My eyes!

[innocent_lex]

LJ has a lot to answer for. After randomly clicking on links to other links to other links and reading various random people's LJ posts as I go, I was just hit with David Cameron / Nick Clegg RPS. For realz. I'd heard tell it existed, but it's like goatse - you just don't google it without wearing full CBW preventative gear and preferably being high as a kite so you can convince yourself afterwards you were hallucinating.

It's possible I'll never recover.

Comments

[readerjane]

I don't get RPS.

Fictional characters? Heck, yeah -- they were made up to start with. People bend them into all kinds of pretzel shapes that the author never intended. As long as credit is given to the original creator and no profit is being sought by the fan, whatever.

But real people are... well, they're real people. Who have a say in what they would actually do because they're Actually People. With their own free wills and all. Yeesh.

[innocent-lex.livejournal.com]

There's a whole long discussion around RPF that I can twist myself into knots with. I mean, really, really, really twist myself into knots with. I mean, Doctor Who has been full of RPF practically since it started and that's never been an issue for me. So there's that side. But the other side is RP-something. And then there's RPF which is actually RPHet which is out there in the mainstream in so many so-called biographies in film or books.

Where is the line? Is it okay if the people aren't alive any longer? Is it okay for Doctor Who to write RPF about Agatha Christie but not JK Rowling? Is it okay with Agatha Christie as long as it's not romance? Is it okay as long as Agatha's not acting out of character (as if anyone has any idea what out of character would be?). Oy. And then there's the whole range of fic that gets written about, say, SG-1, and instead putting the actors in their place (I dunno - who knows if that's out there). That would be too weird for me, but for others it isn't. I watched and enjoyed Young Victoria (film about Queen Victoria), which is essentially RPF but was okay because it was mainstream? There's a recent film about Nelson Mandela's wife, which she doesn't support and says is nonsense - which side of the line does that sit on? Is there even a line?

My brain, it hurts.

And none of this is to say that I don't agree with you. Because essentially I do, except when I start to ask myself the kinds of questions above, at which point things start going all asplodey in my brain. It's not pretty. I don't have an answer. Except for the PM/deputy-PM thing - that's just creepy. ;-)

When I write, I write about fictional characters because they're the only characters I can be sure about - I can get in their heads, at least to some extent, and I can understand their lives, their motivations and their plans. And then the little buggers go off and do whatever the hell they want without me being in control at all, which is just mean. And exhilarating, I confess.

[sg1scribe.livejournal.com]

You make a very interesting point. I'd never thought of Young Victoria being RPF, but you're right, in a sense it is. I was going to say maybe that is OK because it is history, but then there are all those docudramas aboout Princess Di that one could argue are history but some of the key people are still alive and so there's another grey area.

Hmmmm... I think I will join you on the twisty brain thing (and also the ewwwwww Cameron/Clegg! That opened the door to a gallery of images I would prefer to not have in my head!)

[innocent-lex.livejournal.com]

And then we get into even weirder headspace with films like the one about the 9/11 plane that crashed into a field, which was incredibly disturbing even as a concept (I haven't watched it) - why would anyone make such a film? That's almost pure fiction with real people's names in there.

So a lot of these films / books are trying to be realistic. Some of them are trying to be sensationalist. And some of them (such as DW) don't bother to concern themselves with any kind of historical accuracy, just dive headlong into AU worlds.

[corbyinoz.livejournal.com]

I love what Lex has written here in response to your comment - your comment, of course, which is a very valid point of view, and one I certainly shared for a long time.

I agree with her that there's all kinds of grey areas with RPF. I enjoy (and write) RPF or RPS that is AU - so, basically, an original story that uses the perceived characteristics of RP as the main characters and, instead of putting an author's note at the top that says, oh, think David Tennant for the character of Fred Ratgobbler and John Barrowman for the character of Butch Hardly as you read it - simply uses their names. Then it becomes a project that they might make togetehr, another movie or TV show. David Tennant/ Fred as a psychiatrist, John Barrowman/ Butch as a firefighter.

But others go further and write about DT and JB as actors, making Dr Who. I'm much less comfortable with that, and I definitely do not include any members of the family, as many writers do. But can I really draw those distinctions without being crashingly hypocritical? I don't know. And there is undoubtedly a frisson created by imagining the real people in those different scenarios that doesn't exist if their likenesses are simply used.

And Lex's comments about RPF in the broader sense are spot on. What do we make of To Kill a Mockingbird, my second most favorite book of all time? It is widely accepted and known that Dill is, in fact, Truman Capote. When people are well aware of the RPs being represented in a work of fiction (Primary Colors, anyone?), how and how far does that differ from blatant RPF? Does Harper Lee keep herself nice by not naming the character Truman? Or could we make an argument that it's less honest? I have a book actually about all the RL people on whom fictional characters are based, and it's an extensive list (well it *is* a whole book's worth). How do these vary from RPF? Is it disingenuous to claim they're different, when they are physically and in terms of character described to a T but simply given a different name?

All good, crunchy stuff. As I said, I draw the line at my RPF/RPS folks' families, and I do try to keep within the character parameters of the RPs as I see them, so that I can find myself thinking as I read a story, "Oh, this is out of character" even as I'm supposedly accepting that the RPF is an original story 'casting' the real people. If I *truly* believed that, then any depiction of their characters would be acceptable to me, and it's not so. (It would be as ridiculous as watching My Bloody Valentine and thinking, oh, Jensen wouldn't do that!) So I think something else is going on there, and my stance is dishonest. Nonetheless, I do most enjoy those RPF/RPS stories that follow those parameters of close to real characterizations, AU settings and no families.

[innocent-lex.livejournal.com]

Is there a question of fame in people's thinking somewhere? As in, people who effectively volunteered to be famous by their choice of career are on the side of 'okay to be written about' while those who haven't made that choice aren't? Is that what you talk about with the no families rule? I do like your distinction around AUs, though, and I know we've talked about that before.

On a whole different end of the scale, there's the question of personal fantasy. I've seen some of the descriptions of some of the more, er, unsavoury(?) stories floating around out there, and it's as if people are just switching off a filter and writing their sexual fantasies about famous people down on e-paper. I realise everyone has a different line in the sand as to what's okay and what's not, but there is what I think of as the google test: if I googled myself and found this stuff written about me, how disturbed would I be? I've actually been in the position where a bloke I worked with shared with me (and two other guys) at a dinner table how he would go about torturing me. It wasn't pleasant, and I don't want to know what the hell else went on in his head, but that was only one instance and I'm still disturbed by it to this day (it happened years ago). And seriously, I know more about what can be done to a person with a cheese grater than anyone ever needs to. Keep this stuff in your own heads, people!

BTW, I had no idea about To Kill A Mockingbird. I still have my copy from when we read it for school, with notes in the margins. I thought it was an astonishing piece of writing at the time, and still do.

I really can't come down anywhere on what is and what isn't hypocrisy. The fact that RPF exists in the broader world of media, with anything from the films we've mentioned to pretty much any and all tabloid newspaper stories, kind of brings in an automatic acceptance factor that could easily be transferred to RPF in fandom. But still there's an uneasy feeling about it all that makes it a topic for continued discussion, and where there will be more opinions than people on the planet. I do understand your question about whether or not you're being hypocritical, but I don't think you are. I think there's a continuum in this as in everything else, and the films that exist in the mainstream that never appear to have been challenged bring a dimension into it that generally isn't discussed. I also think that everyone sets themselves boundaries to live by, and unless you're deliberately stomping over those boundaries while still telling yourself you sit inside them? - then there really isn't an issue, at least in that respect.

And I'm going to be a bit off-track perhaps, but is there something about the mantra to 'write what you know' that means all of the original fictional characters we write about end up being based on a person or at least a key set of their characteristics?

Yet more thinky thoughts, which bring me no closer to conclusions.

[corbyinoz.livejournal.com]

LOL! I just flashed on an RPS for Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott. Oh dear god. There are no words.

[innocent-lex.livejournal.com]

See! Glad it's not just me. There's fiction and then there's mental trauma, and never the twain should meet.

[innocent-lex.livejournal.com]

Also, see response to readerjane, above. You have excellent thinky thoughts on this. Any help for my poor befuddled brain?

[sazandra.livejournal.com]

That is just so uggh!

Makes me shudder and not just because DC is my MP and I've met him (he turned up on our doorstep canvasing). The thought of RPS is just so uggh! Character slash fine but the idea of slashing say the actors that play the characters is just noooooooooo ...