Really
Cannot believe I’m seeing the tired old RPS debate on my dash in the year of our lord 2016.
This debate was old when I entered fandom ten goddamn years ago, and it’s just gonna keep getting older.
Like last I checked, it was considered the polite norm to keep it out of the main fandom tags, actors asking fans to stop writing fic about them got them to stop, and shit like sending fanfics to the actors was considered this like, ridiculous thing that happened in Ye Olden Days. The major problems seemed to have resolved. Did something change recently?
What I’ve never understood when the “stop RPF” arguments come around, is that they always seem to fixate on the people who ship actors. Like, that’s such a minor part of the RPF section (if you ignore the Supernatural segment which is, frankly, kind of like spiders georg statistically and messes with the data.) Actor-shipping is absolutely obliterated by the sheer volume of people shipping musicians together and sports players together. Like, have you seen the Hockey RPF tag on AO3 alone? It’s staggering. When I first joined fandom on LJ, I legit thought “hockey rpf” was a tv show or anime or something I’d never heard of, because it showed up fucking everywhere.
If you really wanna slay this beastie, you’re gonna have to stop the sports fans and bandslash people. And honestly, seeing as I’ve seen this debate go on for ten years, and it was going on in the years before I joined fandom, and it’s likely been going on long before I was born, I expect this to continue going around and around in a circle forever.
From time to time, fans also start objecting to darkfic. It is basically ship wars and bullying wearing a different coat.