It's midnight where Fay is.

I have a lot of incoherant points to make, but I will try.

1. I have read one piece of RPF. And, I am embarrassed to say, it was about the cast of Dawson's Creek, filming. It was fairly well-written, and it actually brought up some interesting points about fame, as it was about the person's imagining what it would be to work, as actors, playing a couple on TV when in real life you were a broken up couple. It was fairly good, but I would have felt a lot less horrible about reading it if it were about original characters, as that is basically what they were (as many people said before) However, IF they were original characters, I probably never would have had access to it. It wouldn't have been published. I rarely if ever, read random original fiction on-line. I only saw it because it was somewhere where I was indulging my shameful and embarrassing addiction to Pacey/Joey stories. So maybe people don't disguise their characters because they wouldn't have readership

2. Isn't part of the reason we're exposed to RPF more because of the internet. Certainly, as an pre-adolescent, I wrote RPF (an elaborate Soap Opera about the "popular kids" grown up. They became like characters to me.) In college, a friend of mine and I made up this family tree of our theatre department, which paired off the profs and had us as their offsprinf (although that was much more about working style than actually thinking about them having sex)) So certainly it happens. Just now, it is available on a wider basis.

3. I really don't like to read RPF about actors I like BECAUSE i feel like I know them (even though, as Re=becca said, they are unknowable). I feel protective of them, especially young people. I don't want to see Michelle Tractenberg or SMG or ED in some jack off fantasy. I don't really care about Britney Spears. That probably makes me a hypocrite.

4. Part of David's point is that by eliminated ALL RPF as a genre, one may be eliminating one truly good, subversive story that turns art on it's head-- that has something real to say and says it better than anything else. As an artist of sorts, I do agree, but I haven't seen that piece, and the things one has to look at to get to it sometimes scare me.

5. Rebecca-- for you, is there some sort of line where the use of real people is OK, a la "Being John Malkovitch" or using real people as sort of background noise or cameos in original fic (say an original character going to a Hollywood party and seeing famous people? Or is any use, even when you don't claim to know that person, not OK?

Um, hi. My name's Nutty, and I got this mad call out of the darkness, how I was supposed to expound on something... the narrative of celebrity? But, it's 11:15pm, so I'm just going to be a goof.

All lusts aside, and I know that's hard to do, the film Velvet Goldmine was a serious attempt at a psychobiography of David Bowie. (Basically, RPF, of the more thoughtful variety.) If you've seen the movie, you'll know it's not the most forgiving of theses, and it's not a surprise that Bowie wouldn't license his music for the film. Even though the main character is named Brian Slade.

(It's pretty obvious who Brian Slade is supposed to be, what with the glitter and the outer space and the gender-bending, and who "Curt Wilde" is, what with the nudity on stage and the dancing around like an electrocuted muppet and the whole Iggy Popness of the character. But the names and enough of the details are different.)

That's one bit of art I'll remember for a while, and even though it never mentions Bowie by name, it will color how I feel about David Bowie and his relationship to gay iconography. I love how art can be powerful like that, and even condemning like that, without ever naming names or pretending it's a documentary. I love how the film signals that this is only one interpretation of events, and not even an interpretation that hews strictly to facts and testimonies, but one interpretation and a striking one and one I think needed hearing. All without invoking Lawyer Wrath and official nastiness.

That's cool.

Ironically, the same movie mentions Oscar Wilde by name. It also implies he was a space alien, and largely he's there as a symbol of the continuity of gay history in the arts, but I thought I'd mention it in the interest of full disclosure.

Rebecca-- for you, is there some sort of line where the use of real people is OK, a la "Being John Malkovitch" or using real people as sort of background noise or cameos in original fic (say an original character going to a Hollywood party and seeing famous people? Or is any use, even when you don't claim to know that person, not OK?

I think I said this upthread, but I'll say it quickly.

John Malkovitch starred in Being John Malkovitch. I'd call that to go under the heading of fic written for people, with their knowledge and consent, the way that Fay wrote that post for me (well, it wasn't just for me, but it was mainly about me, and I looked at it like a gift). One of the constraints of that among-friends RPF is that the friend it's being written for/about likes it-- BJM did not show him doing anything basically unwholesome; nor did it seek to plumb the inner depths of his mind. Well. Okay. It had people crawling inside his mind, literally. But no one narrated from his point of view! ... BJM wavers on the edge of the comfort line. But if JM hisself was okay with it (as he must have been, since he was *in* it) than I'm filing that under the among-friends acceptable sector.

Re. famous people making cameos: As I said with Yahtzee's Hoop Screams, it sets off an uncomfortability in a small, screaming part of me, that doesn't want to touch real people-- much less real people who don't know about it-- doesn't want to touch them at all at all at all! (Sorry for the italics. I mentioned she screamed.) But a much larger part of me knows that it's impossible to do that, as I said above. Background cameos, and tiny supporting roles where they don't do much but stand there and not really say anything or do anything active, don't touch me off, because the fic then isn't presuming to pilot the person as though it knew what they would do in a particular situation, or what they would say.

See what I mean? It's infringing upon the psychic propertylines that make me upset.

'll also admit-- c'mon, how weird am I?-- that I don't like it when people call stars (&c) by their first names. It implies a degree of familiarity that I'm just not comfortable with. You don't know friggin' Alyson Hannigan, don't call her Alyson, call her AH if her last name is too much for you to type. I do admit I've said just "Alyson" in the past but it's always come with a little sneaking guilty feeling.

I do this too, RL. I go through whole editing processes when it comes to writers, because I'm forever wanting to say "blah blah blah Marti" and it feels invasive. (Interestingly, I only ever do this with the female writers - all the man are last names in my head. Except for Joss, with whom I don't feel weird about using the first name.)

My first (and only) experience with RPS was "huh. This is about Gillian Anderson, not Scully? Weird, I wonder what... oh, now she's getting on the Internet. And looking at... M/S fanfic... and... oh God what is she doing with her hand? Back, back, back!" It felt rather like someone had lost their grip on the separation between actor and character, and it gave me the icks.

Except for Joss, with whom I don't feel weird about using the first name.

Yeah, me too, because... Joss. It rhymes with "God". Or, almost.

My first (and only) experience with RPS was "huh. This is about Gillian Anderson, not Scully? Weird, I wonder what... oh, now she's getting on the Internet. And looking at... M/S fanfic... and... oh God what is she doing with her hand? Back, back, back!"

This, or rather, your thought processes in encountering the squicky fic, made me laugh like a drain. In a sympathetic way. Wrod.

No one's announced the new noir yet?

I win!

[link]

Yay!

In a strange synchronicity, I spent several hours poking around that same website yesterday, though from a different angle.

Yes, that's all the relevance I have to add, since hard as I tried I could not keep up with RPF argument. Bon chance!