Isn’t it funny how sometimes a subject seems to seek you out, popping in and out through the course of your days, until you acknowledge it? the hows of celebrity crushes seems to be that subject for me recently. First, I was cleaning up my bookmarks and had a whole section about celebrity crushes and fandom saved. this prompted me to google ‘stages of a celebrity crush’ because sometimes there are lighthearted posts about the experience that I find enjoyable to read, either because I can relate or because I myself have never experienced it in quite that way before. one of those stages that others often talk about is the ‘ruined’ stage, how the crush supposedly ruined their life or ruined all other men for them. I can relate to the obsessiveness this stage brings about, that feeling that you have to ingest everything, save everything, surround yourself with everything like a blanket, and how sometimes it leaves you feeling out of control and restless. I understand that part all too well. but the phrasing of ‘ruined’ is not something I would ever choose to describe it.
Second, I felt compelled to play the song I’m Weak by AJR repeatedly, as the Dan Stevens folder on my computer went through it’s slideshow. the lyrics to this song speak to me as an anthem for celebrity crushes/fandom. I find the resemblance cute because it’s so spot on when you interpret the lyrics in that way. resistance is futile.
Third, I ran across a gif set of Dan Stevens from the film Permission that always stops me in my tracks when I see it, for the combination of it’s sweetness and heartbreak.
This time my mind went to the recurring subject of celebrity crushes and the ‘ruined’ stage again, the denial that it’s happening or the resistance to it. it struck me how that was not the case for me this time around, even though it would make total sense if it was. I was still at the tail end of all the confusion regarding the dwindling of my previous crush and trying to get past the bitterness, fully expecting that there wasn’t an existing actor out there who would be able to reach that spot inside of me again. and even if there was, I wouldn’t let him in because I had become too jaded regarding the whole experience. but low and behold, there was someone!
I know, I was surprised too.
I’m still baffled that i’d never heard of Dan Stevens before. I vaguely recall seeing pics of Matthew Crawley but Downton Abbey is not a show that I sought out, and I hadn’t seen the other movies he appeared in. after watching him as David Haller in Legion over several weeks, I remember wanting to look him up on IMDb but resisting, either because I didn’t want to be disappointed or that I didn’t want to be intrigued- I couldn’t decide which was worse. then, after seeing his name attached to the Beauty and The Beast movie and recognizing the same name from Legion, I decided to google him ‘real quick’. fast forward a few weeks and my thoughts were:
It’s happening again.
*awed sense of wonder*
I can’t believe it’s happening again.
Thank You, David Haller.
Not once did I not want it. I was scared (scarred?) though. scared that he wasn’t what he seemed (again), scared that it was a flash in the pan and would fizzle out at any moment. 1 year & 5 months later, those fears remain unfounded. does he do things that I don’t like or like things that I don’t like? yes. I just smirk and shake my head in amusement now, instead of falling headfirst into a tailspin of doubt.
silly rabbit, trixs are for kids!
It’s not hard to separate the crush and fandom this time, since there isn’t really a fandom, at least not in the sense that I’m used to. it’s much more a show than tell fandom. not a lot of discussion happens. opinions get thrown around here and there, but in a way that isn’t begging for discourse. I find that both good and bad.
it is what it is
I’m glad I wasn’t strong enough to resist. I’m glad I’m weak.
Redbubble is having a sale on small stickers (50% off 10), so I bought a bunch to put on my laptop. it was fun typing things into the search box and seeing what creative ideas other fans had come up with to represent some of my favorite television shows and movies. my picks are ones that make references to the program without actually naming the title. it’s more mysterious that way, and will be enjoyable to see if family and friends pick up on the references without me having to tell them. will any of them guess all ten correctly? can you? four of them are television shows, five are movies, and one is neither…
why I like it
it’s so hard to put into words! and that is the beauty of the show, it’s not any one thing. the look of the show, the layers of the storyline, the character development, that feeling of not having a clue as to what’s going on but how the thrill of it feels like an amusement park ride. it’s just so unique, like nothing I’ve ever watched before.
i’m not even going to try to explain this.
favorite scene
season one: when the Shadow King takes control of David and they wreak havoc at Division 3. the security monitors show David being over the top dramatic, like a magician, snapping his fingers above his head as he makes the soldiers disappear into dust.
season two: when showing all the different realities David could exist in, he appears as a Meth addict at a diner trying to explain String Theory by using french fries.
favorite line
season one: when Clark is interrogating David and repeating back the unbelievable things that David has told him, David says “you don’t have to be a dick about it”
season two: when David comes face to face with Farouk at the fortune teller’s booth, and Farouk tells David that he needs to get up from the kiddie table and join the big boys.
favorite outfit
season one: the triangle shirt
season two: the green & black stripped shirt
confession: I bought an antique service bell at a rummage sale recently because of this scene. I randomly ring it to drive my daughter crazy.
honorable mention: this mustache
a wish
I would really like for everyone to quit referring to David as the villain. David is human, with human emotions, and truthfully? I can’t fault him for the decisions he made. were they the ‘right’ ones?
maybe not but they were damn enjoyable
unpopular opinion: I’m looking forward to seeing the David & Lenny pairing play out, platonic or otherwise.
5 words to best describe it
SWEET
Syd, the girl who can’t be touched, hugging David’s ‘inner child’
FUNNY
when Syd traded places with a catand then David carried on a conversation with her
CONFUSING
I still don’t know why.
TRIPPY
THOUGHT-PROVOKING
and it’s aesthetically pleasing too.
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as an aside- this keeps showing up on my search screen:
So you know they’re making a Downton Abbey movie, right? fans of the show would really like to see Matthew Crawley return but that seems highly doubtful, considering the way his character exited the show in season three. Recently, costars Michelle Dockery, Allen Leech, and Dan Stevens had a little reunion. Dan posted this pic on Instagram:
With this caption attached:
Costars from Legion and Beauty and The Beast chimed in:
One of my go-to Dan Stevens themed Tumblrs was deleted a few days ago. after looking around, I saw that several other Tumblrs in different fandoms suffered the same fate. evidently a paparazzi company is tracking down it’s photos through a reverse search process and making complaints, to which Tumblr is deleting the blogs completely without warning. I view Tumblr pages but I don’t have an account myself so I’m not versed in Tumblr’s TOS, but it appears that this isn’t the first time it’s made grand sweeps deleting fandom related blogs. just the thought of having either of my blogs deleted completely without a chance to save any part of them beforehand horrifies me! some of the remaining blogs are panicking now, going through their archives and deleting photos, and scrambling to hunt down the sources to see if they belong to this particular company. I’ve witnessed similar hysteria through the years, which results in the remaining blogs becoming more selective in what they post. which may be more responsible but way less fun.
My first encounter with fandom was as an active member of a fan forum. it took awhile before I understood how to post images using URL codes but I thoroughly enjoyed when others did. the next fandom I was a part of found me moderating a fan forum, which caused my online file sharing account to grow by leaps and bounds! I didn’t realize at the time that I was going against internet etiquette by not citing the sources of the images or the photographers. okay, that’s not entirely true- it’s just what everyone did, so I did it too.
The next fandom I joined started to clue me into these issues when their fan forums didn’t allow photoshoot or paparazzi photos to be posted on their sites. it cut the fun factor dramatically, in my opinion. it’s one of the main reasons I took my fangirling to blogs instead. when I started a fan blog I started to use all the images I had collected from Google images to enhance my posts, adding relevant and silly captions to accompany the gifs. when I visited Tumblr, I often saw users berating each other for reposting instead of reblogging the gifs and images, because if the source wasn’t cited then it was as if the person posting was claiming that they had made the gifs/edits themselves.
in the comments of my blog readers sometimes congratulated me for having such awesome gifs. I always pointed out that I didn’t make them myself, even going so far as to put a little disclaimer in the sidebar of the blog stating that fact. I didn’t source the gifs because a.) it would interfere with the aesthetic of my posts b.) I tended to go ‘dumpster diving’ and just browse through images without clicking on the actual page the image came from, and c.) even when I was going through the archives of a blog, I always seemed to forget to check whether that person had made the gifs themselves and if they didn’t, who did. as time went on, I knew I was breaking etiquette and it was crappy for me to do but I felt like the ownership wars I saw on Tumblr were moot. the gifs didn’t ‘belong’ to who made them in the first place, since they were scenes from movies/television or photoshoot images.
me, looking for excuses.
One of the main fansites in that fandom sent me an urgent message one day, asking me to please remove the image and audio files of hers that I had linked to on my blog because she was having a bandwidth issue and was no longer allowing hotlinking. I did understand what bandwidth was at that point because I was originally linking the images I used directly from my photo sharing account, which came with bandwidth limits. but hotlinking? I knew that hotlinking was bad but I didn’t realize that it applied to noncommercial sites too, I just thought it was in relation to the actual news sites and magazines. crap! I had been hotlinking all over the place!
life on the street
I contacted another fan site in that fandom and asked what their wishes were, since I didn’t want to offend them if I had linked to them as well. they said it wasn’t an issue for them because they didn’t have the same bandwidth problem that the other site did. they suggested that I try to upload to my own blog instead of linking, whenever possible, to avoid similar situations with other sites. so I set to work and edited all my posts with downloaded versions of the images instead of linked ones. the majority were linked to my own file sharing account anyway but it was less hassle in the long run to just upload them all to the blog. years later when Photobucket broke all the links, forcing it’s customers to purchase high priced plans, I was doubly glad I had switched mine over!
One of the bloggers I currently follow is a photographer in her ‘real’ life.
she’ll be so relieved to know.
she clued me into the issue of copyright from the photographers point of view, how when I post professional photos without permission or citing who the photographer is, it’s stealing. it’s why you can’t copy things from places like Getty Images, because you’re supposed to pay money to be able to display those photos. that’s what the news articles and magazines do because that’s how the photographer makes money, by selling their photos. oh. ohhh. yeah, I suck.
I don’t mean any harm by posting these things, I’m not making money off them or a brand name for myself. I’m a little pipsqueak of a blogger, I fly under the radar. I’m just having fun. how big do you have to be before you’re worth cracking down on, even if you’re just having fun with other people’s work? I get mad at the big bad companies who are like hawks on Youtube, swooping in and shutting down every instance of their content being used, even if it’s in seemingly insignificant fanvids. but they’re just protecting what is theirs, right?
killer of fun
Because of all this, my fangirling fun is getting smaller. the sites I enjoy have less content to view, the places I used to connect with other fans by reacting to those images aren’t as heavily populated anymore, the abundance of new sites are few and far between because they don’t want to risk getting slapped for copyright violations and the ones who do, change their tone in order to conform.
It’s a conundrum. I don’t have answers. just dirty hands.
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…I don’t make the gifs used on this blog. I just hoard them. and then get high off the satisfaction of fitting them into my posts.
