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Real-Person Fic

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"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.)

Fan Fiction Dot Net does not allow Real Person Fics anymore, 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. If religious texts like The Bible or the Qur'an mention historical figures, they're likely to be this—but that's all we'll say on that subject.

Compare Historical-Domain Character.

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.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Automobiles 

    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.
  • An unusual In-Universe example occurs in Haiyore! Nyarko-san 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.

    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 — 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • A Girls Aloud RPF called Girls (Scream) Aloud, a Gorn-tastic 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.
  • 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 1940's to 1970's. 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, Juby Phonic 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.

    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.
  • The Internet has been lately seeing tons of fics involving Barack Obama, John Mc Cain, 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.

    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 kindergardener 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 Mary Sue 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 Sierra is engaged and 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.

    Web Comics 

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 

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

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