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Real-Person Fic
aka: Celebrity Fic

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Brotherly love is all you need.

"While browsing LiveJournal for Sharks icons, I found this multi-part epic about [Evgeni Nabokov] and Joe [Thornton] getting it on. Didn't read much (RPS ain't exactly my cup of tea), but apparently it revolved around the playoffs last year and the two of them comforting each other after the Sharks were eliminated. And by comforting, I mean butt sex."
— Fear the Fin writer mymclife on the subject of pro athlete slash

Also known as Celebrity Fic, this is basically fanfiction based on the real life of one or more celebrities (as opposed to a strictly fictional canon). Just as how people find fantasies and interpretations within their favorite fictional characters, so, too, do they find them in celebrities. Any and all fanfiction tropes can apply (for example, it could decide to base itself around the high school days of the celebrity, create a Relationship Sue to vicariously live out a relationship with the person, use them as part of a Hurt/Comfort Fic, etc.). The possibilities are endless and often just disregard the celebrity's history, personality, etc. in order to facilitate the plot (or, often, just the particular fetishes of the author).

However, it's just as likely that a fic will be relatively accurate, based on knowledge of the celebrity's "real lives" gained from interviews, blogs, tweets, etc. Increased interactivity between actors/bands/whoever and their fans makes it extremely easy for ficcers to include canon details into their work. This avoids factual inaccuracy, although there's probably a fine line between research (good) and stalking (bad).

Also common in this genre is for the celebrity to meet the fictional characters that he or she is famous for playing as. They might either coexist in the same universe (this is a flimsy premise at best) or there's some sort of alternate universe with travel between them.

The final theme which turns up a lot is fics which blur the line between Character Shipping and Cast Shipping; depending on the quality of the acting, it's often easy to read real-life relationships between the actors in the emotions their characters portray towards each other on screen. These sorts of fics are often set in and around the filming of the show, to the extent that frequently they're just plain ol' show fics in disguise; the actors will often take on the traits and ideas of their characters and go through similar emotions and experiences. Somebody will tell you that there's some sort of metaphor in there for the duality of the actor and the character, or something.

There is some level of controversy surrounding this genre. For some people, the mere existence of Real Person Fics — especially lemon fics — is a case of squick, while others don't see them as wrong as long as the tone is kept respectful. Then, there are those for whom anything goes because it's unlikely the "protagonist" will ever read the fic anyway and will do everything from Character Derailment to Gender Bending to unceremoniously killing them off. (That last can sometimes be legally dangerous, though.)

FanFiction.Net has not allowed Real Person Fics (with the exception of those featuring historical figures) since 2002, but that doesn't stop anyone. Most of them are hiding here.

The existence and popularity of "Celebrity Pulps" makes this Older Than Television—but that's just the reasonably modern form of it. Technically, William Shakespeare's historical plays could count, pushing it to Older Than Steam, as historical accuracy was not a going concern when his main object was to entertain Elizabethan crowds! It's not only that they didn't need to follow actual history precisely, political biases also seeped into his work, partly to make it palatable to the Crown, partly due to inheriting the biases already extant in his sources.

And that's not even to count possible older examples. Alexander the Great had tons of romantic/fantasy tales written about him, over 300 years after he died. If religious texts like The Bible or The Qur'an mention historical figures, they're likely to be this.

Compare Historical Domain Character.

Alternate History is not always Real-Person Fic; even if sites like AlternateHistory.com have settings which feature individuals like Bill Clinton or Tiger Woods; they are more of a Bit Character in the narrative, depending on who's the focus.

Not to be confused with when a Self-Insert Fic doesn't even bother with an Author Avatar and the author just puts themselves (and their friends) in. They could theoretically overlap, but not a lot of big-name celebrities are known for writing fan fiction after all. If they and their friends are the subjects rather than inserts, however, it's a flavor of RPF known as "friendfic". For a bittersweet variety, see Celebrities Hang Out in Heaven. If they're survivors of a disaster, they're Celebrity Survivors, and in a Super Fic, they may be part of a Celebrity Masquerade. Oh, Crap, There Are Fanfics of Us! is typically the result of the "subject" finding out about these.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • There's a fanfic out there in which anime voice actor Vic Mignogna is kidnapped by Justin Bieber fans and gets rescued by members of his fan club, the Risembool Rangers. Reportedly the story amused Vic so much that he has a framed copy on the wall of his home.

    Comedy 
  • Although the fandom seems to have died down a little, there were days when The Goth Detectives (the temporary comedy duo of Russell Brand and Noel Fielding) had a nice big fan-following with lots of slash fics to be found. That seems to be shrinking in direct proportion to the rise of The Mighty Boosh RPS. (Most of it predictably being Julian Barratt/Noel Fielding, though have been reportings of a Julian/Michael Fielding fic.)
  • There are communities devoted to the pairing of Hugh Laurie and his long-time comedy partner and best friend, Stephen Fry. According to Stephen Fry, during his most recent appearance on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, he was subjected to a reading from one of these fics. It was cut from the broadcast, though.

    Comic Strips 
  • "Eight Pagers" — the softcore porn comic strips published in the depression era — usually featured fictional characters of the time (such as Popeye and Olive Oyl) but sometimes starred well-known actors or sports personalities. What those portrayed made of it is not recorded. Also known as "Tijuana Bibles".

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 

    History 

    Literature 

    Live-Action TV 

    Music 
  • The Beatles seem to lend themselves quite well to this due to their almost mythical status. This is probably because of their relatively short lived career, leading a lot of fans who want more than just the decade of activity filling in more of what they view should have happened after 1970. It also helps that there are three movies featuring them as themselves, each one goofier than the last. With Strings Attached is a particularly famous example.
    • Fandom invokes John Lennon's ambiguously questionable sexuality in 99.9% of the fics with sexuality. Interestingly enough, most of these fics don't include Brian Epstein, their openly gay manager — or, when they do, he's at most Starboarding for Lennon. (The film The Hours And Times is an exception.)
    • Poppy Z Brite wrote a speculative piece for Nerve magazine about what would happen if John married Paul McCartney instead of Yoko Ono.
    • Spider Robinson's short story "Rubber Soul" speculated on a reunion between Paul and John in the future, in which Paul has John placed in suspended animation after he was shot, giving him the opportunity to recover. In a stealth pun, John was brought out of suspension in the year 2004 at the chronological age of 64. "Will you still need me, will you still feed me..."
  • Songs by the Blue Öyster Cult crop up a lot in Discworld fics written by A.A. Pessimal, who would appear to be a devoted fan. Justified, as Terry Pratchett makes a lot of one particular song and has alluded to others in the Discworld canon.
  • Perhaps because of his flamboyant nature, people just love to use David Bowie as a character in their fanfiction.
    • There is also a fair amount of Bowie on Bowie fanfiction, clearly due to his numerous personas.
    • Bowie even got a professionally-published slash fic, the film Velvet Goldmine, which is very transparently Bowie/Iggy.
  • Most Boy Bands are ripe for slashing due to their prepackaged Five-Man Band archetypes.
    • When fanfic writers for The Beatles worked more modern Boy Bands into their fics, things got ugly; even, or maybe especially, those who were tweens thought Boy Bands were necessarily evil. There is one Beatles fic, "Angelic Sins," that attempts to make the group 98 Degrees into villains. (This one also has Metallica as a friendly presence despite kidnapping John Lennon — this was completed before the Napster scandal and St. Anger.)
    • The fandoms for *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys are largely credited for jumpstarting the idea of using Livejournal as a fandom platform as the site was started right around the time of the height of the bands' careers. These two fanbases are even credited in Fanlore as the being the genesis for many of the major common fandom experiences and gradually making the idea of RPF much less taboo among fandom circles.
  • Bandfics, either involving original characters varying in quality to bandslash. The bandslash ends to be significantly better written than the Sue!fic but significantly less concerned with reality. Quizilla was particularly infamous for "bandfics", starring people from any band that featured a moderately attractive male, from Simple Plan to All Time Low and everything in between.
    • Essentially the basis of Pete Wentz's entire career. Both within his own band, Fall Out Boy, and between all of the bands on his label. "Bandom" is practically synonymous with Pete Wentz in said circle.
    • There are numerous fanfics of the various members of My Chemical Romance, usually involving bandslash or the band members becoming teachers in the fan's school or something along the lines.
  • The cult British indie band The Libertines are probably only remembered now as being the group that brought supermodel-chasing drug-botherer Pete Doherty into the public eye. That band's dissolution hinged on Doherty's initially intense but later fractious (although not gay) relationship with guitarist Carl Barat. The band's self titled (and final) second album cover◊ sees a vacant, mildly distressed Barat cradling a collapsed Doherty. All this inevitably led to the band getting more RPS fics than any non-Boy Band. The NME printed an article on indie-rock-RPS that was illustrated with a real (just-about SFW) fanart piece showing the two kissing.
  • After The Libertines split, Franz Ferdinand became the main focus of bandslash in British rock music, stimulated by the rather homoerotic lyrics of some of their songs and Alex Kapranos's ambiguity about his sexuality.
  • Go on YouTube. Now, in the search bar, type in any word that has some sort of relation to love or romance, or could be used as a cliche metaphoric word in a love poem. Now, count how many "Jonas Brothers Love Stories" you find. And it doesn't just have to be a love-related word. Sometimes typing in completely random words like "stairs" and "lunch" will also get you pages of these.
  • There is Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds slash out there. One wonders if the band knows.
  • X Japan is pretty much the Trope Codifier for Japanese rock/metal bandslash — their love of male/male onstage fanservice, having actually written and performed at least one song that is openly about gay sex and their most famous cover being a song with heavy Homoerotic Subtext, their even endorsing the early slash doujinshi, and three members of the band being actually bisexual leads to everything from fanfic to fanart, of varying degrees of respectfulness and quality. The main Fan-Preferred Couple|s are Yoshiki/hide and Yoshiki/Toshi, but other fics involve Taiji/Toshi, Yoshiki/Heath, Yoshiki/Sugizo, Taiji/Yoshiki, Pata/Heath, Taiji/hide, Pata/Taiji, Sugizo/Heath, and various combinations thereof.
  • Gackt, usually slashed with some other J-musician. These include most guys he's worked with, especially Hyde, Miyavi, Mana, Kami and Masa.
    • Japanese rock and metal bands fall under bandslash. Nearly any band will have some. Some bands don't mind the slash, others are... less welcoming. That said, some bands also have a Broken Base even if the band itself doesn't mind the slash, where non-participating fans will loathe the participating fans as "yaoi fangirls" or "gay," often with some subtext of homophobia (e.g. the angry fans don't get half as angry over heterosexual fics when they exist, or even write those themselves)
  • Adam Lambert is the new focus of the American Idol slash fandom. Out of all the other contestants on the season, he's most often paired with Kris Allen.
  • Tarja Turunen/Tuomas Holopainen is surprisingly popular amongst Nightwish fans.
  • It's rare, but British indie singers Patrick Wolf and Edward Eke (formerly known as Edward Larrikin) are occasionally shipped together. And, oh, it gets better. There's an entire Livejournal community devoted to Patrick Wolf fanfics.
  • Perhaps due to an unfortunate combination of Bishōnen and I Was Quite a Looker, there does exist Peter Gabriel-era Genesis Slash Fic, usually pairing him with Tony Banks, but sometimes Phil Collins gets a turn as well.
  • Tokio Hotel gets this, like from here here and here and here. Tends to mainly be Twincest shipping between Bill and Tom Kaulitz or band member/fan/Author Avatar fics written by younger fans. Proceed with caution.
  • Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park had a very close friendship up until Chester's death in 2017, and as a result, many a fanfic written about them. They even have a Portmanteau Couple Name of "Bennoda".
  • Also, Aerosmith. Most Slash Fic about them is Joe Perry/Steven Tyler, but if you can dream up an Aerocouple, fic for it probably exists.
  • Radiohead. Radiohead. There's a small but infamous community on the internet that specializes in writing slash fic, termed "cheesecake" after a... prolific fic involving lead singer Thom Yorke and Michael Stipe of R.E.M. doing things to each other with the dessert. Popular pairings include Thom/lead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, Jonny/bassist and brother Colin Greenwood, and Colin/guitarist Ed O'Brien. Drummer Philip Selway is left out of the equation 99% of the time.
  • Rammstein isn't exempt from this either. The fact that the guys aren't adverse to simulating sexual acts with each other on stage and in their videos adds plenty of fuel. Of course, there are also the Wish-Fulfillment stories of pairing one of them with a female character that's essentially an Author Avatar or Audience Surrogate.
  • There is a small but dedicated community writing sordid fic involving members of MarilynManson and NineInchNails.
  • A Girls Aloud RPF called Girls (Scream) Aloud, a Gorn-filled snuff fic that rivaled the infamous Power Rangers fic Agony In Pink in utter awfulness, was deemed so obscene that the author was arrested and taken to court (but eventually acquitted). This was the first prosecution for criminal obscenity relating to unillustrated prose in the UK for over thirty years. Allegedly, the reason the author was taken to court was because the band itself discovered the story and were convinced that their lives were in jeopardy. Yeah, it was that horrifying.
  • Guns 'n' Roses and/or Velvet Revolver RPF is out there, a lot of it being Axl Rose and Slash.
  • Rush— yes, the Canadian prog band-also has a fandom with surprising amounts of horny fangirls eager to ship (the typical Rush fan is Always Male). Geddy and Alex, being Heterosexual Life-Partners, are the ones most often shipped.
  • Three words: Justin Bieber fanfiction, the most infamous being the Spongebob Squarepants crossover.
  • There isn't a lack of One Direction fanfiction on the internet. It is also one of the biggest fandoms on Archive of Our Own.
    • This actually may have led to their extended hiatus-there are rumors of fans who only wanted to see them get together that instead only worsened tensions between the bandmates, to the point some of them don’t speak to each other anymore.
  • Then there is this Falling in Reverse Slash Fic starring a Self-Insert shipped with Ronnie Radke. The fic is actually quite well-written.
  • Due to all of the Ho Yay moments between Chris and Jonny from Coldplay, this is inevitable.
  • Perpetrated by Discworld fic author A.A. Pessimal in the Good Omens fic All The Best Tunes? on his A03 account, which not only takes the Virtual Soundtrack to extreme levels but also deals with Real People, many of whom are still living. Justified, as angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley are sponsoring rival musical talents in the 1940s to 1970s. Crowley kick-starts Black Sabbath, the Angel gets people like Cliff Richard and Van Morrison, both claim responsibility for The Beatles, and Crowley whispers possible lyrics in the ear of Mick Jagger. Even the Four MotorcycleRiders of the Apocalypse get in on the act — War (who sees rock n' roll as violence using different weapons), Pestilence, who finds more interesting things to do with garbage bags and bin-liners, Famine (who likes artistes with eating disorders and body image issues) and Death get their preferred musical genres.
  • Twenty One Pilots is one of the biggest newer bandoms of the mid-2010s. There are thousands of fics on Archive of Our Own alone. Due to Friendly Fandoms, Halsey and Melanie Martinez crossovers aren't rare either.
  • Parodied in this song set to the tune of "Magnet" by Vocaloid. Two female Youtube singers who duet sometimes, JubyPhonic and Rachie, had a lot of shippers so they did a joke duet about how they're very straight and aren't a couple. If anything however, the song ended up increasing their shipper count. They have a few fanworks about themselves as well.
  • Depeche Mode has its fair share of fics, mostly found on Archive of Our Own and Tumblr. You’ll usually see Dave get shipped with Martin or Alan. Poor Fletch seems to be left out unless it’s an orgy fic. You’ll also find the occasional Sue!Fic.
    • Writers have also determined which member is a top or bottom based on their stage personas.
  • Spice Girls aren't immune to this as sites like Platform/{{Wattpad} have became a favorite for both fanfics and original fics writers. They can range for the basic to Darker and Edgier, with the latter being the case... most of the times. Into the Dark is an example such Dark Fic, while others like Astral Journey: It's Complicated goes for the Alternate Universe Fic route.
  • The April Fools Episodes of Disgraceland technically count as this, and very Dark Fics at that. The 2019 episode is a young Jim Morrison making a pledge to Satan and becoming the Zodiac Killer, while the 2020 one has John Denver as an FBI agent who ends up shooting JFK.
  • Almost every single K-Pop group falls into this. If the group is known well-enough then there will be fanfiction of them. There's even an entire website dedicated to K-Pop fanfiction, with a few exceptions in there, courtesy of neigbouring countries. Not to mention the ones that extend to other fanfiction ''sites. In ships, fans would base where and who to pair members up with through how the groups interact and what is noticed when they are on camera. Whether they are displaying their stage personas or real selves is irrelevant. This is more common with popular groups who have their own shows and have frequent guestings where fans get to see more of their personalities and how they react to situations.
    • K-Pop groups and their agencies are very aware of shipping between idols, garnering mixed reactions from group members who are active on social media. These reactions range from them enjoying it, complaining about being OOC in the ones they've read, to utterly despising it. Some groups and agencies will use this to their advantage through fanservice. Of course, this only fuels fanfiction writers further.
    • Certain interactions between members tend to be interpreted as romantic because idols (strictly of same-sex and mostly from the same group) tend to be very affectionate with each other. As is the case that idol groups go through a lot together, this doesn't seem to be too out of the ordinary.
    • In South Korea, along with Japan, intimate affection between friends of the same-sex is seen as normal and simply being friendly. This is why a lot of idols are very touchy-feely and comfortable with each other that way, regardless of gender. They even have a term for it. This, however, tends to shake up the minds of fans who may not be used to seeing that, especially if it's between two men due to social norms being different depending on where the viewer lives. Hence, being shipped by fans.
    • This is oddly treated differently when it comes to an opposite-sex pair as interaction between female and male idol groups are quite scarce. Despite this, it doesn't stop fans at all from writing fanfiction about which two opposite-sex idols they decide to ship, regardless if they've ever interacted at all.
    • K-Pop and fanfiction have quite a history, going way back to first-generation K-Pop groups such as H.O.T. and Sechs Kies, when extreme fan culture emerged in South Korea. This is explored in the drama series Reply 1997 where the protagonist is popular amongst her fellow fangirls in her school because of her being a writer of H.O.T fanfiction. She also gets accepted into a college to study screenwriting due to her submitting one of her Slash Fics as an application. Amusingly, one of the members of Sechs Kies is also a main character of this series. The same series where he and his group members being written into romantic and sexual situations is used as a main plot point.
  • Fifth Harmony: Fans love to write fanfiction about the band members, particularly Lauren Jauregui, who has arguably the biggest LGBT Fanbase of the whole group. This mainly takes the form of "Camren", pairing Lauren with Camila Cabello, which became so popular that Lauren expressed discomfort with it. There is also fanfiction that pairs her with her other bandmates or some form of Self-Insert character. Dinah Jane and Normani are also often paired together in fanfics, though Normani is also paired with Ally Brooke often.
  • Fans of the Russian pop-punk band Kis-Kis have written several fanfics about them, 90% of them shipping fanfics due to Sonya Somuseva and Alina Olesheva's close friendship and ambiguous sexualities, as well as the fact that they play up the gay in several of their music videos.* They even have a Portmanteau Couple Name of "Solina".
    • Interestingly, the girls do appear to know about the fanfics, but seem to be okay with it as long as no one gets too crazy.* They also know about their ship name and seem to embrace it as one of their inside jokes.
  • ABBA fanfiction has sporadically been a thing throughout the 21st century, particularly on Wattpad, but the release of Voyage (2021) has resulted in a exponential increase of stories on Archive of Our Own. Most of it is Frida/Agnetha Slash Fic, likely inspired by their interactions on-stage (singing love songs while facing each other and generally engaging in playful behavior that could be taken as flirty).

    Politics 
  • Back in 2004 someone actually published a humorous story in The New Yorker where an unidentified diarist who was obviously Bush confessed to having a mad crush on John Kerry. One only wonders if that author knew of the Kerry/Edwards slash being written on the net at the time.
  • Many, many fics have seen the light of day involving American politicians, like Barack Obama, John McCain, and George W. Bush.
  • Liberality for All features several famous conservative icons fighting an evil liberal U.N dominated United States.
  • Forget about all the photoshops and fanfiction, even the British Newspapers were getting in on the Ho Yay of the 2010 British Parliamentary elections between Conservative David Cameron and Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg, respectively. Poor Gordon Brown is pretty much left behind as the Romantic Runner-Up. Clegg's status as Cameron's personal bitch has only gotten worse in Fanon as accusations of him selling out for power pile up. That both attended very posh schools where there supposedly remains a tradition known as 'fagging' for older boys have not helped either.
    • It was still present in late 2012, at the halfway mark between elections. 'Cameron and Clegg renew their vows' indeed.
  • There was a short sci-fi Alternate History story published in the early-to-mid 1970s which had Ralph Nader be a detective in the literary equivalent of a Film Noir, in a DC utterly corrupted by cheating corporations.
  • During the run-up to the 2012 US presidential election, many fanfics on the internet were created about the GOP contenders and Barack Obama, perhaps most frequently about Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney. This is made especially entertaining by the fact that the candidates, aside from Obama, generally have a fairly anti-gay record and some have made controversial statements regarding homosexuality.
    • One story in particular involved Gingrich/Romney. It crossed the line into parody when the resulting santorum turned into Rick Santorum.
  • There is now a whole online community devoted to this... started by a Wonkette columnist, even.
  • Though the fic itself is lost to time there exists a list of fanfic that is supposed to be out their on different computers most of which have never found homes on the internet; including a fic described as "Blair and Thatcher couple like stoats on the grave of Nye Bevan".... thanks so very much for that mental image internet, really.
  • According to Word of God, Pet Shop Boys' "I'm With Stupid" is Tony Blair/George W. Bush, and "I Get Along" is Peter Mandelson/Tony Blair.
  • Several fics exist on Wattpad shipping former president Donald Trump with other authoritarian world leaders, mainly Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-Un.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • The debate has been raging for years whether Professional Wrestling fic is RPF or not. It's been around for ages and Henry Jenkins has written essays on it (along with the rest of fandom). At any rate, there seem to be three different versions...first, television-based, in which the stories are about the people in the ring being exactly who they are on the show and the matches and conflict being real. Second, character-based realism, in that the wrestlers are their characters, but the matches and conflict are scripted and all part of the show, and finally, the real-person version which is based off real life. Different writers use different methods, some explicitly only write television-based, others dabble all the way down to RPF. Of course, there's also AU, but that's another trope altogether. Further subgenres include:
    • Back in 2001-2003, the biggest and most vocal (and also virtually only) het shippers were the Smoochy Dreamers, Chris Jericho/Stephanie McMahon. Chris/Steph is nothing so much as a kindergartener pulling the pigtails of the girl he likes, and between the boob comments, kissing as gross-out tactic, and his seemingly extensive knowledge of her supposed sexual practices, they were ripe for shipping.
    • Then there's the slash. Between the Matt/Jeff Hardy fangirls to the Rock/Steve Austin subset to the Kliqfic, if two men were anywhere within a five-block radius of each other, you can probably find fic about them. If they were tag-team partners, it's almost a certainty.
    • Don't even go into the self-inserts (all the long-lost McMahon children, the Lita-Sues, the random "cousins").
  • In a way, professional wrestling IS this. Basically, the wrestlers are martial artists acting out how things would be if they were even more over the top awesome martial artists. It's not so much a self-insert fic as a real person fic about themselves.

    Sports 
  • As the quote at the top of the page attests, athletes are no exception to this trope. There is a quite healthy soccer/football slash fandom, there's been a community devoted to fic from the 2004 Athens Olympics that was reactivated for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
  • It is ridiculously easy to find slash about male figure skaters.
    • About eighty-five percent of the 2010 Olympic winter games kink meme centers around Weir, Plushenko, Lysacek, and Lambiel. The rest is Ohno/Celski, Token Straight Couple Scott Moir/Tessa Virtue (and/or their fellow ice dancers Charlie White/Meryl Davis), a few fics with Shaun White or some other snowboarder, and one curling slash request.
      • It got so bad the kink meme ended up divided. Skating had to go to a separate community just to accommodate the volume of skater fic (though that's partially due to a missing mod at the winter games meme).
    • Figure skating fandom exploded over this very short video, in which Stéphane Lambiel kisses and then tickles Johnny Weir.
    • Oddly though, and this is no doubt due to the fandom dying down in between Winter Olympics, there is very little fic of Johnny Weir and his now husband, Victor Voronov.
    • Post- Sochi 2014, the figure skating RPF fandom seems to have focused on three pairings: two sets of actual on-ice partners, Meryl Davis/Charlie White and Tessa Virtue/Scott Moir, and the slash pairing of mens' medalists Yuzuru Hanyu and Javier Fernandez.
    • There is also a small but loyal contingent that ships legendary ice dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, aka the 1984 Olympic gold medalists who recorded the first and only perfect score in the history of figure skating. This is largely thanks to their work together on reality show Dancing on Ice, though of course there are a few die-hards who have been shipping them since their competitive skating days. It's not that hard to see why; their chemistry on the ice is renowned to this day.
  • MLB RPF is surprisingly popular. The most common pairings usually involve pitchers and catchers, for obvious reason. Also, the Oakland A's seem to be the most susceptible to being slashed.
  • There's also a dedicated hockey RPF fandom. One of the fanfics from that fandom ("Heart In Hand"), in fact, became so popular with non-hockey slash aficionados who didn't recognize the characters' names and assumed that it was original fiction that the author went ahead and revised it into an original fic.
  • Women's gymnastics is quite prone to femmeslash. Shippers pounce upon the slightest bit of Les Yay.
    • The fanfic shipping American Aly Raisman with Russian Aliya Mustafina warrants a special mention thanks to it becoming pretty much the number one power couple among gymnastics fans. How popular was it? Popular enough that Raisman herself actually responded to a fan interview, wondering why people were so obsessed with her and Aliya. The fans pretty much went nuclear.
  • There's a dedicated fandom for Formula One and the fanfics are usually slash fiction; popular pairings are usually between teams (e.g. Button/Hamilton, Webber/Vettel) and it isn't necessarily always between drivers — Christian Horner is probably the most popular non-driver to appear in F1 fanfiction.
    • The Tooned series could be considered an official example, with Button and Hamilton getting into various slapstick antics and several past drivers being revealed to have had unusual secret lives.
  • Believe it or not, there is a healthy NFL fanfiction community. Tom Brady/Peyton Manning seems to be a very popular slash pairing. Brett Favre is another common subject of fanfiction.

    Theater 
  • Pairing up Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, the original Wicked protagonists, is quite popular.
  • An unhealthy number of people have started shipping Ramin Karimloo and Sierra Boggess, the stars of The Phantom of the Opera's 25th anniversary. The fact that Ramin is married doesn't seem to have slowed them down any.
  • King Charles III includes, in its roster of characters: Prince Charles, Prince William, Duchess Kate, Prince Harry, Camilla, and the ghost of Princess Diana.
  • Every named character in Oslo is a portrayal of a real person who participated in or facilitated the Oslo peace talks of 1993 — including Norwegian diplomat Mona Juul, her husband Terje Rød-Larsen the social scientist, Fafo Institute Executive Marianne Heiberg, Norwegian Government Officials Johan Jorgen Holst and Jan Egeland, University of Haifa Professors Yair Hirschfeld and Ron Pundak, Director-General of Israel's Foreign Ministry Uri Savir, Israeli Foreign Ministers Yossi Beilin and Shimon Peres, Finance Minister for the Palestine Liberation Organization Ahmed Qurie, and PLO Liaison Hassan Asfour. (The play itself could count as being chock full of Historical Domain Characters... except for the fact that some of the participants were still alive at the time of the 2016 premiere of the play, and not many of them could be considered "famous.")
  • Fantasia Times features several actors from Team StarKid in supporting roles amongst its huge cast, all of whom are connected to Sera in some way. In fact, the person Sera is based on (one SeraTheAdventurer02) also writes plenty of real person fics involving the group.

    Web Comics 

    Web Original 
  • Hammohamster basically defines this with her fanfic about The Angry Video Game Nerd, The Nostalgia Critic, and The Irate Gamer slash fics.
    • She wrote a hateful fanfic about the Fanfic Critic on her livejournal account. The fanfic involved the internet persona brutally killing herself.
    • She's also written slash fanfics about political figures like Glenn Beck and Barack Obama (Note: the fanfic is no longer on fanfiction.net anymore. However a review can be found here.)
  • The Muggle Cast guys have quite a bit written about them. It is slightly more popular amongst another spin-off podcast that they did, Smart Mouths, but... yeah. There has even been one story written by one of the hosts, though it is pretty much a Dead Fic since she left for Costa Rica.
  • There is a large amount of Channel Awesome fanfiction.
    • Fandom can't agree on whether it's all RPS or just some of it is. Obviously the fic where people write 'Noah' and 'Lewis' and 'Doug' doing things are RPS. But what about the vast majority of the fics, which use the names 'Spoony,' 'Linkara,' and The Nostalgia Critic and have appearances of the characters Ask That Guy, Mechakara, and Dr. Insano?
      • So it gets complicated when it actually is dark Real-Person Fic. The Critic getting humiliated, tortured, beheaded, mutilated, gangbanged, snuffed and so on is A-OK, but when the Kink Meme asks for Doug abuse, everyone suddenly gets too scared to post anything.
    • It's also a little complicated because of the question who is really a character? Sure Ask That Guy is, the Critic is. Linkara is, same with the Chick. But what about Nash? MarzGurl? It's like a sliding scale of Alter-Ego Acting and the line isn't always clear when you go further down.
  • Literotica - an adults-only fiction site - calls these "Celebrity" fics, and has an entire section devoted to them.
  • There was an entire site devoted to celebrity fics (of varying quality), creatively called Celebrity Sex Stories Archive which ran from the early 2000's until about 2017/2018. Mostly female celebrities were featured (Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen did not take kindly to having that kind of stuff written about them, and mentioning the twins would get you thrown off the site for good. Their sister was fair game, however). The site eventually shut down when the founder left it, although most of it has been archived, and the site eventually spun off into the similarly named Celebrity Story Site, which although similar, does have more rules and content restrictions in place.
  • Youtube-celebrities Charlie McDonnel and Alex Day were quite Squicked to discover that people had been writing slash of them. Charlie made a reaction video as well.
  • The majority of Slenderman fanfiction is Everyman HYBRID related. The cast noticed almost immediately and commented that it was both creepy and flattering at the same time.note 
  • There's serious shipping going on in the Achievement Hunter fandom, especially Michael/Gavin slash in every setting and situation imaginable.
  • The Runaway Guys get slashed every once in a while. The preferred pairing seems to be Emile/Jon.
  • There's quite a few Slash fics of Ian and Anthony of Smosh, the two have even read some of them on their second channel.
  • This happens a lot with the Yogscast. They're mostly okay with it as long as it's not in the main Tumblr tags and they're not made aware of some elements of it. Violating this rule and sending them explicit/disturbing fanfic (which in one case involved Lewis Brindley graphically abusing Hannah Rutherford) is a guaranteed way to piss them off.
  • Dan and Phil get this a lot, even having their names combined into a portmanteau of "phan", now fans who ship them and even those who think the ship is creepy call themselves "phans" and are part of the "phandom".
  • SeptiPlier videos, edits, fanfiction, and artwork have inundated both of their communities ever since the two started making more collab videos and hanging out together, though YamiMark is also still out there. And let's not even get started on all the Game Grumps/Markiplier ships.
  • An interesting case when it comes to the Dream SMP cast and other related fandoms; as the characters in the roleplay share their names with the content creators playing them, there's occasionally confusion regarding whether certain fanfic is being written about the content creators themselves or the characters they play (and there's plenty of both). As the series goes on and Cerebus Syndrome sets in, the authors usually clarify and actively differentiate whether their fics are about the characters or the creators behind the screen. Notably, a Slash Fic shipping two members of the server (Dream and GeorgeNotFound) became so popular that it managed to induce a Colbert Bump on the song it was named after ("Heat Waves" by Glass Animals), leading to it becoming the best-performing single of 2022 according to Billboard.

    Western Animation 

In-Universe Examples:

    Anime and Manga 
  • An unusual example occurs in Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! W, where Mahiro is horrified to learn that an alien Doujin circle published a Yaoi manga about him. His three companions all fight over it (Nyarko and Hasta want to read it, Cuuko wants to sell it on the open market), but Mahiro ends up buying and destroying it. Several times throughout the season the doujin's author (a massive Mahiro fangirl) pops up and attempts to meet him in person, not realizing that he isn't exactly happy to be the subject of gay porn from space.
  • Kaguya-sama: Love Is War spin-off series We Want to Talk About Kaguya features an In-Universe example with Karen, who secretly draws Kaguya/Shirogane doujinshi in her spare time (and is up to 11 volumes by the end of Shirogane's first term as Student Council President). She ends up recruiting Ishigami to act as her editor and later offers to write one about him as thanks should he fall in love. This later reaches I Should Write a Book About This levels when Ishigami gives her the idea that she could write a series about two people trying to force the other into confessing.

    Comic Books 
  • Ms. Marvel (2014): Kamala, as part of her Audience Surrogate characterization, is a devoted superhero fan and an avid writer and reader of superhero fanfic — with the catch that these superheroes are all very much real and public figures in her world. This leads to a number of comedic incidents when she discusses these with their subjects (Wolverine in particular was not pleased to learn that a story about him got third place in popularity to "Cyclops and Emma Frost's romantic vacation in Paris"), and she's less than pleased when shipping fanfics start popping about her.

    Fan Works 

    Live-Action TV 

    Video Games 
  • In Disney Magic Kingdoms, during a Turning Red sidequest, Priya mentions that she writes fanfic about Jesse from 4*Town despite having actually met him.
  • The Fate/Grand Order event "Servant Summer Festival!" takes this trope to its logical extreme with the titular in-universe event (abbreviated to ServaFes), which is a doujinshi event for, by, and about Servants. Your player character helps write a few of their own to sell, and Gareth is introduced as all too happy to buy a slash doujin about her and Saber's brothers. The available doujins are even as varied as real-life doujinshi, ranging from High School AU to Furry Fandom to Original Generation characters. Remember: most of these characters are resurrected historical and mythological figures in real life, essentially meaning this entire scenario is RPF about the subjects running an RPF convention about themselves.
  • Genshin Impact: You can pick up an In-Game Novel about the Raiden Shogun and Yae Guuji as a couple named "Pretty Please, Kitsune Guuji?" Although the Yae Guuji is named Masako and not Miko here, it's clear who it's supposed to be about. Notably, this book is published by Yae Publishing House, which is headed by Yae Miko herself. Additionally, it was promoted heavily during the Irodori Festival, where you could pick up a tie-in drink from a cosplayer that worked for the company. You have to wonder what Miko meant by that. It's noted in its description to be a Spiritual Successor to an Isekai novel about the protagonist being reincarnated as the Raiden Shogun, which is also an example you can find in-game. Note that as the Raiden Shogun is a Physical God, these stories are not just tasteless but blasphemous. Fortunately, when the Raiden Shogun finds out about the latter, she thinks it's Actually Pretty Funny.

    Visual Novels 
  • In Psycholonials, Abby is very involved in the BTS shipping community and has written a number of Slash Fics and even an entire manifesto about the Jimin/Jungkook pairing.

    Webcomics 

    Western Animation 
  • Appears in-universe in Teen Titans when the Titans find out that people online debate on which of them should be with the other. Canonically, the only Titans to end up together were Beast Boy/Terra (temporarily) and Robin/Starfire.
  • Similarly, the Big Hero 6: The Series episode "Fan Friction" sees Big Hero 6 discover that Karmi, one of Hiro's classmates, has been penning massively popular fanfiction about the team. Unlike the rest of the team, Hiro reacts quite negatively to this revelation (in part because Karmi is crushing on "Captain Cutie" and has written herself into the story as his girlfriend), even trying to devise a way to get Karmi to stop writing her stories. He eases up by the end after saving Karmi from a plot cooked up by Momokase and Obake, humoring Karmi by reciting lines from her fics.
  • The Gender Flipped episode of Adventure Time, "Fionna and Cake," turned out to be Ice King's fanfiction of the titular duo. Marceline later gets in on the act, co-opting her own gender flip, Marshall Lee, to tell another story. Lumpy Space Princess also makes a story about her genderflip and forces Ice King to read it, hoping he can make him real enough to marry her.
  • As the Bob's Burgers episode "Bad Tina" reveals, Tina Belcher has apparently written sexually-explicit fanfiction on every fictional series known to man. As a result, she's run out of properties to write about and has taken to writing erotic "friend-fiction" about the people in her life instead.

Alternative Title(s): Real Person Slash, Bio Fic, Real Person Shipping, Celebrity Fic

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