I think this post is going to be like swinging a baseball bat at a papaya shaped hornets nest, but I do not care.
The fan related media handling of Oscar Piastri was rancid this year. I’ll be referring to two instances and only two instances to make this point. Im not making commentary or judgment based off any other things.
First (and admittedly the media have a fault in this): pushing this cool, ice cold, ice boy narrative on Oscar when he on multiple occasions asked for that not to happen was icky. Let men be emotional. Furthermore, it puts him in a weird place with an expectation that he will have a calm reaction to everything and any minor ‘infraction’ is being blown out of proportion because he “lost his unshakable charm”. It also draws more attention to lando’s emotionally expressive branding and forms this oversimplified juxtaposition between both of them that is bad for both of them. It would be one thing if he was consenting to it and playing into it but he was not.
Second (and admittedly, Grindr has a lot of fault in this), bottom gate was not acceptable. This is sexual harassment. Im gonna say it. It’s one thing in clear RPF spaces like ao3 or fan blogs to call someone a bottom, but involving a super popular public figure and filming them talking about it such that Grindr gets involved and these messages are out in the open is *crazy work* and again quite literally *sexual harassment*. Oscar’s mom accidentally liked a TikTok about it. I saw a post from someone saying that they wondered what Oscar’s sister thought about this. That is insane. I think because so many rpf fans are young straight people, that they don’t realize (in general lol) but how much of a connotation that has. Youre not calling him uwu submissive, you are calling him someone who predominantly receives penetrative sex. That is the (closer to, but obviously there’s nuance) correct definition of bottom, so in your head, when calling someone a bottom in public forums, please be substituting that definition in your head. “I wonder what Oscar’s sister thinks about people saying he predominantly receives penetrative sex” sounds crazy- because it is- and that is what people are saying. That is sexual harassment at a massive scale. I hope Grindr faces consequences. I won’t get into the fact that these drivers drive in places that are not queer friendly.
This problem is routed in the dilution of top/bottoms as terms and they have been bastardized to now mean that tops are the manly man macho dominant gay and the bottoms are the submissive woman weak gay which is not a given in the real world and also many queers are vers, even tops and bottoms often aren’t always 100% top or - *has a moment of mental clarity and decides to stop writing out this point and goes outside to finger some grass*
Bonus point: oscbama is hilarious and should continue. I have zero issues with that at this moment based on what I’ve seen. Sometimes I wonder what Obama thinks about being shipped with a random young dude every few years.
Okay I am new to this side of the Joe fandom and I’m on the spectrum so don’t mind me if this is a stupid question but I have to ask: Do we actually think they’re gay/bi/pan? If so is it like a closeted relationship or repressed feelings they don’t act on
ok, i had to stew over this for like a week and figure out how to word it.
do we actually believe that joemarr is real?
*whistles through my teeth* whew boy, tough question.
ok, for me, i like to explore joemarr's relationship from a romantic lens, because whether you truly believe that joe and ja'marr want to fuck each other, you can't deny that they have a special relationship. they mean a lot to each other. they've been together for the better part of a decade. their careers will forever be defined by each other.
it's very important to be reminded of reality though, and the reality is that homosexuality in the NFL (and throughout every major American sport tbh) is practically taboo. and you can't really get around that fact when you're discussing rpf.
(that being said, there are moments (cough cough jerseygate) where i'm like '... idk man, there is kind of only one way to interpret that')
so i guess i would say: realistically not, but who's stopping you from thinking your own thoughts?
2. what is the exact situation of their relationship, assuming that they are in a relationship?
that really does depend on the person and how they interpret joemarr's behavior.
like ik @chasedeys has amazing posts where she goes in DEPTH about joemarr and their relationship and what phase they might be in (@cementcornfield has some awesome thoughts too)
if i did have to say what i think their relationship is... honestly joemarr does has some very 'dancing around each other and our own feelings' vibes to them. mostly because the whole 'we can read each other's mind' is so romantic on its face, but also a minefield for miscommunication because, bitch you cannot actually read each other's mind.
and also they're very... uhh. how do i phrase this. ok, it's different when it's ja'marr, that's obvious, just looking at the two of them. you will always see tee and joe hugging each other to celebrate (broncos game, signing day, afc championship, etc etc). meanwhile joe and ja'marr are always doing their pinky shake. and the pinky shake is very special to them, i get it, but it's just not as physically affectionate as joetee's celebrations. and i do think it says something, that joe and tee are comfortable seeking affection openly in public like that, while joe and ja'marr are not. they keep their relationship almost obsessively to themselves. i've talked a lot about their relationship and how the public (us) really don't know that much about them, but it bears mentioning again. their relationship, despite both being public figures, is private.
now, part of the beauty of rpf and specifically, the insanely small community here, is that none of that actually matters.
repressed feelings and miscommunications? always always here for it! secret relationship? can never get enough fics of that imo! pining idiots? a thousand times yes! imagine what you want! no one can stop you!
How common etiquette is locking rpf fic actually? This post by @zeegras made me wonder.
So I made a mini test on Archive of Our Own.
--
Logged out:
13589 Works in Men's Hockey RPF
Logged in:
28791 Works in Men's Hockey RPF
(53% locked fics)
--
Logged out:
63059 Works in Sports RPF
Logged in:
91929 Works in Sports RPF
(31% locked fics)
--
Logged out:
449604 Works in Real Person Fiction
Logged in:
501220 Works in Real Person Fiction
(10% locked fics)
--
How does rpf measure against media based fandoms? The first that I happened to click was
Logged out:
5073 Works in Downton Abbey
Logged in:
5141 Works in Downton Abbey
(1% locked fics)
--
Something bigger?
Logged out:
183840 Works in Star Wars - All Media Types
Logged in:
189389 Works in Star Wars - All Media Types
(3% locked fics)
--
I edited this post a bit because I was curious enough to count the percentages. Pie charts would be more informative and decorative, I know, but I'm not going there now.
But yes, in these cases it looks like locking your fic is many times more common in rpf, but even there it varies between fandoms.
Based on these percentages I wouldn't say, though, that it is common rpf etiquette to lock your fic for only logged-in users. Out of these fandoms, you can fairly say so only about hockey rpf, and even there it's just over half of the fics that are locked to the archive. If only 10 percent of all rpf, across all real person fiction fandoms, is locked, it rather indicates that some fandoms are outliers with their larger numbers.
None of this is to say that I wouldn't recommend locking your fics! But it's more of a case of personal taste and personal choice than a fandom standard.
Hi. Maybe you've talked about this before but I'm now on a fandom that is very vocal about not writing fanfiction about real people because it's wrong and "creepy", apparently especially if you make straight cis people into however queer. I don't think it's creepy because I see them as characters, but sometimes I feel bad about this whole discourse going on. What do you think about it?
oof i have definitely written about this at length in the past, in response to various discourse situations (check my /theorizing-fandom tag if you are curious!). but i will give you a short-form answer here. i do not think rpf is ethically wrong or creepy as long as people are following these basic rules:
the people you are writing or creating art about in public forums can be reasonably construed as “public figures.” (in my opinion, it’s fine for fic to briefly mention real life partners, family members, or friends of the celeb who are not public figures—but if you’re producing any kind of explicit content involving them you should either be locking your content or making a concerted effort to keep it in fan-only spaces.)
there is no tinhatting or conspiracy-mongering going on around the people or ships in question—we all understand that we are creating fictional characters based on real people & that our headcanons or our emotional projections onto those characters do not give us privileged insight into the real person’s life or relationships.
no one is directly @ing the celebrity or anyone close to them with fic, art, headcanons, or invasive questions about the celeb’s identity or sex life (i guess we used to call this "don’t break the fourth wall” but twitter has pretty much obliterated the fourth wall, so...)
i think it’s completely fine and VERY common for people to draw their personal rpf lines in more nuanced ways within those categories. for example, to start with the caveat i added to that first one: some people might not feel comfortable writing fic that includes the characters’ real life families, partners, or children at ALL, because that comes up hard against their personal ethical rpf lines. or for #3: i personally don’t feel comfortable posting fic or fic-like content on twitter because i feel uneasy about the lack of a fourth wall and would prefer to keep my own content in more ‘bounded’ fan spaces like tumblr or ao3. I SHUDDERRR in horror at the thought of the real evgeni malkin coming across something i’ve written or made about My Crush, the 100% fictional half bear half man geno. it would ruin my fandom experience! but i want to emphasize, again, that it is VERY FINE AND NORMAL for people to draw those lines differently. (i have definitely written about this subject before, so feel free to comb through the tag if you want to read more nuanced thoughts.)
as long as people are generally following the three broad rpf guidelines outlined above, i don’t EVER see a need to hound rpf creators or to pile on when we see others hounding them about whatever dumb discourse thing people are worked up about that week. do i sometimes see people making decisions or drawing rpf lines that make me a little bit uncomfortable on social media platforms? for sure! but when i stop and reflect on it i usually realize my discomfort is not of the “that behavior is MORALLY REPREHENSIBLE and anyone who defends them must put on a BLACKLIST FOREVER” variety. it’s more like, “that would make me feel kinda exposed to non-fan communities” or “that wouldn’t be a fun and relaxing way for me to enjoy fandom” or “my past fandom experiences have made me leery of that mode of engagement for XYZ reasons.” if someone is making me Pretty Uncomfortable, i just unfollow or block, and voila, i don’t have to see or engage with their content anymore! (my personal rule is: if someone makes me angry or uncomfortable twice, i have to unfollow or block them the third time. it’s not good for me emotionally to hateread.)
i think that where it gets tricky is that some people (maybe a lot of people) don’t seem to make any distinction between “this is a hard ethical boundary that i expect all fandom members to respect & need to call out if i see someone violating it” and “this is a personal preference that i feel strongly about—strongly enough that i need to respect it in curating my online experience, so that i can engage in fandom in a way that feels fun, joyful, and healthy for me.” and, as you have discovered, it can be really easy to get swept up in the intensely passionate and emotional rhetoric that people use to try to make other people feel bad for not respecting their personal fandom preferences. but when i am in doubt, i try to ask myself these questions:
is this fan behavior causing actual harm (not hypothetical or imagined harm) to an actual person (not a hypothetical person as constructed in the minds of the fans “defending” the celeb, or an imagined group of people like “younger fans”)? is there clear evidence that this fan behavior is causing a real person (or their loved ones) significant emotional distress or endangering their physical safety? or, does the fan behavior represent so gross a violation of the celeb’s personal privacy (hacking private email accounts or voicemails, taking photographs or recording the person inside their own home, etc.) that we can reasonably assume it makes that person feel less safe or less able to maintain a private life?
if there’s a pile-on effect happening (ie lots of people are suddenly going after one writer or a small group of writers) is there a moderate to substantial chance that this has more to do with social jockeying than legitimate ethical concerns? i feel like after a certain point in your fandom experience, you get pretty good at discerning when the people leading the pile-on charge are mostly doing it for attention, or social clout, or notoriety, or whatever. tbh they almost always are! some people just thrive on creating drama and turning their followers against a convenient target. it’s a way for them to make a name for themselves or to consolidate their own “power” within fandom, even if they try to give their shit-stirring the veneer of righteous ethical combat or whatever. i try to stay as far away from those people as possible! they can really poison your fandom experience. and they are often people who—in their crusade to stop imagined harm against imagined people —will not hesitate to do real harm to real people (often other fans who are more socially exposed or vulnerable than they are).
are the people who are driving the discourse under the age of 21ish? if so, i am not getting involved. very few things are as black and white as they seem when you are a teenager or in your early 20s. people will eventually figure that out, or they won’t, but either way, i don’t need to be involved in that process.
are the practical, ethical, or definitional questions being raised here something that i find intellectually interesting, as a person who has a scholarly interest in fandom and fan cultures? if so, i usually try not to get personally involved in the discourse, but i might use an ask like yours to work through some of my own thoughts or to provide additional context from my research that i think/hope could be helpful in understanding the real or imagined stakes of the discourse. however, this is risky lol, because in analyzing discourse you inevitably wind up participating in it and sometimes fueling it, so sometimes i find it better to just let it pass.
the good news is that almost all minor fandom discourse blows over in about 48 hours! every once in a while, you’ll find yourself in a more extended version of discourse—usually when a subcommunity within the fandom has decided to engage in perpetual war with the rest of the fandom (you will know them by the endless blacklists they circulate). and then once every four or five years, a point of discourse or a disagreement about fandom practices will explode into all-out fandom civil war that leaves such deep scars in that fandom’s culture that it will forever poison the content & community experience for you and will make you never want to have anything to do with the fandom again. lol.
you can survive the 48-hour discourse cycle by just nope-ing out of it—take a social media break, filter tags, and quietly unfollow/mute/block as needed. the medium-length version can almost always be resolved by just unfollowing the really toxic shit-stirring status-seeker types and finding a chiller group of fandom friends (I promise they are out there). and then the long drawn-out all-fandom civil wars... well, everyone must weather at least one or two of these in their lives. it’s just a fandom rite of passage!
but from your ask, it kinda sounds like you may be stuck in situation #2. so i would say, if it is making you a bit miserable, try to identify the posters who are making you most miserable and experiment with just not following or viewing any of their content for a couple weeks. and if you have a close friend in that fandom who seems chill and drama-free, you might also privately ask them if they can recommend people to follow who have a similar vibe. fandom should be fun and reasonably joyful, especially in the hellscape that is 2020-21, and if it is making you feel bad, it might be time to make some changes that make it feel joyful again. i wish you the best of luck!!
I am super sorry to bother you, but I just read your RPF disclaimer, which was wonderful--- I left feeling less hesitant about my reading choices, but then I went to google “Sidney Crosby Evgeni Malkin” to see if there was an update on injuries and one of the first things that showed up was ao3…and just I have no idea how to take something like that. I mean that level of closeness makes me outright worried and uncomfortable. Again sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if you had any thoughts?
Thank you! A lot of people have written more intelligent and well-thought-out meta about it than I did, but I really wanted to have a statement of my own that I could link to on my header.
There are three answers to this. 1) Wanna know what’s even worse? Google ‘Jordy Staal Eric Staal’. The AO3 page for that incest ship is at the top of the second page of results. 2) I wonder sometimes if the presence of AO3 in Google searches is informed by those searching and maybe the links wouldn’t appear for everyone?
Most significantly, 3) I don’t like it at all and it makes me very uncomfortable too. I’m not really sure what can be done about it, though. It’s pretty common practice for people to lock their fics on AO3 - something I would certainly do with anything I myself post there - especially if they’re particularly dirty.
We know there’s been some breaking of the fourth wall, both in the past and recently - Seguin saw a Tyler/Tyler primer on LiveJournal, I think, and there was a screencap going around recently implying that people have been bringing the Bennguin ship up to him in chats, although I’m not convinced it was real.
I think, to a certain extent, we need to just rely on the fact that they’re celebrities and they know that if they go looking for weird shit about themselves on the internet, they’re going to find it. For the most part, I really doubt they’re going to come looking.
So I lock fics on AO3 and I avoid putting things in tumblr tags and I cross my fingers that no one sends them any links, and beyond that I just hope for the best.
