1. Introduction
[1.1] Real person fiction (RPF), narratives that treat celebrities as characters and subsequently depict them in various imagined circumstances (Winter 2020), is both a relatively niche and private fan practice and, as fandom scholars have noted, a deeply mainstream and normalized genre (Piper 2022). RPF provides an essential inroad to understanding how and why audiences (niche fans and mainstream consumers alike) both create and consume fantasies about public figures, reflecting the deeply complex and contradictory relationships that audiences have not just with the subjects of RPF but with the broader power dynamics that fantasies around these subjects illuminate.
[1.2] Through a consideration of common threads and practices associated with RPF, I ask here how power is exerted, denied, and challenged in this diverse genre. As the literature on RPF (sometimes called RPS / real person slash, which refers specifically to same-gender pairings and tends to exclude self-insert RPF) has historically viewed it through lenses of ethics (Sprott 2022), desire/sexuality (Pruett 2020), narrative/genre (Fathallah 2018), and electoral politics (Spychala 2024), I expand on the political and power-related characteristics of RPF, contributing to its academic study by highlighting the relationship between the sexual nature of much RPF and its functions as an exertion of power, whether or not specific examples explicitly address questions of consent.
[1.3] Expanding beyond the individual functions of RPF for its writers and the topic of identity construction, I want to here consider how broader political realities manifest in this genre. Power structures are consistently grappled with, whether consciously or unconsciously, by RPF creators of all kinds. This work contributes to the existing literature on RPF by expanding its scope to account for the political attributes of its individual functions. In short, in the vein of the popular aphorism paraphrased by Janelle Monáe as "Everything is sex, except sex, which is power" ("Screwed," https://open.spotify.com/track/1Z2MfAx1nJ09NzGjodnvRW?si=09a4681e02534e65), I read the seemingly apolitical and often desire-fueled characteristics of RPF through an explicitly political lens.
[1.4] Arguing of RPF that the genre as a whole frequently centers on the conscious or unconscious expression of sexuality as power exertion, I demonstrate how different kinds of RPF (fan made, mainstream, and political establishment focused) engage in control by way of desire. I begin with a review of the intersections between scholarship on RPF and similar phenomena, categorizing the literature broadly in the areas of ethics, desire/sexuality, narrative/genre, and electoral politics. Following this, I situate my own approach at the intersections of these areas, with a particular focus on the politics of desire/sexuality in RPF, using a broadly Foucauldian approach.
[1.5] Methodologically, I collect examples of the intersections of each of these areas in order to demonstrate the inherently political nature of the genre. Though the examples are primarily chosen based on my personal awareness of them and are not comprehensive, I have made a point to include case studies of mainstream RPF that are either popular with general audiences as measured by engagement on mainstream platforms like TikTok (e.g., Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story [2023]) or that are popular with slash fandom specifically as measured by engagement on fandom-centric platforms like Tumblr (e.g., Our Flag Means Death [2022–2023]). My use of textual analysis applies a critical-cultural framework to popular RPF and RPF-adjacent media in order to argue for their importance to scholarship on contemporary culture and to assess their ideological functions. Critical-cultural analysis is particularly appropriate in a fan studies context because it approaches cultural phenomena from an informed (auto)ethnographic perspective that meets fans and audiences where they are.
2. Overview
[2.1] To briefly review the literature, I categorize existing studies of RPF broadly in the subfields of ethics, desire/sexuality, narrative/genre, and electoral politics. Ethical considerations are both very well scrutinized and still-contentious elements of RPF studies. McGee describes how "RPS has been roundly denounced in the fan fiction community as most likely illegal and almost certainly unethical" (2005, 173). Relatedly, Sprott argues that "As a transgressive digital queer text, RPF teases out and queeries [intended] ethical questions without providing answers" (2022, 650). In short, discourse around RPF as a practice centers not just on the question of whether it is acceptable to create and share fantasies about public personae but also on more complex questions having to do with the ethical implications of intentionally blurring fantasy and reality (see also Lin 2017; Wilson 2012). Given that a central ethical justification for RPF is that it is not infringing on the subject's privacy because it delineates between the subject as a public persona and the subject as an actual (private) person, fantasy/reality blurring is intrinsic to the genre.
[2.2] The act of imagining public figures in fictional situations, whether to achieve an emotional fantasy (Busse 2006) or sexual titillation (Hedrick 2020), to express sadism targeting the subject (which may or may not overlap with the aforementioned sexual titillation [Rowley 2017]), or for other purposes, has a long-standing history that is sometimes emphasized in justifications of RPF within fandom contexts. While RPF studies as a subfield still discusses the ethical elements at play in RPF, it also considers other characteristics of the genre.
[2.3] An early consideration of RPF emphasizes its inherently erotic nature and the implications for gender and sexuality; in short, the fact that women writers and readers of RPF erotically engage and/or flirt with one another through role-play challenged early envisionings of fan fiction as being by and for straight women (Lackner et al. 2006). While the sincerity of such practices was questioned by openly lesbian and bisexual women in the community (with one fan quoted by Busse calling it "gay-for-LJ [LiveJournal]" [2006, 211]), these practices themselves began to demonstrate the (inter)personal functions of RPF. The role of queer identity in RPF engagement has been studied more recently as well, as in specific considerations of lesbian boy band fandom (Pruett 2020).
[2.4] Research on RPF has also considered the extent to which it engages with consent culture and/or rape culture; self-insert fan fiction (which centers, rather than a slash relationship between same-gender celebrities, a usually heterosexual relationship between a usually male celebrity and a usually-assumed-female reader) in particular can reify ambiguities around consent and/or rape myths (Hedrick 2020). This is particularly important to note given that this type of fan fiction might unintentionally act as a mirror of famous male musicians taking advantage of their underage female fans in real life. In short, sexuality and desire are central elements of RPF scholarship as well as RPF itself. These characteristics also overlap with genre conventions that are noted within RPF writ large.
[2.5] Key characteristics associated with the genre-based study of RPF include sexuality, parasociality, identification, and fantasy/reality blending. Of narrative tropes and genre conventions, the parasociality of RPF plays an important role. This is due to the fact that emotional investment and affective connections are reliant on the simultaneously realer (more accessible, more detailed, and more intimate) and less real (less grounded, less connected, and less likely) nature of the public figure themselves and one's relationship to or identification with them. The intersections of "identification fantasies" (Busse 2006, 207; see also Popova 2017) and affection, sexual desire, and/or idolization/idealization (Bruhn 2021) are indeed notable for their very seemingly mutual exclusiveness. To idealize a version of a celebrity with whom one identifies in some way can here be read as a type of literal self-love, but more significantly for the study of RPF, it provides yet another example of the polysemy that characterizes the genre's content and technological modes (Fathallah 2018).
[2.6] RPF's historical associations with pulp are notable for the light that these overlaps shed on perceptions of the genre as trashy. Simmons notes the similarities between RPF and the celebrity pulps of the early twentieth century, which intentionally blurred the lines between fiction and reality (2016). This work also highlights the interpersonal nature of the genre, elaborating on the actual friendship between H. P. Lovecraft and Robert Bloch, which resulted in the former giving his permission for the latter to portray him as a character in his fiction (Simmons 2016). Further, Simmons highlights the broad political functions of mainstream RPF in contemporary contexts, as when such works depict fictionalized versions of Lovecraft, infamous for his racism, as a marginalized outsider. This political investment in RPF as image rehabilitation (on both a micro/individual level and a macro/societal level) expands on the fantasy/reality blending characteristic of the genre.
[2.7] When fantasy and reality are blurred, different shades of fantasy become even more indiscernible from one another. Authors note the nebulous relationship between different types of canon in RPF. As a contemporary classic of the genre, The Social Network (2010) is particularly noted for the overlap it represents between mainstream and fandom RPF. As Piper writes, characteristics of actors Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield and their characters Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin are sometimes conflated, and similarly, RPF about Saverin and Zuckerberg often takes elements of canon from outside the direct text of the film (e.g., Saverin moving to Singapore after the events of the film) (2022). Given the focus of The Social Network on a very powerful public figure like Zuckerberg, it is unsurprising that the final area of interest for RPF focuses on a particular type of RPF subject characterized by their real-world power.
[2.8] Electoral politics are the final area of interest that has historically characterized RPF literature, with authors particularly emphasizing depictions of American politicians (Rowley 2017; Spychala 2024; Winter 2020). Rather than being motivated by the type of parasocial love that characterizes celebrity RPF, RPF about politicians is generally associated with self-conscious commentary (though Spychala [2024] notes the role of white liberal nostalgia in mainstream Barack Obama RPF like the Obama Biden Mysteries novels, which can be read as simultaneously politically and emotionally motivated in their rose-colored depictions of the relationship between the former president and vice president). Emotional investment in the context of political establishment RPF tends to be more fraught with negative potential as compared with celebrity RPF, a feature that demonstrates the ongoing evolution of the genre's study writ large.
[2.9] My contribution to the field of fandom studies draws from each of the subfields identified here (ethics, desire/sexuality, narrative/genre, and electoral politics) to expand on the overlap between desire/sexuality and power. Reviewing the ways that these elements manifest in fandom, mainstream, and political establishment RPF, I argue that the genre as a whole frequently centers on the conscious or unconscious expression of sexuality as power exertion.
3. Fandom RPF
[3.1] The concept of real person fiction is largely associated with fandom first and foremost, making fandom RPF an important entry point to discussion of the genre. While mainstream RPF is largely defined by its established nature in Hollywood and other professional industries (Piper 2022), fandom RPF is an amateur leisure pursuit (Busse 2006). In the context of power exertion, fandom RPF mirrors other fandom trends in its characteristic tension between investment in the maintenance of the political status quo and investment in liberatory politics (Pande 2018).
[3.2] One of the more (in)famous examples of fandom RPF's political nature is Miku Binder Thomas Jefferson, a viral piece of fan art depicting the character from the popular historical musical Hamilton (2015) as a college student (Know Your Meme 2021). In addition to humorously demonstrating the enormous gulf between the real historical figure on the one hand and the "weeaboo drug dealer" version of the Hamilton version on the other hand, this meme highlights a key element of RPF more broadly speaking: that it is inextricable from broader sociopolitical power dynamics. Whether RPF functions to reify existing power dynamics by, for example, romanticizing a figure like Jefferson as a national founding father, or to upend existing power dynamics, as Hamilton and its fandom attempt to do through the casting of a Black man as an infamous enslaver of Black people, it ultimately reflects a deeply held cultural preoccupation with not just famous figures but the power that they represent and hold (whether that power is derived from their fame or is the direct cause of their fame).
[3.3] Fandom RPF is inherently political and its power dynamics have the potential not just to reflect but also to actively affect reality, potentially by reinforcing widely held victim-blaming ideologies (note 1). While fandom's handling of abuse in the form, for example, of common fan terms and practices like noncon (nonconsent) and dubcon (dubious consent) is outside the scope of this article, I note it here for its relevance to the broader point that, as Pande (2018) and other scholars have noted, fandom's inherently political nature exists whether or not it is acknowledged as such in the moment. Common practices of fandom like shipping, whether applied to real or fictional subject matter, are reflective of the classical academic canon's approach to fandom (as a place where marginalized audience-creators can reclaim power) and simultaneously of contemporary fan studies' recognition of the ways in which fandom can and often does reify white supremacy, misogyny, and other forms of oppression.
[3.4] Fan practices both within and outside fan work narratives reflect reproduction of common preexisting themes. In the remainder of this section, I demonstrate the overlap between racial politics and capital exchange in fandom RPF practices. Broader fandom trends associated with high prioritizations of whiteness (Pande 2018) can be seen across RPF and non-RPF fan practices. We could argue that it is to actors of color and musicians of color's benefit that they are not generally featured in RPF (adjacent or otherwise) as much as white actors and white musicians. As Zhang notes, the scrutiny and surveillance associated with fan cam practices, as in one example of real person fandom, sometimes take as a negative target female members of K-pop bands who are subject to ridicule because of their weight or the perceived quality of their performance on stage (2024).
[3.5] While there are certainly celebrities for whom the benefit of relative RPF anonymity applies, being prominently featured in RPF can also be potentially correlated with economic benefits to the celebrities who experience the phenomenon. Lantagne argues that given the devotion with which fans produce RPF of their favorite celebrities (that, by virtue of the fact that it is free, cannot be an economic competitor of official merchandise, media, and other profit creators) and the subsequent demand on the part of both fan producers and fan consumers for more canon material of the RPF subjects, it logically follows that some of those fans are also investing money in closely following the celebrities' careers, whether by streaming their television shows, buying tickets to see their films, or attending their concerts (2016).
[3.6] However, this argument is countered by Huang's consideration of Chinese idol shipper communities that are centered on not financially supporting the idols in question and rejecting the type of digital labor/promotion that is characteristic of mainstream idol fandom (2023). This is a radically distinct approach compared not just to mainstream idol fandom in China (which has organized some backlash against RPF shippers [Wu 2021]) but also music fandom in Western subcultures, which is extremely consumption focused. The anticonsumerist, anticapitalist approach of the shipper communities that Huang discusses arguably provides both a more politically substantive and narratively radical approach to RPF as a fan practice, though it also subverts the idea of fan communities financially supporting celebrities as compensation for "treat[ing] [them] as toys" (Huang 2023, ¶ 2.3).
[3.7] Research on race, capital, and idolization reflects the underlying power struggles that often characterize fandom RPF specifically. In the fandom context, where RPF is largely seen as an expression of parasocial love, its power dynamics can be less overt than those of mainstream or political establishment RPF. Despite this, fandom treatment of race, sexuality, and other identities can involve implicit bias that favors systemic inequities and the political status quo. A subgenre like mainstream RPF differs from fandom RPF due to, among other factors, its less emotionally intense investment in its subjects.
4. Mainstream RPF
[4.1] In the contemporary context, we can delineate between more marginal fan practices and normalized or accepted industry practices with the fandom term RPF referring to the former and Piper's term "mainstream RPF" (2015, ¶ 7.2) referring to the latter (inclusive of such popular genres as biopics and historical television). As one example of how widely accepted mainstream RPF is, a work hosted on AO3 that is tagged as "Eduardo Saverin/Mark Zuckerberg" is filed not under the general RPF category but under The Social Network fandom, despite the fact that both figures are indeed real people; as Piper notes, works tagged as "Jesse Eisenberg/Andrew Garfield" are more often recognized as real RPF (2015). Here, I review power dynamics of mainstream RPF in the context of implicit politics, ethics, sexuality, legality, and historical revisionism.
[4.2] Mainstream RPF can be more explicitly political than fandom RPF; for example, due to their naturalization of the great man theory of history among other hegemonic epistemologies, biopics have historically been characterized by inherent conservatism, if not explicitly reactionary politics (Dickstein 2005). As a result, mainstream RPF's political characteristics are aesthetically, if not necessarily substantively, distinct from those of fandom RPF (with, for example, the cost of a biopic production being comparatively astronomical and the cost of sharing fandom RPF online being very negligible). Whether they exist to celebrate, to denounce, or simply to gawk at the existence of great men of history, biopics assert an extremely limited worldview, with Sheldon calling the genre "inherently epideictic" in its devotion to circumventing undesired narratives of its subjects (2021, 76).
[4.3] One of the distinctions between fandom RPF and mainstream RPF is the extent to which the general public does or does not contest the ethics of creating fictional narratives about real people. While mainstream audiences are not generally involved in RPF-specific debates, legal considerations of celebrity RPF have been discussed (Lantagne 2016) as has the broader potential awkwardness of being the subject of mainstream RPF; as Zuckerberg himself said, "I just wished that nobody made a movie of me while I was still alive" (Day 2010). Still-living figures can reluctantly coexist alongside their biopics, be very heavily involved in and have considerable control over them as producers, or actively protest their creation as exploitative.
[4.4] Because mainstream RPF has been known to include explicitly sexual depictions of its subjects (as in the fan-favorite Social Network scene in which Mark and Eduardo can hear each other getting simultaneous blow jobs from groupies in adjoining bathroom stalls), debates about the ethics of such depictions demonstrate some of the broader ideological features that sometimes differentiate mainstream RPF from fandom RPF. While mainstream RPF tends to be heterosexist in its sexual depictions of real subjects (with the act of receiving blow jobs from female fans putting the male characters in an ostensibly flattering position of power), slash fans subversively read it as homoerotic, emphasizing the fact that Eduardo's gaze lingers on Mark's recognizable flip-flops in the next stall. Regardless of whether it is perceived as flattering to its subjects, the existence of explicitly sexual mainstream RPF demonstrates that fandom RPF is not distinct in its sexualization of its subjects. Despite this, film and television reviewers do sometimes question the need for such depictions in mainstream RPF (Donnelly 2016), while other reviewers express a desire for more of such content (Ruiz and Specter 2020). Author Curtis Sittenfeld has speculated that readers are more comfortable with romans à clef (like her novel American Wife, which is based on the life of but uses a fictional name to refer to First Lady Laura Bush) than with alternate history (like her novel Rodham, which, as the title suggests, directly uses the names of Hillary Clinton as well as associated figures in her life) due to the potentially awkward nature of reading sex scenes featuring real people (Gladstone 2024).
[4.5] While ethical contentions exist in the mainstream RPF context, legal debates are more characteristic of it. Regarding the broader legal context of mainstream RPF, Lantagne writes, "under the current state of the law, name changes are not required to be protected from publicity rights violations. Indeed, an archbishop lost a case in which he was depicted in a novel by name plotting an assassination" (2016, 68). Though one can object to both mainstream RPF and fandom RPF on ethical grounds, mainstream RPF is largely accepted as a practice among the general public, even if specific examples of mainstream RPF become contentious and/or are viewed as exploitative. A recent development in this issue is the rise in attempts to file defamation lawsuits against the producers of mainstream RPF. Netflix's Baby Reindeer (2024) is the subject of a new suit alleging that it violated both defamation and publicity law in its depiction of a character whom the plaintiff states that she inspired (Cho 2024). While this case might not be settled for some time, Netflix recently settled a similar case with no major losses regarding its miniseries When They See Us (2019).
[4.6] Finally, an extension of ethical debates centers on the role that historical revisionism plays in mainstream RPF. As Zuckerberg's "while I was still alive" lament indicates, dead figures can sometimes be seen as more up for grabs for fictionalization in ethical terms, even if debates still occur around other elements like historical accuracy. However, there is an inherent tension in public response to this topic; the untimely death of a celebrity and/or other circumstances of their life can sometimes make the general public more unhappy with attempts to fictionalize their lives. Of particular note is the intrinsically identity-based nature of public discourse around these issues—for example, while the general public is more likely to subject biopics about white people to scrutiny regarding their potentially exploitative nature (as with Blonde [2022] subject Marilyn Monroe), the exploitations and inaccuracies associated with biopics about people of color are less likely to receive attention without the direct intervention of the subject's family (as with Green Book [2018] subject Donald Shirley).
[4.7] Biopics can be read as an expression of fandom (generally in the form of the filmmakers' love for and admiration of the subject of the film); as discussed above, they are also often an expression or exertion of power, whether it is the reclaiming of power by marginalized communities or the re-exertion of white supremacy, rape culture, and/or other forms of structural power. The power struggle that biopics often represent is exemplified by the simple title contrast between Elvis (2022) and Priscilla (2023), the latter of which a New Yorker review reflected on as a direct response to and implicit rebuking of the former (Lane 2023). Where Elvis versus Priscilla provides a direct example of two biopics seemingly at war with each other for the correct history, another case study like Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) is arguably a vacuum of subject Freddie Mercury's absence and silence. Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor had a fair amount of creative control over the film (they served as executive music producers), which portrayed them in very flattering (and sometimes historically inaccurate) lights. For example, the film's choice to depict Mercury as being responsible for the band's breakup (which in reality did not occur [Greene 2018]) due to his selfish desire to go solo demonstrates a deep investment in the images of the still-living members of the band at the expense of its famous lead man. Original star of Bohemian Rhapsody Sacha Baron Cohen (who was eventually replaced with Rami Malek) said in an interview that at his first meeting with the band, one of its members told him that Mercury's death was going to happen just halfway through the film. "He said, you know, 'This is such a great movie, because it's got such an amazing thing that happens in the middle of the movie,'" Baron Cohen described. "And I go, 'What happens in the middle of the movie?' He goes, 'Uh, you know, Freddie dies.' [...] I go, 'So, wait a minute, what happens in the second half of the movie?' He said, 'Well, you know, we see how the band carries on from strength to strength.' [Interviewers groan and laugh] And I said, 'Listen,' I go, 'Not one person is going to see a movie where the lead character dies from AIDS and then you carry on'" (Howard Stern Show 2016). Regardless of the accuracy of this story, the anecdote demonstrates the ego wars that frequently characterize biopics; the film was indeed considerably focused on the other founding members of Queen and subsequently their version of events. As a result, the film's handling of both Mercury's ethnicity and sexuality were largely filtered through a white heterosexual perspective, resulting in such now-infamous scenes as the one in which, in response to Mercury saying "I think I'm bisexual," his partner Mary Austin, arguably speaking for the film itself, chides, "Freddie, you're gay."
[4.8] The political functions of mainstream RPF—to contest, correct, or circumvent histories in a variety of power plays, whether in the name of protecting a legacy, maintaining the status quo, or simply making a quick buck while stroking one's ego—reveal one important element of RPF writ large. It exists in its mainstream form as a fundamental exertion of control. Whoever authors it, approves of it, or adjudicates it, mainstream RPF exists to pin down an image of its subjects. The lack of ambiguity and even the simplicity that biopics are often accused of, rather than being a bug, are a feature of the genre. But where the politics of mainstream RPF are often found in behind-the-scenes production contexts—who has the right to tell this story and for what purposes?—political establishment RPF lives in a much more explicit place.
5. Political establishment RPF
[5.1] Due to both its subject matter and distribution methods, political establishment RPF provides a strong example of why sexuality is inherently characterized by power struggles in this new media genre. By contrast with mainstream RPF, political establishment RPF is largely unofficial and has much more in common with fandom RPF.
[5.2] Where mainstream and fandom RPF are associated to varying degrees with debates about ethics, political establishment RPF rarely demonstrates a concern with that issue. RPF as an exertion of (negative) power is particularly associated with political figures, as popularized RPF in the form of contemporary graffiti and other types of public art often seemingly emphasize a desire to humiliate public figures through their depiction (e.g., public graffiti of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin kissing each other and of Trump being degraded in sexual kink practices associated with his affair with Stormy Daniels). As a result of both its aggressively fictional nature and the fact that it is generally not-for-profit, political establishment RPF seems to have significantly less investment in protecting itself against defamation suits and similar legal challenges, whether or not this is rooted in a comprehensive understanding of the law.
[5.3] In the case of politicians like Trump and Bernie Sanders (Winter 2020), RPF (whether mainstream or fandom) is often associated with political critique, for example, depicting Trump as being sexually receiving or submissive in his fictional relationship to Putin in order to comment on international relations between the United States and Russia (Rowley 2017). This aligns with the existence of other fan practices that comment on international relations through implicit or explicit personifications of nation-states and their colonial histories, as De Kosnik describes regarding Philippines/US fan works (2019) and as Baudinette describes regarding Japanese reception of K-pop (2021).
[5.4] In the US context, political RPF, and pornification specifically, has relative historical specificity. Bill Clinton's extremely publicized affair and subsequent impeachment in 1998 is popularly seen as the start of contemporary political sex scandals in the United States. While historians note that Clinton was preceded in his infidelities by such figures as John F. Kennedy, whose "affairs are used today as a differentiating mark to distinguish the old press corps (which restrained from reporting on such stories) from the modern media circus (which feeds on them)" (Dagnes 2011, 3), Clinton's coverage by twenty-four-hour television news networks and the online availability of the Starr Report (1998) is widely seen as a technological and cultural turning point (Drenovsky 2011). Since Clinton's scandal, increasing awareness of politicians' sexual misconduct (in the form of affairs, coercion, abuse of power, and/or sexual assault) has informed US media and the general public. The rise of Trump might be seen as yet another turning point. Trump has a unique role and position in pornographication (McNair 1996) (also referred to as pornification [Anderson 2011]) as it manifests in US politics. This term broadly refers to the application of pornographic aesthetics and logics (especially as they are associated with domination and exploitation) in mainstream, that is, not traditionally sexual, contexts. Trump is unique not only in that he is often the subject of pornification but also the producer. Rowley (2017) describes how Trump's association with pornification has inherently political functions, with self-published Amazon Kindle stories about Trump, Putin, and other public figures centering heterosexist political satire and commentary, whether it exists to deride Trump as feminine on one end of the spectrum or to celebrate Trump as violently virile and masculine on the other end (with one of the examples Rowley describes ending in an imagined snuff film centered on the torture and rape of an ISIS prisoner by Trump and Putin). As this example demonstrates, consent on both a meta and a narrative level is distinctly elided by political establishment RPF.
[5.5] The role that sexual violence plays in political establishment RPF makes its ideological functions extremely apparent—where, for example, the power functions of mainstream (for-profit) RPF like The Crown (2016–2023) are expressed through the narrative framing of historical reality, the romanticization or rebuking of individual figures, their relationships, and their roles in the world (with even the choice to make a television show about the British royal family in the first place being a reflection of the creators' belief in their inherent importance), the power functions of political establishment RPF are starkly expressed in often violently sexual ways. Here, power is exerted in an extreme and explicit way; as Rowley notes, some of the defining characteristics of pornification include "hypersexual or exploitative elements [that] are present even if an image may not actually be a piece of pornography" and "individuals who defy traditional gender norms [who] are schooled" (2017, 383). Though mainstream RPF certainly has many elements of heterosexism, it does not necessarily view itself in that way as explicitly as political establishment RPF does. By virtue of the fact that political establishment RPF is generally not-for-profit, it has inherently distinct rhetorical approaches to its subject matter. RPF is distinct from pornification of mainstream politics in a few ways; for one thing, fandom RPF is not always explicitly sexual, as the existence of AO3 works about real people that involve no sex scenes and are tagged for "General audiences" demonstrates. Even when fandom RPF is explicitly sexual, it is predominantly characterized by queer/slash frameworks that are generally not focused on the heterosexism that arguably makes pornification exploitative. By the same token, mainstream political RPF is not necessarily always pornification, as, for example, the Obama Biden Mysteries novels and memes depicting the relationship between Barack Obama and Joe Biden as largely platonic demonstrate (Spychala 2024).
[5.6] The public nature of graffiti and similar artistic phenomena (Rowley intentionally chose to focus on self-published Amazon Kindle works that come from a search for "Trump and Putin" rather than works published on AO3 because of Amazon's much larger reach of audiences who might not be familiar with the concept of slash) is also distinct from the marginally less visible nature of most fandom RPF. The distinction between more publicly visible RPF and RPF hosted on fandom sites like AO3 also highlights broad distinctions between the affective affordances of different types of RPF. The practice is generally seen as inherently demeaning when expressed in its political form via hypervisible public forums (with a disturbing example of what could be termed political establishment RPF being the existence of self-published Amazon Kindle stories about Anita Sarkeesian meant to express sadistic, sexually violent frustration with her feminist work). By contrast, the practice is mostly recognized by fandom RPF creators as an expression of sincere love, admiration, and/or positive emotional investment. While it can still be derogatory, as Winter notes of some AO3 fan fiction depicting politicians like Trump, Putin, and Sanders (2020), most types of RPF are focused on objects of fans' affections rather than on celebrities of whom they are antifans. This is aligned with the fact that fandom RPF is associated with relative secrecy. Relatedly, the depiction of an RPF subject as sexually receiving and/or sexually submissive has different functions across the spectrum of the genre. Where political RPF, due to its more explicitly ideological functions and associations with heterosexist worldviews, tends to associate practices like sexual receiving, or bottoming, with degradation, fandom RPF tends to have more nuanced and/or celebratory depictions of different types of sexual behavior, as aligns with fandom's more distinct association with LGBTQ creators and subjects.
6. Conclusion
[6.1] As general anxieties around reality and fiction heighten, all types of RPF are likely to grow as a source of and simultaneously a means of working out and expressing our collective preoccupations with reality, fiction, and celebrity. The different types of RPF, whether mainstream or fan based, share political groundings in their concerns with issues of power, consent, and truth.
[6.2] As is the case with all fandom practices, RPF is neither inherently progressive and liberatory nor inherently reactionary and oppressive. It ultimately functions as a means by which power can be exerted, reified, challenged, or reclaimed. Even diverse reactions to and perceptions of RPF reflect existing power dynamics, wherein racial, gendered, and economic status differentials between a filmmaker creating mainstream RPF and a fan writing fan fiction can be part of what determines the extent to which they are seen as socially acceptable or worthy of celebration.
[6.3] In its self-conscious grappling with the reality of public figures' identities, symbolic functions, and relationships, RPF experiences a heightened political realness. Because the emotional investment and knowledge experienced by consumers of RPF far exceeds any knowledge they could ever achieve about the real subjects of this genre, it feels real enough and sometimes even realer than reality. RPF authors' experiences with and depictions of race, gender, and sexuality reflect the widespread desire to not just achieve personal expression or satisfaction but also engage with the world, whether as it is or as it could be.