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reenka3am 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*
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*
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no subject
Date: 2003-01-11 09:11 am (UTC)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).
no subject
Date: 2003-01-11 02:26 pm (UTC)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~:)
no subject
Date: 2003-01-12 10:48 pm (UTC)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....
no subject
Date: 2003-01-12 11:00 pm (UTC)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...