blah blah history boners
So in my three am sickly delirium as I was curled up trying to sleep, I made a ~REALIZATION~ about why RPF takes over my LIFE so easily. I've been nerding out on research with andthenextday about the Mike Richards/Jeff Carter STORY OF PERFECTION she is writing, and it's tapping into all my history feelings, and I think...that's kind of it. I remember in like 10th grade, when we basically had to write an essay in response to the question "WHO CARES?" in regards to studying history, and I went into a CRAZY HISTORY FEELINGS TRANCE and rambled about how amazing it is to study these things that ACTUALLY HAPPENED and ACTUALLY EXIST in the world, real human experiences and emotions and everythiiiing, blah blah blah. And then I went to college and had the best history professor of all time who taught me that history is the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the world, with that emphasis on STORIES, and how it can't ever really be about absolute truth, but how building these stories around the details and documents and whatever we have is so fucking rewarding, to take fragments of reality and piece them together. Of course, uh, when studying history, the point and ethical responsibility is to build as close to truthful representation as possible, but I suddenly see a whole lot of similarities between the study of history and the nature of RPF. Except what we're doing is building alternate histories from the details we get from the real people we write about.
AND THAT IS SO FASCINATING TO ME ALL OF A SUDDEN. Like, Mike and Jeff, since they are on my mind - for the non-hockey majority of my friendslist, they were these two superbros on the Flyers and were wicked close and did great stuff together and both signed long term deals with the Flyers with the idea that they would get to do this together, but then last summer they were both very shockingly traded to other teams, Mike got sent to LA and Jeff got sent to the black hole of sadness and despair (at least from how he looked in every interview ever) that is Columbus, but very recently Jeff was traded to LA TOO, and now everything is rainbows and sunshine and Jeff's beaming smiling face and Mike tweeting things about Jeff with the hashtag #needaroommate and YEAH IT'S GREAT - have this amazing narrative, it is already a fucking great story, and because we get all this evidence and all these details about them we can...piece it together however we want, and obviously we're not seeking out TRUTH, but we're using that same foundation of actual events to make sense of their story in this different way (BOYFRIENDS) and the freedom to do that is really, really great. FANDOM IS REALLY, REALLY GREAT.
...and I mean, obviously, sometimes we just want to write about these real people fucking with no plot or commitment to details of reality, or werewolves, or sex pollen, or in space, or with totally different histories in general, which is equally as awesome. BUT HOW COOL IS IT TO BE ABLE TO, for example, look up, say, real tour dates to write Frank and Gerard boning after, you know? We can place these stories in real actual history, even though our uh interpretations do not reflect reality, but they are so often BUILT from specific reality and that is suddenly SUPER COOL TO ME.
I WISH I WERE BETTER AT WORDS TO MAKE THIS WHOLE POST SOUND LESS DUMB. THE POINT IS REALLY JUST THAT I HAVE A HUGE BONER FOR HISTORY AND RESEARCH AND I AM REALIZING HOW RPF TAPS INTO THAT, TOO.
I should stop writing this and go work on some actual research for Kat now. Um. HI LIVEJOURNAL.
(and then I post this with an icon of a fictional character. BUT ANDY IS HOLDING A MAP. AND MAPS ARE...HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS.......shut up.)
AND THAT IS SO FASCINATING TO ME ALL OF A SUDDEN. Like, Mike and Jeff, since they are on my mind - for the non-hockey majority of my friendslist, they were these two superbros on the Flyers and were wicked close and did great stuff together and both signed long term deals with the Flyers with the idea that they would get to do this together, but then last summer they were both very shockingly traded to other teams, Mike got sent to LA and Jeff got sent to the black hole of sadness and despair (at least from how he looked in every interview ever) that is Columbus, but very recently Jeff was traded to LA TOO, and now everything is rainbows and sunshine and Jeff's beaming smiling face and Mike tweeting things about Jeff with the hashtag #needaroommate and YEAH IT'S GREAT - have this amazing narrative, it is already a fucking great story, and because we get all this evidence and all these details about them we can...piece it together however we want, and obviously we're not seeking out TRUTH, but we're using that same foundation of actual events to make sense of their story in this different way (BOYFRIENDS) and the freedom to do that is really, really great. FANDOM IS REALLY, REALLY GREAT.
...and I mean, obviously, sometimes we just want to write about these real people fucking with no plot or commitment to details of reality, or werewolves, or sex pollen, or in space, or with totally different histories in general, which is equally as awesome. BUT HOW COOL IS IT TO BE ABLE TO, for example, look up, say, real tour dates to write Frank and Gerard boning after, you know? We can place these stories in real actual history, even though our uh interpretations do not reflect reality, but they are so often BUILT from specific reality and that is suddenly SUPER COOL TO ME.
I WISH I WERE BETTER AT WORDS TO MAKE THIS WHOLE POST SOUND LESS DUMB. THE POINT IS REALLY JUST THAT I HAVE A HUGE BONER FOR HISTORY AND RESEARCH AND I AM REALIZING HOW RPF TAPS INTO THAT, TOO.
I should stop writing this and go work on some actual research for Kat now. Um. HI LIVEJOURNAL.
(and then I post this with an icon of a fictional character. BUT ANDY IS HOLDING A MAP. AND MAPS ARE...HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS.......shut up.)