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Jared and Sandy Split
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 situationstaken 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 ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stellabelle's From Here We Go Sublime. Which you should read. For it kicks ass. But that's sort of cheating, right? LOL
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
stellabelle's From Here We Go Sublime. Which you should read. For it kicks ass. But that's sort of cheating, right? LOL
no subject
Yesterday I
harrowed Hellgot 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
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!!!!!!!!!!!