occasionally people i follow will reblogged anti-rpf posts and it always make me feel deeply uncomfortable about my own place in fandom and with my engagement with rpf because I write it and I'm aware of the fictitious nature of what I'm writing but anti rpf discourse re: privacy, the idea that it is simply fetishisation, robs men of the idea that they can be "just" friends with other men. idk i just want to write and be happy.

my advice is to write and be happy!!!

imagining the interiority of celebrities is not a pasttime that’s exclusive to fandom—look at entertainment media as a whole! not to mention the entire genre of historical fiction/drama and projects like Hamilton or The Crown or a hundred other based-on-real-events stories. look at every book, show, and museum about world war ii and the lives of its soldiers! we aren’t the only ones doing this, is my point, but by and large we are the only ones being treated like shit about it—and that is absolutely gendered. your work is being regarded through a lens that infantilizes and discredits the passions and labor of women, and makes the assumption that because you engage in this hobby, you’re a ripe target for misogynistic strategies of shame and control.

RPF is not just a creative & emotional challenge. the “relationships” we form with our imagined versions of these people actually fall into the category of parasocial relationships. that’s the idea of forming connections that are emotionally important, meaningful, and let us explore something important for ourselves & our sense of social relationships, through the format of how we relate to fictional or *fictionalized* versions of people. rich parasocial relationships are linked to intelligence, emotional depth, and empathy—as long as we know we aren’t forming bonds to real versions of these people. we may be internet flotsam & fringe, but we aren’t delusional. we don’t deserve to be treated like we are.

when I write RPF, i am writing about a pete wentz I have made into fiction. I know he’s not real and that if I met the real pete wentz, I wouldn’t know him. that doesn’t matter to me. I explore so many important-to-me issues and complexities by imagining the interior of this man and his interpersonal dynamics with imagined others. doing that while creating emotional continuity and playing within the “rules” of real-life events is a combination of research and creativity that challenges me uniquely as a writer—plus, it forms a shared universe for me and my friends. and we enjoy ourselves there! because I don’t do anything to infringe on his actual privacy and I don’t try to interact with him about my fic, I consider this to be a harmless pastime.

now this thing about how rpf shipping somehow destabilizes public perception of friendships between men… like… what?? that is such a blatant and misogynistic attempt to limit and control what women enjoy! we are not personally responsible for The Culture™️’s view of masculine intimacy, and what we scream into our personal void on ao3 doesn’t impact it *at all.* who reads our stories but people who are deliberately seeking them out and engaging with them? whoever is putting that pressure on you is, in my opinion, full of shit. the VAST majority of ‘great’ and classic western literature and film is obsessively focused on the inter- and intrapersonal relationships of men with men, and the VAST majority of those so-called classics that dominate intellectual and cultural spaces could not pass a single feminist critique like the Bechdel or Mako Mori test. all of which is to say: I assure you, there are ample fucking representations of friendships between men in our culture. we do not need to curb our private recreational activities in order to protect the perception of these poor, helpless fragile creatures. we do not need to edit ourselves for the protection of men who are entirely too famous to ever even know we exist.

all of this is to say: to the anti-RPFers of the world, please employ the time-honored tradition of “don’t like, don’t read.” whatever your hobbies and favorites are, I wish you joy of them. fuck off and extend the same benefit to others!

and to my RPF crew and my fellow tinhats: write and be happy. block people who treat you like shit and fill your blog with things that make you lighter til you shine like the fucking sun. life is too short to fill our hearts with bitterness, and maybe one day the people who seek to make us unhappy will realize it too. I am sorry people have been unkind to you, and I hope you do not allow them to spoil any of your joy.