about the real, breathing people that inspires it. i’d go so far as to say it has very little to do with them, or reality, at all. at least in the cases of fandoms with super diverse, and often fantastical or outright bizarre rpf content.

secondly, rpf is not just shipping. real person shipping (rps) is just a category of rpf (albeit a popular one, usually). rpf is just fiction that deals with evoking real people, or that’s inspired by them. hamilton is rpf, and you could even argue that plato’s stories about socrates are rpf.

thirdly, rpf is OLD. the fandom-y kind we’re familiar with predates the internet. the not-necessarily-fandom-y kind has been done as long as people had the concept of famous people. it’s not new or unique to the last decade of fandom, which i think sometimes people unconsciously misconceive and it informs their disapproval. humans have been doing rpf forever, so you’re not particularly weird for taking an interest in it, anon.

fourthly, to address what it seems you’re asking, rpf is not a single monolithic fandom. there’s rpf of literally everything, from actors to reality tv to bands (my specialty) to sports leagues to youtubers to like. long-dead historical figures. and then subdivisions upon subdivisions of those things. what your experience with it is like will depend entirely on which specific fandom you’re interested in, and how much of a dumpster fire it is. which is, unfortunately, just as diverse of a spectrum as rpf overall.

to make you feel better, you can exist in a dumpster fire rpf fandom and not contribute to the dumpster fire or Bad Stories. i do this daily. it kinda sucks when it comes to going outside your bubble, but the reasons a lot of rpf fandoms suck in the first place don't often have to do with the rpf itself.

but, since i brought it up, i’ll give you a non-exhaustive breakdown of how you could go about this (and in general what to do to stay clear of delusional thinking):

the thing you want to avoid is conflating fiction with reality, and thus inserting your personal narratives onto someone else’s life (and therefore acting entitled to their autonomy/life).

thankfully this is not difficult, bc the biggest pitfall into it, in my gnarled opinion, is starting to consider certain types of content unacceptable. rpf is only really justifiable when you allow all of it, no matter how weird or uncomfortable, because otherwise there is an implication that it does have to do with reality. which is explicitly what you don’t want to start thinking.

this does not mean you can’t have squicks or specific preferences for what you like to engage with! you absolutely can and the vast majority of people do. but you can’t object to the stuff you don’t like’s existence. if you find yourself doing that you should stop and examine why. if the reason has smth to do with inaccuracy, not being realistic, offending the person it’s about, ect, then that’s a red flag you may be forgetting that it's all imaginary, including what you like.

i’d also recommend putting disclaimers on your fics or ao3 profile clarifying that your work is rpf, and shouldn't be taken seriously. or at least condemning the Bad Stories, if you're worried about that. in general if you just keep in mind people outside rpf can see your stuff (if that is likely), you largely dodge the dumpster fire. a little context goes a long way to keep your content from being misconstrued for what it’s not by bad eggs or those unfamiliar.

lastly, i’ll end on the note that most people feel like you do now before they take the plunge. i know i did. i hope that my response provides some of the information you need to begin navigating it, as rpf in and of itself is not creepy or bad. you just have to be mindful of your behavior, like in..everything.

I think I'm starting to have a small interest in RPF? Honestly, I'm kind of freaked out, since I have no idea what the RPF fandom is actually like, though I figure at least most of them aren't like the bad stories you hear about (that's the case in most fandoms, really). I don't want to be creepy. I don't know what to do here.

So the thing about RPF is that it’s shipping real people... but only kind of. 

As fans, we never see the actual real person. We see whatever version of themselves that they choose to put out publicly. A lot of the time, that’s very similar to their regular self. But it’s still a persona. I’m not as calm and thoughtful in my everyday life as I attempt to be on this blog, for example.  Public figures when they are in public are playing a version of themselves, and that’s what people ship. 

Don’t freak out about it, anon. It’s fine. Most people who ship RPF know that it’s not real. They have no desire to talk to the actual people and tell them that they ship them with their best friend or whoever. A lot of them are frankly horrified by the idea of the people they ship finding out about it. A lot of RPF fic on AO3 is locked so that only people who are logged in can see it because RPF fans don’t want outsiders seeing it outside of the fannish context where we all know it’s not real and it’s just for fun. 

There are, as in all groups, people who forget the rules or get really invested. That happens in any human endeavor. You already know where the line is, and you’re the only person you can actually control. Stay within your own comfort zones and you should be fine. 

RPF fans, feel free to add things in the notes - and let me know if I’ve got you wrong. I’ve never actually posted RPF so this is my understanding of the rules from the outside.