Real Person Fic, or RPF, is a world in some ways completely apart from the rest of fanfiction subculture. While all of fanfiction suffers from a stigma in the mainstream, RPF is something even other fanfiction writers often mock and deride as "creepy" and often "juvenile."  

Why? RPF, as its name suggests, is fanfiction written about "real people"--celebrities. Written, almost solely, about--well, cute boys. And nothing but cute boys, essentially--despite the pervasive idea among other fans that RPF readers and writers want to imagine themselves with their favorite stars, RPF thrives on fans imagining their favorite cute boys with other cute boys. 

Almost all RPF is slash, with the notable exceptions of Robert Pattinson/Kristen Stewart (which generated an enormous boom of material from 2008-2010 but has largely, or maybe completely, fallen off now), and David Henrie/Selena Gomez from the Disney Channel show Wizards of Waverly Place. While some RPF has become an ingrained, central part of media-based fic fandoms, notably J2 RPF (Jared Padalecki/Jensen Ackles) in Supernatural's fandom or "Jewnicorn" (Andrew Garfield/Jesse Eisenberg) spinoffs in The Social Network fandom, it is generally seen as an entity entirely its own, with little writer and reader crossover between it and the fanfiction about the media canon on which its cast works. And rightfully so: it is its own entity. There is a large contingent that writes Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto completely separate from their basal pairing of Kirk/Spock; the pairing of Robert Downey Jr./Jude Law, which originated in their roles as Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, is written as distinct from their roles as the great detective and his assistant--despite "Johnlock" being a hugely popular slash ship unto itself, no matter the adaptation.  

However, most RPF actually revolves around pairings in fandoms that have no ties to fiction. There is fanfiction for actors, there is fanfiction for politicians, and there is fanfiction for historical figures, but the majority of RPF is for musicians. Virtually every mainstream band of the last fifty years that includes at least two men has had a slash RPF fandom, from John Frusciante/Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Brendon Urie/Ryan Ross of Panic! at the Disco; Nick Jonas/Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers (yes, even that line is not sacred in the world of fanfiction--very angsty) to, most notably and hugely right now, the members of One Direction with . . . every other member of One Direction. 

One Direction, of course, is a boy band: a prefabricated harmonic vocal group designed to align with certain archetypes rather than to produce music; fortunately, One Direction does both well. Formed in 2010 as a business venture of notorious music mogul Simon Cowell after appearing on the British TV talent competition The X Factor, One Direction is made up of five boys, born between 1991 and 1994, from different parts of the UK and Ireland. They align, as all boy bands do, very neatly into their distinct, publicity-driven personae, something that lends itself incredibly well to both writing fanfiction and, its intended purpose, courting the admiration of fans. Niall Horan, the Chill One; Zayn Malik, the Sensitive One; Liam Payne, the Mature One; Louis Tomlinson, the Funny One; and Harry Styles, the Cute One. They've been received with broad critical acclaim and financial success; One Direction was among Barbara Walters' "Most Fascinating People of 2012," won a coveted BRIT Award (the British equivalent to a Grammy) for "BRITs Global Success" in 2013, snagged two VMAs, performed at the 2012 Olympics closing ceremony, and are a favorite of the Obama girls.  

Despite this acclaim, One Direction suffers the same pitfalls as most boy bands, in terms of "respectability." RPF, as noted, carries a stigma within the larger fanfiction community. But even within RPF, there is a hierarchy of respectability, and One Direction, along with other boy bands--due to the poppy style of their music, their prefab start, and the perception of their audience as teenage girls--is at the bottom. Compared to the muddy festival circuit and close-knit inter-band connections of "bandom," and the pop-punk royalty of the Fueled by Ramen and Decaydance labels, One Direction and its fans are tion as immature, and their fic as underdeveloped fantasy. As music writer Natalie Zina Walschots pointed out in the Toronto Standard, "If men approve of an album, if they think it's . . . sophisticated enough, then that opinion has value and weight . . . On the other hand, [the] love of female teen fans is seen as something reductive and dangerous."i  

The way an RPF fandom is viewed is frequently connected to the way its source material is seen by the rest of the world--in other words, whether or not it is based on people seen as legitimate "artists," or at least connected to a legitimate narrative. The Social Network (TSN) RPF is an excellent example. The Social Network, of course, is RPF itself, about Mark Zuckerberg's relationship with Eduardo Saverin, making fanfiction of the film a sort of second cousin of RPF; fanfiction about its stars, then, is RPF about people acting out RPF--an incredibly cool, meta kind of fiction.  

Since TSN itself is legitimate art, it's a short step from there to considering fanfiction about the actors playing those roles to be legitimate as well. As TSN was so lauded by film critics and mainstream media, its fandom, including the RPF offshoots like Jewnicorn, is not only well-respected, but also assumed to be made up of older fans writing carefully constructed slash. In contrast, because the members of One Direction are young, cute, and bubblegum pop, and are subject to derision by Serious Music Critics, it's assumed that their fans are young and doodle their fanfiction while dreamily staring up at posters of the boys they will one day polyamorously marry.  

The misconception of RPF by nonparticipating fans/fandoms is that RPF, because it tends to occur in fandoms seen as being predicated on the good looks of their celebrities, must be a delusional attempt by younger fans to do one of three things: to feel their devotion to those celebrities is validated, and is about more than just their appearance; to "prove" in some way that they "know" a star better than other fans (and therefore deserve his love); or--and this is often RPF detractors' biggest bone of contention--to seek to legitimize the "lesser" form of media of which the star is a part.  

By "lesser," they usually mean, as even teenaged fans in other fandoms will snort, the domain of Teenage Girls. Of course, this is not actually true. In a survey performed in the fall of 2012 of over 1,550 One Direction fans who wrote or read RPF, a whopping 83 percent were over sixteen, and 35 percent were over twenty.ii While teenage girls do comprise the base of One Direction's fans, this survey suggests that the majority of the community that participates whole-handedly in fandom, especially reading and writing RPF, is on an age spectrum comparable to fandom in general--or at least matches many fans' perception of such. What is really being said when the term "teenage girl" is used by other fans as a smear against RPF or, particularly, a fandom like One Direction's, is: I don't think what you like has as much cultural value as what I like, and I think less of you because you like it.  

The implication of criticisms of pop music RPF is that because you like "crap" media, you must naturally produce crap fanworks. The conversations in real-person fandoms couldn't possibly have the nuance of conversations about fictional personae. What could there possibly be to write about besides stripping off One Direction's painted-on red trousers and letting them--to quote their own song lyrics--"be the first to take it all the way like this"? 

A look around any One Direction fanfiction community, however, reveals the polar opposite. Of course, as with most RPF, it is largely oriented around slash--98 percent of surveyed fans read slash, while only 15 percent read het fic (and of those, 18 percent will only read genderswap/sexswap het, wherein the girl is "really" one of the One Direction boys in an intra-band pairing). In fact, 66 percent of RPF reader-writers surveyed within the One Direction fandom don't even consider self-insert, wish-fulfillment fanfiction to be fanfiction.  

"Self-insert, to me, is like writing a more sophisticated diary entry about your daydreams or telling your friends (and the entire internet) of them," says Colazitron, a twenty-four-year-old One Direction writer. "I do, however, have absolutely nothing against self-insert on principle. We're allowed to fantasize and we're allowed to share those fantasies with friends/the internet, if we wish. I do think it is a companion of RPF, although there is a difference." (Colazitron writes het fic about Louis Tomlinson/Eleanor Calder and Harry Styles/Caroline Flack, in addition to slash fic about Harry/Louis, Harry/Ed Sheeran, and other pairings, and used to write slash fic about the German boy band Tokio Hotel.iii) 

Lucy, a twenty-year-old One Direction slash writer, takes a semantic view on the subject: "I do consider [self-insert] to be a different genre from traditional RPF. The whole point of RPF is that it's fiction: your characterization is fictional, the setting is fictional, the plot is fictional . . . [Self-insert is] no longer completely fiction, because the person writing it isn't fictional, even if they are placed in a fictional environment."iv 

"Me personally, and I know this is a probably unpopular opinion to most of the fandom, am completely content with seeing them as I do now. I do not want to get to know them just as much as I do not want to get to know my new neighbors. I believe in the fourth wall, strictly, and I write about them not to get closer to these people, but because they are attractive and entertaining and are fun to write about. I would write no matter what - and I would find a different muse to fixate on if my fandoms didn't exist. To write about them I need a certain amount of distance on my attachments to these people.Me personally, and I know this is a probably unpopular opinion to most of the fandom . . . I do not want to get to know [the members of One Direction] just as much as I do not want to get to know my new neighbors," says eighteen-year-old slash writer Elle. "I believe in the fourth wall, strictly, and I write about them not to get closer to these people, but because they are attractive and entertaining and are fun to write about . . . To write about them I need a certain amount of distance."v 

So what kind of fic are One Direction fans reading and writing, if not het and not self-insert? A whopping 94 percent of One Direction fic, as of the 2012 survey, is written about the slash pairing of Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson, although other pairings have healthy showings, too: 74 percent of fans read Liam Payne/Zayn Malik, for example, and since the original survey was taken in 2012, Niall Horan/Zayn Malik (then 58%), has seen a massive upsurge in popularity.  

As in other fandoms, a lot of the content is smut-driven: 98 percent of surveyed fans read NC-17 rated material, but that is rarely the purpose behind the story; PWP (Porn without Plot; or Plot, What Plot?) is rare in One Direction fandom. While most stories do include (or revolve around) sexual content, the dynamics of the band or pairings are what drive the story, since it is the boys' real-life interactions that tempt fans into fandom in the first place. Far more than their looks (although that's obviously one root of their popularity), it is the way they behave around each other, or the ways they might behave around each other because of inherent similarities and differences, that intrigues fans. While boy band members like those of One Direction come neatly prepackaged in their archetypes, devout fans are the first and loudest to interject that none of them really fits the role they're being paid to play. Instead, they find the nuances of behavior that set them apart from their color-coded trousers and use that to create virtually new characters who wear One Direction boys' faces. 

A vast, vast majority of the stories are AU, or set in an alternate universe, where the members of One Direction are not members of the band at all. They feature Zayn and Niall as high school marching band drum majors; Harry and Louis as accidental parents; Liam and Zayn caught in a tragic love affair during World War II; Harry as a bartender and Louis as a burlesque dancer; Zayn as an art student and Liam as a barista; Niall as a leprechaun; and on and on. Louis as the Doctor and Harry as Amy Pond. Harry as Mark Zuckerberg with Zayn his long-suffering Eduardo against the nefarious presence of Nick Grimshaw as Sean Parker. Although I didn't count this statistic, there are probably more intense AU fics per capita for One Direction than there are canon-based fics (based on fic repositories and rec lists on LiveJournal, Tumblr, and AO3). 

Then again, "canon"--official or sanctioned "reality" as defined by the source material--means something different in regard to RPF, because of course there is no such thing as a canon-based RPF. Not really. There's only the tiny portion of manufactured "reality" that fans can observe. It's a different kind of manufactured reality than fictional canons, where all choices were made deliberately by an author or showrunner, because the observable moments of RPF are a random jumble of marketing ploys and happenstance, crafted constructs and slips of actual personality, about which fandom at large comes to a consensus.  

The key difference between RPF and traditional fanfiction is that RPF stems from what Kayley Thomas, a master's candidate at the University of Florida studying folklore and fanfiction, calls remediation:vi a process of globally creating a common narrative from unrelated real-world events for the purpose of forging a canon or fanon (a common fan consensus not based on observable or textual "truth") understanding of real people as characters.  

What Thomas is essentially arguing is that celebrities (or their publicists, at least) create an intentional character through all of their public material, but it varies and changes through time and circumstance. Like any other living person, the celebrity whose actions create his or her "canon" grows, changes, and reacts to situations organically-unlike a fictional character. Watching that organic growth, RPF readers and writers attempt to construct and keep running a cogent, singular narrative of the celebrity's life. However, real lives do not have singular narratives. They're messy. And they're not narratives at all.  

Thomas suggests that since interviews with major media sources are often meant to stand on their own for uninitiated viewers (which is why interviews with celebrities tend to be so redundant), each piece of celebrity media should instead be taken as an individual, unique canon, not part of a larger whole.  

In the reality of fandom, though, that is not the case. Fans instead take the loose information provided through that material--interviews, Twitter, photos, and so on--and reincorporate it into a unified fanon, or "whole" picture of the celebrity. Because celebrities are often aware of how their fans perceive them, especially in today's age of instant and continuous Twitter interaction, the celebrities sometimes then take fanon into account--consciously or subconsciously--in further creating their personae's canons. 

Ramona, a twenty-one-year-old writer in many RPF fandoms, explains that the process of writing RPF is "a lot like [being] an actor preparing for a role, looking over the script time and time again and forming [your] own idea of the character in [your] head. It probably won't be exactly the same idea as the person who wrote the script, but I think that's what I like about fic and movies in general. You're never going to come across two people who characterize [other] people the exact same way . . . It happens with everything, even people you meet at work or at school. You may've only talked to someone one time, but you already assume a lot about that person's personality based on whatever conversation you've had."vii 

These constructed "characters" are also necessarily simplified, reducing real, complex people into more marketable stereotypes ("the Chill One," "the Sensitive One," etc.). In this context, even the most "in-character" Liam Payne of fanfiction--the Liam who appears to adhere most closely to the public "canon"--is still deeply, deeply OOC, or out of character, compared to the real person. Zayn Malik himself has stated that although he is seen as the "quiet, moody, mysterious bad boy," he loves a joke and playing pranks; enjoys staying in with his girlfriend, Perrie Edwards of Little Mix; and sees his persona/role as "misunderstood." Louis Tomlinson, financially responsible for his family and a deeply invested booster of his hometown (even helming their local football team--a true badge of patriotism in the UK), is painted in official and fan media alike as inanely immature and self-absorbed, although that is visibly untrue.  

"When I read and write RPF, I keep a distinct line in my head, one that separates the real people from their fictional characterizations," says eighteen-year-old reader-writer Shrew.viii "Personally, I do not believe that any of the relationships that I write (het, slash or otherwise) are real. I tend to feel that I am writing about personae rather than people themselves--I understand that there is a difference between what someone presents to others/to the public as a celebrity, and what they actually are like." Shrew writes both het and slash, with pairings ranging from canon--in this case, real, confirmed relationships--to fanon and crack (pairings that can in no way be construed as canonical, such as real person/fictional character or characters who have never met or interacted). All are based on stock characterizations that she has crafted from assumptions she's made while viewing official material, which she calls "headcanon." 

All the same, assumptions based on headcanon are built on the materials available to the fandom during its initial stages (as was the overwhelming popularity of Harry/Louis as the OTP, the One True Pairing, of choice). The difficulty--and the fun, and the challenge, and the beauty--of RPF comes from the ever-changing nature of the materials available for creating canon as the people who generate it grow, change, and react to experiences in new ways. What was considered an "accurate" assumption in 2010 may be seen as wildly unrealistic in 2013. Kayley Thomas' process of remediation (the construction, by RPF writers, of a coherent reality from the available bits and pieces of media) then becomes the creation of a through-line, from who these people "were" at the outset of fandom to who they "are" now, via a cogent narrative--essentially rendering the "real people" being written about into fully fictional characters that happen to have real faces (just like any character portrayed by a live-action actor). 

"I'd say the main difference for me with RPF is the accessibility of source material, and the fact that the fandom is constantly moving with new information and events . . . ," says Cat, a twenty-five-year-old writer who has participated in both RPF and traditional fanfiction for nearly a decade.ix "I use as much material as I can get my hands on in order to form characterization. In no way do I think this means I am getting an accurate characterization, but it does make me feel like I am offering a story appropriate to the particular fandom rather than just a story about two hot guys (or whatever)." 

"I try to keep the events and characterization as close to what I think their lives are like as possible [based on the available information], but there's no way to know," says Darcie, a twenty-four-year-old One Direction slash writer. "I try to be as respectful as possible, too."x 

Therein lies the biggest difference between what RPF is and what detractors tend to think RPF is: the readers and writers of RPF want their work not only to be respectful of its subjects, but also to find or create an inner truth about them, rather than sensationalize or shame them. Society at large treats celebrities' pairings as public commodities meant for the consumption of all, exploring and poking at the cracks in their relationships until the guts of Why They're Together or Not fall out for us to feast on.  

After all, every issue of People magazine in the last ten years has featured suppositions about celebrities' home lives, "Are They/Aren't They?" photo essays about alleged couples, and self-reflection reassurances that "Stars Are Just Like You!" The breathless speculation required to ship, say, Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson or Niall Horan/Demi Lovato or Zayn Malik/Perrie Edwards is a cue taken and a behavior learned from that same media coverage. But it's also more than that. In a way, writers of RPF are attempting to humanize celebrities, rather than dehumanize them. Instead of saying that Celebrities Are Just Like You!, RPF aims to show it. 

RPF has existed for as long as there have been celebrities. Any media "based on a true story!" is RPF. Any historical fiction narrative that co-opts a real person or real group is RPF. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is RPF, and reflects reality just as accurately as the better and more lovingly, carefully written internet RPF today: virtually not at all. The names remain--Julius Caesar, Mark Antony--as do certain simplified traits, the archetypal roles they play. In lieu of Actual Julius Caesar and Actual Mark Antony, we get AU!Caesar and an AU!Antony in a simpler, more dramatic narrative. 

An increasingly connected world--particularly via Twitter--has changed the lens through which "real" history, and real people, are viewed. Historians work by interweaving primary documents to create their version of the truth--historiography being, essentially, a larger framework of Humanity Fanon--and RPF writers do the same. With every new piece of evidence, every day, every interview, every tweet, the canon evolves and changes. Most fans can and will find a workaround for any and every new primary document to fit it into their preferred fanon. In some cases, this requires Steven Moffat-esque levels of plot twists and conspiracy theories, which is often one of the main causes of discord within RPF fandoms (particularly One Direction). This process of remediation is not in itself a bad thing, but when people forget that they are, in fact, creating their canon themselves, they are failing RPF's most basic tenet . . .  

That it is Real Person Fiction.  

There is no way to know, or even pretend, that RPF is reality. There is no guarantee--or even any desire for one on the part of most reader-writers--that the contents of an RPF fic are any closer to "canon" than a traditional fanfiction about something that happened off page in The Hunger Games between characters Katniss never even named. Instead, RPF seeks, like all other fanfiction, to pose hypothetical answers to questions posed by their media.  

What happens when a band walks offstage?  

What is Niall Horan like at home?  

Would Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson be happy together, and just how messy was their apartment after that New Year's Eve party?  

Who is Zayn Malik when nobody is watching? Is Liam Payne really a grown man afraid of spoons?  

And how exactly did One Direction decide that playing Real Life Fruit Ninja on a moving bus was a good idea?

Learn more about the book FIC: WHY FANFICTION IS TAKING OVER THE WORLD: http://www.smartpopbooks.com/fic

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V. Arrow (aimmyarrowshigh) graduated from Knox College in 2008 with degrees in history and creative writing, specializing in twentieth-century pop culture and young adult lit. Under another name, she has previously published at Pop Matters, The One Love, Tommy2.net, and The Hollywood Reporter. She believes that pop culture affects, reflects, and informs all aspects of daily life in Western culture and that it is perhaps the most crucial form of media expression to analyze and discuss.

References

i Walschots, Natalie Zina. "Teenage Dread." Toronto Standard, 12 July 2012. torontostandard.com/culture/teenage-dread. 

ii Arrow, V. "Real-Person Fanfiction: Looking at Band Fandom(s), One Direction Edition." Survey, 28-31 Oct. 2012. 

iii Colazitron. Personal interview, 29 Dec. 2012. 

iv Jones, Lucy. Personal interview, 30 Dec. 2012. 

v Elle. Personal interview, 30 Dec. 2012. 

vi Thomas, Kayley. "Remediating Reality in Real Person Slash Fiction." (Master's thesis, University of Florida, 2010). http://www.worldcat.org/title/remediating-reality-in-real-person-slash-fan-fiction/oclc/741565148.  

vii Mitchell, Ramona. Personal interview, 30 Dec. 2012. 

viii Shrew. Personal interview, 26 Dec. 2012. 

ix Cat. Personal interview, 31 Dec. 2012. 

x Darcie. Personal interview, 30 Dec. 2012.