Fans of celebrities can get weirdly obsessive at times. One trend I noticed happening in the last decade is fans convinced that two male characters must be gay, because in the show/film they were in, they had a close (platonic) relationship. Kirk and Spock is a perfect example of this.
Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd (the actors that played Merry and Pippin in Lord of the Rings movies) were once handed a photoshopped image of them by a fan. Apparently the image was a photoshopped depiction of them making out. There’s a funny series of pictures on the net somewhere with them being handed the picture, and having a horrified reaction when they realized what it was.
Lauren Faust is the creator of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and has a huge fanbase of men in their 20s and 30s. A large part of the ‘Brony’ phenomenon seems to revolve around sexualizing the characters (Yeah, I know, people will sexualize anything these days, but they seem weirdly fixated on cartoon ponies apparently). Either her or one of the voice actresses (or both) had their own ‘pony’ drawn to represent them. Not a moment after, people were already drawing sexually explicit depictions of the creator’s Pony avatar and showing her :eek: .
I have also heard that some of the cast of Supernatural were thought to be gay to the point that fans were openly hostile to the castmembers’ wives. This level of obsession is strange.
So if you were a celebrity, how would you react to this type of attention? Granted, its not as severe as straight up stalking/death threats, but its still pretty creepy. I have a difficult time wrapping my mind around people that are quick to assume people are gay. Its like two people of the same gender can’t have a platonic relationship- if they are friendly together, they must me fucking. I wonder how much it has to do with the warped perception about relationships where there is no middle ground. The fact that they often fixate on siblings is extra creepy in my opinon; had Frozen been a live-action movie I’m sure people would have been convinced the two ‘sisters’ were lesbians and in love in real life :rolleyes:
I would understand that short of shutting down tumblr, 4chan and about 80 different fanfic sites, I’d never be rid of it. I would probably take the tack that a lot of internet-savvy celebrities do which is encourage my hypothetical fans to maintain a level of respect and decorum regarding people’s personal lives.
edit: and I would never ever follow the tumblr tag of the portmanteau of my co-star’s and mine names.
Not a lot of choice in this poll. I don’t see why it would be disturbing or arousing. That sort of thing is pretty accepted. We have “bromance” as a term. Most works capitalize on the Ho Yay.
My choice would be either “embrace it” or “ignore it.”
“Bromance” is a platonic relation that may amusingly resemble dating but isn’t actually intimate. The stuff in the OP goes well into intimate territory.
A few years back, Elijah Wood was on Graham Norton’s show talking about some internet images he’d seen of Frodo (Wood) making love with Sam Gamgee (Sean Astin) is a bucolic setting…
Norton had such images queued up already and displayed some of them. Wood was cracking up because he found it hilarious.
That’s probably the right approach.
And ***Supernatural ***actually worked erotic fan fiction into a few of their own episodes. Dean gets to read some incestuous stories about himself and Sam, then gasps, “Don’t they know we’re brothers???” Sam shrugs, “They don’t seem to care.”
The correct term for this type of thing is “slash”, which originally came from the slash between the two names in Kirk/Spock fan fiction.
I don’t typically read or write slash, but I have no problem at all with character slash, even when it would be weird within the characters’ universe. Actor slash is bit stranger, and would make me uncomfortable, but I think I’d keep quiet about my feelings to avoid upsetting the fandom and making them even nuttier.
I currently follow a storyline with a couple who are gay within the context of the story, and the speculation about the actors can get pretty bizarre. People seem to have no trouble with a gay actor playing straight, but any actor playing gay is just assumed to be gay. For my own peace of mind, I’ve had to back away from message board discussions about this couple.