I'm always popping on and off my blogs for something, sentence here, paragraph there, and as I cruised through again this morning I screeched to a stop and thought, "Not one person on this planet doesn't look awesome in a pair of sunglasses." I linked that back in case you're interested.
Anyway, every little bit I get funny thoughts twisting fandom stuff into real life, so this morning I was musing again on how easily fans automatically leap to assumptions that people working together on a job must have a real life relationship beyond work, no matter how platonic, they must still think about each other unceasingly because the fans do. And I see this all the time on twitter, Bradley can't show up without a virtual swarm of fans asking point blank about Colin, as if his life still revolves around a former coworker and he has the same warm fuzzies for him that that fans do. What really brought this idea home was an interviewer mentioning to Martin that he'd recently interviewed Ben, and Martin said "Who?" because they hadn't seen each other in months and there are plenty of Bens around, so why should he automatically assume which Ben, right? But once actors are coupled up in fandoms, it's basically married for life, whether they have a clue that's happening or not.
I've had a variety of jobs, everything in and out of food, hospital and hotel services, radio sales, worked up in retail. I've been offered hospital administration and teaching at one of the local colleges and told I really should finish my certification in professional counseling or nursing (or what the heck, my thesis in resource planning), but I have this habit of turning down salaried positions, God knows why (I do have reasons), so it's not hard for me to cross pollinate funny visuals of celebs working menial jobs.
So imagine those two up there working a department store. They have separate lives, they only know each other through work, they're not pals outside of work. They simply work in the same building, probably run into each other because the floor plan requires it or they wind up at register together or cover for each other on breaks.
Now imagine a few other coworkers in the store going home and shipping them into fanfics. Does anybody really do this in real life about their coworkers? I've not seen it, but surely they do. I was thinking how long something like this could go on without the two guys even being aware of it, until, say, a little gang of 5 other coworkers grouping up on break was giggling every time one of them went by, or asking one about the other on his day off, or bringing up weird convos about the two of them, and the guys going Huh?
At first I thought this seemed silly, but it's kind of occurring to me how stress relieving this could be, actually. Say you have a manager you hate, and a lead over you driving you crazy, you go home and ship the two of them into these wild dirty flings and laugh yourself silly because they reeeeeallllly don't go together in real life. And you could completely reorient them sexually and have them carrying on steamy affairs on the dock or something, and wind up pulling several other coworkers into your stories (both in the stories and in real life) and really have a ball with it.
STRESS RELIEF.
Except don't get caught. I have a suspicion if you hit too close to home with shipping people you could wind up in some kind of legal entanglement.
When I retailed, there was only one other person in the whole store out of 150 people who knew what Lexx was, and I was very careful not to tell him who I was on the webs. He'd have died. (That was before I ever put a real pic of myself up on my fansite.) But every little bit a group of us would get 8-8'd to bunch up and blitz a messy area together real fast, and it was fun driving other coworkers crazy shooting Lexx quotes back and forth. It wouldn't be long until the rest joined in shooting other scifi show quotes around, everyone anteing up, and I loved it. That was probably the closest I had to actually having friends in real life, except outside of work I never saw them, and they had no idea who I really was.
That was it. I really need to get back on my day. Hope you guys are having/have had a good weekend.
