I've never shipped RPF in the typical sense, but a lot of my past fandoms have been historical RPF (Rome, HBO War, Hamilton, etc.) or pseudo-RPF (The Social Network). I still feel a bit weird about it, but in some cases the people have been dead for hundreds or thousands of years so whatever, and in other cases it's a fictionalized story about real people and real events, but I'm shipping how the actor's portray the real people rather than the real people themselves. It's a fuzzy line, especially when it's RPF about people who aren't celebrities.
Though, I should point out that fandom didn't create RPF. It's been around for thousands of years in one sense or another. For instance, almost all of Plato's work is fanfiction about Socrates and a good chunk of Shakespeare's plays were based off real events or real people.
TSN fandom had such a bizarre reaction to whether or not it was RPF. No one knew how to tag anything at first and it was this big ordeal over whether movie fic should be tagged as RPF, but if that would confuse people who shipped RPF for the actors. And there were so many author's notes stressing that movie fic was based on the movie characters and not the real people because people were worried the real Mark Zuckerberg would find the fic through the power of the internet and sue them. What a wild ride that was. Good times.
I know, right? TSN fandom had a fascinating relationship with reality, since there were a lot of details known about the real people's lives, but not included in the film that authors could pick and choose to include or change. I'd done some academic research on fandom, particularly RPF, right before this movie came out, so that aspect of the fandom was especially captivating.
Also, the quality of the writing was weirdly high. I didn't even particularly like the movie, but that was the highest ratio of available fic to good fic I've ever encountered in a medium-sized fandom.
NAYRT (but the anon upthread who first mentioned TSN)
HBO War was similar, since there are books and interviews with details from the real people's lives, so fandom could pick and choose what they wanted to include in headcanon and fic. So it was a lot of fic based on the characterization from the miniseries, but with real life details from the books thrown in.
The fandom's heydey also had a lot of high-quality fic for such a medium-sized fandom. In fact, a lot of the medium-sized pseudo-RPF fandoms I've been in have had high-quality fic.
What has always interested me about fandoms like these is that they're about people who aren't celebrities, so there's such a different approach to fic than normal celebrity based RPF.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Re: RPF
(Anonymous) 2016-01-30 02:37 am (UTC)(link)Though, I should point out that fandom didn't create RPF. It's been around for thousands of years in one sense or another. For instance, almost all of Plato's work is fanfiction about Socrates and a good chunk of Shakespeare's plays were based off real events or real people.
Re: RPF
(Anonymous) 2016-01-30 04:56 am (UTC)(link)Re: RPF
(Anonymous) 2016-01-30 04:42 pm (UTC)(link)Also, the quality of the writing was weirdly high. I didn't even particularly like the movie, but that was the highest ratio of available fic to good fic I've ever encountered in a medium-sized fandom.
Re: RPF
(Anonymous) 2016-01-30 04:44 pm (UTC)(link)Re: RPF
(Anonymous) 2016-01-30 04:55 pm (UTC)(link)HBO War was similar, since there are books and interviews with details from the real people's lives, so fandom could pick and choose what they wanted to include in headcanon and fic. So it was a lot of fic based on the characterization from the miniseries, but with real life details from the books thrown in.
The fandom's heydey also had a lot of high-quality fic for such a medium-sized fandom. In fact, a lot of the medium-sized pseudo-RPF fandoms I've been in have had high-quality fic.
What has always interested me about fandoms like these is that they're about people who aren't celebrities, so there's such a different approach to fic than normal celebrity based RPF.