reenka

to start off on the right foot,

hpart has the most adorable remus ever, ehehehe. i just want to cuddle him and his socks (*insane laughter*). i've never wanted to cuddle remus before. hmmmmmmm....... (i know there is actually potential for him to be my favorite character, in theory, since it's quite possible i'm more like remus than anything, but eh.) (oh, and yes, her ballerina!draco pretty much kills me. and the little h/d comic~!~<3<3<3! oh my gahd! i'm feeling the love, here. a LOT. a lot, lot, lot. a whole big lot. yes. yes. i am so easy, but goddamnit, YES. guh. how adorable can you GET??! aren't there laws about this sort of thing??! i could die you know. from the cuteness. i could die, and then how will i wallow in the cuteness, huh, huh??! i... see. see? no other pairing can be this fluffy, goddamnitalltohell!!! *hyperventilates* also, wand!h/d...! and there's more! *sticks out tongue in glee*)
    and she draws awesome gw art too. *siiiigh* the love just keeps on comin'.
    and just when i thought my day couldn't get any brighter. eeeeeeeeeeee, is all i can say ^^ that -is- my favorite fan!poem ever. everevereverever. (well, okay, the last month or so.) am gelatinous goo of adoration, here.
~~

the question of "too much" keeps troubling me. i suppose i should also consider "not enough", but i have a feeling that would be too much. er.
    do i talk too much about.... do i think too much about.... am i too much of this, not enough of that...?
    am i too soft, too romantic, too obscure, too hard to know, too abstract, too obsessed, too....
    mostly, i was thinking, "too much of a romantic". i don't think i am, not really, so this is all pointless worrying, because it's not like i can (or really want to) change, or stop. i want to reach some degree of "rightness" but i don't believe it exists, even.

i know i take romance of the ever-after sort too seriously. i know i don't really take anything (especially myself) all that seriously at all (i'm too insane for that), but what if i appear so? and i believe appearances do define us in subtle ways, and that scares me.
    because almost no one else is like me, am i wrong? do i need to change? but then again, mostly, i think i'm more -right- than "them", not the other way around, so this whole line of thought is patently ridiculous, but it's hard for me to stop anyway.
    it's not that i take harry/draco all that seriously. okay, i'm obsessed, but not with them in particular as much as with what they mean to me. i was always in love with love. it's just who i am. that sort of thing can't be "wrong" but it's hard to live with.

i'm not blind. when i write stories, when i think, i am (i think) honest. i don't just write what i want to see, so that's okay, that's the important thing. but what does honesty on a personal and fiction-driven level mean in light of "truth"? is there such a thing? especially in fiction?
    perhaps i have illusions of objectivity at times. in the end, i come back to subjectivity, completely tired from trying to pull all the trailing ends together all the time.
    i'm so stubborn, comparatively. you could say it's closed-minded, but really, i'm just picky (and sentimental). it's all about pleasure, and yet i don't want it to be. i want it to mean something, i want it to feel right, which comes back to subjectivity again, just from another angle.
    i want to believe in what i'm reading, always. this isn't really about being "in-character" or "canonical" but rather, just deeply felt and well expressed. believe and also, feel that basic joy, the instinctual delight in reading, where i experience this other world and take away something from it.

most of my favorite fanfic isn't what i'd call "canonically correct" in characterization or style. i don't really care, obviously, as long as it pushes my buttons. if i wanted canon, i'd -read- canon. the point is more, i want to read some incarnation of characters i can recognize in some way, have something click. this is hard to completely define and maybe it depends on the writing skill mostly. if you're not borrowing life from existing characterizations, you'll need to bring them to life yourself. and if you're being that original, i'd say it's no longer fanfic, really (if it's ooc enough i mean)-- but it's obviously okay to not be fanfic (especially if you're good). you could just be original fic. ahem.

because yes, i do treat all this the same way i do literature (shocking to some people, i guess). all that matters is whether it matters to me as i read it, however it manages (or doesn't manage) to do it.
    but back to the "too romantic" thing. sometimes i read stuff that is very well-written and beautiful but i reject it because it doesn't "work"-- it kills them, it contradicts their rightness somehow, it steals my dream, it makes me doubt so much it's just torturous. doubt, in its way, is as insiduous and hard to combat as belief, and yet i think one actually reinforces the other. i know exactly why maya felt bad about DSoL, because i think this is how it feels, to hurt characters you love and believe don't have to be doomed, and aren't.

i deal with it by seeing it as a lesson, a parable, a nightmare, rather than quite "real", as a part of my internal history of their love.
    i could never kill draco in a story, or have harry & draco break up, or just hurt their love somehow, without feeling bad, without feeling a sense of loss and pain and horror at myself. i believe, and i can't separate the characters into separate enclosed versions of themselves, quite, for every story.
    i can't touch darkness and not feel it, not have it change me, not become an expression of it in some awy even as i express it. my writing (and in a different way, reading) is a personal journey every time. if i hurt characters i care about without giving them hope, i am cutting off my own hope, i am losing sight of that dream i cling to so much.

a lot of writers don't seem to care whether they tear apart their characters, even if "In theory" they are rooting for them too. but i think inevitably, there is less emotional involvement then. it's not that i can only bear to write (or read) fluffy happy fic, obviously.
    i'm just saying, for me, darkfic is an exploration of wrongness, a look into the abyss, a descent into the dark, frightening place insider wehere we all find out what we're made of. it's not easy to write or read or think about. i can't love it the same way as other, hopeful fics, and yet i can't forget it. it's darkness and it's needed, but it is also something to fight even as you accept it, for me, deny the inevitability of even as you embrace it.

am i too much of a romantic, then? darkness, for me, exists to point us and show us the way to the light. it is a mirror and a crucible. it's the wtin to the mirror of erised, in fics like maya's DSoL and aja's `twelfth night' and such. the destination there, the hope, the catharsis, is made to occur within the reader and the writer, more than within the story's characters. it is there to cleanse us, to confront us, to ask us the hard questions. but i refuse to see it as being "real" in the same way as a fic that includes a catharsis or resolution (ie, hope) within its arc already. its purpose and meaning seem intrinsically different to me.

i do think i resist too much though. for example, i resisted, all this time, any fic that starts off or quickly involves draco having gotten the dark mark. to me, that's like the death knell of hope, and i hate that. my kneejerk reaction is to say, harry would never accept that-- they're now doomed. i hate doom in a non-darkfic (ie, in a regular old angstfic where there's just misunderstandings and fear and anger and sadness rather than all-out tragedy & darkness).
    but i was talking to

addictedkitten yesterday, and she made me realize that you could actually use the dark mark as a way to get harry to deal with his own relationship with darkness, his insistence on pigeonholing draco, his black-and-white judgement system in general. not that anyone actually has used that effectively that way, but i was missing out, rejecting the very idea of the value of draco's becoming a death eater. it's much more difficult to create a believable romance, then, true (and isn't it all hard enough as is), but maybe it'd be a truer, more lasting love then, with harry accepting and understanding more, with harry changing too, not just draco. of course, i think it's still imperative that harry not know draco has the dark mark until he's already in love-- hooked, so to speak. until he has something to hold him there, to force him to re-evaluate things.

so, trust me (and sara) to find a way to make even being dark and supposedly unlovable conducive to romance. love is just not as inspiring, anyway, if it doesn't have a lot to overcome. the more the merrier, even. as long as it does, eventually, i'm happy.
~~

also: a surefire way to make me think you're the biggest idiot since peewee herman masturbated in that movie theater full of people is to ask why do i think harry & draco are gay. i couldn't decide what is even the -word- for that sort of stupidity. i couldn't say it directly to them without being offensive myself, but i had to say it. one of the things i hate most are questions that insult my intelligence. on the other hand, if you ask that, perhaps your insult to my intelligence can be excused, considering you are yourself, such a raging moron. yes, MORON. i'm not about to pretend i'm so nice i don't get bent out of shape when i'm confronted with things that basically boggle my mind.

how about: why did i think people who form a list intended for intelligent discussion have to be capable of such discussion themselves? i don't know, actually.
    but that is just painfully imbecilic, seriously, not to mention offensive. i can't even think of a question as stupid as that off the top of my head.
    i think, "why do i think draco is a nice (if angsty) guy?" comes close. or, "why do i think harry secretly loved snape/draco/ginny/hermione/who-the-hell-ever since year one," maybe.

big shock: he didn't. he doesn't. there's this silly little thing called "source material" and extrapolation from said source material. and then maybe you could say, "harry -could- be gay [and even then, i'd say bi] -if- blahblahblahblah". otherwise you're implying i don't know how to read.
    harry is presently asexual with hetero beginnings. gay he ain't. to even ask that displays a stunning lack of understanding of the slash mindset & of the fanfic mindset in general.
    i can't even fully express how mad this sort of question makes me. does anyone really think slashed characters simply -are- what we make them in the fanfic? do people really think draco is a sexgod, ron's homophobic, harry is suicidal, hermione's lusting after ginny, and fred & george are fuck-buddies? say what?

i am similarly offended when people pin extrapolations from fic onto authors in any other way. like if by writing h/d slash we're propagating our heartfelt belief that harry & draco are gay, what of writing ron/ginny incest? tom/harry, anyone (do we believe harry actually wants tom, wants him bad?) what of writing rapefic, deathfic, chanslash, etc. are we expressing what we believe in there, too?
    in religion & communism, you could be a saint or a heretic, simply by writing one way or the other. what i say is who i am, then, and what i believe in general. this is the fucking -root- of censorship, people. gah.

it's a small step from assuming you have to believe in what you write to attacking/discriminating against you for that supposed belief. and no, i'm not distancing myself from my fiction at all. it doesn't -matter- what i believe, not in writing -or- reading. and what sort of "belief" are we talking about, here? as in, believe within a particular story, or some over-arching, sincere "faith"? yes, i suspend my -disbelief- with any well-told story. yes, i create my own version of the characters in my head, who are in love, because i want them to be. simple as that. why? because! it's a desire to believe, yes. do i -think- (ie, rationally) that my -desires- equal facts??
    just how insulting is that question? what am i, five? i didn't believe in santa claus, yet i'm supposed to believe in a fairytale i partly made up myself? am i completely mad?

yes, i sometimes begin to believe in my own fantasies (as well as other's). i'm always teetering on the edge of delusion, okay. but even so, semi-believing in faries is different enough from proclaiming harry & draco are gay that i feel somewhat sane, most of the time, thank you very much. and yes, i will admit i think of harry & draco as in love. -my- harry & draco. not THE harry and draco in the "real world", even though they don't exist anyway, outside of jkr's books.
    i think that i get most offended by things that make me feel stupid for even thinking about them. and um. meep. i don't know how much (if any) should i post to the list. gar. i'm mean, mean, mean reena. *wibbles*
~~

EDIT:

sabworks finally drew a pic i can get behind 100% for draco, eheheheh. okay, well, er, insane!draco, but still! still! hee.
and. and. and!! i found yet another draco-centric japanese fanart site following a link from one of my favorites, here (mmmmm)~! yeayeayeayeayeayeay!! like, this & this. is. priceless~! *licks*

EDIT #2 - oh, and aja?? i found more h/d porn for us, eheheheh, courtesy of

moriavis. *cackles*