Scandalous Salacious Sexapades of Sidney Crosby or Why is Hockey RPF So Popular?
The Pittsburgh Penguins Captain Sidney Crosby is a legendary athlete that has dominated the sport of Ice Hockey. He is a three time Stanley Cup champion, , two time gold Olympic medallist , and on the 15 February he scored his 500 goal against the Philadelphia Flyers. This makes him the 46 player to pass the 500 goal mark since Maurice ‘’ Rocket’’ Richard first achieved the feat in 1957. He is the second active NHL player to pass the illustrious milestone, the other being his rival Alexander Ovechkin. Or is that his lover?
Fanfiction has always gotten a bad rep as porn written by overexcited girls , but RPF( real person fanfiction) has always been Bruno in fandom circles. The problem child , the scapegoat , the one that shall not be named. People are aware of RPF in relation to celebrities most notably After by Anna Todd — a popular young adult romance book series that originated as Harry Styles Fanfiction on Wattpad. Allegedly the popularity of Larry fanfic — romantic fic featuring Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson- was one of the reasons for the breakdown of their close friendship. The ethical conundrums of RPF still divides fandom. One of the biggest fan fiction sites Fanfiction.net completely banned RPF from their site in 2002.
Female sports fans are a subculture that are not taken seriously by mainstream society. If you are a sports fan who is a woman you have to have a persona of being one of the guys. If male fans find out you are attracted to the players they will likely not take your appreciation of sports seriously and call you a ‘puck bunny’’ which is a misogynistic term thrown at women who are fans of ice hockey. Fanfiction has always been a female dominated space where it is safe for women to explore their sexuality away from scrutinising eyes of the patriarchy within the confines of words. Fanfiction can act as a safe space for women away from male fans and the hegemonic masculinity that dominates sports culture.
But why is Hockey RPF popular compared to other sports fanfiction? Hockey is still a niche sport that reaches nowhere near the astronomical viewership or revenue that the NFL or NBA achieve . The NFL achieved $14 billion in total revenue whereas the NHL only received $4.54 billion in 2018. The NFL had 12.84 million mentions on twitter , the NBA had 12.75 million mentions on twitter and the NHL trails behind with only 4.15 million mentions in 2019. Therefore you would expect the NFL and NBA to outrank the NHL in sheer numbers of fanfic written about the players. After all it’s a numbers game- right?! In reality the NHL far surpasses any other sport in terms of individual fanfiction posted on Ao3 about various players. There is one major difference between the NBA , NFL and the NHL.. The majority (93%) of hockey players are white whereas 69.4% of NFL players were people of colour and according to the 2020 report published by Tides: The Institute For Diversity and Ethics in Sport 74.2% of the NBA was composed of black players. The uncharitable interpretation is that Hockey RPF is just another ‘’whitecock’’ fandom where girls can fetishes and lust after white men.
Stitch, a writer for Teen Vogue that explores fandom issues in her essay What Fandom Racism Looks Like ? says that fandom is plagued by white prioritisation . Fandom will obsess over white male characters then pair them with other white male characters even if they have no meaningful interactions or chemistry rather than write fic/ create content for a ship with one character of colour. White prioritisation leads to the phenomenon of Migratory Slash Fandom which posits that slash fans ( fans of two male characters in a romantic or sexual relationship) are always on the lookout for their next fix. These fans move from one white dude slash ship to another and this is exactly what happened with Hockey RPF. The huge influx of Fic and popularity of the Hockey RPF fandom is attributed to One Direction RPF fans as well as Supernatural fans ( two juggernaut fandoms ) discovering Hockey RPF. Due to the overwhelming majority of players being white and Hockey players having tighter media restrictions then other athletes — slash fans viewed them as perfect avatars for their fannish endeavours. Hockey RPF writers are fans of hockey and cupelled with hockey’s niche status it can feel like a tv show only you and your friends know about which also contributes to high production of fan content about NHL players.
Ice Hockey as a sport is more romanticised than other sports. On TikTok the hashtag “ hockey boys” has 2 billion views ; ‘ hockey boyfriend ‘ has 11.7 million views ; and “ hockey romance’’ a tag used to recommend romance books featuring male hockey player love interests has 48 million views. The hashtag ‘’ football romance’’ has 11 million ; ‘’ football boys’’ has 182 million ; ‘’ football boyfriend’’ has 11 million. The fantasy of a hockey boyfriend is so alluring not just because western beauty standards have ingrained whiteness as attractive — a necessary requirement for desirability, but also because hockey is synonymous with wealth and privilege.
What separates RPF writers who write about Sidney Crosby in various sexual encounters with other hockey players to Aron Sorkin’s acclaimed biopic about Facebook co founders The Social Network ? RPF elicits a negative reaction because a lot of the fan fiction published online is about sex — sex that the real life celebrity did not consent to which causes many people inside fandom spaces and out to see it as a gross violation of privacy.
Questions regarding the ownership of public identity and consent arise when discussing RPF phenomena, as well as what it says about celebrity culture in today’s digital age. Unreachable gods such as athletes and Hollywood actors who are idolised by the ordinary masses are now just a click away thanks to the advent of social media. According to the law, RPF fan fiction no matter how steamy or bizarre is not in violation of any laws since celebrities are not able to trademark or copyright their public persona or image. RPF fanfiction is also published online for free without making any profit. If an author were to publish their RPF story a simple way to evade the legal conundrum is to file the serial numbers off : as easy as changing the names of characters. People writing about Sidney Crosby in high school dating Alex Ovechkin understand that their fictional characterizations have no bearing on the real life athletes.
RPF is slowly becoming mainstream with Curtis Steinfeld publishing her novel Rodham about an alternative life for Hillary Clinton where she never married former president of the USA Bill Clinton . In real life Hillary Clinton is still alive and still married to her husband Bill Clinton. There is a whole subculture on Ao3 dedicated to writing fictional stories about their marriage- their ship name is Biliary.
Tonya Riley says in her Medium article titled ``The Dubious Ethics of ‘ Real-Person Fiction” that it is not a question of when RPF becomes mainstream, but when we will acknowledge this is how society has always viewed public figures , celebrities , and athletes. We enjoy speculating about their private lives because they appear more interesting , engaging like a story , that distracts us from our own mundane lives. However, with the recent uproar about privacy it will be interesting to see how the phenomena of RPF develops.
