My general rule is that if they've been dead long enough that no one now living knew them, they're completely fair game for fiction. Price of leading a noteworthy life.
Before that cut-off, it gets more complicated. I don't have a hard and fast rule, but it seems to be mostly "Is it good?". Lawrence of Arabia, the Peter O'toole version, is not only RPF but RPS (if that is not a nonsexual romance, my subtextometer is broken). It's also the greatest film I've ever seen, and I completely fail to care if anyone who knew T.E. Lawrence et al may be uncomfortable from the portrayal. On the other hand, I tried to read ... ugh, I've blocked out the title. Some slashy historical novel about the same characters that was terribly written, and it not only offended my sense of aesthetics but made me supremely uncomfortable in a human sense.
The Alexander/Hephaistion relationship in Alexander made me uncomfortable, too, because it was so badly done -- despite a couple thousand years' cushion, and despite much of it being taken word-for-word (and uncredited) from Mary Renault's novels, which I love. If you're going to make historical figures your puppets, all right, but do it well.
Fic about living celebrities simply squicks me, particularly if it's sexually-oriented. I imagine it's a combination of several factors. First, I think it's poor taste to air masturbatory fantasies where the object of said fantasies could conceivably come across them. Second, so much of it's terribly done -- though that's most fic, pro- or fan-. And, honestly, I think a lot of it is because I could care less about the living celebrities that get written about. I don't care about popular music. I don't care about most of Hollywood. I liked Lord of the Rings like most geeks who didn't hate it, but the actors are not the Fellowship and thus are not one tenth as cool. Sean Bean is very, very nice to oggle, but I simply don't give a damn about his personal life, including who he has sex with, and I wouldn't like to meet him in real life, both because I probably wouldn't like him and because I'm shy and don't want to meet the vast majority of humanity.
no subject
Before that cut-off, it gets more complicated. I don't have a hard and fast rule, but it seems to be mostly "Is it good?". Lawrence of Arabia, the Peter O'toole version, is not only RPF but RPS (if that is not a nonsexual romance, my subtextometer is broken). It's also the greatest film I've ever seen, and I completely fail to care if anyone who knew T.E. Lawrence et al may be uncomfortable from the portrayal. On the other hand, I tried to read ... ugh, I've blocked out the title. Some slashy historical novel about the same characters that was terribly written, and it not only offended my sense of aesthetics but made me supremely uncomfortable in a human sense.
The Alexander/Hephaistion relationship in Alexander made me uncomfortable, too, because it was so badly done -- despite a couple thousand years' cushion, and despite much of it being taken word-for-word (and uncredited) from Mary Renault's novels, which I love. If you're going to make historical figures your puppets, all right, but do it well.
Fic about living celebrities simply squicks me, particularly if it's sexually-oriented. I imagine it's a combination of several factors. First, I think it's poor taste to air masturbatory fantasies where the object of said fantasies could conceivably come across them. Second, so much of it's terribly done -- though that's most fic, pro- or fan-. And, honestly, I think a lot of it is because I could care less about the living celebrities that get written about. I don't care about popular music. I don't care about most of Hollywood. I liked Lord of the Rings like most geeks who didn't hate it, but the actors are not the Fellowship and thus are not one tenth as cool. Sean Bean is very, very nice to oggle, but I simply don't give a damn about his personal life, including who he has sex with, and I wouldn't like to meet him in real life, both because I probably wouldn't like him and because I'm shy and don't want to meet the vast majority of humanity.