Episode 185: RPF Revisited

 
 
Episode cover: Photograph of several photographers pointing cameras into the backset of a car. White fan logo in bottom corner.

In Episode 185, “RPF Revisited,” Elizabeth and Flourish use a trio of listener letters to return to the perennially thorny topic of real person fiction. How does RPF fit into the broader fandom space in 2022? What does “canon” even mean when it comes to real people? How do fans reconcile with troubling new information about celebrities they’ve written and read about? And is RPF source material the same as fictional source material, or are there fundamental differences between the two? 

 

Show notes

[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.

[00:01:08] We talked with Aja Romano about RPF in episode #80

[00:09:14] Flourish as unreliable narrator: Pauli Murray was the first black female (?) Episcopal priest and there’s a lot more to say about her pronouns and gender identity. In fact there is an entire page on the Pauli Murray Center’s website dedicated to Pauli’s pronouns. You should probably go read that instead of listening to Flourish, who kinda muffed the explanation lol. Also, here’s the ikon of Pauli that Flourish got to help install! 

 
Image of Pauli Murray in black, white, red, and gold clerical garb. One hand is in the air and the other holds a scroll.
 

[00:11:07] Our last AMA, where a listener asked about the boy band conspiracy theory romance novel If This Gets Out. 

[00:19:30] Incredibly, just one minute prior, it was Flourish who actually picked him.

[00:23:02] SORRY FOLKS.

 
Photograph of Formula 1 Driver Sebastian Vettel
 

[00:42:55] For the record, everyone involved said Harry Styles did not spit on Chris Pine

[00:51:16]

Animated gif of Lestat from IWTV, covered in blood, giving a come hither gesture with his finger

[00:57:01] We discussed the increasing trend of “positive” blurring of the fourth wall in, amongst other episodes, #104: “The Fourth Wall Redux.”

[01:06:10] In the several weeks since we recorded this episode, we both have completely SUNKEN INTO THE ABYSS re: IWTV, which, in fact, only has seven episodes, not eight. (A TRAGEDY!! MORE PLEASE!! ASAP!!!!!!) 

Animated gif of Louis from IWTV in eighteenth century costume, gazing at the camera while dancing

We’ll be releasing a special episode discussing the entire first season of the show (and the film, and the first two books) early next week for patrons at $3 a month and up. That’s at https://patreon.com/fansplaining

[01:08:56] Our outro music is “Credit roll” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.


Transcript

[Intro music]

Flourish Klink: Hi, Elizabeth!

Elizabeth Minkel: Hi, Flourish!

FK: And welcome to Fansplaining, the podcast by, for, and about fandom!

ELM: This is Episode #185, “RPF Revisited.”

FK: It has been a while since we had an entire episode just about real! person! fanfiction!

ELM: Are you…doing a William Shatner impersonation right now? [laughs]

FK: [laughs, starts doing a Shatner voice] The man—that I would love—to write—fanfiction about… [both laugh] No, I don’t wanna do that, for what it’s worth he’s already doing enough of his own thing on Twitter at all times.

ELM: [laughs] OK, anyway, so, yes. We do talk about RPF from time to time. RPF: real person fiction. The last time we did a whole episode about it was with Aja Romano, the journalist and longtime member of fandom, in the summer of 2018. So, it’s been a while.

FK: Yeah, it’s been long enough that somebody could’ve, like, attended college.

ELM: And majored in RPF.

FK: [laughs] Right! So it’s time to, you know, give everything a little revisit. A tuneup.

ELM: Aja’s in a totally different RPF fandom than 2018. So…

FK: Totally different.

ELM: To be fair, I bet some people have been in, like, 50 RPF fandoms in the last four years, with the speed of things these days.

FK: It’s true, and also time is…a flat circle or something, and you know, it doesn’t matter.

ELM: Yeah, OK, thank you.

FK: But! But, but. We’re checking back in on this. OK. We’re also doing this now because we got a few different letters over a period of time, and we were like, “Hmm. RPF is coming up in them.”

ELM: [laughs] A little, little peek behind the curtain at the process. “Hmm! RPF is coming up in them!”

FK: [laughs] Oh, shut up, do you want me to read the first one? 

ELM: Yeah, why don’t we—so we’re gonna read these letters interspersed throughout the conversation, we didn’t wanna hit you with a wall of just ten minutes of letter reading at the start. These letters are really interesting, because they, I do feel like they naturally are in conversation with one another, which I think says a lot about the kind of swirling discussion around this topic. Which, I mean, it’s been a perennially thorny subject in fandom, but I think has potentially only gotten more complicated in the last five years.

FK: Yeah, definitely. All right. Shall I read the first one for now, for real?

ELM: Please do.

FK: OK. This is from Tanya:

“Hello Elizabeth and Flourish,

“I know this is something you have talked about already, and I loved all the discussions so far, but I guess I want to calm my own inner turmoil on the ethics of RPS specifically. 

“I’m in my thirties and I spent most of my life silently judging people who were into RPF. Maybe because I’ve mostly been a lurker, I didn’t even realize it was a thing until recently. The ships I knew of were also not in any fandom I was interested in and I found it weird overall. Recently though, I stumbled into not one, but two RPS fandoms and on top of that, I ended up writing fic for one of them. 

“Although I do enjoy the aspects of RPF that everyone does, I think I also know why I’ve been so invested in these certain fandoms. They are both queer ships in countries where a queer relationship is not really accepted. I can relate to that, because my country is like that too and I've been in a queer relationship that I had to hide. I guess it’s left a mark, because I find the idea of those couples being “real” comforting and relatable. Being in those fandoms keeps bringing up my memories of that period and I won’t lie, it’s also fun wondering, speculating. I think regardless of location, a lot of LGBT+ people can relate similar experiences. 

“The issue is, even though I appreciate your defense of RPF, I find it difficult to apply it to myself. I also cannot ignore some disturbing aspects of it, especially when it comes to RPS. Some apply to any fandom and I am not for censorship at all. I can’t say what is acceptable to imagine or write, or that there is a superior reason to enjoy something. When we are talking about real people, it makes it hard for me to just accept it all. Specifically in RPS, you have the phenomena of fans going to the celebrity with their conspiracy theories and/or sharing them and explicit fic/fanart on Twitter of all places. I know some celebrities were uncomfortable with it, not because they are homophobic, but actually because they are queer and it felt like outing. I can imagine how it could make you overthink your actions and make you anxious, if you are trying to keep some semblance of privacy. 

“Whenever I consume some sort of meta on shipping, there is always a pretty big group of people insisting that shipping is fine, as long as it’s not RPS. I want to disagree but on some level I guess I feel like it’s justified. 

“I don’t think I have a point to make, I just want to hear your thoughts.”

And that’s from Tanya.

ELM: Thank you very much, Tanya. Great letter to start with. So first, for clarification, because we only said RPF in the beginning, RPS: real person slash. 

FK: Yeah.

ELM: Which is a term I see a lot less of these days, just like I see a lot less of the term “slash” even if people are writing more things that I would call slash than ever before.

FK: Yeah, I agree with that. Although I think in this case, a lot of what Tanya’s saying is specific to real person slash, so it’s, it’s relevant.

ELM: Right, right. So…or queer RPF, right.

FK: Yeah, I can, I can really relate to Tanya’s concern about the effects of RPF or RPS on the celebrities that you are into. For sure, I think it’s hard to imagine a situation, like if you’ve ever really been into something that’s an RPS thing, it’s just totally undeniable that there’s this tension that exists. And for me anyway, one of the questions is like, how much of that tension is going to exist just by them being a celebrity, separate from RPS? Do you see what I mean? Because obviously RPS can add another dimension to it, but celebrity is already this sort of glass cage that you’re in, you know, with people like, observing you and being obsessed with you and stuff, and for that you get fun prizes like being really famous and making lots of money and stuff.

ELM: Sure…

FK: So to me it’s like, well this is one aspect of this relationship, which is already fundamentally kind of lopsided and uncomfortable and like…gives the celebrity some benefits but also means that they’re worried about fans stealing their underwear or whatever. [laughs] You know what I mean?

ELM: Yeah, I do. Well, so let’s take a little bit of a step back, I would say, because some of what you’re describing, and some of what Tanya’s describing, to me that’s not RPF at all. Right? That is…you know, that’s shipping.

FK: Right, absolutely.

ELM: You’ve seen plenty of examples where it’s not about a couple of celebrities, but just one, and insisting that they are queer, and that they are perhaps sending coded messages or publishing a book of sapphic poetry on the day that they released their latest album… [FK laughs] I’m not gonna actually give any opinions about that whole situation, but like… You know, you see, you saw it recently with the Harry Styles stuff, of people saying he’s—

FK: 100%.

ELM: You know, a human queerbaiter or whatever, and people saying “That’s not a thing! Why can’t people have a right to privacy? Oh, but he’s,” you know, like—

FK: Yeah, yeah, “Why is he wearing those frilly shirts if he doesn’t want us to speculate about his—” you know, or whatever it is.

ELM: Right, right. I mean I think there are some less, [laughs] less specious arguments around this than that, you know? [laughs]

FK: [overlapping] Oh, there are, there are, I was thinking of specious—but I’m not, to be clear, I’m not, I fully believe that both he and Taylor are aware of some of the, you know, some of this stuff, and doing it very consciously. [laughs]

ELM: Oh my God. You think that the two—well, first of all, you just named the most media-controlled person on the face of the Earth, yes. Yes.

FK: [overlapping] Exactly! I’m saying!

ELM: Anyway. So setting all that aside, I definitely think there’s an element that is even more heightened when it is a couple, right, because then you get this thing that you get in plain old shipping, where people start to make arguments about how important it is for it to be true. And even Tanya’s kind of getting at some of this, the idea of like, it’s the society in which these two people live, right, it’s the country, the laws, that are repressing them, and it would be so important for Tanya or for anyone who feels like they are being similarly oppressed in their own place, etc., etc. Which is, I think, really a lot to put on two people who potentially… [laughs] are not in a secret relationship, are not queer. You know what I mean? That’s a lot of pressure, to say “I’m relying on you, these celebrities, to kind of, to see myself reflected back.” You know? As opposed to just me projecting onto them.

FK: No it definitely is, I know what you’re saying exactly, and it’s hard because I think that it’s natural for people to want to look for heroes, or stories that they can see themselves in, you know what I mean? 

ELM: Sure.

FK: I think that it’s a really really natural thing. It’s funny, this is reminding me of, actually, a conversation I was having in seminary, about a religious figure who never came out in any way during their lifetime, who we now know was in same sex relationships with another woman, and also who we know explored early processes to transition gender. And one might wonder, you know, would they be a trans man today? But they never said anything about it, they resisted it, they wrote an entire autobiography that they were like, finishing on their deathbed, and didn’t do it, and so I had this argument with somebody about whether we should claim them as trans or nonbinary or queer or whatever, or if that was against their will and wrong. And that’s like, actually lower stakes, because they’re dead. [laughs] But now we’re seeing this play out with people who are alive. And like, here with us, and also kind of exploiting some of those emotional feelings sometimes. But also sometimes just trying to live their lives, presumably.

ELM: Right, I mean, I think it’s extremely fra—I frankly think it’s fraught for people who are dead too, I think you know— [laughs]

FK: [overlapping] Oh yeah, it is, it is, like, there’s a reason we were having this argument as an argument and not as like, a, you know. [laughs]

ELM: I’m assuming that you were on the same page as me, that applying retroactive, modern definitions of sexuality and gender to people from the past is not good.

FK: I was on the page of “It’s complicated.” I was not all the way to like, “We can’t say that this person was anything,” you know what I mean? 

ELM: Oh, I guess we’re on different pages.

FK: Yeah, no, we’re on different pages, I think. I agree with you in terms of, like, history, but I think in terms of this person is considered a saint, you start getting into mythmaking about saints in those ways, and lemme tell you, that has a different function. So.

ELM: We’re also on extremely different pages regarding saints. [both laugh]

FK: Yes, that’s true. Anyway, this is all an aside, but I agree with you that it is in no way uncomplicated.

ELM: Right. So this is, so go back. We’re talking about celebrity fandom here. So you know, I think that the lines are blurry, and I think this is an issue across all sorts of RPF issues, right? I’m thinking about that letter we got in our last AMA, talking about that boy band, you know, the boy band conspiracy theory romance novel, and whether that was irresponsible, given the harmful conspiracy theories around Larry. And you know, I think that conversation, too, had a lot of elements of “the lines are blurry” and there are a lot of different kinds of fan behaviors within the broader celebrity space. 

And so for me to sit here and be like, “Well RPF is different, because there’s a really firm fourth wall, and it’s just for fans, and any famous person that even looks at it should just pour bleach in their eyes because it’s not for them,” right, you know? [FK laughs] “It doesn’t harm anyone because it’s so cloistered and everyone is entitled to their personal fantasies” or whatever. 

Obviously—I don’t want anyone to pour bleach in their eyes—obviously that’s not the way it works, and I think that there are people who are approaching RPF that way, who are perhaps friends with, even, maybe not knowing the full behaviors of other fans in their fandom who are like, you know, over here, sending kinda threatening tweets at the celebrity being like, “This is true, right, this is true, confirm or deny!” You know?

FK: Right, right.

ELM: And they may have no idea, because over on Tumblr you’re just all talking about your favorite fic about these two people, you know what I mean?

FK: I think that’s definitely true. And I think also, we don’t even need to say that it’s threatening messages or something, [ELM laughs] when people are reaching out to celebrities, right?

ELM: Yeah.

FK: It could be, I mean the way, I appreciate the way that Tanya is framing it here, because saying like, you’re trying to avoid, you don’t want to be outed, as the celebrity, but you’re getting these messages from people, maybe who are being totally sweet and loving and being like, “You give me strength to exist as a lesbian, because I think about your great love with your best friend, and how important that is,” and it’s like, well that’s not a rude message or a mean message or a trolling message. But it’s putting a lot of emotion on somebody, you know what I mean? [laughs]

ELM: Sure. Right, but don’t you think that’s in the contract of an actor? 

FK: Well.

ELM: And you know, I think—in this scenario, I mean I think in your head, this is a closeted actor who feels a lot of, you know, pressure, but like…

FK: Yeah.

ELM: They could also be a straight person, and they appreciate hearing that, you know—I’ve seen this a million times, right?

FK: Sure.

ELM: And you obviously see this with other identity things, when there’s no hiding. A Black actor is not hiding that they’re Black, and so if they receive feedback from Black fans that their performances are meaningful, I think that’s more of a straightforward interaction, right? I mean it’s still a big sense of pressure and representation things and all that— 

FK: Right.

ELM: But I think that it’s hard for me in this scenario…all right, here’s what I’m gonna say: I feel like there’s a misalignment between the celebrities that fandom would really like to be queer and, frankly, the ones that I’ve heard through rumors from people in the entertainment industry who are queer. You know what I mean? [FK laughs] There’s a lot of closeted people in Hollywood, and that sucks.

FK: Nobody wants them to be queer. [both laugh] Oh God, that’s so awful.

ELM: But do you know what I mean? I’m not saying that—

FK: [overlapping] I do know exactly what you mean.

ELM: Yeah, and I, I don’t think, I mean it’s very unfortunate that that’s the environment that seems to persist in Hollywood, but it is what it is, and I absolutely, not like I have a little notebook and every time I hear a rumor that someone’s gay I write it down, like who cares, people are entitled to their personal lives. But I feel like often when fans do it, it feels so much more about fandom to me than it actually does about the people that they’re projecting onto, frankly. Right?

FK: Yeah.

ELM: It’s like, “It was really important to me to see these two,” which, I think you see a huge parallel with shipping as well, where you see people not caring about the canon queer character, because it needs to be the two that I think should be queer! You know?

FK: Right. And now you’re bringing in the idea of canon, which I think is really interesting in this, right? Because you’ve got the “canon” of things that have happened that are visible to the public, that people are seeing, and the “canon” of what actually happened, or was experienced. Actually, I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna do it, we have a letter about this.

ELM: I like how, I was just like sitting there watching, kinda like just slack-jawed, being like, “Is this the transition? Is this how you’re transitioning to our letter about canon?”

FK: [laughs] I didn’t intend to transition and partway through my sentence I was like, “Wait!” [ELM laughs] Chug-chug-chug-chug-chug, my brain just turned over, and I was like, “Now we’re transitioning.”

ELM: OK! Transition time, we have a letter about this. [FK laughs] Shall I read it? Since you read the last one?

FK: Sure. Read it. [laughs]

ELM: All right. OK. So, letter #2 is from, we’re not sure how to pronounce your name, See-onis? Sigh-onis? I’m gonna say See-onis. Apologies if that’s wrong. [laughs]

FK: Doin’ our best.

ELM: I know someone named Siona [see-ona], so, you know.

FK: [overlapping] There we go, that’s the logic.

ELM: [overlapping] You know, close, similar. All right.

“Hi Flourish and Elizabeth!

“I recently entered a sports RPF fandom for the first time. Let me say that for all the flak RPF gets, it’s been one of the most awesome fandom experiences I’ve ever had. What I’ve been thinking about lately is why I find it so much harder to write RPF than fic for my previous book fandom. 

“My first thought was that the ‘plots’ and ‘characters’ of RPF fandom are so much more ambiguous than in a neatly laid out fictional canon. And there are so many more mediums from which to construct canon—official broadcasts, independent press, social media etc. This may be true, but I see a lot of conversation on Tumblr about how RPF is functionally no different than non-RPF, because we’re still just working from a collective understanding of some text, even if that text is the Formula 1 World Championship. 

“Another point in favour of this argument is: how is an unfolding IRL scenario different from an airing TV series? There’s some point when a TV show ends, and the same isn't necessarily true for RPF canon—does that make a difference? It’s complicated. I can think of so many comparisons to draw.

“It seemed like an easy question at first—obviously RPF has a different relationship to canon, canon is real life! But I’m not sure it's so clear cut. What do you guys think?

“Absolutely love the pod. New episodes are one of the highlights of my week. 

“Best, Sionis”

FK: Aww, thank you, Sionis!

ELM: Yes, thank you very much. 

FK: All right, so. Now you see why my brain trnk-trnk-trnked over to this letter. [ELM laughs] Um, because I do think, I mean I think that what Sionis is saying is really interesting, and I think that one of the things that complicates it is that, exactly what Sionis is saying about the different sources, right? Like, if we’re talking about what really happened in real life, well, fans have a set of sources that they get that from, whether that’s the Formula 1 Championship airing online or social media or whatever. And then the actual Formula 1 driver has their own experiences of what happened in real life, right? So there’s different sets of facts that people are working from, in a way that I think is not the case when you’re looking at a television show. Like, when you’re looking at a television show, there’s a script, there’s things that were shot, those things are packaged into a neat package, and it goes up on your streamer, and everyone has access to this contained thing.

ELM: Counterpoint. I’m in the X-Men fandom.

FK: All right. Point. [ELM laughs] But! But, but but but, you still don’t have, like, Wolverine doesn’t have… you know what I mean? The X-Men fandom may be huge and sprawling, but it is still finite.

ELM: [overlapping] What doesn’t he have? Tell me, what doesn’t he have?

FK: Well, he’s not, like, a real human being. He doesn’t have, you know…

ELM: [overlapping] What are you saying?

FK: Well, I mean even if you had perfect access to like…this becomes a problem because if you had perfect access to Wolverine’s thoughts at all times—

ELM: I do. I’m a telepath, so.

FK: Right. Well then, then you know, the map is the territory and you could never understand what counts, you know what I mean?

ELM: Well, frankly, I, what I know of Wolverine is limited to like, what, seven or eight movies? Whereas he’s been in thousands of comics. Right?

FK: [laughing, overlapping] Yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah.

ELM: And there’s another reader, you know, I’m sure there’s readers—have I put Wolverine in a story—oh, I have—I don’t know why somehow we wound up on Wolverine here, but you know, I’m—

FK: You picked him! [laughs]

ELM: [laughs] I know there are—because he’s the most important mutant—I know there are readers of my work who are deep in comics fandom, and have read, you know, hundreds and hundreds of comics, and have a different… It’s interesting, some of them, I’ve been friends with a few who have said very complimentary things about my characterization, and I always think, “Does that mean that the movies are well-characterized compared to the comics?” Like, I’m trying to work my way back, because that’s the only, where it’s coming from, you know? 

FK: Right.

ELM: So, I think that yeah, if we’re talking about one singularly contained television show. But then, counterpoint to that too, if you’re talking about a classic long-running, unevenly written, 22-episode season, 10-season, you know what I mean? Those don’t have consistent, frankly, plots or characterizations or whatever, those are not some perfectly clear discrete…you know, or like, you were in Star Wars fandom, and they jossed a giant—are we not saying “jossed” anymore—[FK laughs] they de, de-canonized…

FK: [overlapping, laughing] Even the word “jossed” has been canceled! 

ELM: [laughs] They de-canonized huge swaths of that, right? And so it’s like, I think the…people are working with a lot of different things, and for writing fic, what do you wanna do? Do you want a very, very faithful, incorporating as many “factual” details as possible into a work, for a fictional fandom? Probably not, you know? Like, that’s not interesting fic, if it just feels like you memorized Wookiepedia or whatever, you know what I mean? And then you’re just shoving details in. Sorry, I’m, I gave a lot of counterpoints, go ahead. [laughs]

FK: No no no, I think you’re right, when it comes to RPF just as a practice of writing. Which is what Sionis is talking about in that letter. 

ELM: That’s why I went in that direction, because this is specifically about writing RPF. [laughs]

FK: No no no, I think that you’re right, but I think that when you get to some of the concerns about the ethics of RPF that Tanya was bringing in, that becomes more challenging because there is a person who in some sense is in charge of “the canon” of their own life, right? And then there’s a bunch of people who are like, “No, that’s not what we’re seeing in the bits of it that we’re getting, we’re getting something different to you.” Or, you know, are we interpreting what’s happening with you correctly. 

ELM: I mean…

FK: So, you know, again, I think you’re right when it comes to separating this out as a practice of fiction writing, where it always gets messy is where it starts crossing over with that broad celebrity culture issue.

ELM: Well, sure, but…I guess I’m just a little skeptical that… To me, say I was a fan of some man in the Formula—some man in the Formula 1. [both laugh] I don’t know why—

FK: [overlapping, laughing] Can you name one? I can’t. Sorry to Formula 1 fans.

ELM: [overlapping] Yeah! The one, I know the name of the one who looks like—I’m gonna, we’re gonna get hate mail for this—the one who looks like just some guy, Sebastian Vettel. [laughs]

FK: OK, I do know his name, because you’ve told me about him, and looked at a picture, and I agree that, sorry to everybody, [ELM laughs] he looks like a guy who’s married to a friend of mine from college. A random guy. He seems fine.

ELM: You’re saying this as like, a hypothetical, not like, one of your actual friends’ husbands? He looks like—

FK: No, no, he looks like the platonic ideal of a random actual friend’s husband.

ELM: [overlapping] Yes. Yes. Yes.

FK: Which is fine! I’m not, you know, any, if that is what people are invested in, then I say go with God. [ELM laughs] It makes you happy, bless you, bless him, bless the world. No shade whatsoever, but that is my reaction.

ELM: I will say, I also know, from living in the United Kingdom, Lewis Hamilton, who’s been around for a long time and is famous.

FK: Great! You have, you have a lot more information than me.

ELM: [overlapping] That’s two! I’ve got a ship here, right now! [both laugh]

FK: OK, but let’s get back to it. Formula 1. A random guy.

ELM: OK. So I love Joe Smith from the Formula 1. And it seems to me—I mean this is hypothetical, I’m not in RPF fandom, I understand it’s challenging, I have good friends who are in RPF including in this fandom—but to me, the text, the starting point of the text, is everything that’s publicly available. You’re not putting hidden cameras in their homes, you know?

FK: Yeah.

ELM: And yeah, I understand that there’s a complicated—there’s an element of, “Oh, I heard rumors, it’s rumored.” Because fandom loves rumors. 

FK: Right.

ELM: But you could do the same thing with a fictional canon, to say like, “I heard there was a deleted scene in the script where actually they declare their love to each other,” right?

FK: Right.

ELM: Um, I just realized that that inadvertently was a Supernatural reference and I did not mean it for that. [FK laughs] But you know, if you start by saying, “Oh, the canon could be everything that’s publicly available,” so the interviews they give, the things they post on social media. With most celebrities, that's highly controlled. Right?

FK: Yes.

ELM: Like, they are literally crafting a narrative for you, that is the entire point.

FK: Yeah.

ELM: And so you start there, and then  you take more details from, you know, if you wanna take details from interviews or whatever that are a little less scripted, sure. Just in the same way that like, to me, I will never engage with several of the X-Men movies but I’ll engage with other ones, because I think some of them are bad and not relevant. You know what I mean? 

FK: Yeah.

ELM: I guess I just feel like maybe I’m a bit more agnostic when it comes to canon, and so I don’t really understand…on an intellectual level I guess, because I see a lot of people who care a lot about what is canon and what isn’t, but on a personal level I don’t get it. So to me, I don’t…this doesn’t seem super hard, particularly because I know that tons and tons and tons of RPF is AUs.

FK: Yeah…

ELM: So then I’m like, well, this is really about characterization, so then it’s just your perception of these people when they give interviews, and their social media. And there’s no such thing as correct canonical characterization.

FK: Yeah, OK, so I would say two things to that. One is, I would say I think that you’re taking a super writerly perspective on this, which is, it is writing, and that’s great. I think that there are a lot of people for  whom it is writing, but they’re not actually thinking of it in a very writerly way, they’re thinking about it in—now this is not to say that Sionis is doing this, just to say like, in general people I know who write and are into RPF—I think there’s a lot of people for whom it’s sort of like, writing out their fantasies or ideas or dreams about the person, and sometimes that includes being invested in the idea that you know them better than they know themselves. 

So I think that there’s a level on which writing is functioning as writing here, and then there’s a level where writing is functioning as sort of…channeling that more celebrity culture fandom aspect, and I don’t think that… I think that those sometimes mean people having different approaches. But, I think Sionis is a lot closer to what you’re saying here, and I kinda suspect, I wonder, when I wrote RPF I had a similar question to Sionis, which is, “Where do I stop my research?” 

ELM: Yeah.

FK: Like, I wanna write about this, where do I stop? And at a certain point I had to come to the place that you’re at, which is, “It’s all just vibes man, you know? [both laugh] Research as much as you feel like researching!” Because I am one of those people who’s fairly, not totally canon obsessive, but fairly canon obsessive when I’m writing something in a fictional space. So I mean, I think in that regard what you’re saying is really accurate, and like, a good response.

ELM: My, uh… Well, I appreciate that, thank you. I mean, I am responding as a writer and also to the question of a writer as you’ve articulated here—

FK: [overlapping] Yeah, totally.

ELM: But I also, I understand the—I mean, I am I guess gonna continue to argue for saying I don’t think they’re that different, because the…oh, you can write something that, you know the Joe Smith Formula 1 driver better than he knows himself, right—he’s my guy, Joe, he’s really good at driving, so.

FK: [overlapping] Joe Smith, yeah.

ELM: [laughs] But how often, like literally all the time, are people saying about fanfiction written about fictional sources, “You know this character better than any other writers. You know this character better than the author of the books.” Right? And it’s like, it’s such a paradoxical statement, right, and I understand why it makes writers so—you know, the writers of the source material—so mad, [FK laughs] because they’re like, “No one knows it better than me, the person—” You know what I mean?

FK: Yeah, totally.

ELM: [overlapping] And of course I always thought this about J. K. Rowling, you know, and it’s just like, I would say this to people who weren’t in fandom and they would be like, “What are you talking about, these literally came out of her mind,” and it’s like, I understand why that sounds presumptuous. And so I understand why taking it to the real person thing, that can sound very presumptuous, because all you’re saying is you know them, you’ve interpreted their public persona in this deep way, you don’t know them at all.

FK: Yeah, yeah. Or you have your finger on the pulse of what the public persona means to the people who love it.

ELM: Right, right! Which I think, you know, it seems to me the healthiest approach to this is to understand that…I feel like you get into this territory of…really dashed expectations when you start assuming that your perceptions of a public persona are some kind of real deep down truth. 

FK: Right.

ELM: And like, I don’t think this is unique to celebrities, either, right? [FK laughs] Like, you might have all these perceptions of your coworkers, or your friends, or your partner, or whatever, there’s so many things, and you’re not gonna know. And like, you know, if you don’t vocalize any of that then they’re not gonna know how you’re perceiving—you know what I mean? 

FK: Yeah, yeah, I think that’s really real.

ELM: [overlapping] So, if you’re writing RPF about your boss…you know…you could…

FK: Right, and I mean this is a source of pain and stress sometimes in people’s real life relationships. You know? Thinking about like, in families, where I think it’s really classic that a parent will be like, “I gave birth to you, I know you better than anybody in the world,” and the implication is, “better than you know yourself,” and you’re like, “Yeah, fuck you!” You know? [laughs] “Absolutely not!” It’s just a human dynamic.

ELM: I mean that’s a very interesting example too, because I feel like that’s often weaponized and kind of used in a…I mean that’s a controlling sort of statement, right? “I’m the one who created you,” and I feel like there’s definitely an element of that in all kinds of fandom, in your kind of desperation to say, “I love this character the most, I love this celebrity the most, I know them better than they know themselves, I know this fictional character better than the writers will ever know them, it’s mine.” 

FK: Right.

ELM: And I feel like the family example or an abusive relationship example of saying that “I have some ownership over you,” right?

FK: Yeah. Absolutely. And I think, I do think that’s less problematic when it’s like, an author wrote a book, they can feel deeply invested in the book, but ultimately it is a thing that they made that they shared with other people, it’s not them, you know?

ELM: Yeah.

FK: And it does get harder when the thing that the person made is a persona that happens to share the exact appearance [ELM laughs] and name and many of the mannerisms [laughs] of the person who they are. Right? 

ELM: Sure.

FK: That’s where it gets really, really sticky. I mean it was sticky to begin with! But it’s stickier. [laughs]

ELM: So, I guess going back to this letter, you know, part of me is still wondering too, I just feel like… I mean whatever, I’ve never been in an RPF— You’ve been in one RPF fandom, right?

FK: I have. And I’ve been in other fandoms where RPF was a part of the landscape that I engaged with sometimes, but I was never, like, a shipper.

ELM: Which fandoms? I’m curious.

FK: The X-Files, there’s a huge David Dulchovny/Gillian Anderson RPF space.

ELM: [overlapping] Oh, I believe it! I believe that any of the fandoms you and I both have been in—maybe not Black Sails for me but who knows—I believe that all of them have a big RPF component.

FK: And I’ve read, I’ve read a bunch of that RPF, and been around it in that way. I wouldn’t say it was my primary thing there.

ELM: So when you, the X-Files RPF you read—back in ye olde 90s, I’m assuming—did David and Gillian work in a…I’m trying to think of where they would…or is it “David and Gillian are actors making a show called The X-Files?” [laughs]

FK: It was “David and Gillian are actors making a show called The X-Files,” very much. Very much.

ELM: [overlapping] What job, if you had to write them in like a “has a different life” AU, what jobs would you give them? This is meaningless to me because I’ve never seen The X-Files, but please go ahead.

FK: You mean the characters or do you mean David and Gillian?

ELM: David and Gillian.

FK: Oh, I have…oh, that’s hard. I mean…realistically, actually it would probably be like, he is some kind of a college professor or something like this, which is actually what he was going to do before he got into acting. 

ELM: OK. OK.

FK: And she is doing something that is, uh…on the surface not highly intellectual and then impresses him with how smart she is in some way. 

ELM: Oh, interesting.

FK: Because that’s a, that’s a, that’s a big chunk of the sort of Gillian Anderson persona, is that she’s like, she comes off as a bimbo apparently sometimes, but she’s actually obviously a really good actor and very smart.

ELM: That's really surprising to me! I don’t know anything about her as a celebrity, I’ve never seen, you know, I’ve heard her on interviews or whatever, so to me, not knowing them at all but just gettin’ their vibes, I want him to be like…on trial for something, right, [FK laughs] and she’s a high-powered defense lawyer.

FK: That’s, that’s a classic, so she has gotten less bimbish in interviews as she’s gotten older in general.

ELM: Oh, they look like they do now, they’re their real ages in my story.

FK: Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, I’m thinking about during The X-Files, in that period.

ELM: All right, all right.

FK: But yeah. Yeah.

ELM: OK. So, when you were reading “David and Gillian are actors making The X-Files…”

FK: [laughs] Yeah.

ELM: I mean that’s interesting to me too, because that kinda stuff I feel like, in my experience of what I’ve read and like, have never ever ever enjoyed, because I’m just, RPF is not for me, is also there’s an element in that kind of thing about the show that you like. You know? It’s like, they’re making the show.

FK: Yeah. And in this case a lot of it was also definitely about the contrast between the actors’ personalities and the personalities of their characters. 

ELM: Right, right.

FK: Which I think is quite different than a lot of RPF that I read these days, where there’s a lot of crossover, you know, where it’s like, “Oh, yes, this actor is like the character they play,” whereas in that time period when I was more reading that, it was much more about how, “Isn’t it funny that actually Gillian Anderson is this giggly, lighthearted person as far as we know? And Scully is this kind of dour, serious person?”

ELM: This is so interesting, because I feel like I have seen an increasing trend of people talking about the actors in the show that they love as basically the characters. Right? And they’ll show a scene, you know, it’ll be like a clip of a scene from their show, and they’ll be like, “Look at—” and then they’ll say the actor’s name. 

FK: Yeah.

ELM: And it’s like, I’m lookin’ at the character right now, unless you want to describe some sort of interesting acting or physical choice that they made, but they’ll be like, “Can you believe X actor said these words?” And it’s like, yeah, I can, someone wrote those words down and it’s their job to say them out loud. [FK laughs] That’s kinda the whole job. Have you noticed this too?

FK: Yeah, yeah. I’ve noticed this. It reminds me of, there was a point at which in fanvidding there were people who began to slip in images of the actors into their fanvids, in ways that were like, clearly the actor was actually the character in the context of the fanvid but it was a picture of the actor just being the actor. And I always thought that was really interesting, because if you’re just watching a vid and it goes by, sometimes you don’t even notice, because they look exactly alike. But then after a little while you’re like, “Wait, that wasn’t a scene in—oh! That was just an interview,” or something like that. They needed a picture of so-and-so laughing, and he’s never laughed on the screen. 

ELM: [laughs] Yeah.

FK: So yeah, I find that really really interesting, and I wonder, I actually kinda wonder if it might be time to transition to the next letter, because I feel like some of those relationships between like, the character and the actor and the, you know, your vibes…do they relate? Is it time? Do we get to transition now?

ELM: Another, another exquisite transition. [FK laughs] Um, it…perhaps that wasn’t the smoothest, but it’s probably time to read the third letter, you know, just so we have time to talk about it.

FK: [laughs] Look, it’s gonna, I’m gonna read the letter and you’re gonna be like, “Actually Flourish, that was so smooth, it so connects, it’s so perfect, you’re great, teach me your ways.” 

ELM: Regardless of whether like, thematically it fit, [FK laughs] the way that you presented it, I will never say is smooth.

FK: OK, all right.

ELM: [laughs] There’s no circumstance in which I would say those words. Don’t write me in a fic saying that, because it would be out of character.

FK: Great, OK, shall I read it though?

ELM: Yeah, do it.

FK: OK. 

“Hello Elizabeth and Flourish, 

“I am a long time listener and enjoy your perspectives, surveys/data, and banter. I feel the podcast connects me to fandom and discourse as I am a passive consumer of content and hardly engage with a community. I have attended many conventions but am older (Geocities generation) and also come from an academic background so I enjoy and interact with it in a different manner. 

“I thought I was open minded but your podcast challenged my assumptions regarding individuals reading or writing RPF. I have been reading fanfiction since I was around 11, which is a long time ago, and had equated RPF as being somehow wrong. You helped me process my thoughts and feelings with this part of my fandom. I read several to understand but for any ship I found I had to compartmentalize it as a portrayal or alter ego. I found RPF isn’t my cup of tea but learned to see it objectively and not judge others for their preference. Thank you for this.

“To tie all this in, you have previously discussed topics which interest me, especially in how fans cope. My question is how does one process their RPF fandom or writing when something such as a scandal or problematic behavior happens? You previously discussed the topic from what I remember in relation to Sherlock fandom and Harry Potter/J. K. Rowling but this got me thinking. If an author, actor, or fictional fandom becomes problematic it may be easier to divorce this in the mind but what if the individual IS the primary fandom or content and the fan exclusively created for this particular ship or person? How do they view the fandom after this?

“For example, I am an ice hockey fan but I understand the toxic culture within it so I choose not to engage with social media or fan-created content. I enjoy the game, went to games, and have personalized jerseys so I consider myself a fan in this respect. Recently the NHL and Chicago Blackhawks (not a team I am a fan of) are under fire for the mishandling of sexual abuse allegations. I read the investigation report and watched the victim’s interview, which was heartbreaking. I had to take a break from hockey for obvious reasons but also fanfiction since the events which occurred were close to summaries and plots I have seen in fictional works which disturbed me.

“I felt helpless as a fan but I believe so-called ‘cancel culture’ is an attempt or expression for some sort of accountability and consequences since only money seems to talk. I have had to come to terms with my fandom of a game which has seriously damaged individuals and will continue to do so (including CTE and forcing injured players to play or take copious amounts of pain medication to function) but I haven’t had to rectify this with my creative endeavors which others may have had to do.

“These questions kept popping up in my mind so I researched and on AO3 the Blackhawks fandom is one of the larger ones in the hockey RPF tag and the second most popular pairing were a major component of the organization during the accusations and 10 year cover up and still remain on the team. Their responses in my opinion have been tone deaf and lacking responsibility to say the least. One thing I noticed is a dramatic decrease in fics for the pairing and organization on AO3 which may be anecdotal answers to my questions. 

“How does a reader or writer view these people if their knowledge of them has changed over time but not for the better? Does one purge the content or defend them and act as if everything is normal, or do they continue and view them as ‘characters’ which are their created headcanon? Is an athlete, singer, or actor a portrayal of a character played out in media and for creative purposes not the human behind them? How does a fan cope with a revelation which changes the idea of who that person is in reality? 

“You talked in one episode about what draws us to a character or ship and this then leads to the question of does this then make the fan question what it is or was about themselves which they were attracted to, found appealing, or compelled to create content? It seems like an existential fan crisis at some point. I know many episodes have gotten into philosophy so this is one of those overarching questions. 

“Thank you and I hope for many more years of the podcast, Anonymous.”

ELM: Thank you very much, Anonymous, this is a great letter.

FK: Seriously.

ELM: OK, so, where do we start here? And connecting it back to the rest of the conversation. Because some of this is less about RPF.

FK: You know, this is really interesting to me, because [laughs] because of my deep and abiding commitment to Harry Styles, and although it is not sexual assault allegations, all of the drama happening around him and Olivia Wilde, and Don’t Worry Darling, and all of this stuff. Which, you know, honestly, if I’m taking this right, is sort of about what happens when there’s stuff that occurs that’s different from that person’s persona. And I think that everyone would agree that like, homewrecker Harry Styles, who creates a—because of his breaking up a marriage, creates an abusive situation for a nanny and a child, that is not what his like, persona is at all. [laughs] You know?

ELM: Really? Seriously?

FK: [overlapping, laughing] Oh, shut up. Shut up, Elizabeth.

ELM: I’m not, I’m not being sarcastic, none of this stuff about him in that whole debacle at all seemed…that tracked for what I know of him.

FK: He seemed like he was pretty much out of it. But I think there was still, I mean I saw a bunch of people being like, “Really? All of that?”

ELM: Yeah, those people were watching…and many, many people do, watch their faves with like…

FK: Rose-colored glasses.

ELM: Yeah, fave-colored glasses. Yeah, I don’t know, he’s always seemed like a fuckboy to me, so this is not—like, this tracked.

FK: Yeah, I mean I will say that I was not shocked or horrified by any of this, I was like, “OK, well, I guess it was about time that something like this happened, because you know, people are shitty to each other all the time.” But I will say that for me, it made me less into it. You know? I was like, “OK, this all happened, I guess it’s not surprising, but that, that cooled it off for me a little.” You know? I was like, “All right, he’s a person, he’s not just this, like, idol.” And even though I knew that was true intellectually, my emotional reaction to it was not the same thing as my intellectual reaction. I was like, “All right, well, maybe he’s entangled in this functionally incredibly shitty situation, and kind of rubbernecky and fun to view from the outside,” but like…

ELM: [overlapping] It was pretty funny, that whole Venice situation…the spitting…

FK: [overlapping] Yeah, it was! It was, I don’t mean to say like, yeah. I don’t mean to suggest that I’m, like, humorless about this.

ELM: [overlapping, laughing] Oh man, it feels like so long ago, when everyone was talking about [FK laughs] how he spit on Chris Pine. [laughs] Allegedly.

FK: [overlapping] Yep. But, but I just, you know, all I’m saying is like, yeah, I mean I guess in my experience of this, it wasn’t as dramatic. But I definitely do think that Anonymous is pointing to something, the cooling off, it’s like…well, I was holding this construction of this person that I knew wasn’t really probably true, as a fun thing to sort of indulge in, and now the gap between that is larger, and it’s less easy to hold together and less fun.

ELM: OK, so here’s my question for you, specifically with this example.

FK: Mm hmm.

ELM: When you were writing fanfiction, RPF about Harry Styles—

FK: Yeah.

ELM: Were you thinking of him as an idol? And lemme finish the question, it’s got multiple parts, get ready. 

FK: Yeah.

ELM: You’re thinking right now. Do you feel like, from the time when you were writing “Harry Styles gets impregnated,” right, he was the—no, was Louis the impregnated person?

FK: It was, it was Louis.

ELM: OK, sorry. “Harry Styles has a, impregnates Louis.” Right, so it’s a, you know, it’s a scenario that you put them in, right?

FK: I did, I did do that.

ELM: So, do you feel like you thought of Harry Styles, the celebrity figure, differently then than you did when you stopped having an RPF relationship with him as a character, and just started attending, like, 17 of his shows every time he sets foot in New York City? Which I feel like is a much more adulatory fan practice than, you know, writing complicated, messy, human depictions in a fic. Right?

FK: Yeah.

ELM: Do you feel like your feelings about him changed in that way, or is it just circumstantial?

FK: No, what I would say is that my feelings about him were always adulatory in a certain way. But I was, in the process of writing, accessing knowledge of people being shitty to each other and engaging in those things and so forth, to sort of come to a place where I was able to write, I hope, a character who was not just sort of like, some kind of pedestal whatever. 

ELM: That’s interesting.

FK: And I would say that also, in that story, he’s in complex human situations, but he’s never sort of the villain or like, never the main jerk or something like that, right? 

ELM: Well, we don’t know what happened with this Don’t Worry Darling thing, but I think we both agree that he’s not the main jerk.

FK: Yeah, that’s true, that’s true. But I mean, but yeah, I think what I would say is, because I was writing fiction, I was taking my adulatory feelings and sort of putting them through a filter of, how are actual humans existing? Even though obviously I’m not trying to write the deep truth about Harry, I don’t think that in our world, now, Louis Tomlinson is likely to have ever been impregnated by him. [laughs] 

ELM: You never know. They really keep a lid on these things, you know? That’s what the real conspiracy was. [laughs]

FK: [overlapping] You never know. You never know, it’s true. Um…but yeah, I mean I think, I think this is what I’m trying to say about sort of the difference between the emotional reaction to somebody, and the writerly reaction or the intellectual reaction. And I feel like the emotional, for me, can fuel my choosing to do something more writerly and intellectual, but it’s still like, there’s this underlying, just, “Yeaaahh, that one!” vibe, you know?

ELM: Yeah. Well, so, I wonder how many people who write RPF or read it are coming from a similar place of…starting with the adulation. Because I feel like there is a difference between the way that I, and I think you, and most people I know, and don’t know but see writing meta or whatever, talk about being grabbed by fictional characters. Just like, “I’m fascinated. Do I wanna fuck him, do I wanna be him? Do I—” 

FK: [overlapping, laughing] So true.

ELM: [overlapping] —you know, like, “Oh, he murdered so many people—fascinating, fascinating!” Right? And you’re like, “OK.” There are all these lists of like, all the things that he’s done, and it’s like, “I didn’t say his name, but he popped into your head, didn’t he,” and everyone tags it with some different dude or whatever. That’s different, it feels different than the adulation, the way people talk about, like, music artists in particular, but movie stars to some degree as well. 

FK: And sports stars, sometimes, too.

ELM: Yes, sorry, not to forget about sports. Absolutely sports stars, right? 

FK: Yeah.

ELM: And sports have the additional element of scoring the points and winning the game for you, there’s an actual measurable value that they bring to your life by, like, being the star.

FK: Right, right.

ELM: The scorer or whatever, you know? So, I wonder how many people are approaching RPF from that like, “Oh, he’s my favorite player,” because my friends who are into hockey RPF, I don’t think that their favorite players are their favorite people to read and think about. The ones they admire the skating skills of. [FK laughs] And I think some of that, as far as I can tell, and this is extremely secondhand, is partly like, just some people have more interesting—seem to have more interesting personalities, or better vibes. It’s all about particular interpersonal dynamics. Or interesting, compelling in interviews or whatever, that’s not necessarily aligning with who are the very best players, who you might admire their, you know, puck handling skills or whatever, I’m just gonna say hockey words, go ahead. [laughs]

FK: I think everything you’re saying is right, however I think that it’s not directly describing what I was talking about with Harry Styles, or I think what people who are writing fic are talking about if they have that adulation. I think we’re almost talking about three different kinds of things here. 

ELM: [overlapping] Three different? What? [laughs]

FK: Three, I think that you have another one, because OK, here’s what I’m gonna say. I think that the like, “That guy, that’s my guy, that character!” feeling, right, to me that’s what I mean when I say “I had an adulation for Harry Styles.”

ELM: Oh, all right…

FK: I was like, “That’s my guy, he’s the most interesting, he’s all this.” But by saying “that’s my guy, he’s the most interesting, he’s all this,” I had a certain idea about like, who he was, what the things he might do were. And to some extent I didn’t want to see him…I didn’t want to see him be a dick to somebody, I wanted to see him do the things that he was doing right then, and then one has to set that aside to write something interesting about anybody, to some extent. ‘Cause if you’re just like, “That’s my guy!” you’re not gonna actually be able to realistically have them react to anything or paint them as a fully 3D character. And then there’s a separate kind of adulation of like, “I just love his music, I love his voice, he sings so good.” You know? Or “He hits the hockey stick”—hockey stick! [ELM laughs]—“He hits the hockey stick so good!” 

ELM: Yeah.

FK: Then there’s that kind of admiration, which is a third thing. And I think that the question I have then, is if you have that admiration for somebody and then it turns out that they’re a rapist—not, Harry Styles is not a rapist, I’m back in the sports space.

ELM: Right.

FK: And to me I think, is there a difference in your reaction if you’re sort of like, “He’s my guy and I’m attached to his personality,” and then it turns out that his personality is also attached to a person who is a rapist? Or maybe has aspects of that personality that you didn’t know about, or didn’t ever imagine being part of it. Versus “He’s the star,” which doesn’t really have anything to do with his morals or personality or anything, because he’s so good at playing hockey, but then it turns out that he’s like, a dirtbag.

ELM: Yeah.

FK: Like, are those two reactions the same?

ELM: Right. I’m trying to parse this, because I’m trying to think of why it feels different when it’s fictional.

FK: Yeah.

ELM: I mean maybe it’s just because it’s fictional. Like, I was just thinking, OK, so I write characters being rude all the time. Maybe not super rude, but somewhat rude.

FK: Yeah, you do. You do.

ELM: You’ve read my...

FK: [overlapping] I have, you do that.

ELM: I just, that’s who these people are, right? They’re…

FK: [overlapping, laughing] That, that is who they are. Undeniable.

ELM: [laughs] But I was thinking, I’m not like, super in celebrity fandom, but there are some actors that you know I love, and if I witnessed one of them being rude in an interview?

FK: Yeah.

ELM: I’d feel bad. And I never feel that way when I’m reading or writing fanfiction about, you know, about…

FK: Yeah! Yeah.

ELM: And I’m wondering what…is that truly just my brain understands that these fictional characters are fictional, and…[FK laughs] You know, just looking at some of the backlash to Interview With the Vampire right now—which we’re both watching and loving and can’t wait to talk about in a special episode—

FK: Yup.

ELM: You know, and it’s just like, what show are you watching? [FK laughs] These are, these are murderous vampires, like, you know what I mean?

FK: Yeah yeah yeah yeah.

ELM: And like, who cares? They’re vampires! I’m watching a fictional show about morally bad vampires! [both laugh] 

FK: Right, right, right. Right.

ELM: Right? And it’s just like, “Oh, he did something that hurt my feelings.” It’s like, what are—I don’t—what did we sign up for here? You know what I mean? And there’s a—I mean this is a defense of any sort of problematic behaviors in fiction, is like—it’s fiction. That is a place where you can play out all sorts of scenarios and no one gets hurt.

FK: Right, right. And if you read it in RPF, I wonder what that would be—you know what I mean? The question I have is like, how would you feel if—

ELM: [overlapping] Yeah! This is what I’m talking about!

FK: Right, yeah.

ELM: Yeah yeah yeah yeah.

FK: And yeah, no, this is 100% why I have never tried to meet Gillian Anderson, because if she did anything that was less than perfect, [ELM laughs] in my conception of it, then I would be heartbroken and I just don’t need to subject myself to that. She can live her life and have a bad day and not ruin my day. I will never put her in that position. [laughs] Or me!

ELM: Right. But if you’re reading my fic about Gillian Anderson, attorney at law, and her dirtbag client David Duchovny…

FK: Yeah! Yeah.

ELM: Right? [laughs]

FK: And you made her a jerk.

ELM: Yeah, and she was an asshole, would that hurt you? Would you be like, “Oh, not my Gillian!” You know? If it was fun, if it felt in character, if it felt like it was consistently written, whatever this character is that I’m constructing now…

FK: I think I would stop feeling like it was…I might enjoy the story, but I wouldn’t enjoy it as a story about Gillian Anderson. You know?

ELM: But this is the reason that I brought up that even to begin with. So much of hockey fanfic, so much of, you know, sports fanfic in particular—look, so much One Direction fanfic, right, is AUs. They are not, it’s not “Louis and Harry are in a band called One Direction,” right?

FK: Right. But it sort of goes in one—[laughs]—it goes one direction, right, you can take a person and make them do morally horrible things in fic, right? There was a classic genre of One Direction fanfic where like—do you remember the moral outrage over this? It was on Wattpad, where it was like, “One Direction kidnapped me, and sexually abused me in a van?”

ELM: [overlapping] Yeah, or “My mother sold me to One Direction.”

FK: Right, right, there was, so you can do it in that way, I think people feel comfortable with it going that way, because they’re like—

ELM: [overlapping] Well, obviously a lot of people don’t feel comfortable with like—

FK: [overlapping] Obviously, but some people do.

ELM: “One Direction gangbanged me” or whatever, you know?

FK: No no no, no no.

ELM: Or like, gang raped, you know? Yeah, I understand, but I also understand why people are writing those stories.

FK: [overlapping] Right, but there was, there was sort of a large number of people who felt—some people hate it but some people felt fine with it, you know, it’s fiction, it’s separating it, it’s different. But I think that there’s a different attitude toward the idea of making somebody better than they are in real life. 

ELM: Yeah.

FK: Writing something about like, someone who is a rapist in real life and making them a sweet love who, you know, I mean—and to be clear, people’s actions—people commit rapes and also are sweet to other people, I’m not trying to say that doesn’t exist, these are two separate actions, both of which can be taken by one human, being nice and raping somebody. But, but, I think people would see that as an attempt to rehabilitate them. Or, you know?

ELM: Absolutely, yeah.

FK: And so you don’t want to do that, you don’t want to be associated with that.

ELM: Yeah, but I don’t think that’s unique to RPF. Like, if you look at discourse about, say, one…Ben…Kylo Ben…[FK laughs] Kylo “Ben” Ren…what is this…[both laugh]

FK: You gotta go with either Ben Solo or Kylo Ren, and both names are stupid but they’re the names that we were given. [ELM still laughing] But no, I, yes, I see what your point is. Yeah.

ELM: Or, in my story, I don’t think we’ve ever revealed this because I never have posted it because I don’t want to talk to Star Wars people, his name is, as you know, Kylo Renzio, Italian American. [laughs]

FK: Yeahhh. You should just call him Kylo Renzio forever.

ELM: I am, because I’m Italian, so it’s pretty important to me to make everyone Italian. So, you know, people write these stories, obviously we’ve seen massive amounts of discourse about what you’re “allowed” to do with him in fanfiction and whether that means that you are condoning the actions of the fictional character in canon or whatever, and also everything’s fictional, etc., etc., etc.

FK: Right, right.

ELM: I mean obviously it’s wildly different if we’re talking about a real man who plays hockey and allegedly raped some people, you know what I mean?

FK: Yeah, yeah.

ELM: I’ve spent this whole episode saying these things aren’t so different, but actually I think they are different when it comes to that, when it comes to real world harm that someone has caused.

FK: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I do think it goes one way. I do think that it’s, I do think that if you’re writing fiction about somebody and making them as a character worse than they are, well it’s just fiction, ignore it. But if you’re rehabilitating somebody who has done something really bad, then I’m not comfortable with that.

ELM: I think a lot of people would agree, and I think that’s one of the tensions of RPF that persists. One thing that I, this is maybe the flip side of this, and it’s, not to kind of veer the conversation away too dramatically, but I wanted to make sure that we got a chance to talk about this before the end, is I think that if you were to ask me, you know, with the caveat of not actively being in any RPF fandoms but obviously being friends with many people who are and observing these conversations, as someone who observes pan-fandom convos, in the last five years I think we’ve seen an increasing number of television shows in particular that have very vibrant fandoms, and a real diminishing of the fourth wall, particularly on Twitter, with showrunners and actors being very pro-fan.

FK: Mm hmm.

ELM: And pro-fanworks, pro-queer fanworks, in a way that I think we’ve talked about this in the past to some degree, in a way that I don’t love.

FK: Yeah.

ELM: And you get framings of these actors and showrunners being like, “Oh, these are the good guys, these are the ones who are validating us, these are the ones who are on our side.” And then the second RPF gets involved… [FK laughs] it’s just a fucking shitshow, right? 

FK: Yeah.

ELM: And it’s like, of course it is, because they’re not actually on your side. They’re the actors making this show. Right? They’re not, you’re not all in it together, right?

FK: Right.

ELM: And just having witnessed some of these meltdowns, and witnessing the virulence with which people who are eager to assuage the actors’ feelings or whatever are just, just destroying the people who might’ve been making the RPF, being like “Those people are disgusting and we as a fandom, we cast them out! Don’t worry, none of us would ever speak to monsters like that!” I’ve literally seen people using this kind of language.

FK: Yeah.

ELM: In tweets to these showrunners and actors. And it’s like, you know, this is not a great development to me. And I feel like, you know, a lot of this conversation has been predicated on my kind of old-school, and I think maybe your too, beliefs of that strong fourth wall around RPF, and the murky bits in which fans kinda shove real person shipping culture into actors’ faces or whatever. But I think that what we’re seeing is really unprecedented in the way that some of these shows, actors and fans acting like we’re all in it together, “Oh I love this fanart of my character,” and then you say, “Oh, no, that’s fanart of you, the actor,” and then it’s just, it’s a bad scene. You know what I mean? Have you seen this too?

FK: Yeah, I’ve definitely seen it too, it’s funny because I think about sort of the earliest…well, maybe it wasn’t the earliest, but some earlier fandoms with the good guy showrunner, you know, I’m thinking about like, Hannibal and so forth, and I’m thinking about the way that that has developed.

ELM: Hannibal’s an earlier fandom?

FK: Well, it’s earlier than the ones we’re talking about now, yeah.

ELM: I guess, I guess if we’re talking about…yeah.

FK: Good guy showrunners who are on Twitter and like, really into all the slash and talking about it and encouraging people…

ELM: [overlapping] I thought you were gonna say like, the people in The Bronze or whatever. [laughs] In like, 2001.

FK: No no, I don’t mean early early, I mean like—and that’s not even that early, right? Move on, move on, move on. My point being, I think it’s hard, because it’s like…it’s so relational. The actors and the showrunners are sort of reaching, they’re reaching across the fourth wall, and being like, “Yes, we love this stuff.” They don’t necessarily know what they’re getting into as far as what people are thinking or doing back there, and when they come in contact with it, I think it is actually fairly reasonable to be like, “Actually I didn’t want to hear your sexual fantasies about me as a person.”

ELM: Yeah.

FK: “I understand the difference between me and my character very well, because I’m an actor, and I know those things are different. So I have no problem separating those. But when you talk about me, it’s weird.” Like, I understand that, I don’t think they’re wrong to have those feelings. But then you get to the next step, which is now we’re on Twitter, and so now we’ve gotta run everybody out with pitchforks and torches, because that’s the only way that fans are able to sort of…function, is in these mobs in that way. It’s really hard, because you can’t say that the showrunners are wrong, or the actors are wrong to want to avoid RPF and so forth, but you also can’t say that the people who showed it to them are totally wrong, because they were kind of invited.

ELM: [overlapping] Yeah. Yeah yeah. Right.

FK: [overlapping] In certain ways, you know? They didn’t know how they were being invited, maybe the actor wasn’t aware of the invitation they were offering. But they were still genuinely doing that.

ELM: Yeah, it’s interesting, because I saw some good commentary about this the other day, though, that was talking about how even the lines…you know, even in the fictional stuff, in the non-RPF stuff…you know, you’re still looking very closely at their bodies. 

FK: Yeah.

ELM: You’re describing their bodies in great detail, right, in fiction or if you’re drawing something, you’re still, even if it’s their characters, if you’re drawing erotic, you’re drawing them in sexual positions, like, I don’t see a massive difference between if someone…I don’t know, whatever, I’m not an actor, but I don’t see a huge difference, it’s still a depiction of me doing the thing, right?

FK: Yeah, I mean, this is kinda reminding me of like, historical ideas about women on the stage, and the idea that if you were an actor, you were sort of presenting your image to people to be consumed. You know?

ELM: Right.

FK: I hate saying that it relates because you think about that and you think, “God, the dark ages,” like—not the literal Dark Ages, the metaphorical dark ages—

ELM: [overlapping] Yeah, I gotcha, the like, 2013 [FK laughs] is when the old times were. Yeah.

FK: Yeah, but you know, you think how could anybody have ever thought that, why did anybody think there was a problem with somebody just being an actor, but then actually no, maybe—I mean, they were wrong, but, like, maybe some of those concerns are still functional in this relationship.

ELM: Yeah. That’s interesting. I don’t know, I just think it’s really tricky, and it’s like…I mean, I brought this up at the end and I feel like, just kind of looking towards the future, because you know, it’s interesting we’ve been talking about hockey all this time, I know hockey’s had, the hockey fandom has had a massive issue with concerns about the real people seeing it and everyone in hockey fandom continues to lock their fic, and all this stuff and…

FK: Yeah, rumors about who might have an AO3 account.

ELM: Yeah, right, exactly. And so, you know, it’s interesting to see where this is shifting and where this isn’t, and where the lines are being drawn. Because you know, there’s the tired old arguments about RPF, that’s like, “Oh, tons of prestigious television and film is basically RPF blah blah blah,” which again, that’s like saying Paradise Lost is like fanfiction, sure it’s like it, but OK, this is not really the same, you know what I mean?

FK: Right, but some of the same issues do, are relevant, like Monica Lewinsky talking about her portrayal in TV versions of that, you know what I mean? So it’s not unrelated.

ELM: [overlapping] Sure, I mean, the big, there’s a big discourse around Blonde, and whether it was exploitative or not, or like, you know, on the flip side, I do think that The Crown has done an extraordinary amount to humanize, uh…[FK laughs] a horrific institution, you know? Like, to the point where I really felt like a lot of the response after Queen Elizabeth’s death, I felt like could be directly attributed to…the number of examples of people saying, “Oh, did you know this thing in history happened,” and then it was like, and it’s like, that was on The Crown! [laughs] 

FK: [simultaneous] Yeah, it was on The Crown. [laughs] 

ELM: It was like, I’m glad they made you feel a lot of sympathy for everyone. So like, yeah, I absolutely think that some of this stuff is not unique to RPF, but RPF is a fandom, it’s a fannish practice. And there are these in-fandom biases, there are these norms, you know, that are shifting. I don’t know, I feel like we’re not, compared to 15 years ago, I think we’re in a very different place, because look how huge hockey RPF is, Formula 1, I mean the boy band stuff isn’t new but arguably Larry was much larger than its predecessors.

FK: Yeah, for sure.

ELM: So, I absolutely think that it’s become a lot more normalized within pan-fandom spaces, particularly certain RPF fandoms.

FK: For sure.

ELM: But I think that’s also brought a whole host of new friction points.

FK: Yeah, I mean I think that’s true, and I Look…I guess it’s weird to say I look forward to seeing where this will all take us, [ELM laughs] but we’re gonna see it, you know? In the next few years, we’ll see where this all goes, and it’s interesting to reflect back on where we were, you know, four years ago to where we are now, thinking about this, what seems the most alive and seems like the biggest concern or issue or interest. I don’t know. It’ll be, it will be interesting to see how this all unfolds.

ELM: In “RPF Revisited Revisited.”

FK: Yeah, someday.

ELM: All right, great. [FK laughs] Mark your calendars. 2027.

FK: All right, with that, I think that we are pretty much at the end of our episode, and it’s probably time to remind you guys that yes! We are going to be doing a special episode about Interview With the Vampire, and the way that you can get access to that special episode when it comes out is by pledging to our Patreon.

ELM: Flourish…I love this show so much.

FK: It’s really good!

ELM: It’s so good. It’s so good.

FK: [overlapping] I’m so glad that you liked it, because knowing how sometimes you’re much more critical of things that I like, I watched it and I was like, “I am fucking hooked and I love it, and if Elizabeth hates it I can’t show her my weakness. [ELM laughs] I need to be really, like, guarded.” This is like a preview of what we’re gonna be into on the special episode. So.

ELM: Is it? OK.

FK: Yeah, it totally is, [laughs] we’re gonna talk about how you’re criti—how I have to guard my heart from your criticism.

ELM: Uhh…wow, I didn’t realize you cared that much, you like to be very blasé about these things, that’s very interesting. 

FK: [overlapping] I do!

ELM: Ah, no, it’s so well made, you know, I mean all the people involved are like, I don’t know, people who worked on Mad Men and stuff [both laugh] so of course I love it.

FK: [overlapping, laughing] Your fandom truly comes out.

ELM: Thank you to the AMC network, I really appreciate you. So, yeah. We’ll be doing that. I’m not sure, we should decide whether, I think there’s eight episodes, five have come out, so…I don’t know if we wanna wait until they’re all out, probably? So maybe at some point in December, we’ll put that out? And we’ll also be going to Flourish’s future favorite movie, Glass Onion, [FK laughs] A Knives Out Story

FK: Yep.

ELM: And so we’ll have a special episode on that as well, so you can get that at patreon.com/Fansplaining, those’ll be at the $3 and up tier, along with—I think 26 other special episodes at this point? Definitely two dozen plus. Or, if you have a little more money to spare, at $5/month we will send you a very cute enamel pin shaped like a fan in the mail, and at $10/month, I think you still have a couple of Tiny Zines.

FK: I do!

ELM: As a reminder, it was our ficlet edition, Flourish wrote an X-Files ficlet, Betts wrote a Star Wars ficlet, I think not about Kylo Renzio, it was about Ben. [FK laughs] Right? To me, I read it with my Italian-American lens, as about Kylo Renzio, actually? So.

FK: OK. All right.

ELM: And Britta Lundin writing an Our Flag Means Death ficlet. So, we will send you that in the mail, you get the pin and the Tiny Zine at once, and you can look at them while you listen to our thoughts about those vampires…doin’ crimes. Bein’ beautiful.

FK: And, if you don’t have money or don’t want to give it to us right now, you can also help us out by subscribing to the podcast, by sharing information about the podcast, or by writing in! As the people that we responded to this week did. Which really actually does genuinely help us figure out what we want to talk about, and we love, love, love getting emails at fansplaining@gmail.com; messages on our website, there’s a box to do it there; Tumblr messages, anon is on; or, you can give us a phone call at 1-401-526-FANS, we haven’t had a voicemail in a while, and we love receiving voicemails, because that means that we can include your actual voice on the podcast.

ELM: You didn’t say what the website is!

FK: Fansplaining.com! We’re Fansplaining everywhere. [ELM laughs] People know.

ELM: What if we were Fansplaining.biz?

FK: Get outta here, Elizabeth. I’m gonna talk to you later. This is enough. I’m done with you.

ELM: [overlapping] Fansplaining.nyc. [laughs]

FK: Goodbyeeeeee Elizabeeeeeeth.

ELM: [overlapping, and finishing together] OK, bye Flourish.

EpisodesFansplaining