I'm with Nutty too. And it's not only or always that I feel protective of these people -- it's that it's deeply squicky and even upsetting for me to hear someone talking about someone I've known like they were, well, an object. Something or someone not-real.

Rather than draw from my own annoyingly large repertoire of stories, I'll tell one that isn't mine. A friend of mine was friendly with John Kennedy Jr. and his wife. Not in any significant way -- they had one good friend in common, and they went to the same sports club, so they were "hi, how are you"-ers to one another. When Kennedy's plane went down, my friend was devastated -- for their mutual good friend, for the loss of two people who were part of her everyday scenery, and most of all by the psychic assault that the wall-to-wall coverage of their deaths constituted for people to whom Kennedy and the Bessettes were real people rather than media figures.

There's just way too much collateral damage for me ever to feel that real people fiction is OK. Historical fiction, where everyone involved with a personal stake in the people being fictionalized is dead? I'm OK with that. I'm even OK with contemporary stories that use real people as set dressing without pretending to show us their inner lives (some of David Foster Wallace's work, or Yahtzee's "Hoop Screams"). But there's a point at which I draw the line. Your fantasy about appearing on Jeopardy is one thing. Your fantasy of what Alex Trebek is really like is another.

Historical fiction, where everyone involved with a personal stake in the people being fictionalized is dead? I'm OK with that.

Wrod, I'd say, because all that's left is the (an) object-self, the image that history recorded of them.

What Burrell and Nutty said.

It's funny--I often daydream about what it would be like to meet various celebrities, but they're never sexual fantasies. It's all Michelle Kwan and Alexei Yagudin give me skating tips, or I get to talk writing with Joss while waiting for a plane. Stuff like that.

I distinguish between RPS and fantasy. Sure, you play with the idea that John Travolta sweeps you off your feet in your mind. Perhaps you go into detail.

But writing it down and disseminating it? Makes me shiver.

Well, there are gray areas. There are the celebrities who have created characters that they are in public that are completely different from who they actually are. And there are some things, like Whose Line Is It Anyway? fanfic, which uses the idea that the actors are essentially playing characters who just have the same names. Still, there is a major difference between just imagining what that person might have done in a certain situation, and writing some wish-fulfillment that has more to do with the writer's crush than anything else. (As I may have mentioned before, I read one wonderful piece by a Xena fan who imagine that she'd won a contest for a date with Lucy Lawless, and the story was largely about her trying to interact with LL as her own person, and not just a strangely modernly dressed lesbian love goddess.)

Just to be clear, I'm not saying my personal habit of not fantasizing about real people is something I'm advocating as a hard-and-fast Moral Rule of any kind. Just my own admittedly vanilla comfort zone in action.

People can draw their ethical lines where ever they're comfortable, and I understand that. Nobody's obliged to oost after AD anymore than they're obliged to oost after scruffy Wes.

But once the performer markets themselves as a sex object then they've opened the door. They are specifically trading on their appeal as the actor - not just the character - to people's sexual fantasies.

You don't have to go through that door, but they are the ones that opened it.

I don't think the do-unto-others rule applies since I'm not in the same position as a celebrity who has made (in my mind) an implicit contract to sell their image.

Part of this is a certain cynicism on my part about media culture, appropriation and a bunch of other stuff which wouldn't make sense in the ethics between two people. But writing RPF doesn't feel like an act against the performer, but appropriating the media image which they sell as a career function.

To me, the objections here are like applying Newtonian physics to sub-atomic particles. Our time and culture are fundamentally different than (for example) 19th century or even early 20th century notions of propriety. The media culture is not an element that we sample at will, but rather the saturated environment we inhale and exhale daily, shaping us and our experiences beyond our conscious choices.

I'm saying Fic writing, textual appropriation, illegal sampling etc. are necessary defensive responses to an invasive media culture. If you apply the morals of a different era to this situation you are essentially participating passively in a culture that will twist and turn you until it's shaken all the money out of your pocket. I guess I'm saying that taking the high road makes you vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation in our culture.

This raises all kinds of troubling ethical questions, of course (particularly about authorship and intellectual property), but the ethical dilemma is implicit in the culture itself. If you just swim downstream with the current, you're a perfect consumer.

edit: Sorry, I didn't mean that to sound like I'm calling all of you with scruples against RPF to be tight-ass Victorian media illiterates. I know you're not. I'm just throwing darts at the argument.

But once the performer markets themselves as a sex object then they've opened the door.

But then you have to define what it means to market yourself as a sex object. IMO, a lot of reasonably good-looking talented actors playing charismatic characters have had sex objectness thrust upon them, and never really wanted or dreamed of such a thing--in their minds, they're character actors lucky enough to get a well-paying gig.

(Again, not condemning anyone here--just thinking through the issues involved.)

(Jesus, I am so going to regret this. But.)

See, my problem - I agree with what has been said here by the 'RPS is invasive & of the bad' camp. I have said it myself.

Nevertheless, I feel obliged to be honest about the fact that I'm very fond of several pieces of Lord of the Rings Real Person Fic. In the following paragraphs I am in no way trying to persuade anyone else to become fond of it, nor am I disagreeing with the comments already made about RPF being intrusive or squicksome. In the following paragraphs I am simply looking at why I don't interact with the stories in the way that I thought one did interact with the stories.

I thought that liking RPF was something that developed out of an obsessive interest in the individuals concerned, in the way that fanfiction develops out of an obsessive interest in a given show or character. But it ain't necesarily so.

Let it be stated for the record - I didn't oost after the characters or the actors, much as I adored (adore) The Fellowship of the Ring and excited though I most certainly am about The Two Towers. I'm still not particularly interested in any of the actors*, beyond wishing them all well and feeling vaguely that they're probably all nice chaps. Still, generally speaking - not particularly interested in/oosting after any of the actors, not particularly knowledgable about any of them, wish them all well but wouldn't neccesarily call myself a fan.

But I'm still very fond of and intrigued by several pieces of LotR RPF. I don't remotely think of them as being true, nor do I want them to be true, nor am I interested in the love lives of any of the people whose names and appearances have been appropriated for the sake of the fanfiction. Frankly, it would be very much easier for my conscience if the LotR RPS writers had outright made up fictional characters, because in effect that's what they're doing. Effectively it's original character fiction. And as porn (and slash) I think it's interesting in a way that 'proper' fanfiction isn't precisely because it's fanfiction that exists outwith a narrative structure.

Morally, fwiw, I'm of the opinion that rps isn't immoral/unethical/whatever - but that it's discourteous, and as such A Bad Thing and unnecesary, and in practice something one pretty much shouldn't do. There's enough unkindness in the world already without making art out of intimate details (whether real or hypothetical) of someone else's life without their permission. It's not a terrible or wicked thing to do, but it's an unkind thing to do. (Or at least to do and publish in a public forum.)

Outwith the question of hurting someone's feelings, though, I do think that (based on my limited reading to date) RPS functions in a way that is genuinely interesting and distinct from proper fanfiction, and that as such it merits intelligent discussion of the writing - both in terms of literary merits and of feminist & psychological issues involved. Although I'm not proposing to engage in such a discussion here.

• Except for Sir Ian - I do have huge Sir Ian love based on his fabulous acting in umpty ump plays & films and the handful of times I've seen him appear on chat shows/game shows/whatever. He's up there with Dame Judy in my personal hall of Jolly Good Eggs who should have a splendid time and be plied with fine wines and sparkling conversation wherever they go. But this is a tangent, unrelated to the whole RPF thing. Still, Go Team McKellern. Bless.

(puts whip down. Steps cautiously away from dead horse. Whistles nonchalently. Saunters away)

I do think that (based on my limited reading to date) RPS functions in a way that is genuinely interesting and distinct from proper fanfiction, and that as such it merits intelligent discussion of the writing - both in terms of literary merits and of feminist & psychological issues involved. Although I'm not proposing to engage in such a discussion here.

Not so fast, missy. You don't owe me the whole discussion, but I think you need to articulate some of the issues worth discussing that you think RPS raises.