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reenkawah. i'm such a basketcase. but, wibbling aside, i don't know how to express what are basically semi-spiritual (not religious at all, just....) viewpoints without sounding like a milquetoast sentimental fool. at a certain point, when i'm talking about possibilities rather than necessarily realities, i forget how to be entirely rational, and i don't know if i have to be. when i say "redemption", people snap to some sort of christian ideal, and i don't mean that at all. when i say you don't have to be trapped by who you are, i don't mean you could become a saint. just because i struggle with the ideas of good and evil, doesn't mean i accept them in the first place.
this song. i want to see more viewpoints like that. i want to see love as being a revelation about yourself. not going anywhere, but merely acknowledging the madness and the need to let go of illusions. any two people i write in love-- but especially if i see them as laboring under illusion-- is it too much to want to break it? is that sentimental of me? just because i don't have the answers, do i need to accept the ones that other people think are inevitably sewn into the fabric of "reality"?
now, okay. see, i'm taking two philosophy courses this semester. take pity on me. you might say that there are places enlightenment and seeking a deeper truth shouldn't penetrate. i don't believe it. i see this idea of being a death eater, of being bound to an ideology, of being born and bred to be a certain way (savior or follower, destroyer or redeemer-- and note, riddle thinks of himself as a redeemer even as he destroys)-- i see it there as a challenge, as something that exists to be challenged. it's like-- i can never separate my desire to write about heretics, to write about non-conformism. now, you can write about that by writing about conformists, true. but i think that's too narrow. i want to write about being both. i want to write/read about draco opening his eyes. and not becoming good. and not becoming great. and not even becoming palatable.
this are so much more complicated than that. if you forget about fiction, and think about real people, you realize that. you realize that even merely -realizing- who you are, where you are-- even realizing what choices you are making-- letting that touch you-- even that self-awareness is already more than most people attain. i'm tired of black and white. i'm tired of people using the Mark as the be-all-and-end-all. i'm tired of the simplistic morality inherent in so many stories.
all i want is an approach towards self-realization-- i don't need its attainment. if anything, that's beyond the scope of most stories set within a year or two. all i want is an opening up of these characters-- seeing where you could take them, seeing where they could take you. i'm not about to claim there are any easy answers, but i think 99% of h/d stories anyway (my field of relative expertise), whether they're in-character or not, imply them.
you know what's funny?![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
verdant05 recently said that she wants to see a serious dealing with Issues in fanfic, and i rather scoffed and said, "oh, that's asking too much," sort of. heh. and here i am, implying (even if unsuccessfully) paradoxes that stumped famous philosophers. but it's not about answers, anyway. that's what i'm saying. it's not about answers. it's about questions.
i wonder if there's such a thing as being too upbeat. well, obviously there is. i don't know if i am. i get called an optimist-- as if i believe in some sort of higher order, as if i think things just -have- to work out, in the end. i don't. i just think triumph-- transcendence-- is always within one's grasp, merely a change in perspective. i think stories are most effective when they show us possibilities, rather than only limitations.
i think love can transcend tragedy. i think you can die without regrets. i think you can attain a sort of peace with darkness, merely by looking at it without flinching. a sort of belief in the invisible, in the intangible-- a belief in the strength of one's spirit-- is required here. a metaphor that keeps occurring to me is the vision of someone standing on the edge of a cliff, or a really tall building. and then they smile, looking blissful, and tumble, arms out-spread. and that moment of free-fall-- i think that moment is life itself.
it occurs to me that this is a classic tarot card image, and perhaps that's why it's so powerful to me. an interesting idea, i think, is to write harry/draco using the traditional deck. there are very heavy resonances there, i think, in terms of symbolic structures. first of all, that image makes me think strongly of The Fool. another strong h/d image (to me) is The Hanged Man, rooted as it is in contradiction and paradox, in the inexpressible, victory by surrender. The Magician. The Devil (obviously). The Lovers (especially since there's the strong duality between `the devil' and `the lovers'-- in one, you have the angel standing over the lovers, in the other you have the devil). Two of Swords. Wheel of Fortune. and also, i think, The Tower - downfall and revelation. falling. whereas `the fool' stands at the precipice, `the tower' is where it all tumbles down. ...
laughing through the tears. accepting the limitations of knowledge. believing in yourself even though you fail, and you will fail again, and again, and again. there's the connection, there-- love is also free-fall. everything tells you you will die, and pain is imminent. the wind rushing around you, there's a feeling of freedom, and exhilaration, and fear. i think it's your own decision, whether you fly or fall. i think it's a question of perspective, a direction of consciousness, a question of Will.
fatalseafood's post about harry & draco's (lack of) prospects is certainly not the first of its kind, and won't be the last. we are who we are. we can't change. war is war. who we were determines who we will be. we are trapped by our definitions, we are not at leisure to challenge what appears to be destiny. we may struggle, we may passionately desire, we may hate or we may love, but we may not change.
i don't think my reply really touched upon enough points. there is so much to say-- and yet almost nothing i can say. hope isn't something i can prove. the power of one's will-- a person's inherent ability to change-- the strength hidden inside us-- these things you have to either experience or believe in. i believe in change because if i didn't, the world would be a prison.
i'm not blind. i can see the pain, the suffering, the tragedy all around me, the seeming inevitability of it, the way people -don't- change, the way the same mistakes get made over and over. in a way, i think it is only in stories, only within imagination that anyone's ever found "the solution". war, pain, anger, fear-- they have no solution. the past is the past, and we are who we are, and love alone won't change that, yes. i think it is merely an axiom-- saying love is endless, hope is endless. and yet, it is the only way i can think of, the only solution that seems to work in my mind.
the fic i'm writing right now for the armchair challenge, is holding me up because i'm trying to deal with this huge theme of personal change, of choices. there are so many stories that either sweeten or darken everything. and yet the truth-- the multitude of possibilities for truth-- is so much more frightening, so much more vast. life is so uninteresting unless you really believe in free will. there needs to be this possibility of change-- that one day-- you can wake up and decide to take a different path. and you won't be a different person. you will still be the same person. but your actions could change-- your attitudes could change. there are many stories about this. and it is not "just love" that can save you-- love alone can't do much. what's needed is a realization of -need-, and a hope for oneself, a leap of the imagination.
maybe i simply can't believe in or desire a love that simply can't inspire you, a sort of impotent, pale imitation of emotion. if this love is impotent, if it is merely there to tease you with things you can't have, won't ever acquire the courage to attain, why bother? if we are who we are, and love is merely decorative, why bother writing about it? if at the end of the day, you are going to leave your characters where they started, why did they make the journey in the first place?
am i just talking in circles, spouting some sort of new-agey mumbo-jumbo? that's what my ex would've said. truth is, i've been in love, and it changed me, but it hadn't changed them. they remained in their shell. things only change you if you let them, a lot of the time. there's a vulnerability involved here, and a willingness to take the leap.
and wah, i'm thinking of `love under will' a lot right now (dunno if that's obvious or not), and `leap before you look', which was the quote for the last chapter of luw. *sigh* disintegration goes so hand-in-hand with completion, and danger is merely the feeling you get when the possibilities suddenly cease to be predictable and you begin to get the idea of freedom. need is only the first step. the interesting thing is, though, that as a writer, you also have to let go, to let the possibilities multiply. you can't afford to cling to your certainties, to the safe places where you think you understand how things work. it is when it begins to be painful to imagine, and unlikely, and possibly insane, that i believe you start really getting at the heart of things.
i probably made like, no sense. *sigh* just-- nothing is hopeless, most especially not love. is it really being a raging optimist to merely claim this inherent flexibility in the universe? there's no such thing as an immovable destiny. there's no such thing as inevitability in emotion. you could never convince me that there's only one valid path for someone's life to take. on the other hand, if your character doesn't find hope, doesn't change-- they're as good as dead. a static emotion, a static self is a self in the process of disintegration. even if draco -does- turn to the dark side, becomes a death eater (which i don't think he will, but no matter)-- he could stop. snape stopped. you could always just-- stop. and even though you can't really -turn around-, you could always-- take the side road. somehow.
~~
oh. andfyrie's lucius pic is... wow. i actually like it ><
EDIT - gah.antenora can do no wrong. her latest h/d ficlet simply -owns- me. waahhhh.
this song. i want to see more viewpoints like that. i want to see love as being a revelation about yourself. not going anywhere, but merely acknowledging the madness and the need to let go of illusions. any two people i write in love-- but especially if i see them as laboring under illusion-- is it too much to want to break it? is that sentimental of me? just because i don't have the answers, do i need to accept the ones that other people think are inevitably sewn into the fabric of "reality"?
now, okay. see, i'm taking two philosophy courses this semester. take pity on me. you might say that there are places enlightenment and seeking a deeper truth shouldn't penetrate. i don't believe it. i see this idea of being a death eater, of being bound to an ideology, of being born and bred to be a certain way (savior or follower, destroyer or redeemer-- and note, riddle thinks of himself as a redeemer even as he destroys)-- i see it there as a challenge, as something that exists to be challenged. it's like-- i can never separate my desire to write about heretics, to write about non-conformism. now, you can write about that by writing about conformists, true. but i think that's too narrow. i want to write about being both. i want to write/read about draco opening his eyes. and not becoming good. and not becoming great. and not even becoming palatable.
this are so much more complicated than that. if you forget about fiction, and think about real people, you realize that. you realize that even merely -realizing- who you are, where you are-- even realizing what choices you are making-- letting that touch you-- even that self-awareness is already more than most people attain. i'm tired of black and white. i'm tired of people using the Mark as the be-all-and-end-all. i'm tired of the simplistic morality inherent in so many stories.
all i want is an approach towards self-realization-- i don't need its attainment. if anything, that's beyond the scope of most stories set within a year or two. all i want is an opening up of these characters-- seeing where you could take them, seeing where they could take you. i'm not about to claim there are any easy answers, but i think 99% of h/d stories anyway (my field of relative expertise), whether they're in-character or not, imply them.
you know what's funny?
verdant05 recently said that she wants to see a serious dealing with Issues in fanfic, and i rather scoffed and said, "oh, that's asking too much," sort of. heh. and here i am, implying (even if unsuccessfully) paradoxes that stumped famous philosophers. but it's not about answers, anyway. that's what i'm saying. it's not about answers. it's about questions.i wonder if there's such a thing as being too upbeat. well, obviously there is. i don't know if i am. i get called an optimist-- as if i believe in some sort of higher order, as if i think things just -have- to work out, in the end. i don't. i just think triumph-- transcendence-- is always within one's grasp, merely a change in perspective. i think stories are most effective when they show us possibilities, rather than only limitations.
i think love can transcend tragedy. i think you can die without regrets. i think you can attain a sort of peace with darkness, merely by looking at it without flinching. a sort of belief in the invisible, in the intangible-- a belief in the strength of one's spirit-- is required here. a metaphor that keeps occurring to me is the vision of someone standing on the edge of a cliff, or a really tall building. and then they smile, looking blissful, and tumble, arms out-spread. and that moment of free-fall-- i think that moment is life itself.
it occurs to me that this is a classic tarot card image, and perhaps that's why it's so powerful to me. an interesting idea, i think, is to write harry/draco using the traditional deck. there are very heavy resonances there, i think, in terms of symbolic structures. first of all, that image makes me think strongly of The Fool. another strong h/d image (to me) is The Hanged Man, rooted as it is in contradiction and paradox, in the inexpressible, victory by surrender. The Magician. The Devil (obviously). The Lovers (especially since there's the strong duality between `the devil' and `the lovers'-- in one, you have the angel standing over the lovers, in the other you have the devil). Two of Swords. Wheel of Fortune. and also, i think, The Tower - downfall and revelation. falling. whereas `the fool' stands at the precipice, `the tower' is where it all tumbles down. ...
laughing through the tears. accepting the limitations of knowledge. believing in yourself even though you fail, and you will fail again, and again, and again. there's the connection, there-- love is also free-fall. everything tells you you will die, and pain is imminent. the wind rushing around you, there's a feeling of freedom, and exhilaration, and fear. i think it's your own decision, whether you fly or fall. i think it's a question of perspective, a direction of consciousness, a question of Will.
fatalseafood's post about harry & draco's (lack of) prospects is certainly not the first of its kind, and won't be the last. we are who we are. we can't change. war is war. who we were determines who we will be. we are trapped by our definitions, we are not at leisure to challenge what appears to be destiny. we may struggle, we may passionately desire, we may hate or we may love, but we may not change.i don't think my reply really touched upon enough points. there is so much to say-- and yet almost nothing i can say. hope isn't something i can prove. the power of one's will-- a person's inherent ability to change-- the strength hidden inside us-- these things you have to either experience or believe in. i believe in change because if i didn't, the world would be a prison.
i'm not blind. i can see the pain, the suffering, the tragedy all around me, the seeming inevitability of it, the way people -don't- change, the way the same mistakes get made over and over. in a way, i think it is only in stories, only within imagination that anyone's ever found "the solution". war, pain, anger, fear-- they have no solution. the past is the past, and we are who we are, and love alone won't change that, yes. i think it is merely an axiom-- saying love is endless, hope is endless. and yet, it is the only way i can think of, the only solution that seems to work in my mind.
the fic i'm writing right now for the armchair challenge, is holding me up because i'm trying to deal with this huge theme of personal change, of choices. there are so many stories that either sweeten or darken everything. and yet the truth-- the multitude of possibilities for truth-- is so much more frightening, so much more vast. life is so uninteresting unless you really believe in free will. there needs to be this possibility of change-- that one day-- you can wake up and decide to take a different path. and you won't be a different person. you will still be the same person. but your actions could change-- your attitudes could change. there are many stories about this. and it is not "just love" that can save you-- love alone can't do much. what's needed is a realization of -need-, and a hope for oneself, a leap of the imagination.
maybe i simply can't believe in or desire a love that simply can't inspire you, a sort of impotent, pale imitation of emotion. if this love is impotent, if it is merely there to tease you with things you can't have, won't ever acquire the courage to attain, why bother? if we are who we are, and love is merely decorative, why bother writing about it? if at the end of the day, you are going to leave your characters where they started, why did they make the journey in the first place?
am i just talking in circles, spouting some sort of new-agey mumbo-jumbo? that's what my ex would've said. truth is, i've been in love, and it changed me, but it hadn't changed them. they remained in their shell. things only change you if you let them, a lot of the time. there's a vulnerability involved here, and a willingness to take the leap.
and wah, i'm thinking of `love under will' a lot right now (dunno if that's obvious or not), and `leap before you look', which was the quote for the last chapter of luw. *sigh* disintegration goes so hand-in-hand with completion, and danger is merely the feeling you get when the possibilities suddenly cease to be predictable and you begin to get the idea of freedom. need is only the first step. the interesting thing is, though, that as a writer, you also have to let go, to let the possibilities multiply. you can't afford to cling to your certainties, to the safe places where you think you understand how things work. it is when it begins to be painful to imagine, and unlikely, and possibly insane, that i believe you start really getting at the heart of things.
i probably made like, no sense. *sigh* just-- nothing is hopeless, most especially not love. is it really being a raging optimist to merely claim this inherent flexibility in the universe? there's no such thing as an immovable destiny. there's no such thing as inevitability in emotion. you could never convince me that there's only one valid path for someone's life to take. on the other hand, if your character doesn't find hope, doesn't change-- they're as good as dead. a static emotion, a static self is a self in the process of disintegration. even if draco -does- turn to the dark side, becomes a death eater (which i don't think he will, but no matter)-- he could stop. snape stopped. you could always just-- stop. and even though you can't really -turn around-, you could always-- take the side road. somehow.
~~
oh. and
fyrie's lucius pic is... wow. i actually like it ><EDIT - gah.
antenora can do no wrong. her latest h/d ficlet simply -owns- me. waahhhh.
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no subject
Date: 2003-03-12 02:09 pm (UTC)seems we were saying almost the same thing in two different languages. yours, of course, seems to be so much more eloquent than mine.
and i *do* believe in draco changing. i believe in him changing for love, for harry. but i do not believe in him becoming someone else, even for harry. draco is draco, and i can't see -don't *want* to see- anything or anyone changing that. i cannot see his beliefs and opinions warping so much that he would no longer be the heir of lucious malfoy, death-eater in training.
i have hope in love, and i have hope in someone as petty and childish as canon!draco being in love and changing for that love. but i also have hope in people being always, *always* honest with themselves, and the way i see draco, he would only betray himself if he betrayed his beliefs. (i am one of the people that thinks that voldemort's plan makes sense, ultimately, and therefore i do not feel disgust at the thoguth of draco being a death-eater. disappointment, yes, if he's a follower with no opinions of his own, but not disgust, because if i were in his shoes i'd have the same convinctions.)
wah. i still make no sense. sorry. blame it on exhaustion.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-12 02:29 pm (UTC)and i'm not saying that draco -has- to stop being into that whole death eater thing, but ultimately any sane person wouldn't really follow voldemort, whether they thought his "ideas" had any merit or not, simply because voldemort is an insane sociopath. so is draco's father. anything he got taught by them isn't something that would withstand any rigorous scrutiny, i'm pretty sure.
and it's not that i want draco to become "smarter than all that rubbish", but it's just-- death eaters are petty murderers in deed if not in ideal. mindless slaughter of mudbloods and some muggles isn't anything you can do long-term without losing your humanity. i mean, i don't think snape lost his humanity, but then, he -stopped-, and his whole soul is twisted, i think, anyway.
maybe the isolation of the wizarding world has merit, but the answer isn't dictatorship and liberal use of murder and basically mind-control.
i may not approve entirely of dumbledore or the ministry or even harry's ideas of what's a good idea, but quite obviously the death eaters have even worse ideas. things are not -that- relative-- not in the world jkr constructed. she made the death eaters stupid, small-minded, even mindless followers of basically absolute evil. voldemort doesn't have shades of grey. not even tom riddle really has shades of grey, canonically, i don't think. no sane person could follow them without becoming a sociopath.
ideas and execution are different things.
ideas and ideals don't define you-- you can change your mind without changing some essence of yourself. but your actions -do- define you, and you can never really be free of them. if you murder innocents, that will never change. you can retain some semblance of sanity, you can leave that person behind-- but the stain will always be there. it will always be a part of you, yes. but things you believed, grew up with? that's where it gets more complicated.
there are lots of examples in real life, of people growing up in extreme ideological environments. catholicism, communism, and so on. it never entirely leaves you, but most people actually question these things and let them go as they grow up. people give up ideologies all the time-- without changing their core selves. it's not a question of -having- to, it's just-- a question of being -able- to. you're not inherently stupid if you remain a communist having been born one, but if you're incapable of questioning that and discarding it if you understand it to be unviable, then you are merely a brain-washed sheep, and honesty has nothing to do with it.
i do want honesty. honesty would tell draco that he hasn't been honest a day in his life. he's been blindly parroting back things he's been told (about everything-- potter, weasleys, mudbloods, slytherins, voldemort, blahblahblah). he wants to be a perfect little slytherin, and he's a failure at that, really. he's a petty little bully, lashing out because of envy, because he feels inadequate-- and he -is- inadequate. he's not lucius-- and even lucius is a stupid little toady.
being a toady isn't honest, or admirable. he can remain slytherin-- snape is slytherin-- and not be a stupid, mindless follower, as he'd need to be to believe in being a death eater, because that's what being a death eater -means-, rather like being a nazi meant you were a stupid mindless sheep. that's all~:)
no subject
Date: 2003-03-12 02:54 pm (UTC)i am also right.
i think it depends on how you see and how you interpret canon.
my interpretation and vision is different from yours, and that is normal. no two people can read a text the same way, and no two people can see a chracter the same way.
i will not be able to explain my vision to anyone, because the way i see hp is purely unique and personal. and i think that goes for everyone.
i truly enjoyed this...shall we call it debate? discussion? but it is rather redundant, in a way, because i like my interpretation of canon, and you like yours. otherwise neither of us would be here. and while i enjoy learning more about the books and hearing what other people have to say (you, especially, often raise excellent points in your posts) i still keep to my own opinions. and i realize that you weren't trying to convince me of the Ultimate Right, but you are more intelligent and eloquent than i, and i hate losing arguments (debates, discission, whatever). :)
rereading that, i realzie that what i said could be interpreted as offensive. if so, sorry, i meant no offence at all. i really did enjoy our discussion, and i hope to talk to you more, on this subject or on another.
:)
~Sushi~
no subject
Date: 2003-03-12 02:57 pm (UTC)aww, that's not true. or rather, that's sort of sad. i think you do express yourself well. er. i'm sorry if i seem intimidating. *giggles* that is a weird idea, for me ><
oh, and you didn't offend me at all. i just bat at windmills all the time~:)
no subject
Date: 2003-03-12 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-03-12 03:19 pm (UTC)I just noticed you sort of equating Catholicism with a cult. I mean, not really, but you referred to it as being Other. And it always makes me sad that Americans seem to think of Catholicism as being something so outré. Maybe the American brand of Catholicism (like everything America does with religion - sheesh - hell, where I live, ANY kind of religious advertising that promotes a particular religion is banned, so we sure don't get televangelism) is weird and crazy or summat, but the Catholicism I know is what everybody was brought up with (even for people like me, who declared atheism at the age of five, Catholicism was the comforting norm around, to the point where I wanted to get married in a church when I was a kid despite not believing in any of it). Maybe I'm culturally biased towards it. But, I mean, it wasn't any secret cult. It was the friendly priest down the road that you could have a cuppa with, it was the stories in class of mustard-seeds, it was the church your choir sang at. And celibacy of priests wasn't perverted, it was just - normal. Priests are busy dealing with their parishes; priests don't have time for families, ergo celibacy. And there weren't weird idolatries, just that little statue of the Virgin Mary you see dotted around in a nice familiar way.
I have no idea why I went on that long rant. Your post just sparked something that really bothers me when I hear Americans talking about Catholicism. And I kind of want to defend it, because I was an atheist and it was still nice to me and I liked it being around.
sorry, honestly, I so sound like I'm accusing you of something. And I really amn't.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-12 03:29 pm (UTC)i mean, people are all frightened that they've lost any sense of spirituality or connection with what they used to take for granted, and they become fanatics, foaming at the mouth. i mean-- it's so conservative, so reactionary, so blindingly resentful of society. so much censorship and "going back to the roots" and all that.
americans are pretty afraid of themselves.
and i guess i wasn't realizing i was just talking about this one small corner of the world. catholicism in general, though, has always been narrow and conservative when threatened. i mean, it's generous when it's settled in, but when it's trying to conquer, when it's being challenged by times changing or by having to convert-- it's just frightening to me. a lot of really awful things have been done in its name over the ages-- and of course christianity and judaism and islam and all religion. wah. naturally it is also a source of peace and reassurance and tranquility, a source of comfort.
people get pretty feral about their comfort for some reason.
weird, that.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-12 03:45 pm (UTC)Yep. Catholic church can be damn scary sometimes.