What are your opinions on fanfics involving real people?

[feardeer]

I can't imagine the kind of mindset you'd need to have to first write a steamy fic about someone, and then actually send it to them. What kind of response are they expecting??

[Maps]

I no joke made this topic because I was scrolling down tumblr and saw this "suggested post" that showed up on my dash, probably since I followed f(x) blogs, and it was just this NSFW first-person facfic about the speaker and Krystal Jung having sex. It felt like it was the author and her since it was I, me, Krystal.
And don't get me wrong, I like GL. But I did not want to read about someone sexualizing Krystal Jung or any other real-life person for that matter.

[LDJones]

They're strange. I kind of wish people wouldn't write them.

[CodeMonkeyArts]

Yeah...I am not really a fan. I know it's popular, especially with Korean Bands but I'm also like 'Why? No. They have lives. YIKES!'

It just crosses a line for me.

[Maps]

YES. One Direction (had) and BTS have it sooo bad. Like my god protect those men.

[feardeer]

Yikes. The first-person pov adds a whole new layer of uncomfortableness imo.

[CodeMonkeyArts]

Yeah! It's same feeling I get with sexual fics of female actresses. It just feels skeevy, especially if they are a young band too

[vothnthorvaldson]

I find these absolutely disgusting.
Even biographies with fake, reconsitituted personal dialogues are a bit problematic for me, but ok, I can tolerate these unless they are made with bad intents.

But fanfiction nope nope. Yuck.

I even feel slightly bad with having a couple weak inspirations from existing people in my comic. I did not think it would be a problem as it's very slight, vague influences, but I would not do it again.

[ProfessorParsec]

I'm part of a writer's discord group, and a guy came on who had written an entire novel with real life people in it. He was asking us questions about how he would handle radio interviews. I'll let you interpret our reactions from there.

It ended up that so many people tried to unravel everything he was asking about (from legality to how he'd handle his fame from self-publishing his first book) that the Mod had to shut the server down for 30 minutes and block the guy.

All that to say, more trouble than it's worth.

Besides, it's so much fun to create your own characters and bring them to life! I think people are missing out of the fun, pride and wonder of that experience if they opt to just write someone who exists. Sure, take inspiration from real life, but don't stop there.

[Maps]

Lol he was going to publish a book using real people? We’re they celebs or like, people he knew?
That sounds like a legal nightmare either way.
And how bold to assume radio interviews would be lining up.

[rainbowolfe]

I find it lowkey odd, though I used to indulge in it myself when I was younger. When it comes to Youtubers and Bands and such, I rationalize it by considering the "personality" they put out into the public as just a character they play. It's entirely possible that the members of BTS don't actually have the personalities or relationships put forward for the masses to consume, so you're not really writing about them, you're writing about their persona.

I mean, Hamilton is technically just a fanfic about real historical figures. Though maybe it's a bit less weird cause they've been dead for so long, that they're far removed from our reality.

[joannekwan]

For living people, BIG CRINGE.

Is it so hard to just change their names so you can have a thin veil of originality and normalcy?

[Maps]

I get what your saying about a persona being sort of a character and that that’s what people write about. But despite that, persona or not, it’s still themselves that they’re pretending to be. And to sexualize them with one another just seems over the top to me and completely without consideration of their real lives, families, friendships, and relationships.
But that’s just my opinion.

[carloswebcomic]

Not that I'm huge on fanfics without real people, also. But something about fanfics that involve actual living people (celebs), especially when they're sexual in nature, just irks me to no end. It just feels like it's sexualizing those people to cater to their own fantasies and to their readers' fantasies..

I don't know much about the fanfic scene, but isn't that the point? To fantasise over something?
Apart from being a bit creepy, specially to the person placed in the fanfic, I don't really find a problem with it.
Then again, I don't read fanfic so it's not something I'd come across anyway.

[Maryedraws]

So imagine this, you started posting to youtube as a hobby and to your surprise gained quite a large following. You enjoy making videos with some of your close friends.
One day you decide to google yourself and come across a fanfic. It's already strange enough that someone decided to include your likeness in their story, but then your curiosity gets the better of you and you decide to read it. It describes you and your 100% platonic friend having sex and preforming sexual acts on each other. No graphic detail is spared. Your stomach twists and you feel violated, especially when you see the amount of views it has. The idea of so many complete strangers picturing your most intimate, private moments. Sickening.

Okay, most wont read the fanfics about them, but I still find it creepy. I can't be mad at teens exploring their sexuality through fanfics and ships, but I do wish they're stick to fictional characters.

[darthmongoose]

It can be really uncomfortable to have yourself made into a fictional character against your will, to have words put into your mouth and behaviours applied to you.
I've never, to my knowledge had a fic written about me, but I have had:

• Somebody draw fanart of what they imagined me to look like after vaguely interacting with me on a forum and posted it on the forum (which hilariously was tall, busty, intimidating and dark-haired- basically the opposite of what I actually look like). I was presented as a sort of sexy dream geek girlfriend character.
• People shipping me with various members of my voice acting group, often based on relationships between characters we voice, and also being unaware of age differences, leading to me getting shipped with people ten years younger than me who I'd never hook up with because it'd be super creepy.
• People treating my real life relationship like it's a fictional romantic fairy tale ship, or literally a real life version of the relationship the character I'm known for voicing on youtube is in. They follow my partner on social media and talk to her like they know her, they make assumptions about our life etc. My partner considers this creepy, she doesn't like having random strangers who really know nothing about her acting all chummy with her because I sometimes mention her on my twitter.

I'm sure if you're only making this stuff that objectifies real people it seems harmless, but it's way less fun having it done to you. It makes you feel like nobody actually cares about you as a real person or what you actually think about things, they just want to project this fantasy version of you who is their perfect imaginary sexy gamer girlfriend, or their cool gay big sis who is in a mixed race gay relationship- wow, lifegoals! Just like the characters in a f/f romance comic! So cute! You end up feeling really inadequate, kind of violated and...well, lonely, actually. It feels lonely when everyone's engaging with a super amazing, sexy fictionalised version of you outside of your involvement but you're not necessarily getting any support from people as a real person with banal, everyday problems.

[gempompadour]

This reminds me of these two girls from my high school. They shipped my two biology teachers together and actually wrote extremely explicit smut fanfics about them, spread them around school and gave them to the teachers in question; as in walked up to them in person and shoved like 10 pages of fanfiction (with sex scenes!) onto their hands and expected them to, I don't know, be inspired?

The girls went so far that they hoped the men would leave their wives and get together. They kept journals where they wrote about the interactions the men had and how it proved they loved each other...

It's one of those things that I still talk about when I bump into my old high school mates. It was that bizarre.

[Luminosophy]

no

/20characterslimittopost

[Iris-Grimoire]

Funny you should say that, this was done to me.

I have a group of friends, we all like videogames and fanfics, but it used to be bigger. We liked to write fanfics about each other's OCs, but there was one guy that decided to write about us specificially. And instead of focusing on the group becoming tokusatsu heroes so we'd laugh over inside jokes, he decided to pair people he thought had chemistry, including me with a guy that at the time was sexist and FAR younger (he got better), people that were in relationships with people other than their partners, and weird romantic scenes that made everyone uncomfortable!

Granted, we were all teens, but nowadays we mention that fic with nervous laughs and hopes that it'll be the last time someone writes meta humor involving romance.

So yeah, no, disgusting, please don't write romantic or sexual fanfics of real people. Parasocial relationships are a real problem and other human beings are not your toys.

[Kura]

I hate it.

A lot.

Then when it happened to me and someone wrote a fanfic of me about their head canon of shipping me with another webcomic artist they liked I HATED IT EVEN FUCKING MORE THAN I POSSIBLY THOUGHT THAT I COULD HATE IT.