Jared and Sandy Split

[lunabee34]

1. I can haz house!!!!!!!!!!!!! Josh and I found an awesome house in Cochran and it is bigger than our current house (with a garage and a huge fenced-in backyard for Ems) and cheaper! Whoooo! We are moving on the 27th and shortly after that, when we get phonage, I'll update you guys on our contact info. *beams*

2. While I was house-hunting, apparently Jared and Sandy broke up. This is very interesting to me for a variety of reasons, but from a purely introspective one, their breakup has caused me to examine my own feelings about RPF.

I love RPF. I think it's really this amazing and wonderfully cool genre of fanfic because it lives in this very fluid space with so many possibilities. It isn't based on the canon of a show--with specific plot and character voice to confine it. It's based on the canon of a person's life--which is much more wide open because so much of it is open to speculation. Many celebrities allow the public to know a lot of details about their personal lives, but many don't and so RPF writers get the latitude to each do a lot of different things in their fics that read as equally plausible. This is not to say that actors don't have "voices" the way characters do or that there isn't a "canon" of events in their lives that RPF that isn't AU must deal with; just that that canon is sometimes more a vague suggestion than anything set in stone. Add to that the conflation of character and actor (especially when an actor is private and doesn't do a lot of interviews or give out much personal information, I think some character bleed is a little inevitable in RPF) and that makes RPF totally freaking awesome to me and fun to read.

I suppose I must also caveat that like most of the people who read and write this genre, I don't think RPF is in any way a reflection of reality. Celebrity is by its very nature persona and even in what seems to be a very intimate interview, a celebrity is still to some degree performing for the public. I have no ethical qualms or issues with RPF because I think that most people involved know that these stories aren't real and the ones who can't make that distinction are the kind of crazy that isn't just confined to the internet. RPF isn't written for money and it isn't damaging to the celebrities about which it is written. If anything, I would think that RPF is just another kind of PR machine for the celebrity because to write it, you have to really familiarize yourself with the actor (watch his/her interviews and movies and buy the magazine with that photo spread, etc.) I speculate (with no evidence!) that RPF generates publicity for an actor while perhaps inspiring some fans to go buy that early movie or that ill-fated CD or that back issue of Playboy that said celebrity appeared in.

When I first heard about Sandy and Jared breaking up, my first thought was, "That is going to generate a lot of really good fanfic." And then my second thought was, "And I am sorry that they broke up, cause it has to suck to go through something like that in the public eye." The same sort of thought process happened for me when I heard that Heath Ledger had died. My initial reaction was this very dismayed, "Oh, no. I wonder how this will affect the production of Batman." And then my next thought was for the *man* who had died and how sorry I was for his wasted potential and for the family and friends he left behind. And I don't know what to do with that except be ashamed that I am first and foremost a consumer and secondly an empathizer.

Sometimes I fantasize that I get to meet and befriend celebrities because a) I have written a story/novel that wins the Pulitzer and said celebrity wants to turn it into a movie or TV series or b) we've made another movie and it OMG won Sundance LOL and then I get all these TV and movie offers. At some point in these fantasies, there is always the moment of lament (for yea verily my fantasies contain mostly world building more than anything else and include bathroom breaks for all) when I realize that I can't write fanfic for SGA anymore because I'm on the cast and I know these people and that would be strange but SPN is still fair game, at least until I run into Jensen in the grocery. LOL I think that's the point at which I would have ethical issues with writing fanfic because when you actually know a celebrity, it's not persona anymore. But since none of these scenarios, sadly, seems in the least bit likely, I can be completely worry-free regarding my consumption of RPF.

In final thoughts on the subject, I have never written RPF, although I desperately want to. I have a burning desire to write/read RPF AU where Jared and Jensen are grad students and I have a vague outline and eleventy million humorous situations taken from actual experience in mind, but I'm nervous to write this because I don't even know where to begin to do the research for RPF. I don't think I've ever watched a single interview with either of them, or read one either, although I feel like I know things about them from the sheer volume of RPF I've read. Everything I know about Jared and Jensen I learned from stellabelle's From Here We Go Sublime. Which you should read. For it kicks ass. But that's sort of cheating, right? LOL

Comments

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

(Speaking of fannish miscues, I read your first line and thought, "But House has been over for the season for a while now.")

where to begin to do the research for RPF

I think that's part of it, though: I've done very little research with RPF. Making sure the characters actually were in that place at that time (or could have been)? Maybe. But if it doesn't work, whatever. Or that the characterization is right? Again, sure, but it's not like you have any significant amount of canon to parse. Youtube clips, or print interviews are just about all you have (or remembered interactions, for some people).

And AU RPF really is, in a lot of ways, "I'll be using this body and character background for my own nefarious purposes, thank you very much." Because you can use characterizations, but they seem like doubly-removed from the actual person. This is them, if they were someone else completely doing something else completely.

But then, we've discussed my own issues with RPF.

And a Janet for You

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Hahah. I have seen random eps of that show while at the parents but I never really got into it. I did like what I saw, but I apparently can't remember to watch TV other than SPN and SGA. I always leave my family with the firm resolve that I will watch Bones each week and I always forget, which kinda bums me out because I like that show.

OMG discuss them again because I FORGOT THEM! *eep* :)

I've really only read RPF for SPN and to a smaller extent the CW at large in the way that it intersects with SPN plus a teensy bit of SGA RPF. And for me, actor RPF is in a lot of ways about character conflation. My enjoyment of it, I mean. One of my favorite RPF series is parenthetical's Character Bleed and Method Acting and in this series we have the lines between Jared and Jensen and Sam and Dean very blurred. It's super awesome. Even when a writer is not deliberately playing with that theme as parenthetical does, I really like it when there are subtle shades of the character or the show present in the RPF.

RPF is really what made me love the all-human or wacky-out-there AU (as opposed to the everything up to canon X is go and then bam kind). I think the whole time I was in Buffy and Firely fandom, I read one AU and that was one that was assigned for club_joss. Especially with Buffy I was not interested in that kind of AU. I kept thinking, "But I like that he's a vamp and she's the slayer and he's a watcher." I don't give a shit about what they'd be like as coal miners. Then I got into SPN and started reading RPF, the preponderance of which for that fandom is AU and then I was all, "OMG, I *see* why this is awesome." It took me going to the one remove of RPF to understand the second remove of the AU, if that makes any sense. But now I really love AU and read it for SPN and SGA show proper. I especially am fond of SGA AU.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Yay! I am really excited about your fabulous house. And I can't wait until you're unpacked and I can send you stuff (not least, HLOTS S5, which I think is really the best season).

Yesterday I harrowed Hell got my summer clothes out of the basement and added some more stuff to the box for you.

Now that I've finally seen Sweeney Todd, I *get* your icon

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

and it makes me giggle hysterically every time I see you using it.

Ahem.

OMG this house is really sweet. It's bigger than the one we have now and has a two car garage and a huge walk-in closet in the master bedroom. The other dimensions of the houses are about equal. It doesn't come with washer and dryer but Andy and Crystal are giving us one of their sets since as a wedded unit, two of each would be a bit much. :) It has a lovely kitchen with a huge bay window for the dining area and the front yard and back yard are both huge and the back is fenced in for added Emma yayness. Our landlord also seems like he's reliable, dependable and fair which will be a treat after what we've dealt with here in Oxford. We had such a good landlord in Hattiesburg (really, mean the dude has probably the best karma of any human currently living) that when we got here and realized that our landlords were just, you know, average shitty landlords, it was like all WOE and AAACK.

The only thing that concerns me about living in Cochran is the racial tension. I've lived in the South all my life so racial tension is not something that is new to me. But in the circles I've run in, it's just largely absent. It's not something I really encountered as a grad student here (or even as a undergrad in Hattiesburg; I had a very racially diverse group of friends and never witnessed any racial discrimination; which is not to say it wasn't happening, but still) or even as a citizen of Oxford. Most of the people I work with at Security Check are African American and many of the care providers and children at Emma's daycare were African American and I am not saying that Oxford is the grand example of racial tolerance but just that this is a a town that houses lots of broad minded, educated people and I have just not been privy to many acts of overt racism.

Andy had mentioned to me that Cochran is racially tense and I kind of just shrugged it off and thought he meant like every town in the South is racially tense. Well, when we went to look at the house we're renting, there was a mom and three kids out in the yard across the street and my immediate thought was, "Yay! Kids for Emma to play with." When we asked the landlord about the neighborhood and safety, he first mentioned that there were "blacks" across the street (I wish I could textually render the way a Southern person can say that word with such disdain *sigh) but that he didn't think they'd be a problem. Mind, these are the people I'm hoping will be Emma's playmates. And then again at city hall, the woman behind the counter said that if we got to our house and the city trashcan wasn't there we should call and get another. She says, "Sometimes crazy, well, *you* know the kind of people will just take them," and then she cuts her eyes at an elderly African American woman customer talking to another clerk. This shit is going to make me fucking nuts, Exec. I mean, nuts. I've already got enough on my plate trying to make sure my child is a polite child who accepts racial and sexual orientation differences without people actively trying to destroy that for me. Which I know, they were already, but this is just the most blatant crappola of this nature that I have seen since I left highschool and the people I am going to work with are not at all like this so maybe will only mingle with college folks and eschew the town. *sigh*

I am so stoked to get this package. You always send a girl the best stuff! And TV!!!!!!!!!!!

[mosca.livejournal.com]

Well, you know I have thoughts about this, and I've mostly thought them out loud already. We're almost entirely on the same page. I have the same mix of feelings as you when I read about changes in my RPF-subjects' lives. Like, I read that one of my reality TV favorites had a boyfriend, and on the one hand, I thought, "Aww, they're really cute together, and he seems like a sweet and really supportive person." But it also completely killed the fic I'd started.

I think the sense of canon and character interpretation varies from fandom to fandom in RPF. Actor RPF seems to be the most flexible in this respect, but in other RPF fandoms, there's a higher expectation of research plus quite a bit of built-up fanon. That was really true in popslash, and it seems to be true in Bandom. Just last week, one of my friends in skating fandom commented with, "I love this except for this one line that I don't think this guy would ever say, because it shows more maturity than he usually has." I'm really uncomfortable with the idea that any personality can be pasted onto the pretty body of an RPF figure. That's partially because IMO, there are always enough fansites full of archived interviews and crap on YouTube to figure out what kind of person they are. That might not seem like much, but seriously, there's a TON of it. I feel like I have more canon to sift through as an RPF fan than I ever did in FPF fandoms. And often, there's just as much need to interpret canon: was he being honest in that press conference? Why does she never mention Person X in her blog entries anymore?

But part of what attracts me to the RPF figures I write about is always the personality. That's widely true in skating fandom: there's one guy most people stopped writing about (and several people faded out of the fandom as a result of this) because he turned out to be such a homophobic dickwad that no one wanted to deal with him anymore. A lot of Bandom seems to be this way too -- there's so much squee on my flist because OMG someone said blah in an interview or did some cute thing on stage.

This seems to be a long way of saying that most of your anxieties about RPF were my anxieties, too, when I started doing this hardcore a couple of years ago, and it is strikingly non-different and I love Jared/Jensen and DO IT.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I think you're right about the differences between the kinds of RPF. I know virtually nothing about bandom, but I do get the sense from flist and metafandom links and the occasional Xover I'll read that the subjects of bandom RPF do put a lot more of themselves out there for public consumption than, for example, Samantha Ferris or Joe Flanigan might. And even those two have given eleventy million performances over the course of their careers and probably just as many interviews and appearances that I could dig up.

I don't think that *any* personality can be pasted onto the body of a celebrity, but I do think that with certain celebrities, writers have more latitude than they do with the characters of a TV show because aspects of celebrities' lives are left up to speculation.

I don't know what to say about personality re: Jared and Jensen because my only notion of the kind of people they are stems from all the RPF I've read. Do you think I could write a successful RPF based on all the fanon I've absorbed plus some wikipedia time or do you tink I would need to do some more in-depth research?

[mosca.livejournal.com]

I agree that musicians and athletes make their lives and personalities more publicly accessible than actors do. Mostly, I think that's because those kinds of celebrities are always playing themselves, whereas when actors are in public view they're often playing a character.

I do think that with certain celebrities, writers have more latitude than they do with the characters of a TV show because aspects of celebrities' lives are left up to speculation.

I think a lot of aspects of fictional characters are left up to speculation, too, especially characters in films and short-lived TV series. We definitely know more about Jensen Ackles's past than Shepherd Book's. That's a gratuitous example, I guess, but it's why I find this line of argument frustrating.

Do you think I could write a successful RPF based on all the fanon I've absorbed plus some wikipedia time or do you tink I would need to do some more in-depth research?

Do I think you could? Do I think people would read it? Yes and yes. 90% of Jared/Jensen is fanon anyway, and it's one of the few fandoms I'll read in despite limited canon knowledge.

But would you encourage someone to write fanfic based on a show they'd only seen a couple of episodes of, if they'd read a bunch of fic and read the Wikipedia episode synopses? There are a handful of writers who do an excellent job of it, but they're almost the exceptions that prove the rule.

Do I find the approach appealing? Not really. For me, part of the fun of writing RPF is collecting the canon material. New tour bus pictures on someone's Korean fansite? I'm there. New journal entry on someone's website? Fits of joy. YouTube clips or print quotes give you a securer sense of someone's voice and mannerisms. They're primary sources rather than secondary ones, and the difference is relevant for the same reasons as in professional research. Also, I find that videos and interviews are great for inspiring fic, the same way a line or scene from a show or movie often is.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

We definitely know more about Jensen Ackles's past than Shepherd Book's.

You are absolutely right about that.

I pretty much agree with what you've said about writing RPF without doing the legwork. I probably could do a passable job and garner some readers along the way as well, but the end result wouldn't be as well-written or as satisfying as if I'd done the research. I think RPF will have to wait for me then because my dialup prevents me from watching YouTube or video of any kind on the net.

[lyr]

Yay house! I'm so glad you found a nice place! I hope the racial tension in Cochran turns out to be not so bad as it seems as first glance.

As for Jared and Sandy, well, I'm sorry they broke up. That sucks no matter who you are, but living in the fishbowl of celebrity while you go through it is an extra layer of unpleasantness. I'm sure there'll be a lot of RPS spawned by this, too. It's things like that, actually, that make me twitchy about RPF, because in the back of my mind I'm always a bit worried that possibly they read it occasionally (because I know I'd be tempted to, if it were me), and might stumble across something that makes them feel awkward or self-conscious about their real life relationships. I know it's unlikely, but I can't help worrying about it, and it takes some of the shiny off the idea for me. Which is a pity, really, because I have some excellent RPF writers on my flist.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I hope not too. *crosses fingers*

I completely get what you're saying about celebrities reading RPF; I damn sure would if I were a celebrity. And I also agree with you that I would never want to hurt their feelings in any way.

I think where we differ is that I can't imagine it making them feel bad. Having never been famous, I suppose I am speaking with no evidence, but I don't think finding RPF about myself of the kind I've seen online would bother or upset me. It would upset me if my coworkers made up a rumor about me and spread it at work as if it were true. Or if the people I went to school with wrote a libelous story to put in the newsletter. Or even as a celebrity if a magazine like Star wrote something false about me and published it, because these are all scenarios in which the assumption is that the story is *true*. In RFP, nobody except really insane people who are probably also behaving insanely in other ways that we can't see on the internet believes that these stories are real. In fact, most of the fics have some sort of disclaimer on them about how they aren't real.

I don't think that just because you're famous you owe the public details about your personal life or that you become somehow public property. But I do think that if you accept and embrace celebrity, you also must accept that people will be interested in you and your life in ways that they never would have been if you were the manager of GNC. And I kinda don't know where I'm going with that last.

[crazydiamondsue.livejournal.com]

Yay for new house OMG!!! I'm so excited for you guys. And a yard!!

You've got a wee, yet amusing typo, in your above post: When I first heard about Sandy and *Jensen* breaking up -- I think someone's already writing RPF *waggles brows*

You know, I never had any weirdness about QaF or SPN RPF/RPS. I would like or not like a scenario based on my own taste (I'm never gonna like sub/dom RPF, but then, I barely enjoy s/d fic.) The *only* time RPF ever freaked me out was a Nick Brendon-in-AA fic. That felt too close and too personal and too invasive.

However, I've read dozens of "Me'n'Sandy just broke up come hold me Jenny" J2 fics, so the "real" deal wouldn't feel all that unusual, you know?

But, then, it's been weeks since I've read something that didn't begin with, "You may notice your nipples becoming more florid -- this is normal!" And no, it wasn't a J2 fic. *g*

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Ahahahahhahahaha. I am the typo queen. The best is when I mislabel my SGA fic as SPN or vice versa. *headdesk*

OMG do you have links to these fics because strangely enough the newsletter did not create a category soley for Jared and Sandy are splitsville fics and cw_rps was yielding zilch as of last night.

I think Jared's nipples becoming more florid is an excellent topic for fic. *nods* I mean, what would Jensen do? How would they ever leave the house? Can Jensen afford to buy Jared a new nipple-enhancing wardrobe made entirely of white mesh?

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

I hadn't realized you hadn't yet gotten a place in your new town (since last time we talked you were packing up your old house). Congrats!

And yeah, I think mosca said most everything I would have said about RPF and canon -- plus some smart stuff I wouldn't have thought of.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

And yes, smart stuff has been said here by not me. :)

I completely concur with everything mosca says about RPF except that my enjoyment of reading it is much less tied to the piece of writing's intersection with a celebrity's actual history than hers is. I think, honestly, a lot of the fun for me is character conflation. And I can always tell when an RPF writer has done a lot of research and the piece is always better and more interesting for it, but I don't really *know*, you know. Maybe the writers are making it all up and I just don't realize because *I* haven't done the research. LOL