Business Casual Superstar
Fan-fiction scares me, because it's a little too meta. Eventually the fictional characters will become sentient and steal my body. That could happen, probably.
Remember last week, when I talked about fandom? Remember how I said that from now on, I was going to bring in all sorts of wacky things from a given character's fandom pairings? IT IS SO ON, YOU GUYS. :D
To mark the occasion, I wanted to pick a special character for today, my first real, deliberate attempt to show you how wacky and insane and butt-paralyzingly terrible fandom can be most of the time. So I finally settled on my first male character - Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory. There probably aren't a lot of guys that read this, but for the two of you that do, maybe you'll like this.
Also, this look can easily be modified for the girls. I had a phase in my last year of college and first year after college where I wore lots of graphic t-shirts, often with super heroes and random math jokes. In high school, there was this one kid in my AP Calc class who used to wear this t shirt that had the math formula: ∫e^x = f (u)^n.
Wait for it.
Wait for it....
Ah, now you get it. :)
So you guys know about Sheldon, right? He's the alpha-nerd on the Big Bang Theory, a CBS sitcom that airs before How I Met Your Mother. The fourth season is about to start, and I can't wait. I love the whole gang! Sheldon is a theoretical physicist, highly neurotic, who lives with his friend Leonard, an experimental physicist, in Pasadena, CA. They both work at CalTech, and are often visited at the apartment by their friends Rajesh (Raj) Kuthrapali, an astrophysicist, and Howard, an engineer. Penny, a cute 22 year old blonde chick played by Kaley Cuoco, lives across the hall. Leonard had a huge crush on her for years and she eventually fell in with the gang, even though Sheldon seems to sometimes barely tolerate her, and she sometimes has absolutely no idea what's going on. Penny and Leonard went on one date, broke up, got back together a year later and dated for a while before breaking up when Leonard dropped a premature ILY. (That's I Love You in fandom-speak.) They all managed to remain friends, which is good, because I love those nerds.
Here's a picture of my guy Shelly, whose nickname is Moon Pie. His memaw calls him that, because he's "nummy-nummy, and she could just eat [him] up."
Here he is with Leonard's mother after having just gotten a brain scan. He's complaining that he never liked his left temporal lobe, which causes Leonard's mother, a genius psychiatrist, to respond, "Ah, yes, a typical complaint among men. Nothing's ever big enough."
A-ha-haaaa. How droll.
And true.
In preparation for this post, I hit up Fandom Secrets. It's a great LiveJournal community inspired by PostSecret, where fans put together secrets in GIF/JPG/PNG files that have something to do with their relationship to a particular fandom. It's a great place to go when you just want to rejoice in how normal you are, without any strange ego complexes or sexual deviance.
Here's one of the secrets I found about Shelly.
Now, I'm not saying there's anything physically wrong with Jim Parsons, who plays Sheldon, and is up for an Emmy this year. There isn't. He's a good-looking guy with pretty eyes, and seems really witty and charming (in an understated, accessible way) from the random talk shows I've seen him on.
But I wouldn't call him gorgeous. I'd call Ben McKenzie gorgeous. Because he is. I feel this way even though I have only seen 1.5 episodes of The OC. But he's still drop-dead gorgeous. (But then again, I have a thing for Irish boys. Always have.)
So I'm going to agree with the OP (Original Poster in fandom-speak). Sheldon isn't gorgeous, and neither is Jim Parsons. He's perfectly good looking in his own way, but I would not call him drop-dead gorgeous.
But it brought up what I thought was an interesting point. Sheldon's sexuality is never really discussed on the show, except occasionally in order to negate it. Once the guys had a conversation with Penny and alluded to how they always presumed that Sheldon was asexual.
That makes perfect sense to me. Sheldon barely understands social paradigms - relating to other people. He doesn't realize that it's inappropriate to ask Leonard's girlfriend in S2 if Leonard satisfied her sexually in bed. He doesn't understand that it's customary to give a gift on someone's birthday. He doesn't realize that he can't sit down next to a 5 year old girl at a bookstore, in the kids' department, and offer to take her to the zoo and be her friend. (Leonard had to drag him away, warning him not to look up because there were cameras.)
Sheldon doesn't get these social constructs, which is why it totally makes sense to me that he's even more out of his element when it comes to girls - to the point that he just seems not to have a sexual drive. He admits it occasionally, that he doesn't get girls and he doesn't value procreation or intercourse at all, and seems to despise it, partly out of what I have to assume is a mild fear stemming from his lack of understanding. After all, he's Sheldon Cooper. He knows all.
But, predictably, fandom is obsessed with sexualizing this, in my opinion, asexualized character. There is a HUGE contingent in the BBT fandom that ships Penny and Sheldon. They call them Paradoz. You know, like how Brad and Angelina are Brangelina, Sheldon and Penny are Paradox. It doesn't really matter that their names don't form that portmanteau at all. Eh. Whatever.
Want to see their fanlisting? Because they have one, called In Any Other Universe. Fanlistings are serious business in fandom. Each couple, character, actor, actress, television show, book, play, etc, has one OFFICIAL fanlisting. Basically, you buy a custom URL, set up a pretty graphic, make a very bare-bones web page not really listing anything but affiliates (other fanlistings you might own, or the fanlistings owned by friends of yours), and invite people to join. Everyone who joins gets a number in the order he or she joined, to be displayed proudly in signatures on message boards. There are also codes, which are images that are 25x50 or 50x50 or 50x100 or 100x200 that can be displayed in your signature or on your own message board, inviting people to also join this fanlisting that you are a part of. Member names are listed on the fanlisting's page, and that's about it. The page occasionally gets updates about random things, but isn't a comprehensive site for the couple AT ALL. Do not make that mistake, you guys.
See? Here's Sheldon and Penny's fanlisting.
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OMG you guys should totally join! I would, but I have a life.
But yes, omg, fandom LOVES Sheldon and Penny. Now, I'm a part of the BBT fandom by default, just because I love the show. I don't visit any of the sites or forums or make fan art or write fic or make fanvids or fan mixes because, hello, life, but I'm still a part of the fandom just because I like the show. I'm sure the BNFs (Big Name Fans, the very popular posters on the message boards with lots of posts and influence) would disagree, but what do I care what random nerds on the interwebz think?
Anyway, while I was poking around in the SxP fandom, I found this YouTube series that seems to be a bunch of cartoon images with audio clips from the show. In this one, Sheldon and Penny wake up...in bed...in Vegas...wearing wedding rings. Observe.
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It's called "The Vegas Conjugality" and it is ridiculous. I kind of like the way the characters were drawn, though - talent!
And there's fic, too, in case you guys thought that it stopped at fan art and fanlistings and fan vids. No, no, there's fic. Let me share some of the ones I found before I tried to kill myself.
This one is actually kind of cute, but I'm still squicked by it. The premise is that Sheldon and the nerds are talking about life experiences and Sheldon realizes he's never kissed anyone. So Penny agrees to help him out with his research and kisses him, and then Sheldon tries to record his observations and can think of nothing to write. It's not OOC (Out Of Character, a term in fandom used typically to refer to fanfic), but actually stays surprisingly true to the show. The characters are themselves, the story isn't stupid or silly or overdramatic. It's understated and kind of cute, like I said.
But still. There is a kiss. Involving Sheldon. Which is why I'm squicked about it.
Moving on...not that you guys want to...BUT I AM MAKING YOU A BWA HAHAHA THE INTOXICATING POWER.
The Pie Crust Exercise Rated PG-13
This one upsets me. It starts out harmlessly: Sheldon's memaw is coming to visit and she wants Penny to make her famous apple pie, so she sends her the recipe. Penny doesn't know how to bake. Sheldon insists that cooking is an art while baking is a science, so he can help her. They end up covered in flour and making out, and I end up in the fetal position sucking my thumb.
DO YOU SEE WHAT I ENDURE FOR YOU GUYS? JUST SO YOU CAN UNDERSTAND HOW CRAZY FANDOM IS?!
But that's nothing compared to...*gulp*....this one. It's not Sheldon and Penny, but Sheldon and someone else from this show.
:-|
If you clicked that, I'm sorry. Not from any kind of homophobic standpoint. I'm just severely traumatized because THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN. Ugh. My eyes. MY EYES!
Whoops, wrong fandom.
Now that everyone is traumatized, let's get to today's outfit.
Classic Khaki (Straight Fit) in Chino Tire .......... $49.50 Chest Stripe Tee in Ink Blue .......... $7.50 Long Sleeve Red Tee .......... $9.99 Zig-Zag Hopsack Oxford in Black .......... $32
The guys' pants always look too tight to me. Especially Howard's. That's not good for certain biological characteristics. Unless you just don't want to have kids, in which case it's the way to go. So I went with straight-leg pants, something Leonard would wear. I have a sneaking suspicion that Jim Parson's Sheldon-pants are actually skinny jeans, but he's so thin that they look straight-legged.
Anyway, here are some grey pants. They kind of match the ink blue shirt with the stripes, under which I added this long sleeve red tee. Sheldon almost always layers his tees, and goes for contrasting colors more often than matching colors, like I did here.
The guys usually wear Chucks when they're just hanging out (and sometimes at the university) so I went with dressier looking sneakers.
This is kind of a preppy-hipster look, one that embodies Sheldon's style, but dressed up a bit, and is totally work-appropriate.
Also, sorry about the pr0n.
:-|
Posted by Huma Rashid on Jul 28, 2010 @ 7:07 am
