~~the revenge of the mainstream (rps: the legend continues).

[reenka]

3am magazine doesn't impress me. i mean, i realize, they think they're big-shots and i'm supposed to be dying to be good enough to be published there, but i'm not. i'm not dying, and i don't even care if i'm good enough. this sort of attitude ensures i never get published, my mother would tell me. don't think of whether you're ready, just think-- go. don't even think.


i don't want to be some stuffy hip cool dude writer with something to say. i mean fandom-- feels like family. feels fun. obsessively, maybe unhealthily, but not bad for my self-esteem, mostly. i want to be a writer, but i don't want to be one of "those people". those people who write about things i never want to read about. why do they write? nothing seemed remotely interesting. realistic "mainstream" writing is so boring i could cry. cry.

this isn't like that. i'm not entirely lost in the fringes of fanfic to the point where "normal" stories seem gross and overly pretentious. there's just something about writing about random things about people i don't know or care about that doesn't appeal to me. it has to have some sort of innate -magic-, some sort of thematic elegance, some sort of beauty of language or depth of scope and vision.

if it's just about someone's problems at a party one night, or someone's unhappy marriage, or someone else's addiction to cheese-- i just don't want to see it. i really wonder how such dead boring people are even writers. i mean, i think i take too much pride in the very -idea- of being an artist. it's not so much that we're the elite-- it's just that the street-sweepers and the paper-pushers and the gossip-mongers and the meat-cleavers and the divorce lawyers... it's just that they're mostly the living dead.
    but of course, no generalization is good for anything much, and writers are just as stupid as the next person. and just as boring. and so on. *sigh*

i think -that- is my problem with `real person slash'. real people are dead boring. actors are dead boring. most of them, anyway. even really bi actors are... well... not uncommon. (*gasp*! *shock*! oh god, is it true??! yes, it's true! actors aren't actually all straight! the... shock. it's overwhelming.)
    actors have a reputation, even, for being more openly emotional and sexually active than your average person, don't they. sort of like writers have a reputation for being more intelligent and interesting. or maybe that's just me.

in the end, i could get over my squick with anything, it's just that i find so many things less than fascinating. i mean, actors and their lives-- they're fascinating. -if- they're a special sort of actor. like say, i'm kind of interested in what goes on in johnny depp's head. tom cruise-- not so much. do i want to read about their affairs and secret passions in a fictionalized context? well. no. i mean, gossip is one thing, and actually creating the scenario and getting lost in it and having it be all vivid and in your head....
    it's kind of really meta, isn't it? in one's mind, it's the actor and yet it isn't-- it's the object of one's fantasy. and yet, if it was -real-, if indeed it was public knowledge that this person -was- doing this, it would be off-limits, i imagine. i -have- read `nsync rps and some lotr slash, even dan/tom slash once or twice, and while it didn't capture my imagination, it could be done well, just like everything else, of course. it's just-- i can't really pretend it has all the depth i'd want from a potential story. these are just actors. just how interesting are they? what's their deep archetypal significance? what's their personal Quest? what's the anguish, their need, their failure?

perhaps it's that these mainstream things seem to think on such a miniscule scale, just like mainstream society itself, that turns me off them. ah yes. back to the largesse of my silly fantasy slash fics. like franzi's `SPEW 2: Revenge of Spew'. *happy sigh*
~~
i must remind myself that just because it's a photo doesn't mean much more than if it was a sketch. yes. because they aren't real. but, who cares! this knocks me flat. wah. they've perfected the `i'm going to kick his ass and then some' look considerably since this photo, at which point they were merely playing. oh yes. *is dead*

Comments

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

silly me. ahahah. well, i was implying~:)
hee. they look so... grr. argh. you can tell there's going to be some *coughs* bodily contact, and soon. hee, this could so be an illustration for one of those scenes in fic where they fight and start biting and things kind of escalate~:)

hee~!
or right before aja's quidditch match at the beginning of luw >:D

[ethrosdemon.livejournal.com]

Can I link to this in my LJ, or would you rather be quiet? Because I tend to agree with what you're saying about it being boring and meta and how I just don't give a *fuck* about actors...in general. Because lately there's Viggo. Which is strange because before Eminem I never read rps much less *wrote* the shit.

I think there's something to be said for the objectifaction of our fannish obsessions to the point where we divorce them from their selves. Not only are we not preceiving them as people but we are only seeing the collective projections of many reflected concepts...ones are all agree on to a certain degree. I always thought that about BBslash. Which is why I never found it objectionable. I do buy that they treat these figures as characters more than people. So, who cares what they say?

However, I also think this serious shift of seeing a human being as just this mirror of our own hodge-podge of desires about them is dangerous in some. It's what leads people to stalk (the real kind, not following a band from venue to venue or going to a specific bar because you heard a rumor X celeb goes there). It's the sort of reality split people who kill or kidnap or rape make. I *own* X because I know them better than they know themselves. Fucked up, huh? Yeah.

Am I calling RPSers stalking murderers? If I am, I am painting myself with the same bloody brush (this is to preempt the newest wank where people go for my throat). I am saying more that perhaps our own tendancy to objectify should be considered (but not so much it becomes navel-gazing of the worst sort).

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

ahahah, sure of course, link to me. i want to be infamous and controversial and objectified ;) ahahaha
i dunno if i easily objectify real people. i've never had a hero that was living. i have plenty of dead heroes, though. say, emily dickinson, to be random.
when i was like, 12-13, i really thought some actors were beyond cute. i didn't think about it much, but i really really liked seeing them in magazines and movies...
but like... for me to really objectify, i need to really feel i -understand- (like you said). and it would be difficult for me to ever imagine i understand someone i haven't read the source material on, so to speak.
which is hilarious because i actually only read 3/4ths of `philosopher's stone' and not the others... truth is, i probably think of luw and origins and ip and `the marks we bear' and dragonweed and so on as source material that i draw off of. i mean, why is that wrong? to me, harry potter didn't really exist before fanfic. i was like this with star trek, never having watched any before reading the books. so when i did watch it, i was seeing it through the eyes of a fanfic reader, and i could never see it any other way.

but yes. i totally see the objectification as dangerous if taken to an extreme, but rather prevalent anyway. almost everyone in the society at large is sort of encouraged to, even.
we are -given- these actors to objectify, the case could be made. i mean, with nsync, it's just -true-. with lotr... sort of. they want us to obsess, the media does. and not about aragorn, either. i'm pretty sure viggo's pr people would really rather it be viggo, not aragorn.
i have always separated actors and roles. like, leonard nimoy was never spock. -spock- is spock. it's just that simple. leonard nimoy is just not as interesting by far. heh.
also, viggo seems interesting (the fact that he writes poetry at -all- gets him on my good side, plus he's a photographer), but he's not my type, ahahaha.

i suppose i'll eat my words once i find a genius writer/actor who has draco's attitude and possibly looks -.- hee~:)

[andi-sunrider.livejournal.com]

i totally see the objectification as dangerous if taken to an extreme, but rather prevalent anyway. almost everyone in the society at large is sort of encouraged to, even.

I agree completely. When I was 10-12, I used to always buy those teeny-bopper magazines, like TeenBeat and Bop and all those. I cannot think of anything that encourages people to objectify actors/musicians any more than these magazines. They try to make you think that they have the inside scoop on all of these celebrities, and that knowing that this person is a vegetarian will help you get to know them even better. I mean, when I was 11, I wanted to be like JTT and be a veggie! But the image of these people, portayed in these magazines, is not really them, as the people who they are really close to will see them. So is it really RPS when fans make up stories about the people who they've heard so much about? Or is it just regular slash, with characters who share the name and look of a famous person, but act completely different? At that point, aren't we really just writing the "idea" of the person more than the actual person?

Admitedly, I haven't read all that much RPS. But when I have read it, I don't think of the actor doing the things the author dictates. IE. I don't see Tom Felton doing such and such. I see someone who looks like him talking to soemone who looks like Daniel Radcliffe. I guess that that's why I don't relaly understand RPS, or actively seek it out: it just seems more fake than fic, because it's reality simply reminds me that it's not true.

I'm not sure if that makes any sense at all, but then, thoughts rarely do....

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

it makes sense. although i can't really say anymore that i can say what the people who actually read the rps are thinking... i think they themselves create their idea of the actor as much as the media does.
it's sort of half media half their personal fantasies and desires. ahahaha which makes them all a bunch of gary stues, i guess.
totally. they're perfect and beautiful and rich and everyone loves them or wants to be them, unless they hate them out of jealousy.
ahahah in this case harry is the ultimate gary stue for jkr and kids everywhere >:D<

ah. everyone is a gary stu, what am i saying. -everyone- as far as characters go.
i mean. so is draco an idea, and snape, and even neville, for all those people who identify with neville.

at which point the very idea becomes meaningless and my brain starts to fry, but then, it was fried to start with...

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

I think that's a large part of what I feel is wrong with RPS. With characters they never live every aspect of their lives so you can interpret, but people are...well...people, and that's boring. and it sucks that real life is so much less than fiction. Which is, I suppose, why I paint and other people write.
Dude, that quidditch ad is great. I wish it were in color. *saves*

[silviakundera.livejournal.com]

just how interesting are they? what's their deep archetypal significance? what's their personal Quest? what's the anguish, their need, their failure?

I too can't find it in myself to be passionate, to get emotionally attached to actor rps. Not that I find anything wrong with reading or writing it, and I read it occasionally. But, like you said. Actors are fairly dull (to me). And we don't know terribly much about them to go on.

If I knew a whole lot about an actor, and found his/her past interesting, this would probably be very different.

I think the difference for me with NSYNC slash is that. Like. It was as if I was watching a TV show. Interviews and appearences were like episodes. And you have this whole history of the group and its individuals in these rather large magazines called "Life Stories".

And their history was pretty interesting. They had scandal! intrigue! This whole thing with poor kids getting strung along by The Evil Manager and forced to work themselves to death, dragged across Europe, and dealing with rising and falling stardom. Betrayed by the adult figure they'd put so much trust in. Being sexualized at a very young age, and what that does to you. Feeling objectified and the trials of fame. And, hell, one of them was going to go into space.

Not exactly boring.

A lot of it is... if you can indentify with them. NSYNC slashers usually have this protective feel over the band. They've seen/heard about all of the struggles those men have been through to get where they are, and they really want them to succeed. Americans, especially, really love to root for the underdog. The fact that a lot of people dislike popstars, and these popstars have done the rags to riches thing, makes it easy to empathize with the guys and want to see them prove their badmouthers wrong.

Different things capture different people's imaginations. For some people, the whole Harry Potter thing is really. well. lame. They don't get why we care about some whiny little wizard kid. They're like, oh big DEAL. Another fantasy children's book.

I don't think it makes any fandom better or worse than other. They're all based on things that some people love so strongly that it drives them to create.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

hmm. i suppose it's a very subjective thing, you're right. i guess i wasn't being uber-careful and saying "ok, so this is just my opinion and obviously people are weird and obviously my ideas of `interesting' are far from universal"...
i mean, people think those big brother on a deserted island shows are the most fun things ever. people watch miss america pageants. people listen to other people who would put me personally to sleep, possibly for years at a time.
so yes. there is -obviously- mass appeal to these things...actors...performers... what have you.
-i- don't feel it, but then-- yes. i'm not exactly average.

i personally am kind of a pop culture nut, actually. i love reading about actors and musicians, and watching specials and the whole sturm and drang of it appeals to me.
but, this doesn't equal wanting to -slash- any of them, y'know? i can find them plenty interesting and even so, i wouldn't feel i want to imagine them naked and going at it with each other. i mean. i find my -friends- interesting, and yet i don't want to picture them naked except as an amusing sort of thought.
being that deeply attracted to people, i need to feel something... extra. beyond, even identification. that is -weird- for me, to feel that towards an actor. i mean... who am i feeling it towards, again? the actor or my fantasy? this becomes a strange conundrum. if i find the -actor- so bloody fascinating, i wouldn't want to mess with it that much, because it's the reality of him i find so interesting. my fantasy wouldn't be as interesting as the interviews and the movies he's in.
and then there's people saying that they aren't "people" but rather characters to them. in that case, it's not even -important- that the people are supposedly so fascinating, and so on.

but anyway. i'm not -against- rps. it doesn't do it for me in that passionate way that i need in order to get into something. i may be interested in these poppy things, but that doesn't mean i feel inspired and amazed or anything. plus my brain sort of fries trying to split the character-persona and the actual person and then imagining which of them i wanna see naked with his lips around another man's penis or whatever ^^ heh

plus, there's a lingering distaste for stupid bubblegum entertainment, even though i buy into it to an extent. i take music and movies seriously as artforms, so it bothers me that they're taking over the world with the bubblegum.
but yes, mostly it's just my personal bias. i mean, wizard=hot and that's all there is to it ;)

~reena

[silviakundera.livejournal.com]

i love reading about actors and musicians, and watching specials and the whole sturm
and drang of it appeals to me. but, this doesn't equal wanting to -slash- any of them, y'know?

Again, I can only speak for boyband slash. But. I think it's kind of the idea... you [as in many people, not necessarily reenka. ;) ] adore the people SO MUCH that you can't see how they couldn't adore each other. hehehe.

And, like, when you see people having such deep, meaningful friendships... often you want to see them blend this into romance. Because love the comes out of deep friendship is the most healthy, long lasting, full-filling kind.

And, honestly, the affection between the guys of NSYNC has touched me deeply at times. Dude, they -- as guys -- actually say, "Love you" on the phone to each other. That just. It gets me, man. hehehe.

And really, it's NOT the "reality" of the famous person. It's the concept of them. The image they put out, the storyline of their personal lives that they tell for the public. Just as Draco and Harry are fascinating as archetypes.

So. Not saying that you have to agree, or find it personally appealing. Just trying to explain where this interest comes from when it comes to other people. :)

[embitca.livejournal.com]

these are just actors. just how interesting are they? what's their deep archetypal significance? what's their personal Quest? what's the anguish, their need, their failure?

I think their significant, quest, needs, anguishes and failures are pretty much the same as our own. Because while they may be "just actors" I think they are also people and for me people, collectively and individually, are the most goddamn fascinating thing we got going on this planet. We're complex, contradictory and imaginative creatures. I find that endlessly fascinating. I find celebrities endlessly fascinating because they are ourselves writ on a much larger scale. Celebrity itself is a form of magnification of our own hopes and dreams, our good qualities and our voraciously selfish bad ones too.

Celebrity is interactive. You can't really become a celebrity unless you're striving to be one and you can't really become a celebrity unless an audience decides that you are somehow fascinating enough to put under a magnifying glass. Does this objectify them? Certainly. But I would argue that it's part of the Faustian bargain they've struck in order to become famous.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

hmm. yes, i know... well, i know that people are interesting, anyway. heh.
i don't think all people are -equally- interesting, and i also will admit to not knowing anything horribly interesting about any of the actors/musicians i've heard of being slashed, except viggo, and well-- er. he's not my type ><
but yes, i suppose if i found an actor particularly fascinating, and then -another- one to pair him with, and then there'd be some story for them to have... er...
that one sentence makes it sound like i think only underage wizards are deeply significant, which isn't true. it's just that whole... ok, they aren't -great- actors or great musicians. they're vaguely cute. woo?

but er, wasn't really going for a holier-than-thou thing. was in fact saying writers are boring too >< ahahah
and interesting at the same time. though in general, i still hold that some situations/people hold inherently more drama and potential and intensity. but of course, all such things are subjective~:)

~reena

[embitca.livejournal.com]

i still hold that some situations/people hold inherently more drama and potential and intensity. but of course, all such things are subjective~:)

Quite true.

I think the thing I was getting from your post and some of the comments to it is that fictional people are more interesting than real ones. I believe someone might have said real people are boring and I just found that an astounding idea. The professional writing I've done has all been memoir however, so maybe that's just me.

I did spend the majority of my youth with my face in a book, rarely taking it out to actually interact with others. I find over the years, I read much less than I used to, mostly because I'm too busy prying into the business of folks I both know and don't know. Heh.

Eeee!

[franzeska]

She actually posted it! *does a happy dance* It was the house elf talk... I just couldn't stop myself.

Re: Eeee!

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

*giggles* it was -hilarious-. i just kept laughing and laughing at the sheer madness. and your draco, who is adorable ala maya's except less obviously "cool" ahahahah
mmmm, tongues ;)

hee. i'm giggling just remembering it~:) i was thinking of posting to the list in response but i'd just have said "wheeee~! funny! snogs! draco! pretty! yeay!" which would've ruined my reputation >< *laughs*

Re: Eeee!

[franzeska]

*bows* I'm so glad you liked it. I wasn't sure the recipient would like my somewhat irreverent take on her request... Of course then I looked at her website and saw the goofy story she wrote where Draco and Harry investigate Hermione's video collection and I was much less worried... err, yes well... You know how it is: you can never be quite sure the humor comes across properly until you've seen the audience reactions.

On another note, reading all this RPS discussion in people's livejournals has gotten me to read some. Oh the horror. I fear I am becomming a RPS fan. Kill me now.

Re: Eeee!

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

*giggles*
oh, i think killing you -now- would be a little too hasty.

have to see if the rot settles in first~;)