tier 0: actors. too easy. actors fall in love all the time due to proximity and amount of time spent together, especially if they are playing characters who are themselves in a relationship.
tier 1: bands (post-80s). writing songs together is incredibly intimate and requires emotional vulnerability. tours are great opportunities to spend a lot of time in an enclosed space together. sometimes they will sing into the same microphone at the same time so their mouths are close together which is basically making out if you think about it.
tier 2: bands (pre-80s). see above. however this requires slightly more mental fortitude because a lot of their fans will insist on their heterosexuality and get really mad when you say simon and garfunkel were kissing on each other or whatever.
tier 3: contact sports team. sports can be emotionally intense if you care about that sort of thing and obviously there are a lot of opportunities for intricate rituals wrt touching another's skin and locker rooms and all that. but this requires more imagination because there is less text (i.e. songs or correspondence) to use as evidence.
tier 4: solo artists. this is where things can fall apart. you have to choose both figures in the ship wisely and exercise a decent amount of creativity because they are not compelled to be together all the time (see above). you can cast a wider net but that lack of specificity may hurt those with weaker imaginations. also they don't always write their own songs.
tier 5: historical figures. this varies a lot both in terms of plausibility and social acceptability. depending on how old the figures are you could legitimately turn this into an academic dissertation if you wanted to commit that hard to it. however you may also come up against a lot of opposition among your colleagues. one must be intellectually prepared to present concrete evidence and argue one's point. (however, you are also more likely to convince people b/c the figures are old and dead and can't deny it. and probably didn't know what rpf is.)
tier 5.5: historical figures who have been fictionalized in media. this depends on the tone you take but unfortunately you will always be up against thomas jefferson hatsune miku binder as the starting point for the general public's thoughts on your hobby. so good luck.
tier 6: racecar drivers. if you are into racecar rpf i assume you are capable of seeing colors that are not visible to the ordinary human eye. they are literally in cars. the creativity required to wring a [romantic] narrative from people driving cars around a track is beyond my comprehension.
tier π: living politicians. you are a pariah among even your most deranged peers. no one respects you. you are categorically a weirdo and beyond help.
online communities are so strange because people slip away so easily. you can be on here for years, folding people you've never met into the fabric of your daily life, and then they disappear, leaving only ghost posts scattered across tumblr behind. or their blog stays dormant, for weeks, months, years, until you're only still following them because you remember that they love sunflowers or they were kind to you when they didn't have to be or the last thing they posted was sad and raw and you still worry about them sometimes.
and sometimes they come back when you least expect it, years later, even, and there's this sudden rush of relief like there you are, there you are, even though you barely knew each other.
there's a strange kind of love to it. i don't know you and i want to hold your hand across miles and time zones and oceans. i can still see the imprint of you in this community you left. you don't anyone will notice or care when you're gone, but we notice and we care and we wish you well.
i hope you're all okay out there. i hope the sun is shining on your face and you are breathing deeply. i miss you.
no matter how terrible my day is. i can always end my day in bed imagining fictional characters making out sloppy style and fucking raw. and that's beautiful. there's some good in this world mister frodo and it's worth fighting for
Pierre Gasly attends the UEFA Champions League quarter-final first leg match between PSG and FC Barcelona at Parc des Princes on April 10, 2024 in Paris, France. Photo by Jean Catuffe