#my god im sorry this is so long and probably very repetitive. djdmfjdj.

[raytorosaurus]

maybe this is a 'hot take' for which i apologize but. i feel like fanart is a big aspect of this too- how different even is it to make 'rpf' of gerards stage characters as opposed to fanart of it. it's essentially only a different medium. keeping it separate from gerard (Person In Reality Who Has A Life) outside of (character he made up to have fun with) can also easily be an invitation for fans to have fun with it too. which is why a healthy relationship with it can and does bring good things. in theory i mean. ive never seen an mcr fanfic i really liked but :p

yeah i see what you mean, it's one of the reasons that the step from tumblr (or twitter) fandom to the ao3 tag feels like. quite an arbitrary place to draw the line? as if the same thoughts and behaviours are fine right up into they're intentionally put to prose - but images or even comics are okay, textposts discussing their emotions and states of mind as extrapolated from live shows or song lyrics, putting research into constructing timelines of their lives or compiling facts about them as people - even writing (sometimes quite detailed) sexually explicit posts/tags about them is common around here. i do a lot of these things too - i'm not saying they're inherently wrong or bad - but i genuinely don't see how they're any less prone to being disrespectful or invasive or comically removed from reality than a writer putting them in a situation lol. they all involve some level of assumption, scrutiny, and interpretation.

there are definitely valid arguments to make against engaging with rpf in a fandom sense! i totally respect that, and it's something i felt kind of ashamed/guilty about when i first got into mcr, so i understand the reservations. it's just that...the way i see it, i truly think those arguments just as reasonably apply to so much of what happens in any fandom involving real people. behaviours that are extremely common and far from unique to the online fan spaces of today, to the point where avoiding them is a more conscious decision than engaging in them. i respect if people do make that choice, but...that isn't any of us who are running mcr fanblogs yk? haha.

anyway yeah. i agree with you anon, i reckon most people's definition of what does and doesn't entail rpf is just a lot narrower than the reality. there's a lot of extremely beautiful, highly-skilled emotive fanart out there, for which i'm so appreciative! i 100% don't mean it as an insult when i say those often a different kind of rpf. so are the emotive posts about how much this tour means to all the guys, how happy they are, how much they love each other and how they're all friends. i'm not saying these things are untrue, i'm just saying they absolutely don't paint an unbiased holistic picture of real human beings and their genuine emotional states hahaha. neither does fanfiction. and i just think it's impossible to not realise that if you're engaging with fanfic in any kind of thoughtful way, as opposed to reblogging textposts about them on tumblr that also project a lot onto them, yk?

and okay. i also think "the bible/succession/velvet goldmine etc etc is rpf too! shakespeare wrote rpf!" is equally as reductive as "rpf is when fangirls write about band members boning each other." as always, there's just so much more nuance there. what does and doesn't make rpf is a lot more about intent, and if you're parasocially attached to these people as deeply as we all are, most of us just share that same intent. and from what i've seen (though in fairness this is the first real person fandom i've been in, and i only really talk to other adults) it tends to be the people actively engaging with fanfic who are a better at accepting how much of fandom is pure projection and assumption based on very limited information. and that acceptance is a huge part of having a healthier relationship with celebrities/bands/bandom (along with the conscious acknowledgement that these people don't owe us anything at all besides the shows we bought tickets for - least of all insight into their personal lives or private thoughts.)

like genuinely? free your minds. we're all making shit up based on the little parts we see, i think it's healthier and more fun to openly accept that. who cares what's real when we can talk about things in terms of narratives and arcs and metaphors - none of which truly exist in real life, which is infinitely complex and individual and messy. or, more precisely, who cares what's real as long as you know what isn't! and keep that stuff far far away from the real human people involved in the band.