i understand being mad at other fans for discounting fanfic, but for niall (and by extensions, his team) i think it's fully within his rights as human to have and express feelings about fiction being written about his life, using his likeness. whatever those feels are he should be allowed to have and share them! it's a part of the reality you have to deal with being a fic writer, i think. detach yourself from expectations that the subject will give you their approval. you might feel that it's him stepping into your space, but it started when you stepped into his (by creating a story about him and his family and friends). his rights do come first in this, not the fic writer.

i'm gonna treat this as in good faith even tho i'm not totally sure it is AND it's been nearly 24 hours since i reblogged that post. anyways.

what i don't think that you understand about this whole situation is that no fic writer, no person that engages in RPF, etc, wants validation or approval or whatever from the person they're writing about. the basis of RPF is literally fictionalized versions of real people in fictionalized universes for entertainment purposes. nothing about it is real. sure it's his name, his face, and elements of his public persona can be weaved in, but at the end of the day, it's more of a character than anything because we don't fucking know him. we don't know how he is in private, we don't know how he would react in certain (most) circumstances, we don't know anything more about him than what he chooses to share as part of his public persona. anything beyond that is a complete work of fiction. niall himself, his identity as a human person, is not a factor.

and i agree with you, niall is more than welcome to have his feelings about it. no one (at least not me or anyone i've spoken with) is saying he's not. but the fact of the matter is that it never should have been put in front of him in the first place. it never should have been positioned as some cute, quirky little thing to have a laugh about, because regardless of whether or not the fic in that video is real, the message it sends to people that write fic is that the time, the effort, the vulnerability, etc, they put into their work is silly and something worth mocking.

so many RPF fic writers go out of their way to keep the fourth wall intact, to hide their work in corners of the internet where niall or anyone that knows him won't come across it. it's the courteous—and even mutually beneficial—thing to do in a world where we fucking know that if he were to come across it, it would probably be really fucking weird for him because it's not FOR him and he doesn't understand the culture behind it. in response, the courteous thing for him, for his team, and ESPECIALLY for media outlets (because they hold the majority of the blame for putting it in front of celebs' faces most of the fucking time) to do is to leave it the fuck alone. to not go digging for it just for some stupid fucking fodder in a silly video on the internet.

i know that not all fans are going to agree with or understand this position because fandom has changed so much with having more and more access to the actual person, but that's ok!! not every space in fandom needs to be for every single person!! but the least that you could do at that point is not judge and dismiss and lecture for something you don't even understand to begin with yk