Franz Herz

How I Met Kris Allen and Let Him Ruined My Life (lol)

(Part 2)

Acknowledging the existence of American Idol Season 8 has introduced things I never anticipated to my life. I'd 

never find myself this stupefied and lambertgasted flabbergasted at the age of 19. Allow me to elucidate.

Few months after discovering Kris, sometimes I randomly googled him up. I reached sites and forums such as the old IDF, mjsbigblog, Just Jared, TMZ, and anything. At that point I only knew he won over Adam, how he's friends with Adam, and other trivialities like how people admired his performances, hotness, side jaw, how people adored/envied his wife, Katy, some interviews and funny stories behind the scenes, you name it.

One day I remembered my high school friend used to write K-Pop fanfics. She showed me her account on a certain website and later her fics. I was amazed that she wrote them and I never knew people would write fics about real people (I knew they do about fictional characters but not real people). Whether it's for stretching their creativity muscles or plainly escaping reality or just imagining their idols in situations and stories for their entertainment, putting real people into a story and the fact it was popular were news to me.

I was green to fan fictions about real people.

Curious without any hesitations and assumptions, I searched for "Kris Allen fanfics" and landed on fanfiction.net. I was surprised that people did write fictional stories about him. "Wow I can't wait to read one!", I said while scrolling to see just how plentiful the fics were there. I was just too astounded by the results.

Despite my sloppiness I found one that intrigued me. Note: The link is to AO3 but I did read it on fanfiction.net at first.

Quote

 

Lovers on the Balcony

Beauty and the Beast meets Kradam! Kris Allen lives in prejudiced times. Gay people are executed for their ungodly behavior. What happens when he falls in love with a beautiful girl who just so happens to be a prince under a witch's spell? Will he accept love or let it slip away? And will he break the curse or is Prince Adam doomed for all eternity?

 

Now you might not believe me and I didn't even believe myself, but I was just as dense as Chris Redfield that I dismissed: the title, "Kradam", "Gay people". I was focused on the "Beauty and the Beast" that my mind was occupied by how creative the author was to make a parody of Beauty and the Beast into a Kris Allen fic. I'd like to see how the story turned out. Silly me didn't even question the very synopsis of the fic.

The story began with how the conceited Prince Adam Lambert was cursed by the enchantress but instead of a beast, he was turned into a girl. By this point I cracked my self up too hard, forgetting how I was meant to read fics about Kris. What a random modification of the story! What purpose did it serve to? And I just thought, "Okay, so this fic actually features not one but two idols. Neat!" I continue reading.

Despite what should had been obvious from the interaction between these two characters, It took me a slightly more than a halfway of the story to actually realize who Kris was equivalent to. I narrowed my eyes and furrowed my brows as the story went on. The pinnacle of my disbelief was this scene:
 

Quote

 

Kris reached down to offer his hand to Josh. Josh had other ideas though. "I'd rather die than accept help from either of you." He raised the knife still clutched in his hand and drove it into Adam's side. Adam cried out in pain and nearly lost his grip. Kris quickly grabbed his hand before he could fall. "I'll see you both in Hell," Josh said. He let go of Adam's hand and fell to the ground. The villagers below stood stunned around his broken body.

 

and without a doubt the ensuing scenes.

I know it's for the sake of the story but Josh, if you were smarter you could've lowered your ego and pretended you were good in terms with them and with the right timing you can just betrayed and push both of them to death. I guess people back then was just not that bright.

By the end of the story, I took a slight moment to ask myself "... what exactly did I just read?" I went back to the main search results and found out in the end that these are slash fics. Hold on, seriously? People write this stuff?

As a person who's new into fandom culture, I was shocked how these two were even paired? I had to deal with the fact that:

1. People write fanfics about real people.
2. People ship between the characters.
3. People ship between characters of the same sex.

It wouldn't be surprising if they were all fictional or some original characters but these people are real. For some reason I tried to present myself with these witty, challenging questions:

1. It's not that these two are gay in real life, right?
2. Kris is already married why would anyone ship him with Adam?
3. Why would anyone has the nerve to ship them knowing it's not based?
4. Are fandom people this delusional?"

It was an uncanny experience and the above "mystery" was later dismantled one by one in its own way.

1. I read a Wikipedia article about Adam, thus knowing his sexuality.

2.+3. I stumbled upon random clips and interviews that screamed the bromance out loud.

4. I learned that shipping culture has no boundaries. (All Supernatural gay jokes now make sense to me)

Oh..... Oh........

In hindsight although I don't really ship Kradam or real public figures in general, I won't have problems reading fics (not necessarily shipping) as long they meet my standard, which perhaps are a bit tricky (personal exceptions might apply):

• Possess marvelous quality in terms of writing (very subjective).
• Has a riveting plot/not written only for the sake of shipping (you know what I mean).
• Create enough suspension of disbelief that has a noticeable perception differences between fiction and reality. I find this hard to explain myself but I want to think the characters in the fic (mostly) stay in the fic, not blurring my perception to the real world counterparts, without giving them too much out of characteristic traits. (bad at explaining; might edit later)