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This meta explores my experience of reading and writing within RPF. Although rooted in personal experience, it is not meant to make generalisations about every RPF reader or writer or one particular ship/fandom, but to explore behaviours I have noticed from RPF believers and haters.
I’d like to highlight for the record that my own personal experience with both groups has been largely neutral, but the online discourse has been intriguing and often heated, and I have noticed curious similarities between the two polarities that warrants further unpacking.
My RPF experience
I first started writing RPF last year, when I became hyperfixated on the Beatles, specifically McLennon. The Beatles fandom is a multigenerational fandom more than half a century old, with multiple (often contradictory) subfandoms.
In order to learn more about McLennon lore, I used tumblr. Tumblr was a treasure trove to someone new to the fandom, invaluable for learning anecdotes about the relationship, collecting gifs, and hearing fandom perspectives. There were meta-essays exploring primary sources in the most granular detail, arguments to the length of a phd thesis. There were people who exhumed previously unknown information. Most amusing to me was the person who had calculated the hypotenuse of various angles of pictures John and Paul had taken of each other to prove they were sharing a hotel room.
I am grateful for the hard work the fandom put into collating this information, and incorporated lots of the research into material for my stories. As I wrote, I naturally wanted to take my characters in the direction my constructed narrative seemed to suggest. This seemed a reasonable position, since although I’m writing about real people, I’ve never met any of them, and more importantly, I’m writing fiction, not a documentary. I wanted the freedom to interpret things without concern about historical accuracy constraining the narrative.
As my fictionalisation deepened, I noticed decreased interest from the fandom as a whole. I accept this could be something personal to me, such as my own writing skill or capacity. At the same time, I couldn’t help noticing that the fandom seemed to have a similar headcanon around characterisation. This intrigued me, as I had assumed that the point of fanfiction was so that people could speculate, as we all presumably have our own methods of thinking and analysing, rather than sharing one large brain that had the same thoughts like the Borg.
My experience was of a group of people who sought refuge and comfort in sameness in belief and understanding about “what really happened.” Characterising our heroes differently from the norm did not result in me being treated badly, but did result in subtle exclusion for the perceived sin of Beatles characterisation wrongthink, for visiting the cathedral yet remaining an atheist.
We calculated the hypoteneuse, why do you not accept the evidence?! Such was my experience with the RPF faithful.
As an alternative, I sought out comment exchanges. The community helped motivate me to keep writing such an extended piece of work, and I was keen to discover writing in a range of fandoms.
On reddit I came across the RPF atheists, or what is perhaps better characterised as the New Puritans. These were people who took a strong moral stance on RPF, seeing it as “intrusive”, “unethical”, “disgusting” or “weird”. Despite all the discourse critiquing “antis”, many of these self-defined “proshippers” seemed to make an exception for RPF. They would take time out of their day to nail their anti-RPF colours to the mast, while simultaneously promoting their own liberal “don’t like don’t read” narrative. The hypocrisy amused me.
The Two Religious Denominations: Devotion and Purity
Online debates about Real People Fiction tend to become moral conversations. People ask whether RPF is “good,” “bad,” “ethical,” “harmful,” “respectful,” or “violating.” These questions assume that fiction is a moral object and that writers must justify themselves through moral reasoning. I do not participate in this discourse.
I do not believe morality is irrelevant in life, but feel that moral frameworks applied to RPF (or any fiction) are fundamentally misplaced. They are religious frameworks rooted in purity, taboo, reverence, and sin. They have nothing to do with literature. I am not at church now. I am in fiction.
If I wanted to join a religion, I would go back to the church I was excluded from as an adolescent for my sexuality. At least there I’d score points for the afterlife. What reward do I gain from attaching myself to rigid fandom dogma?
The similarities and differences between the pro/anti RPF camps remind me of sectarian conflict between Catholics and Protestants. There are more similarities between them than either may like to admit. Both are religious. Both are Christians.
The Catholicism of RPF Belief
In certain fandoms, RPF becomes a devotional practice, similar to Catholicism. Fans treat photographs as relics, interviews as scripture, timelines as destiny, rumours as sacred lore and relationships as tragic canon. The ethical stance is built on reverence, loyalty, and belief. Fiction becomes a way of honouring real people or proving emotional truths.
The Puritanism of RPF Hatred
Conversely, RPF‑averse readers also adopt purity logic. For them, you can only be “saved” in fandom if you write about pretend characters. RPF is taboo, invasive, morally contaminated, inherently unethical. Like the Puritans, their ethical stance is built on abstinence and prohibition. Fiction (“the Word of God”) becomes a site of moral risk, and explicit content involving real people is treated as categorically unacceptable.
Both positions rely on moral absolutism. Both treat RPF as a moral act rather than a literary one.
The Freedom of RPF agnosticism
My stance is neither devotional nor puritanical. It is agnostic. This is not an amoral position. It is a stance that recognises the limits of moral discourse in artistic contexts and refuses to use religious tools to analyse fiction.
I reject reverence. I do not treat historical figures as tragic gay saints or sacred cultural icons, or elevate them beyond humanity. Characters are human, allowed to be flawed, contradictory, petty, human, and ridiculous.
I reject fandom evangelism. I do not attempt to persuade anyone of the “truth” of a relationship or dynamic. I do not use fiction as evidence or claim revelation. I seek readers, not converts. Who knows what “really happened”? Who cares?
I reject purity, and do not treat fiction as contamination. I do not treat explicit content as inherently unethical. I do not treat imagination as violation. Fiction is not biography. Characterisation is not claim.
Literature Is Not a Church
Moral debates about RPF are boring. Not because morality is trivial, but because the debates are framed as binary religious categories of right and wrong. These categories flatten fiction, turning it into moral theatre, which I refuse to participate in. I am writing fiction, not scripture.
Some readers avoid RPF that includes explicit sexual content involving real historical figures. This is their personal comfort boundary and is separate from RPF secterianism. Ethical writing does not require universal appeal, and everyone is entitled to avoid things that make them uncomfortable. That is what “don’t like don’t read” means to me.
The ethics of Real People Fiction do not need to be governed by devotion or purity. They should be governed by literature. Literature refuses the religious logic of both believers and haters. In a time of increased polarisation of views, in an age of religion weaponised to promote white supremacy and other nefarious agendas, in a world where online discourse is pushed towards the lowest common denominator of hate and judgment, let us in fandom find ways to communicate with each other which involve a greater breadth of discourse than clinging with both fists to our own personal algorithms.