affably

Run, don't walk, and watch this vid: Drove Through Ghosts to Get Here by devilsduplicity. It's Castiel-centric amazing excellent editing and will knock you on your ass. Source up through 5.16 and fair warning it will make you into a crazy person. It is awesome.

No really. I am seriously deranged right now and probably can't even look in the direction of a 5x04 story for the next week.

What the hell is all this about Dean!girls versus Sam!girls versus Cas!girls? I mean, they mentioned it in The Monster at the End of This Book but seriously? Seriously? We have to do this? It's not enough to have ship wars we have partition fandom further by having character wars? Screw that!

I DECLARE FOR TEAM GABRIEL. He refuses to choose sides when it comes to teams he loves equally. (Though I do have faith that he's gonna come through for me and pick my team ♥)

On a less facetious note, whatever you do, however you watch a television it's your choice and your life etc. But I personally can't see how that would be fun because you're perpetually getting defensive or angry on a character's behalf or crowing against a character you don't like and it's just. Is it such a crime to love and sympathize with everyone? Because in my experience only loving one half (or one third) of a team is much more frustrating and disappointing.

I am much much more for the team dynamic. Of them kicking ass together and sacrificing themselves for each other and saving each other and yelling at each other when they're wrong or they left their stinky socks in the sink. I could write odes and odes about this.

( short tl;drs about how awesome everyone is )

These guys, even though they're fictional, make me believe in heroes. And I'm supposed to just pick one? Yeah no, I don't think so. I don't want to. They are all also extremely good-looking. This isn't even touching the (somewhat) more minor but nevertheless insanely great characters that I want to hang out with all the time. Or the antagonists that terrify me but have fantastic panache. So drawing all these lines in the sand is insane and weird to me when there's plenty of room for everything. I just can't get behind the mentality. Gosh. I ♥ everyone.

Bear with me, I'm half-stoned on cold medication right now (which apparently could get me arrested in this country for drug possession of all things — so we'll keep it on the downlow) but I've wanted to do something fic-positive rather than just yelling at thisbrain when I read something that made me crazy.

A fic preferences meme, stolen from architeuthis.
+ Your pairing of choice

+ Your surefire, bulletproof kinks

+ Your most surprising, dirty little secret kinks

+ Who tops/bottoms

+ Squicks

+ Cliches/tropes common in your fandom that just don't do it for you

+ Your ultimate/ideal fic

We'll stick with Supernatural fandom(s) here.

( That's cool with me, it's not my favorite but I'll do it for you )

So I was watching Aladdin and since I now queerify every story I enjoy as recast with CW actors, I caught myself thinking that this would be easy to write as a J2. Jared could be Aladdin, poor but good-hearted and running around being a riff-raff, and Chad Michael Murray could be his-only-friend Abu (what!), Jensen could be Jas- no, Sandy could be Jasmine, and Jensen could be a ridiculously pretty Genie (bonus points for begrudging shirtlessness) trying to get them together, and —

And then I stopped. Because wait, has someone written this story? Have I read it? Is Tyler my bad dream or am I Tyler's?

I feel like this has to exist. Somehow.

RPF AUs basically do what Hollywood does when it pairs up famous people in movies to attract audiences: cast familiar famous faces and personalities into new roles and see what entertaining combinations come out.

What is Mr. and Mrs. Smith but an RPF story on the screen? Who wants to see Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have sexual chemistry while being secret agents that are trying to kill each other but are actually married? A lot of people, actually. The big draw of the film is not, in fact, that they are secret agents but that it's Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie being secret agents. Their star image submerges the characters, and that's why they are using the stars.

That's what RPS AUs are all about. Because whether we admit it to ourselves or not, celebrities in our culture are characters, and characters that we want to see in different situations but still essentially be themselves. That's why we have actors that are just playing a certain character which we call "themselves" — like Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson — that completely overwhelm our image of them as less than larger-than-life people.

At least in RPS stories the writers are not confusing the actors with their on-screen characters. I have yet to see "Dean" confused as "Jensen", or vice versa beyond maybe some minor acknowledged character bleed characteristics. And while some of the stories that happen are kind of horrifying that they exist that I would like to bleach from my brain or smite from the interwebs, the fact of the matter is celebrities are a constructed fiction. Sorry guys. I know you just wanted to act and maybe do something more fun than just being a pretty teen heartthrob.

Celebrities are almost always trying to either reshape or maintain their star image, but their star image is always a performance as much as "we" try to penetrate their inner lives. That's why reality shows about Paris Hilton's life exists, why there are gossip columns, why the news reports stories of them having children. In any case, RPS is well aware that it is fiction, and is not trying attempting to malign or damage anyone in the process except maybe Chad Michael Murray. Okay, I kid. But even beyond the "lol porn" aspect it is a fascinating phenomenon and evolution of the image of celebrity: if you have any doubt, look at Misha Collins' Twitter, where he LARPs as himself.

In pandarus's RPS AU story Starstruck, she writes in the author's note:

I'm pretty sure that I'm not really doing RPS 'properly', but I don't care. Notwithstanding the fact that I'm appropriating the names and physiognomies of the people in question, this is very much NOT about actual Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, Katie Cassidy or anyone else. This is me playing at writing a big gay version of 'Notting Hill', and casting various actors in various roles in my movie. But they're clearly not playing themselves.

Oddly enough, this is exactly what it's all about.

On the whole though, I wish it were a more private enterprise, because these people fandom writes about are adored (well, as characters of their own lives), but I wish that they weren't made uncomfortable so often by their fans, especially in public. I have my doubts that I could enjoy a convention. Fandom is scary.

In conclusion,

Ellen: "John was like family once."
Dean: "Oh yeah? How come he's never mentioned you before?"
Ellen: "You'd have to ask him that." - Everybody Loves a Clown

JO IS JOHN'S DAUGHTER I KNEW IT I KNEW IT.


Okay so, this rpf fanmix I didn't initially click on because uh, I thought the cover was ugly. To be fair, I also judge books by their covers, so I'm an equal opportunity judgmental meanface. However, it INSTANTLY gets massive massive points because the first song on the mix is my Jared Padalecki Theme Song. I shit you not it's been in my bff/bromance/I'm-not-really-making-an-rpf-fanmix-am-I? mix for months now, and whenever I hear it I start spontaneously dancing the way I imagine Jared does (okay not so much imagine as know for a fact). So yeah, for that song alone the mix is 100% win.

Though it hits so many of my pet peeves for fanmixes: less than 8 songs and not labeling it as an EP, explanations/justifications in paragraph form for the song choices, no back cover, etc. But no, for having that song. Gosh.

I'm valiantly trying to deal with the fact that I just got pressured into giving up my Friday night for dance practice — which means my window for watching the premiere within a reasonable non-frothing-at-the-mouth time delay is getting narrower and narrower; I'll be squeaking by on the minutes as it stands. But no power in the verse will stop the goddamned Batman, not even Hope herself.

Also, I cannot deal with how awesome Misha Collins is. Why do these things happen? I just don't understand...