RPF, HPF, and Based On A True Story, or What if Hollywood ficced them First?

[elspethdixon]

I myself have never participated in any real RPS fandoms—I couldn’t tell N’Sync and the Backstreet Boys apart even back when they were all over MTV and the radio, which should give you some idea of the level of my interest in boybands, and when it comes to television and movies, I’m far more interested in the characters than the actual actors. I’d rather read about Jack Sparrow having sex with Will and Elizabeth Turner than about Johnny Depp, Keira Knightly, and Orlando Bloom performing the exact same sex acts, because Jack, Will, and Elizabeth are the ones I saw on screen and got all fangirly over. Mr. Depp, Ms. Knightly, and Mr. Bloom may be the talented and pretty people who helped create Jack, Will, and Elizabeth, but are they 18th century pirates?

Not that I’m totally against actorfic. When someone writes orgy fic featuring Shakespeare and the Lord Chamberlain’s men, then I’ll be all over actorfic like white on rice. Especially if they throw Marlowe into the mix as well. Mmmm… Marlowe.

And that begs the question: when exactly is RPS “RPS,” and when does it become something else? Sitting down at a computer and writing Depp/Bloom or Sean Bean/ Viggo Mortenson fic could theoretically get me sued for libel (though not for slander; to quote J. J. Jameson, “Slander is spoken. Libel is printed.”), but I could not only freely pen Marlowe slash, I could actually get it published. I submit as evidence Melissa Scott & Lisa A. Barnett’s Armor of Light. For that matter, I give you Shakespeare in Love, which might not be slash, but is certainly some degree of RPF. and totally stole the Oscar that should have gone to Saving Private Ryan

Granted, Mr. Mortenson et al are currently alive and well with their own agents and lawyers and press people to perform the aforementioned suing, and Christopher Marlowe has been dead for several hundred years, and moreover, left no descendants, but that’s the legal reasoning, not the moral argument. Why is Depp/Bloom squicky and wrong, and Shakespeare/Marlowe less so? Hell, I consider historical RPS less squicky than RPS with modern celebrities (as well as more interesting, since I’m a history geek), but I don’t know why.

And what about fic written for films and television series that are based on real people and events? To what extent is, say, a Doc/Wyatt slash fic based on Tombstone regular fanfic, and to what extent is it historical RPS? Wyatt Earp and John H. Holliday were, after all, real people. What about fic for a miniseries like Band of Brothers, which was based on a book that told the story of a real life army unit? What if I wrote fic for Good Night and Good Luck or Walk the Line or Capote?

Not only did Hollywood do the film equivalent of RPF in those movies, they used actual footage of Senator Joe McCarthy in Good Night and Good Luck, completely without his consent and permission, since he’s dead, and probably would have refused to give the film his blessing even were he alive to do so. His Hed Was Pastede On Yay! Granted, it was footage from a public broadcast, and therefore presumably up for grabs to anyone who cleared it with CBS first, but you see where I’m going with this, right?

If Hollywood or some published author has “done fic” about a celebrity or historical person first, does it absolve RPS writers who choose to write about those people of fic-writing sin, or does my Doc/Wyatt slash earn me a place in the Special Hell right next to the Timbertrick people?

Comments

[azarias.livejournal.com]

Then why write RPS about him?

Honest question. When I write about a character, it's because I'm interested in that character -- his whys and wherefores, his backstory and his potential. If you're not interested in a person, why write about that person?

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Because I like their personalities? (Or what I've seen of it.) I write mainly Jude Law/Ewan McGregor. I like what I've seen of their personalities (and because Ewan has done a lot of documentaries and written a book and such, I've seen more of his) and they fit the type of guys I like to write about. They're also good looking, which is a plus (but not necessary, as I also write RPS about other actors who I think are completely unattractive), but basically they match the type of characters I like to write about.

But I can honestly say I've never spent any time thinking about their personal lives or their sex lives. I mean, it's got nothing to do with what I'm writing, which is fiction, so it has no bearing on it. Ewan is happily married. The guy I write about just has his face and personality, that's all.

[azarias.livejournal.com]

Huh. Interesting. Possibly my problem with RPF is that I'm too much of a canon-nazi, then.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

I'm a canon nazi with FPS, but for me RPS is something completely different. The entire way I approach writing RPS is different, the way I get plot ideas, everything. Whereas with FPS, I'm inspired by canon events and mainly want to write stuff that fits in the cracks or shows another possible interpretation, with RPS, I have ideas completely divorced from any canon. Just, "oh, I want to write a fic about a guy who walks in to find his flatmate and his flatmate's girlfriend shagging on the sofa, and it's horribly awkward and becomes obvious that the guy has a thing for his flatmate" and then I use whichever of my RPS characters fit in that situation. (This is exactly a fic I wrote last night, btw.)

There's a lot of my RPS that I change the names on and shop around to get published. But I enjoy writing in fandom, the interaction between writer and audience, so I usually post it as RPS first. But even if I weren't, as I said, the actors I like tend to fit personalities that I prefer, so I'd be writing the same thing anyway, even if I called the guys different names from the beginning.

[cupidsbow.livejournal.com]

To give another perspective... I use them as avatars in my writing. I know very little about the celebrities beyond their names, what they look like, what films they've been in and country of origin. I don't even watch or read interviews unless I come across them randomly while in a waiting room or whatnot. But everyone else knows those basic things too (it really is a bit like the pantheon of our times), which means that in terms of story you can skip a whole heap of description and setup and letting the reader know who the characters are friends with and get stright to the plot. Basically, I "cast" the celebrity personas in my stories, and they have no relationship to the real lives of the actors at all. They are as fictional as any roles the actors might play in the movies.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Basically, I "cast" the celebrity personas in my stories, and they have no relationship to the real lives of the actors at all.

So, it would be similar to an original fic author saying "if my novel were a movie, this character would be played by actor X?" I've seen people do this occasionally with original characters in fanfiction (particularly in virtual season episodes). They never use the actor's name or real life persona, though, just create a character and stick something like "and Bob the OMC is played by George Clooney," in their author's notes.