rionaleonhart | Actors Are Not Your Posable Dolls: A Rant.

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Actors Are Not Your Posable Dolls: A Rant.

Hello! First, a call for help: are you from the East Midlands? Are you aged between eighteen and twenty-five? If so, and if you have the time, please consider popping over here to help

sparklenight, my fellow English Language student, with her dissertation on accent features of the East Midlands. It would be extremely kind of you.

And now, alas, although I generally try to keep this journal a place of happiness, I have to take a moment to express how appalled I am by the way in which certain parts of the Supernatural fandom are reacting to the news that Jared Padalecki and Genevieve Cortese are engaged.

DEAR SUPERNATURAL FANDOM: PLEASE STOP BEING INSANE. I cannot believe some of the comments I have seen on the announcement that Jared Padalecki and Genevieve Cortese are engaged. One person across whose comments I have unfortunately stumbled has essentially said 'I CAN'T BELIEVE JARED IS GOING TO PAY FOR A WEDDING TO SOMEONE HIS FANS HATE WITH OUR MONEY'.

Firstly: Jared has not committed a crime against his fanbase by choosing to marry someone he wants to marry, rather than someone of whom his fans (speak for yourself, by the way) approve. All Jared owes us is his acting. We have absolutely no influence over his personal life. We have no right to influence his personal life.

Secondly: as we as fans don't actually know much about Cortese as a person, I can only assume that the dislike of her is based on a dislike of the way she played Ruby. I personally liked her Ruby, but that's beside the point. If you don't think someone is a good actor, that does not mean she is not a good person. I can't act at all, but I hope that doesn't mean I deserve to have scorn and derision poured on non-acting-related areas of my life.

I have seen absolutely no solid reasons to hate Cortese. All I have on which to base my judgement of her as a person is our very brief exchange whilst she gave me her autograph at Asylum, and she was lovely then. That's not solid evidence that she's lovely in her day-to-day life, no, but I am happy to assume, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that she is not a horrible person (would Jared be marrying her if she were?). Hatred is a dangerous judgement; surely it should be based on something.

Another argument I've seen is 'he can't marry her, she's not pretty enough'. This is evidently complete nonsense, because she is adorable, but even if she weren't: attractiveness is not a requirement. Even if Cortese were the ugliest person on the planet, that would not mean she didn't 'deserve' Jared.

In conclusion: please stop saying that Jared 'deserves better'. You do not know his fiancée, and his personal life is really none of your business. I love the Supernatural fandom; please stop making me feel embarrassed to be a part of it. I really, really hope nobody attacks the poor woman in the street.

Er, sorry about the rant. Congratulations to Jared and Genevieve, and I hope they're very happy! Have some adorable dancing Pikachu videos to make up for this entry: one, two.

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(I'm from the East Midlands. But I'm 28 and I can't record sound so, sorry, I can't help sparklenight)
That is why the SPN fandom scares me (well that and all the Dean-gets-raped-by-Sam and weird stuff in fic). All right so only parts of it but they still manage to taint the rest of us sometimes. I just want to slap them all, repeatedly. Idiots. Someone posted about the stupid comments people were making when Jensen got engaged as well and honestly, if I was his fiancee I would be terrified.
(And 'our money'? What? Because they buy a few DVDs that gives them the right to dictate the actors' lives?)
Personally I didn't like her at all as Ruby. I loved other-Ruby but not Cortese's version, but partly I think that was just the way the character was written later on and not completely down to Cortese herself (though I did think she was a bit... stilted sometimes too). But that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with who she is as a person, and it's no one else's business who she marries (or who Jared marries). If they want to get married, good luck to them.

I was initially rather confused, because my first encounter with SPN fans consisted largely of Riona and people she'd routinely socialize with, and I was all "What's wrong? Everyone's lovely, no one wants the show to be misogynist, people who like Wincest and other such things are understanding about their tastes not being everyone's, and the RPF is written with an eye towards sanity and understanding they own neither Jared nor Jensen."

Then I poked my head out and saw the other bits of Supernatural fandom. Bit of a shock.

LOL. I'm sort of glad I was aware of some of the crazies (though that was more people obsessed with weird stuff regarding the fictional characters rather than RPF/discussing the real people, which I've always avoided) before I found decent fans, even if they did really put me off the fandom. But it's still a bit scary that there are apparently quite so many of these obsessive nutters out there who either can't tell fact from fiction or think they own the actors.

See, weird stuff in fic doesn't usually get to me. People being a jackass about it in some way does, and some of it's not my thing. But I rarely get bothered that other people like fic about freaky stuff.

Stuff like this, where people seem to sincerely think the actor they like watching on television owes them something, really annoys me, though.

It depends on how weird and how sexualised it is. I know I'm not easy to freak out, I've read some pretty bizarre stuff (not fanfic) before but occasionally I think some people are way too sick in the head and if people associated me with them because we're watching the same TV show, I'd feel pretty crap (which thankfully hasn't happened to me so far, that I know of, but I've read other people complain about that sort of thing). Whereas something like mpreg or genderswap stuff I think is weird and it may squick me but it doesn't make me want to run away screaming, I can live with it existing and be friends with people who like that stuff as long as they don't make me read it.

Eh, I tend to chalk it up to "Has a dark imagination and/or some truly weird kinks" and not worry about it unless it's accompanied by non-fic weirdness indicating it really is part of a bigger problem. Like there's been one or two people out there who get into discussions about incest-fic with "It's good and healthy and natural! And so is actual incest that people do in real life! We should all screw our relatives!" statements, and I'd be a lot more 0_o about incest-fic written by them, or fic that turned into a "Why this is good and right lecture!" written by anyone, but usually I don't read much into it.

Of course I've got kind of a weird imagination myself sometimes, and I don't want someone to go "She really got into having the main character tormented in that fic/she wrote rapefic/she combined sex and broken glass! (Thank you, Riona.) What's wrong with her?" So I skew strongly towards not judging others for that sort of thing.

Edited 2010-01-08 23:04 (UTC)

Heh, I guess I'm kind of jaded when incest strikes me as a more normal thing to write about (not saying it *is* normal, just in a fictional context, it doesn't bother me). It's more... child-rape as a kink and stuff like that that gets me. Or just endless sexual torture and humiliation type stuff.
I write weird shit too (sex and broken glass *and* 2 Derren Browns *grins*) so maybe I'm hypocritical but I think there's a difference between writing something as crack to amuse people or even just writing something as a plot point, and writing something as 'serious' and graphic porn-without-plot to get people off (though I'd hope no one writes child-rape in crack). Also, and I know this is an entirely personal thing, but I think it's different writing weird (serious) stuff with OCs as opposed to doing horrible things to other peoples' characters. TV characters for instance, I can put the actors' faces to them. That would put me right off writing about them getting raped or whatever (and I suppose partly I don't understand the 'I really love this person/am very attracted to them, so I want to see them being repeatedly gang-raped by demons (or whatever)' idea; if it's a character people hate, that makes more sense to me, even if I don't agree with that either).
Though don't get me wrong, I don't go round posting "You're sick in the head" comments on peoples' fic or emailing them insults or anything like that. I've never actually insulted anyone specifically. I just sit in the corner rocking and feeling creeped out, mostly.

PS I should probably say, maybe these things just bug me more since I've only been reading fanfic of any kind for a few months. I've never been 'in fandoms' really before last year. I think it's probably something you mostly get immune to after a while (and also physically just learn to filter out; some of the weirder stuff I came across when I was more generally reading fic, rather than looking in specific places as I do now).

For me, being around fanfic more makes a difference. Not just desensitization, but also finding that for pretty much any type of fic that freaks me out, I'll end up being friends with one perfectly lovely and rational person who writes that for reasons that actually make sense, which may even be the same reason that I write stuff that freaks other people out. So it's hard for me to be creeped out in the way you're describing, even when it's nasty stuff written to get off. Because I expect what I usually run into - very nice people going "This is a completely freaky kink that would be profoundly wrong to put into practice in real life, and I have no idea why I like writing fic about it, but I really do, and apparently some of you actually want to read it!"

I don't have many LJ friends (and don't go on many communities - I just don't have time), and I guess probably, hmm, less than a third of those friends are ones from any fandoms. So my experience of fanfic writers, especially up to a couple of months ago, was mainly limited to total strangers writing stuff. So I didn't get the... I can't think of the word... but no discovering them as a person, no disclaimer about whether it's something they think is really wrong but acceptable in fiction or suchlike and nothing about their reasons for writing whatever. Just people posting all weird contextless stuff and other people posting about how hot that was. Which sort of seems to be more of a Wincest thing than the SPN pairing I'm interested in (Dean/Cas - or for that matter the other couple of fandoms I'd say I was involved in) so is something really I can ignore mostly (well not always but more) now having figured out LJ communities and that but, it *seriously* put me off the whole SPN fandom for several months (I only started watching SPN last year) when all I seemed to find was people with bizarre and sometimes completely sick kinks and fans of those same kinks (well that and Sam/Dean domestic fluff which I also hate, heh, though that's not creepy as such). It probably is different when you know the people more or at least have some idea about them rather than just seeing individual pieces of fiction, but I still don't really have that; the few fandom friends I have now don't seem to write any of the stuff that would really creep me out or if they do then I don't know that they do.

My first encounter with SPN fandom came from fandom_wank, so I had a rather opposite approach, in that I started out thinking they were all batshit tinhats, and then discovered that there were sane parts as well.

Really, people can write all the weird fanfiction they want; if someone wants to write about Dean getting raped by Sam, fair enough. I personally won't be reading it, but it's not hurting anyone. It's only when people seem convinced that they know all about and/or are somehow owed some control over the actors' real lives that I become uneasy.

I'm glad you're able to separate Cortese's acting from her as a person! (And quite sad that that ability isn't a given in this fandom.)

Mm, they can write it and read it and wank over it or whatever they want to do as long as they leave me out of it, but it's still insanely weird when that's all they write, just these fics that are endless variations on Sam rapes Dean or John rapes Dean or Dean gets abused by someone else or whatever (seriously, what is it about Dean that says 'rape me'? I don't get it), not even as part of some overall story where it's a plot point that actually makes any sense and is not 'sexualised' (that, maybe I can deal with). I don't necessarily mean just rape even, often straightforward rape actually seems very tame. It's like... demon-Sam makes multiple copies of himself to screw Dean constantly and just bizarre stuff like that (I'm sure I saw something about Dean spontaneously has cum constantly materialise in his mouth the other day, very briefly before my brain blocked it out). I'm completely bewildered how anyone can even think these things up never mind find them hot. I don't even go looking for weird stuff but it still turns up. Oh and sex with little kids fic. urgh. That creeps me out no end. I mean something like mpreg squicks me but that doesn't creep me out and make me feel skeevy about sharing the same fandom as some of these people. I end up wanting to scrub myself to get the taint off just reading some of the story headers sometimes. LOL

That probably happens with everything on TV really though. Probably not necessarily the jealousy aspect but people start beating up actors from Coronation Street or whatever because their character does something nasty. Though with Coronation Street it does usually sound like it's mostly little old ladies (with umbrellas! They always seem to hit people with umbrellas) who have trouble telling fact from fiction, so that's probably a bit different to the SPN fandom. The principle's the same though, sadly.

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Actors Are Not Your Posable Dolls: A Rant.

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