People need to understand that pure fiction and rpf are two adjacent but different conversations.
Hey pal, thanks for writing in.
Just want to make sure you know that you can be proship and still have things in fiction that make you uncomfortable and you wanna avoid. There are specific pairings and some general problematic tropes that make us really uncomfortable and we just avoid them.
What makes someone proship isn’t being comfortable with everything, it’s acknowledging that we can’t control what content others make, and that’s okay. It’s also totally okay to curate your own space and avoid whatever it makes you happy to avoid.
As far as rpf and shipping real people goes, I’ll be honest, I don’t understand what compels people to write about that stuff, but I also realize it’s not my business to police what they do.
Exactly. The person whose post we shared is getting absolutely dogpiled and its sad to see.
Please, figure out who your friends are!
I totally get feeling embarrassed about it.
A lot of our opinions about rpf formed when we were 16 in high school and one of the girls in our friend-circle wrote a lot of explicit smut about the band Good Charlotte.
TBH my personal feeling is that celebrities have a ‘media persona’ that is essentially the same as a fictional character, and it doesn’t bother me when other people ship them. But I would personally feel embarrassed about the idea of doing so.
RPF is definitely a more complex topic than fanfic that only includes fictional characters.
Why get into the serious world of political advocacy when what you really want is an excuse to be mean and nasty to people online?
So I’m not really that into rpf, so I don’t particularly read it, but I have an inkling of a suspicion that the reason that pictures/videos of real living children are illegal is because you have to physically be there, abusing a child to make them, and written rpf about child actors or whatever isn’t illegal is because the person writing it is probably sitting in their room at a desk or something 1000 miles away & has never met this child in their life.
So I can see why priorities might point to real pictures of csam would be the thing that’s illegal.
Idk maybe that’s just me tho?
This is it exactly.
Why get into the serious world of political advocacy when what you really want is an excuse to be mean and nasty to people online?
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No. AO3 follows US law.
This is part of the problem with people using buzzwords for shit.
Underage smut in fanfic is not child pornography. Those who describe it as such are muddying what actually is – which is real life crime against minors, not words on a page – and using their new and incorrect definition as an excuse to harass people on the internet.
To be clear; the vast majority of the early-season sex in Gossip Girl is underage. Same for Vampire Diaries. Same for Teen Wolf. Same for Glee. If it was illegal – or child porn, or fucking paedophilia, which, again, muddying the meaning of what that actually is is so dangerous! – no one would be putting it in TV shows.
I’m begging you to gain some basic comprehensive skills, and to crack open a goddamn dictionary. The rampant misuse of words – like the above, like ‘problematic’, like every mental health term kids on Twitter like to throw around incorrectly, BC these people aren’t sociopaths they just don’t agree with you! – is incredibly dangerous, and harmful to a lot of real life victims, actually.
Hope anon saw this so they know the truth, not just puritan rhedoric that’s spout out and treated by antis like it’s truth! If fictional smut was illegal in any context, then ao3 wouldn’t exist right now!
The reading comprehension is non-existent. Apparently acknowledging that something is not illegal is the same as supporting it.
It’s illegal if it’s visual material indistinguishable from a photograph of a real child. As far as I’m aware there has been no case where written fiction about a living minor has been prosecuted in the United states.
Again, I neither create nor am interested in rpf. But it’s not illegal.
The answer to this is much more complicated than the answer with regard to fiction that only involves purely fictional characters.
It’s honestly not something I’m generally comfortable discussing, if only because it’s not relevant to me. I’m not a ‘fan’ of real celebrities, of any kind, either mainstream or youtube celebs.
I don’t create, consume or participate in any rpf content, because I’m not interested in celebrity content, or parasocial relationships with real-life non-fictional people.
🔎 From a purely legal standpoint (in the United States at this time), rpf is acceptable, as long as it is clearly identified as fiction, and does not stray into the realm of libel or misinformation. This is why you can have real-life, living presidents appear in comic books, or use Elvis as a character in fiction.
🔎 From a practical standpoint when one becomes a Public Figure like a celebrity, a musician, a head of state, one commonly accepts that it means that people are going to be very weird about you, and you are going to lose a certain amount of privacy, whether that means dealing with paparazzi, people who send you letters about how you should marry them, or finding weird fanfiction about you. There’s no way to stop all rpf writers– they have existed forever along-side all other versions of weird (and I mean weird in a completely non-judgemental way) fans.
🔎 From an ethical standpoint its going to depend on your personal code of ethics, and this is where it diverges from fictional shipping for a lot of people. Some people believe that it is always a violation of a person’s privacy and boundaries. Some people don’t agree that it is. These people are unlikely to be persuaded in either direction.
🔒 Always clearly identify rpf content as fiction. Include a clear disclaimer at the beginning, and possibly ending as well.
🔒 Never attempt to create photoshopped or computer generated rpf images with the intention of making them photo-realistic or indistinguishable from reality.
🔒 Never share rpf content in places where you believe it is likely for the person you are writing about to stumble across that content unintentionally.
🔒 Only publicly share rpf content of people who can reasonably be considered public figures. Do not ever publicly share rpf content of private citizens or anyone is ‘just some guy’.
🔒 Do not ever send rpf content to the people who it is about, or to people who are related to them.
🔒 Do not ever harass, stalk, or solicit the attention of public figures, celebrities, or their friends and families for any reason.
I do not take a firm stance on whether it falls under the proship umbrella or not, because I do not create or engage with those materials.
Personally, I would say that I am closer to saying that no, rpf doesn’t fall under proship.
HOWEVER that does not mean that I think writing rpf is necessarily unethical, I just think that it has different ethical considerations attached to it than when only fiction is involved.
AND IT IS NEVER OKAY TO BULLY OR HARASS SOMEONE FOR WRITING OR POSTING RPF.
Do not bully or harass rpf creators.
If you see rpf content that you believe is harmful, or that disturbs you, your best course of action is to block the user posting it, and, if you believe it is warranted, report the user for whatever violation you believe is taking place.