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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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*
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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.
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