Real person fiction
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Real Person Fiction (RPF) is a type of fan fiction featuring celebrities or other real people. In the past, terms such as actorfic were used to distinguish such stories from those based on fictional characters from movies or television series.
Before the term "real person fiction" came into common usage, fans came up with a variety of terms, which are still used for specific genres or cultural practices in the RPF community; for example, musicfic, popslash, or actorfic. The genre includes stories about actors, athletes, comedians, historical figures, musicians, newsworthy people, reality show contestants and others, as well as fiction about the fans themselves.
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[edit] Description
In general, the authors seem to adopt the public personas of the celebrities in question as their own characters, building a fictional universe based on the supposed real-life histories of their idols. Information from interviews, documentaries, music videos and other publicity sources are assimilated into the "canon" on which the stories are based.
Communities of writers build collective archetypes based on the celebrities' public personas. Communities also develop their own ethics on what sort of stories are acceptable -- some are uncomfortable with slash fiction, or with mention of the celebrity's real-life families, or with stories involving suicide, murder, or rape. Like most fan fiction, the RPF genre includes stories of every kind, from innocuous to sadistic and pornographic.
Like many fan fiction writers whose subject matter is commercially-prepared entertainment, particularly before the advent of the Internet, a number of RPF authors report that they began writing on their own, without any awareness of a larger fan fiction community, and were surprised to learn that they were not alone.[citation needed] Many report having been completely unaware of media fandom's taboo towards RPF; that is, many fans believe it is acceptable to write about the characters, but not about the actors who portray them.
Depictions of actors in RPF stories are often heavily influenced by characters the actors portray. This is particularly noticeable in The Lord of the Rings RPF, where Viggo Mortensen is frequently shown as taking an Aragorn-like leadership role, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan as lighthearted Hobbit-like pranksters, and Elijah Wood as more physically fragile and emotionally vulnerable than his colleagues.
Between one fifth and one third of these stories may take the form of a "Mary Sue" story. [1] Mary Sue is a pejorative term used to describe a character, usually but not always female, who is described in extremely idealistic terms and is supposedly always a wish-fantasy image of the author. She or he may become romantically involved with a band member or actor, join the cast, and prove to have superior acting or singing ability.
A small number of RPF writers are apparently under the belief that a celebrity is involved in a real relationship with another celebrity, and go as far as to spend large amounts of time searching for proof of this relationship. By writing RPF stories, these people believe they can "prove" that a particular pair of celebrities are in a relationship. A well-known example in fanfic circles is the "Dom-Elijah" or "Domlijah" complex of speculation and stories built around a supposed relationship between Dominic Monaghan and Elijah Wood.
Politician fic is more often used as a form of satire, or to highlight the underlying biases or attitudes of the politician being portrayed.
[edit] History
The earliest known RPF was written by the Brontë children from 1826 to approximately 1844. Based on the children's roleplaying game about the Napoleonic Wars, the series featured the Duke of Wellington and his two (actual) sons Charles and Arthur, and their arch-nemesis Alexander Percy, partly based on Napoleon. Over the years, Arthur evolved into an amazingly charismatic and powerful figure, the Duke of Zamorna. Percy became a tragic villain, partly inspired by John Milton's version of Satan from Paradise Lost. These stories were not published until well over a hundred years later, but the children used them to polish their writing skills and eventually all became professional authors. [2]
Modern fan stories may go back to Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, and Elvis Presley. Jean Lorrah's Visit to a Weird Planet, published in Spockanalia 3 (1968), was a lighthearted two-parter about what would happen if a transporter malfunction caused the Star Trek characters to be swapped with the 20th-century actors who played them. Regina Marvinny, editor of Tricorder Readings, encouraged fans in the early 1970s to write "what-if" stories about meeting Leonard Nimoy. However, some of the earliest known published cases of RPF come from 1977, when fanzines of the band Led Zeppelin began to print some of the fan fiction being written. Due to the fact that these stories involved real Zeppelin bandmembers, most notably Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, names were changed to pseudonyms such as "Tris" and "Alex".
A number of authors of modern bandfic -- stories based on musical celebrities -- began writing in the early 1980s, when MTV brought musicians into close focus for millions of adolescents. Others wrote humorous short stories about Paul Darrow from Blake's 7. Some of these stories may have circulated in fanzine form, but there was little community and many authors remained unaware of others doing similar work. It was not until the 1990s and the spread of the Internet that RPF began to increase in popularity.
The RPF community was, for a period of time, centered around the FanFiction.Net website. When the RPF section was removed from Fanfiction.net, the community dispersed to smaller web archives and LiveJournal communities. RPF is generally totally absent from Usenet, especially in older and more established newsgroups.
[edit] Controversy
[edit] Morality and Legality
The morality of Real Person Fiction is debated. With the exception of people like the "Domlijah" writers, Most RPF authors state that they have no intent to claim these fictional portrayals reflect the real activities of the "source figure" in any way.
Some authors of traditional fan fiction view real person fiction with suspicion, disdain, or outright disgust. Some feel that fanfic based on fictional characters is on shaky enough legal ground, barely tolerated by "the powers that be" (authors, producers, copyright owners) and that RPF, especially real person slash, may turn corporate and public opinion against fan fiction as a whole.[citation needed]
The law, ironically, favors RPF. The often included disclaimer in story headers, stating the work as pure fiction, protects Real Person Fiction from slander and libel. Traditional fan fiction, about fictional persons, is considered copyright infringement.
To date, unlike traditional fan fiction, only one cease and desist letter is known to have been issued against RPF: FanDomination.Net received this letter on March 17, 2003 from a representative of one of the members of the Atlanta Braves baseball team.
[edit] Real Person Slash
Real Person Slash (RPS), also known in some circles as real-life slash (RLS), involves homosexual relationships. (See slash fiction for more on the subtleties and variations in definition.) These are usually complete fabrications, not based on any real-life indications of the subject's sexual preference, but on the fantasies of the author and the desire to experiment with perceived or invented homoerotic subtext between the idols in question. Slash is roughly equal in popularity to less controversial types of real person fiction.
The content of the stories can range from the mildly romantic, involving deep friendships and innocent boyhood or girlhood crushes, to carefully written homosexual love stories, all the way to profoundly explicit erotica.
With the advent of boy bands, fans wrote an explosion of fictional stories about male members being involved in romantic relations with one another. In the 1990s, early online RPS communities were devoted to depictions of boy bands. Most of it was slash. Older RPF communities also began to see a rise in slash content, in contrast to earlier stories, which had generally featured original (non-"canon") female characters as partners for band members.
As slash became more acceptable, the amount of explicit sexual content in the stories also began to rise. Erotic fan stories have certainly been around for as long as other types of fanfic, but they were often a closed-door affair, circulated only in private among friends, and it is unclear whether homosexual content was a common theme.[citation needed] With the advent of the Internet (allowing easy distribution of stories and relative anonymity for authors), stories with explicit content suddenly became much more widespread.
Due to the potentially libelous nature of some stories, and the knowledge or fear that some celebrities dislike slash fiction involving themselves, some fan fiction communities denounce RPS fiction and do not allow it on their websites. However, as of 2007, no legal action has been taken against archive sites or authors.
[edit] Reaction to Real Person Fic
For the most part, celebrities remain indifferent to Real Person Fic. Problems begin to develop when fans of the celebrities try to bring the celebrity into the community or show their adoration for that celebrity by giving them examples of stories. This can lead to some uncomfortable moments as happened with Paul Darrow, Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, who were both given real person fic featuring them and their significant others in sexually explicit situations. Both Elijah Wood and Ian McKellan, as well as Karl Urban, have stated that they do not mind RPF being written about them.[citation needed]
[edit] Timeline
The following is a timeline of events in the Real Person Fan fiction community:
- 1977 - the Star Trek fanfic anthology New Voyages 2 (Ballantine Books) reprints the 1967 story "Visit to a Weird Planet Revisited", in which members of the show's cast accidentally beam up to the Enterprise.
- From 1977 to 1983, Led Zeppelin fan fiction begins to circulate in fanzines. The early zines used the names Tris and Alex instead of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.
- During the 1980s, some ActorFic involving Paul Darrow (of Blake's 7) existed.
- Early 1980s - Star Wars stories are published in which Harrison Ford meets Han Solo.
- 1980s - numerous Duran Duran and other bandfic authors began to write in isolation, spurred by MTV
- 1991 - Duran Duran slash and het fic began to be circulated in fanzines. According to Sidewinder, Duran Duran zine people said that Duran Duran were aware of the fan fiction. Sidewinder also notes that the RPF people at the time did not seem to come from the same community as "traditional fan fiction fans" were coming from.[citation needed]
- March, 1993 - The Nifty Archive came on-line, a repository of boy band and celebrity erotica.
- October 15, 1998 - FanFiction.Net enacts a policy specifically forbidding ActorSlash.
[edit] 2001
- On December 28, LOTR_RPS appears, one of the first The Lord of the Rings real person fiction communities.
[edit] 2002
- September 12 - FanFiction.Net removes all Real Person Fic from the site and bans all Real Person Fic that does not tie in to other media directly.
[edit] 2004
- April 26 - The website rockfic.com appears. This is a repository and community for RPF involving rock stars.
- Between July and November, political slash involving John Kerry and John Edwards began to circulate online.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Based on a survey from FanDomination.net
- ^ Ratchford, Fannie, The Brontës' Web of Childhood. Columbia Press, 1941.
- Lorrah, Jean, Visit to a Weird Planet and Visit to a Weird Planet Revisited. Originally appeared in Spockanalia 3, Fall 1968. Retrieved on 2007-01-20.
