So in a post today mostly unrelated to what I want to talk about, John Green stated, “It’s not okay to ship real people and other real people.” I respect John Green in all ways, but I disagree 100% with this statement, and I want to clear up why Real Person Fiction is not actually wrong.

The first important issue to cover is that RPF is not tinhatting is not harassment. If you ship something, you like to think about it, write about it, draw it, joke about it, talk about it with your friends, and it makes you happy in your own little corner of the world. This is okay. Tinhatting is when you believe your ship is really happening in real life and the Powers That Be are hiding it from you. This is also okay, until it becomes harassment, which is when you throw your ship into the involved people’s faces repeatedly in spite of requests to stop and you say nasty stuff about their girlfriends to them and generally make everybody unhappy. This is never okay.

But that’s not what shipping is, and that’s not what RPF is. The first point I want to make here is that RPF is not actually about real people.

I love Chris Evans. Really. It’s embarrassing. I have watched a disgusting number of interviews and behind the scenes clips and read articles and accidentally collected a really stupid number of facts about him in my head. In my head, I have a fully fleshed out Chris Evans and I know who he is like the back of my hand.

The thing is, that is not really who Chris Evans is. I don’t know Chris Evans, and I never will. No matter how much fans watch and observe and learn about any celebrity, we will never know more than maybe, maybe, 20% of their personality. How do they handle conflict? What phrases set them off and hurt their feelings because of that thing that happened in high school? What did their mom say to them when they were 12 that totally traumatized them? How do they interact with their significant others differently than they do with their friends? We will never know.

And because we will never know, we fill in those missing details with what we want to be there, based on our own history and preferences and desires at the time. And we warp the things we do know to fit the image we want to have of that person. By the end of this process, we’ve created a mostly fictional character based off of Chris Evans. And the thing is, ever single person who is a fan of Chris Evans has a slightly different version of him living in their heads.

Now here’s the thing: We do the exact same thing with fictional characters. Every single person who has read Harry Potter has a slightly different version of Hermione living in their heads, based on what type of person they are. Every single person who reads Marvel has a different take on Tony Stark. Every single person who watched Sherlock has a slightly different version of John Watson that they think is right. This is not a weird or strange thing to do to people. We fill in the blanks.

Now let’s talk about RPF. Here’s the thing: RPF is a way for an author to tell a story they want to tell using characters that already have a built in audience. If I write about Chris Evans coming out to Tom Hiddleston, I am writing about a fictional construct based on Chris Evans coming out to a fictional construct based on Tom Hiddleston. Imagine that I have cast two actors to perform that story about coming out I wanted to write, and I had them keep their names, appearances, and maybe two personality traits each, in order to get my message out to an audience I know exists (their fans).

Sometimes RPF centers around real events, which initially might seem creepier, but really isn’t. This goes back to the “filling in the blanks” thing, where the author takes bits and pieces (the name of the event two people went to, that thing they said they did in that one interview) and warps it into whatever they need it to be to tell the story they want to tell. Because that’s what this is about: an author having a platform to tell a story based on characters based on real people s/he likes.

Another issue I assume Mr. Green might have is the lack of consent from the real people who are being shipped. The thing is, you can’t copyright a name or appearance, so there’s nothing illegal about shipping real people–but there’s also nothing illegal about paparazzi, and no one thinks that’s a good way to live your life. This brings us back to the point we must always remember: shipping is not tinhatting is not harassment. Shipping is fine. Harassment is not fine ever.

You might say then that it’s morally wrong, to ship someone with someone else against their will, but, again, we have to remember that to ship is to enjoy something in your own corner of the world. We can think whatever we want about people without their consent. There’s no way to avoid this and so there’s nothing morally wrong with it. I think my coworker is incompetent. I think my cousin needs to get a real degree and fix her life up. I think my friend needs to dump her loser boyfriend and get with this other guy who’s way better. All of these things are totally fine until I start spreading vicious rumors about my coworker, insulting my cousin, or trying to break up my friend and her boyfriend.

Because shipping is not tinhatting is not harassment.

There is nothing wrong with shipping real people with other real people.