the deal with Real Person Fics: a debate(?)
so i was watching youtube (as one does) and there was a video where this person read REALLY terrible nct fanfiction. like, (advance warning) baby cow hybrid jaehyun, as if baby cow hybrid jimin wasn't enough.
anyway, the comments were all very very exaggerated reactions (or maybe i simply do not emote). ppl were shocked that these things existed and were so bad, but like... ngl i've seen worse. so it's either i'm way desensitized to it, or these ppl haven't seen Real Go Down.
there was also a comment about aff that unnecessarily made me mad. it was smth like 'i found out about a fanficition site called ASIAN fanfics... like wtf.' and ppl were agreeing like 'omg yeah that's so bad wtf', 'everything on asianfanfics is super bad with bad english and ' and i just got unnecessarily mad at that because we all know that aff isn't like that. or at least, the majority of us aren't like that. and ppl criticizing the name fail to realize that kpop is... asian? so asianfanfics as a name for a primarily-kpop fanfic community does, in fact, make sense and is not weird?
anyway i brought this up to my friend who pointed out that most ppl do find RPF (real person fics) a bit weird since the subjects are, indeed, real people. to which i argued (in my head) that there is a certain degree of creative liberty that one can take, even with RPF, and the line really does differ for everyone. some ppl write to release emotions, or to experiment, or to point out certain social issues.
i do totally understand that it can be taken weirdly if it's smth like baby cow hybrid jaehyun, or if graphic r*pe, or smth like that, and there definitely is a line that shouldn't be crossed. but the way i take it is that, as long as you're not treating the subject as Their Legit Personality (you know what i mean? like a delulu who thinks just because their idol said 'i love you' to the camera that the idol actually loves them as a person), then the subject is only a fictional character.
it's hard for me to explain but i think that, since idols put on a certain personality or only present certain facets of themselves to the public, there's no way we can know them well enough to form a true and accurate representation of them. everything we write (or everything i write) about them is filled in with other things: fanon personality, my own interpretation of why they reacted in such a way, pure speculation, etc. in that way, they're very emotionally distant from me and more like a character than a true person.
it's a little bit like watching a TV show, but with idols as the actors acting out their idol personality, if that makes sense?
so i guess i wanted to stir up trouble debate this topic and hear what everyone else had to say about it. like a true academic (says, not doing work). but if you are going to comment, pls do so in a calm and collected manner. if not, take this as just rambling because i haven't been doing anything like a true procrastinator and of course have to waste time doing something useless.
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