~~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

[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).

[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.

[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.

Eeee!

[franzeska]

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