psa; roleplaying as real people
& why it isn’t all that great of a thing to do.
this is a topic i’ve seen people arguing about on tumblr and i would like to honestly put my two cents in. so before you get your panties in a wad over defending why you should do it. now you can do whatever the hell you want to do. trust me. i don’t care. but honestly the reason i’m even talking about this is because rping as real people is bringing up issues.
1. you never really know how people would feel about someone literally writing as THEM on the internet. some youtubers have talked about fanfiction, and how they are alright with it, but honestly i feel like roleplay is very different than fanfiction in this case because they’re literally roleplaying someone’s life. and i don’t know about you, but i know if i saw someone making ME do sexual things with another muse i would be very uncomfortable.
2. your actions as rping and being toxic to someone are only worsened by rping someone irl. with experience under my belt on this, i know that running into a toxic person in an anime fandom or something might get you to dislike a character. but imagine that. but with a living human being. many youtubers rely on their fans for their income, and what if i had been a super fan and had looked up to the person that was being roleplayed as a complete inspiration? it’s just not fair to the youtuber or to the person your being toxic to.
3. it’s invasive. you don’t live this person’s life. you don’t really know them like you could an anime character. studying them as a person and trying to portray them in writing is honestly, if you think about it, kind of intrusive and morally grey. would you really want someone trying to nail down what you talk like? how you act? all of your internal thoughts that NO ONE could possibly know???
4. where’s the line of fiction? it’s not there. you’re roleplaying as someones life . i don’t know about you but this would again really…creep me out.
5. making headcanons about someone’s life….also not really all that cool. you don’t know everything about someone. you can never know everything about someone. please…don’t headcanon things about REAL PEOPLE.
6. i did a little bit of research on forums about this controversial topic. to quote a few?
1. And I’ve actually been in fandoms where the actors discovered RP accounts for themselves and from then on, they all reacted pretty badly to the whole fandom.
2. Its just kind of stalkerish if you think about it…Can I say stalkerish? Hahah I just find that a turn off when it comes to site like that. There is a fine line between IC and OOC and Can’t you get in big trouble for doing something like that? Cause I would think it falls on the line of impersonating a Celebrity?
3. ( my personal favorite and the last point i’m going to make here ) People are not fictional. They are people. However, I’m going to make an addendum and say that historical figures are generally fair game so long as the research is done. Why is there a difference? Typically historical fiction is focused around figures who have long been dead - as well as all their friends and family, and there is a certain amount of “we don’t know” about them. There is a reason that books fictionalizing the recent past are very often controversial… especially if they feature historical figures with still-living relatives and associates.
But a currently living actor/musician/model/whatever? No. No no no. It’s invasive and strange. Think of it this way: writing a book about a living actor and fictionalizing their life would probably get you slapped with a lawsuit for libel. People barely get around this stuff with parody laws. If it’s something that would actually get you sued on a publishing scale, then just… stay away from it in your RP.
TL;DR: roleplaying as real people can have big effects on people. if you act out of line it can cause people to hate real living people. it’s invasive. it’s strange. it’s something that you would get in trouble for in publishing. it’s something that could be considered as impersonation. just think: how would you feel if you saw it done to yourself? someone writing out your life? joking with you getting traumatized in explicit natures?
kianamaiart
gummygunk
areudirty
theartofmadeline
turnnoffyourmind
