~~the sad reality in escapist fiction. heh.

[reenka]

zahra called me the `eternal optimist of h/d' and... well... yes. i've read entirely too many fairy-tales and somehow, someway, there's some meta way for everything to actually be ok even if it isn't. there's always a lesson to be learned and there's always tomorrow. and there's always the small things, for me. if you can't have this, you can have that. if you can't have your true love, you can fall in love again. if you can't have love, you can have writing. if you can't have writing, you can have running, and tasting, and smelling, and painting, and swimming, and hugging, and dancing, and dreaming. you add up all the first flowers of may and all the times you look out the window and see blue mountains in the distance, and all the times you taste pear juice and hum with pleasure, and all the times you're surprised that an old friend still wants to keep in touch-- and it's sort of ok, even if your heart is broken.

i suppose the world could blow up tomorrow and i could go blind and deaf or just really depressed... and i suppose some things go away and never come back again. things hurt a lot. people are stupid. taxes are annoying, but not as annoying as one's relatives. and so on.
    i read grail's `immortality', on penelope_z's rec, and yes, it really packs a punch. in a way, it was almost beautiful and right, the way it all came together. on the one hand, i thought clark was being a bit on the heavily unbalanced, semi-psychotic obsessive-compulsive messiah-complex-gone-amok side of things, but...


it was beautiful and painful, because i could see it, and people really do screw themselves up just this way. if clark thought he didn't deserve to live, or rather he lived only for others and not for himself, i think he would be like this. which isn't to say that it read like some sort of essay on clark & his issues, or that it didn't make my heart seize up and my chest start hurting, because it did.
    i do notice that it is the sad, wrong things that stay with me, that grab me and don't let go. i may be going along, enjoying a fic, thinking it's great, really. but i don't really pay attention until the other shoe drops. even in light-hearted fics like `underwater light', i really think the shining moments are when all the banter falls away and you just sort of have rawness and insecurity and something more real, it seems. and `love under will' didn't -really- begin to fulfill its potential before things began falling apart. this seems strange, really. it seems when things fall apart, they -rip- apart, and you see -inside- them. under pressure, torn open, you see things stripped down to their essential natures. when things are going ok, you can keep up charades and keep lying to yourself and keep pretending your life is working even though it isn't.

i don't think it's so much that you need -sadness- to grab hold of a reader's heart and get the hooks in-- i think it's more-- honesty. reality. honesty is never easy, would never go over without a lot of pain and doubt and destruction in its wake. no one is ever prepared. no one is ever ready to face themselves. and love-- if taken as far as it could go-- makes you face yourself, and your dark side.
    penelope_z's other point about the Perfect Story, and how there would be no need to write if one could only find it....yes. i suspect that there would -always- be reasons to write, no matter what, but... there -is- definitely something to the `perfect story' idea that is endlessly attractive. ever-elusive and yet if only.... if only. in a way, it's sort of that same dilemma. if only things could go just right, then life wouldn't quite have to -happen-, would it. in a way, if things went right, you can't really believe that life could happen, though (or love for that matter). without that dissatisfaction, that need for -more-... it just wouldn't be real.
    it's really interesting how this plays out, for a writer compared to a reader. in writing, you are both escaping and recreating, trying to merge the two and yet only really wanting to -feel-. to feel alive, and real, and -there-. it doesn't really matter if it's pain-- pain stays longer than pleasure, in a way, it's still pleasure, the way we chase after it, the way we're addicted. when reading, the emotions are evoked, and when writing, you are evoking them, since you already have them, so naturally it's more fun to read.
    i think another thing that stays with you as long as sadness is wonder. also, a new level of understanding. a greather depth. hopefully, a story has rearranged some things in your head. hopefully, maybe you even feel like -you're- different for reading it. that's probably what i wish for the most. not just a strong emotional response, but also a deeper sort of thing-- something to capture my imagination. something to make me believe in another way, another world even. it's that story that you read, and then you're never quite the same. it's not necessarily angsty or happy-- it's just... a mix. it feels real, and yet is different from what you always thought reality was, in subtle and hard-to-trace ways. it's that story that not only speaks to you of yourself and what you know, but of what could be, and what might be, if only. it seems to emcompass the past and the present and point towards the future. it has a mythic resonance, and taps into that deep, endless well of hope and wonder that is so intrinsic to human nature.
    this is what's beyond angst and fluff. and this is why i read mythic fiction, i think.

EDIT - ivy is so good she makes me want to cry. guh. aww, who cares, angst ist goot, and break-up fics are usually all tied up with the angst and the hopelessness and despair, but this is more subtle than that, more real, more insiduous even. because you can't always depend on love to make it all better... you have to change, and that... that doesn't ever come easy, and mostly, people don't want it to.

Comments

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

As to the eternal optimist of h/d... I rather like the idea of Harry and Draco circling eachother without ever getting to the point. It's kind of... I think at some point in a story, a good story anyway, you stop and go "yes, this is perfect;" for me h/d is more about the dynamic t han...well...about it being Harry and Draco. It;s the only way I can understand why I bother reading it because I normally loathe fanfiction with the power of a thousand burning suns (another issue entirely, mostly me being wanky about artistic integrity & so on.) Anyway, I think it was you with the so beautiful you want to fall to your knees and weep, and that's the dynamic, or what I'm trying to discuss, or something.
Good god, that was incoherent. I apologize, I have a fever.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

*giggles* i -think- i know what you mean. at least, until the beautiful and the knees, at which point i was a bit less with the knowing and more with the blinking ^^;
i think the circling forever thing is interesting, but would make for a frustrating story ^^
plus they're too real for me, kinda. they live in my head and would get cranky if they never got laid, heh.
also, less angst with less emotional investment~:)

not everything has to be happy, but it's nice to have things expand and grow.
makes for surprises, too~:)

and it's ok, because i don't make sense most times even -without- a fever, so we're even ^^

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

Hehe, fair enough. I think the..well...myself part of me likes that better. The circling, I mean. It's kind of a delicate balance, and if you do anything you could ruin the relationship, and that's never fun.
And yeah, maybe it was someone else with the knees and the weeping? In which case I can't expect that to make sense. XD