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.
no subject
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.