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babydracoAll celebrities show us an at least slightly exaggerated version of themselves, if not an out and out stage persona.
So no, we don't know them, and we really can't. Everything is guesswork. So in a sense, all RPF is written about sort of fictional versions of celebrities distilled from however much we actually know about them.
And that can lead people to feel "well, we don't know, so I can just make everything up". Which is like being a SFF writer and saying "well, it's supposed to be fantasy, I don't need to worry about whether it's plausible". No, at least imo, it only works if you're drawing the most complete and accurate-to-the-best-of-your-abilities- picture of your celebrity. It's part of the fun, part of the challenge. If you've got that, than anything else you do with them is eight times more believable.
Especially since...when you're writing regular fictional people you made up all by yourself, someone who isn't that vital to the story or who only gets referenced but never seen, only exists to serve that purpose. They only matter for the job you brought them in to do. But when you're writing about a real person, you owe them a bit more if you're going to basically root around in their underwear drawer.
Your supporting characters are not cardboard cutouts to move around, they're living people who didn't come into existence just to serve your narrative. They might even have their own independent, devoted fanbase. And if you claim to love your (main character) celebrity so much, how come you can't even hazard a guess as to why they're with that person and you can't be bothered to learn anything about the person they clearly care about?
In this fic (Jen/Lana warning)
http://archiveofourown.org/works/776558
( all Once RPF on A03 is "Morrilla", btw, and this one has 18 comments, 56 kudos, 7 bookmarks and 1022 hits while the sole Morristan fic on Ao3which is mine has 0 comments, 2 kudos, 1 bookmark and 38 hits)
Sebastian Stan is a selfish, childish, inconsiderate, drunk with pretentious taste in beer. Jen does not sit down with him like a grownup and talk about any of this, she just picks fights with him (offscreen so we don't know what he said or did) and then uses it as an excuse to cheat on him with Lana. A Lana who is pretty clearly manipulating Jen into sleeping with her and then dumping her boyfriend. Seriously, Lana is constantly whispering in her ear about Seb's flaws, particularly the age difference, and encouraging her to be mean to him when he has done nothing wrong other than be younger.
He is even explicitly described as a "jerk". They don't bother to elaborate on how, just that he is.
From the perspective of the person who wrote this (it seems) and all the people who loved it, this is romantic and deserves applause.
And this is seriously flawed in two ways.
1) Since Jen is an intelligent, educated adult with her own money and career, who lives in a culture and era where she is allowed to choose her own sexual partners (and isn't required to stay with a guy just because she chose him for sex one time), you need to show us why she chose him in the first place if he's so awful. It happens all the time. You were attracted to someone for certain reasons and then later, those same reasons become the things you can't stand about them. But we don't see anything except his flaws, which are all negotiable things (that he may not even realize bother her) treated as irreconcilable differences. Some of those flaws might even be real things, certainly someone who hasn't bothered to learn much about him could easily believe that he's like that. I'm not saying he can't have those flaws, just show us the flip side too.
What would make Jen want to date him? It's a bit worrying that so many Morrilla fans really don't seem to have a clue why. Forget about emotional reasons (he's fun, he brings out her nurturing side, etc), things they have in common (their parents were teachers, they both like The Little Mermaid, apparently Aries and Leo are a fantastic astrological match) I'm not sure they can wrap their minds around the concept that she might just really love having sex with him. What is this, how could anyone be aroused by a man, let alone so frequently aroused that you'd stay with him even if he did horrible things like drink pretentious beer and force you to abandon him at parties and be four years younger than you?
Like, does.not.compute. There's a twenty something, doe eyed pouty lipped well toned European hottie who wants to have sex with me, and I heard he's even good at it, EW! EWWW! Get him away from me!
2) Sebastian's feelings here do not matter. At all. He's there to play the bad boyfriend so that Jen will give up on men and fall into Lana's arms. It doesn't matter that the way this is handled is actually really unfair. I want to write an answer fic from his perspective, as he's watching his relationship fall apart for reasons he doesn't understand.
like, I'm looking at the gifset taken from the video of them arriving at Comic Con and he is so devotedly focused on her- when she stops smiling, he stops and is watching her anxiously,like his happiness is intrinsically linked to hers. You can't tell me that if she explained to him what she needed from him, that he wouldn't do his best to follow through. Even if you could make a case for her not loving him, he obviously adores her, his friends say they haven't seen him this happy since Leighton.
And it's always the love triangle, never the threesome or maturely negotiated open relationship (or immaturely negotiated one). Even less often is it the grownup person realizing they've made a commitment and should honor it by communicating with their partner and working to improve the relationship they're already in. Because in this case, they're starting from the premise that she doesn't want this guy and never really did.
So no, we don't know them, and we really can't. Everything is guesswork. So in a sense, all RPF is written about sort of fictional versions of celebrities distilled from however much we actually know about them.
And that can lead people to feel "well, we don't know, so I can just make everything up". Which is like being a SFF writer and saying "well, it's supposed to be fantasy, I don't need to worry about whether it's plausible". No, at least imo, it only works if you're drawing the most complete and accurate-to-the-best-of-your-abilities- picture of your celebrity. It's part of the fun, part of the challenge. If you've got that, than anything else you do with them is eight times more believable.
Especially since...when you're writing regular fictional people you made up all by yourself, someone who isn't that vital to the story or who only gets referenced but never seen, only exists to serve that purpose. They only matter for the job you brought them in to do. But when you're writing about a real person, you owe them a bit more if you're going to basically root around in their underwear drawer.
Your supporting characters are not cardboard cutouts to move around, they're living people who didn't come into existence just to serve your narrative. They might even have their own independent, devoted fanbase. And if you claim to love your (main character) celebrity so much, how come you can't even hazard a guess as to why they're with that person and you can't be bothered to learn anything about the person they clearly care about?
In this fic (Jen/Lana warning)
http://archiveofourown.org/works/776558
( all Once RPF on A03 is "Morrilla", btw, and this one has 18 comments, 56 kudos, 7 bookmarks and 1022 hits while the sole Morristan fic on Ao3
Sebastian Stan is a selfish, childish, inconsiderate, drunk with pretentious taste in beer. Jen does not sit down with him like a grownup and talk about any of this, she just picks fights with him (offscreen so we don't know what he said or did) and then uses it as an excuse to cheat on him with Lana. A Lana who is pretty clearly manipulating Jen into sleeping with her and then dumping her boyfriend. Seriously, Lana is constantly whispering in her ear about Seb's flaws, particularly the age difference, and encouraging her to be mean to him when he has done nothing wrong other than be younger.
He is even explicitly described as a "jerk". They don't bother to elaborate on how, just that he is.
From the perspective of the person who wrote this (it seems) and all the people who loved it, this is romantic and deserves applause.
And this is seriously flawed in two ways.
1) Since Jen is an intelligent, educated adult with her own money and career, who lives in a culture and era where she is allowed to choose her own sexual partners (and isn't required to stay with a guy just because she chose him for sex one time), you need to show us why she chose him in the first place if he's so awful. It happens all the time. You were attracted to someone for certain reasons and then later, those same reasons become the things you can't stand about them. But we don't see anything except his flaws, which are all negotiable things (that he may not even realize bother her) treated as irreconcilable differences. Some of those flaws might even be real things, certainly someone who hasn't bothered to learn much about him could easily believe that he's like that. I'm not saying he can't have those flaws, just show us the flip side too.
What would make Jen want to date him? It's a bit worrying that so many Morrilla fans really don't seem to have a clue why. Forget about emotional reasons (he's fun, he brings out her nurturing side, etc), things they have in common (their parents were teachers, they both like The Little Mermaid, apparently Aries and Leo are a fantastic astrological match) I'm not sure they can wrap their minds around the concept that she might just really love having sex with him. What is this, how could anyone be aroused by a man, let alone so frequently aroused that you'd stay with him even if he did horrible things like drink pretentious beer and force you to abandon him at parties and be four years younger than you?
Like, does.not.compute. There's a twenty something, doe eyed pouty lipped well toned European hottie who wants to have sex with me, and I heard he's even good at it, EW! EWWW! Get him away from me!
2) Sebastian's feelings here do not matter. At all. He's there to play the bad boyfriend so that Jen will give up on men and fall into Lana's arms. It doesn't matter that the way this is handled is actually really unfair. I want to write an answer fic from his perspective, as he's watching his relationship fall apart for reasons he doesn't understand.
And it's always the love triangle, never the threesome or maturely negotiated open relationship (or immaturely negotiated one). Even less often is it the grownup person realizing they've made a commitment and should honor it by communicating with their partner and working to improve the relationship they're already in. Because in this case, they're starting from the premise that she doesn't want this guy and never really did.
