Real people fanfic (especially Real Person Slash) has always struck me as a little weird and an invasion of privacy, imho. [small voice]Not that it stops me from reading it[/small voice].
I visit a fansite devoted to the judges from American Idol, and it seems like 80% of the population there has a little crush on Simon Cowell (I think he’s cute, but his snarking gets old quickly). I have seen far too many posts bashing Simon’s girlfriend, saying she is mean and ugly. I have told the more vociferous that obviously Simon sees something in her and they all like Simon, so she can’t be a total witch but the 14 year old teeny boppers (sorry, but the over-18s usually don’t engage in the rampant Terri bashing) don’t listen to me.
Real People fanfic/slash grosses me the fuck out. I think it’s probably the most creepy, deranged aspect of fandom—and there’s some fucked up shit out there. I mean, would you write stories about how Hot Neighbor A fucks Hot Neighbor B up the ass behind their SO’s back? Would you share those stories with the world? If not, why is that any different from writing stories about James Marsters and David Borneaz getting busy between takes?
shudder
I hate that.
I thought I was a Buffy fangeek, untill I checked out a couple of fan sites. Now I know that I’m just a garden variety fan, and I’m happy with that.
I frequent a hopelessly juvenille and brain-numbing message board where one of the current hot topics is hateful blabber about how dissapointed everyone is that Gary Oldman is going to be playing Sirius Black in the next Harry Potter movie. People are seething with the fury of an unjust god because a younger, dreamier actor was not selected.
Awesome.
yosemitebabe:
You don’t have to go to other boards. Right here in Cafe Society you’d best tread softly in the Star Wars/Star Trek/Buffy threads.
It’s only a rough draft. I’ll change the names before I publish. <sheesh>
That Harry Potter MB exerpt almost looks like it’s sarcasm. I hope it is…
I was going to write a biography of silent-movie star Olive Thomas, and actually had my publisher interested—but some of her fans are crazier than shithouse rats. One of them threatened that if I wrote anything the fans didn’t like, “I’d wind up like Ollie” (!). Another sends flowers to her grave every year and calls the cemetery to see if she got them, and still another wants to be buried alongside her!
Not bad for a gal who’s been dead more than 80 years . . .
I know very little about Harry Potter fandom, but from what I’ve been able to pick up I think a lot of the teen/young adult fans are downright delusional. Sirius Black is supposed to look like a haggard convict. To Harry, and apparently the rest of the wizarding world, he also looks just like what they think he is – a murderous psychopath. Gary Oldman is several years older than I would estimate Black to be in the story, but given his hard life the character should look older than he is. There is no way a “younger, dreamier actor” would be more faithful to the books.
Similiarly, I think a lot of Snape fans have managed to convince themself that the character is meant to be sexy when he is clearly written as anything but by Rowling. The casting of Alan Rickman (who I know has many devoted fans) probably had something to do with this, but I get the impression that in the minds of many Snape fans the character is even more attractive than that – like a Johnny Depp type or something.
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When I first started using the web recreationally, I found that the online nexus of fans of my favorite band, Duran Duran, were a prolific lot, but a lot of that prolificity is in the category of fanfic about the band, including tons of slash. It seems that there is a huge number of Duran Duran fans who aren’t happy unless they’re imagining Nick Rhodes and John Taylor doing unspeakable things to one another. Not unspeakable because they’re two men, but unspeakable because even in the realm of hot gay sex the stuff they write would be considered above and beyond kinky. I’m galled by what’s going on in these women’s brains.
The thing that’s most disconcerting about it is that they’re more than happy to not just ignore or rewrite current reality, but to engage in massive historical revision in order to obliterate the existence of these men’s wives and children (the bio points of whom these fans know as well as their ABCs, including children’s birthdates) to either insert themselves (classic “Mary Sue” stories) or engage in the convolutions of slash. It’s just completely beyond belief. And in the name of fandom. It boggles my tiny mind.
The same thing happens in the Beatles fandom. Or so I heard. Not that I looked for Beatles fanfic, or anything…God, I mean, who would do that…whistles
I feel like I should point out that we shouldn’t judge Tolkien fans by these weirdos. Even among hardcore Tolkien fangeeks, the Ent/Elf slash people are considered a splinter group.
I’d believe this, but on one of the HP boards, there was quite a bit of discussion about Snape’s behavior in the most recent volume. Several people made comments to the effect of “You’re being played by Alan Rickman, for God’s sake! Act like it!”
These people worry me.
I was never really a Snape fan. He’s an interesting character and the latest things we’ve found out… well I won’t say but it certainly puts things into a new light. At least for me.
When I found out Rickman was playing Snape and I first saw the movies… it took me a bit to really reconcile it. I just couldn’t see it. Now I can but mainly because he plays Snape really well, he’s still a little too hot for Snape IMO though.
No, unfortunately, it is quite earnest.
Now imagine six or seven pages like that, and counting.
One thing I can say in defense of the people who so closely associate Snape and Rickman - some people had their first taste of Harry Potter not through the books, but through the movies. The first Snape they ever encountered looks, talks and acts like Alan Rickman.
For a while after the first X-Men movie, I used to read and participate in a Wolverine/Hugh Jackman fanfic site. The webmistress stated throughout the site that if anyone wanted to do a Real Person story about Hugh, they were welcome to do so, if “YOU DO NOT MESS WITH HIS MARRIAGE IN ANY WAY… If you submit such a fic, I will not post it.”
So I thought of a way to work around this. “Hm,” I thought. “Under what circumstances could a young woman get a kiss from Hugh without betraying Deb*?” Finally, I came up with a scenario that had Hugh and Deb very much in love, and devoted to their son, Oscar, while Oscar’s nanny, Lorna, is equally devoted to her job only, and not pining away for her handsome employer. (If anyone would like to read it, here’s a link ::
::.
What killed me, though, was that after all her warnings, the webmistress went ahead and titled the first chapter (I don’t do chapter titles; that was her idea) “The Babysitter”. :smack: I’m sure some people saw that and thought, “Woo, Hugh’s gettin’ it on with the babysitter!” After I went to infinite trouble to avoid any kind of sexual tension between Hugh and Lorna!
*HJ’s wife is Deborra-Lee Furness, an actress and now a director, famous for many years down under before she met him. Us Hughphiles hold much admiration for her, both for her own accomplishments, and because…well, she got him, didn’t she? No way would any of us write a story dissing her!
I used to be an obsessive fan, but that was when I was thirteen. For example, I had the biggest crush on Edward Furlong after seeing Terminator 2, I had the walls above my bed literally covered in pictures of him, and I used to cry sometimes because I wouldn’t ever meet him.
About two years later, I got over it.
However, it sounds like some of these people NEVER get over it.
And in fairness to all fandoms, I think the more exotic stuff (including sex stories using the names and personas of real people) is generally considered a part of the lunatic fringe.
Years ago when I used to read more fanfic myself I did come across a funny variation on the idea of “real person slash”, and this seems as good a place as any to mention it. Through some magical process, the two characters most often paired together in fanfic appeared to the two actors who portrayed them on the show. The characters essentially said, “Look, we know you’re both straight, but we are not. Could you at least look at each other with a little more desire when you’re pretending to be us?” After some consideration, the actors agreed to do their best on screen to make the characters seem like two people in love and not just good friends.