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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
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.
no subject
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.