~~ gen-fic and perversion.
Apr. 28th, 2003 02:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkai think at some point we all snap. me, i snapped a long time ago, but that's neither here nor there.
i think it's an interesting sociological observation to say that the readers of jkr's books basically start applying them to themselves. i mean, there's just definitely something in that, isn't there? i see people live out the prejudices that are being delineated in the books-- not something like muggle and mudblood vs. pureblood (thank gahd), but the whole House thing. i've seen this before, but now i've finally snapped, and i need to address this issue.
it's one thing to jokingly wonder which house you'd be sorted in if you were in hogwarts. it's another to rigorously identify with said house and to claim appropriate characteristics-- as well as to actually discriminate in favor of people who likewise identify with your chosen group. so many people wonder why hermione's in gryffindor, or neville for instance. harry only seemed to get into gryffindor and not slytherin because he wanted to. obviously, this isn't really a personality test, here, initial evidence to the contrary aside.
i mean, i jokingly wore a stytherin scarf this winter, but. to say i'm slytherin (or gryffindor, or ravenclaw), would kind of frighten me (and not just because i don't think i fit well into any of the stereotypes). even in jest, i think there's an undercurrent of a true attempt at "sorting". which is both innocent and to be expect and kind of disturbing, really, isn't it?
~~
in other news.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eleveninches is my hero. she wrote a tiny ficlet. go encourage her!!! moooore!!
hee. thinking about how j_h and ps aren't putting me off h/d at all, and are in fact encouraging me, i realized that the sad truth is, i'm just a glutton for punishment. *laughs* i like the impossibleness, i like the anger and the issues and the way draco doesn't deserve harry and how horrible he is. mostly because, while i want characters i love to be happy, i don't need to them to be happy immediately or to be mentally healthy, for that matter. i think conflict and trauma and extremes of emotion and behavior are... well... more interesting than well-balanced interactions. i almost never care about pairings that are too easy. or characters, for that matter. but anyway, horrible bastards make great characters to fall in love with. tee hee. gahd, the torture. torture them with sweetness. woo!
okay, so it sounds like i have issues, doesn't it. but no, i have the stories have the issues for me. yah, that's it.
~~
reading lasair's latest entry, i was reminded of a nagging thought about the idea of "gen" fic. the idea that gen fic is more like what we normally read, more like published literature. i myself don't go in for gen fic-- published or not: i'm a genre reader by inclination. i like romance, fantasy, adventure, coming of age stories, fairytale-related things. my concern tends to be style and characterization and emotion rather than plot. a plot's interest tends to be proportional to its connectedness for the character development arc of a story.
i don't think it would be fair to say i like melodrama and sappy smut and gratuitous kissing in a story-- i just want these people to matter to me, i want to like them, i want to live inside their heads. the plot is merely a backdrop, a landscape to me. i never liked landscapes in painting, actually. it's not that i want -people- in landscapes, it's just that almost no one draws/photographs emotional landscapes. what's interesting about them is either color, texture, or emotional context. most people just wind up regurgitating a representation of place. this happens to plot, too. all you get is some sort of hodge-podge of ideas, and no real road-map as to why you're supposed to care.
gen proclaims to be about plot-- not that the romance or the fantastical elements are gone, but they're not the focus. the focus is on plot. of course, the fact is, for most people the focus is -always- on plot. everyone's obsessed with what happens on a linear scale. and then what? gets asked more than any other question about stories. and i suppose gen-fic is there to answer that question. sort of like an exercise in realism. because well-- realism isn't about romance or darkness or horror or the absurd. reality is balanced and coherent, and everything has its place but nothing dominates in the progression of events. right.
i don't know, it seems to me that's sort of the driest possible way to look at things, isn't it? because once something starts becoming drenched in emotion, the reliability of the narrator goes to hell and the interesting things begin to happen, as far as i'm concerned. somehow, it seems to me that gen-fic has no place here then, in this subjective, unreliable world. something tells me the true gen-fic depends on a third person omniscient narrator-- not sure, don't tend to read it beyond the first few pages.
i guess i'm just implying that romance and horror and absurdity and humor and fantasy have always had a huge place in literature-- that initial tradition of heroes' sagas, romantic quests, the stories of the rise and fall of the gods. now that's melodrama for you. it's not gen-fic, either-- thank the gods. this is what i was raised on, this theatrical mixture of pathos and melodrama. this is "literature" to me.
and maybe it -didn't- include romance outright-- but it -was- romance, in the old sense of being a romantic tale. love and darkness and pain and issues of identity seem to be basic to any good story to me. i suppose there are different ways of seeing the world, here-- rational and emotional. to an emotionally biased person, everything bears a semi-direct relationship with love and fear and anger-- all the basic emotions of the human id. or maybe there's a deeper separation here between things that appeal to the id and things that appeal to the ego, i don't know.
i do know i've completely left off considering the idea of "gen-fic" directly. is that sort of like saying you're vanilla? why would one -want- to read something without a generous helping of lust and angst and obsessive brooding and introspection? nono, i'm just totally becoming solipsistic now. it's late, and my brain isn't working, but i know i'm just being childish now. not everyone is me. even -i'm- not me all the time. alas.
~~
i'm slowly compiling a whole bunch of stupid recs, which i haven't posted 'cause i haven't reviewed/feedbacked/anything most of them and the guilt consumes me and so i will and -then- i can share. but.kissmeagain (aka charli j), writes hp fic so rarely, and i adore it so much, i had to say something. `one thousand instances left this'. i don't know -why- i love it. okay, i know why, but. see, this is my guilt-free rec where i didn't review, but. okay, i don't know what i'm thinking. gah. some people need to write more h/d. charli j is right up there on my List Of Doom. oh yes. oh yes.
also, i love swamps. love swamps, i do. and moors. and weird marshy places. mmm.
i think it's an interesting sociological observation to say that the readers of jkr's books basically start applying them to themselves. i mean, there's just definitely something in that, isn't there? i see people live out the prejudices that are being delineated in the books-- not something like muggle and mudblood vs. pureblood (thank gahd), but the whole House thing. i've seen this before, but now i've finally snapped, and i need to address this issue.
it's one thing to jokingly wonder which house you'd be sorted in if you were in hogwarts. it's another to rigorously identify with said house and to claim appropriate characteristics-- as well as to actually discriminate in favor of people who likewise identify with your chosen group. so many people wonder why hermione's in gryffindor, or neville for instance. harry only seemed to get into gryffindor and not slytherin because he wanted to. obviously, this isn't really a personality test, here, initial evidence to the contrary aside.
i mean, i jokingly wore a stytherin scarf this winter, but. to say i'm slytherin (or gryffindor, or ravenclaw), would kind of frighten me (and not just because i don't think i fit well into any of the stereotypes). even in jest, i think there's an undercurrent of a true attempt at "sorting". which is both innocent and to be expect and kind of disturbing, really, isn't it?
~~
in other news.
eleveninches is my hero. she wrote a tiny ficlet. go encourage her!!! moooore!!hee. thinking about how j_h and ps aren't putting me off h/d at all, and are in fact encouraging me, i realized that the sad truth is, i'm just a glutton for punishment. *laughs* i like the impossibleness, i like the anger and the issues and the way draco doesn't deserve harry and how horrible he is. mostly because, while i want characters i love to be happy, i don't need to them to be happy immediately or to be mentally healthy, for that matter. i think conflict and trauma and extremes of emotion and behavior are... well... more interesting than well-balanced interactions. i almost never care about pairings that are too easy. or characters, for that matter. but anyway, horrible bastards make great characters to fall in love with. tee hee. gahd, the torture. torture them with sweetness. woo!
okay, so it sounds like i have issues, doesn't it. but no, i have the stories have the issues for me. yah, that's it.
~~
reading lasair's latest entry, i was reminded of a nagging thought about the idea of "gen" fic. the idea that gen fic is more like what we normally read, more like published literature. i myself don't go in for gen fic-- published or not: i'm a genre reader by inclination. i like romance, fantasy, adventure, coming of age stories, fairytale-related things. my concern tends to be style and characterization and emotion rather than plot. a plot's interest tends to be proportional to its connectedness for the character development arc of a story.
i don't think it would be fair to say i like melodrama and sappy smut and gratuitous kissing in a story-- i just want these people to matter to me, i want to like them, i want to live inside their heads. the plot is merely a backdrop, a landscape to me. i never liked landscapes in painting, actually. it's not that i want -people- in landscapes, it's just that almost no one draws/photographs emotional landscapes. what's interesting about them is either color, texture, or emotional context. most people just wind up regurgitating a representation of place. this happens to plot, too. all you get is some sort of hodge-podge of ideas, and no real road-map as to why you're supposed to care.
gen proclaims to be about plot-- not that the romance or the fantastical elements are gone, but they're not the focus. the focus is on plot. of course, the fact is, for most people the focus is -always- on plot. everyone's obsessed with what happens on a linear scale. and then what? gets asked more than any other question about stories. and i suppose gen-fic is there to answer that question. sort of like an exercise in realism. because well-- realism isn't about romance or darkness or horror or the absurd. reality is balanced and coherent, and everything has its place but nothing dominates in the progression of events. right.
i don't know, it seems to me that's sort of the driest possible way to look at things, isn't it? because once something starts becoming drenched in emotion, the reliability of the narrator goes to hell and the interesting things begin to happen, as far as i'm concerned. somehow, it seems to me that gen-fic has no place here then, in this subjective, unreliable world. something tells me the true gen-fic depends on a third person omniscient narrator-- not sure, don't tend to read it beyond the first few pages.
i guess i'm just implying that romance and horror and absurdity and humor and fantasy have always had a huge place in literature-- that initial tradition of heroes' sagas, romantic quests, the stories of the rise and fall of the gods. now that's melodrama for you. it's not gen-fic, either-- thank the gods. this is what i was raised on, this theatrical mixture of pathos and melodrama. this is "literature" to me.
and maybe it -didn't- include romance outright-- but it -was- romance, in the old sense of being a romantic tale. love and darkness and pain and issues of identity seem to be basic to any good story to me. i suppose there are different ways of seeing the world, here-- rational and emotional. to an emotionally biased person, everything bears a semi-direct relationship with love and fear and anger-- all the basic emotions of the human id. or maybe there's a deeper separation here between things that appeal to the id and things that appeal to the ego, i don't know.
i do know i've completely left off considering the idea of "gen-fic" directly. is that sort of like saying you're vanilla? why would one -want- to read something without a generous helping of lust and angst and obsessive brooding and introspection? nono, i'm just totally becoming solipsistic now. it's late, and my brain isn't working, but i know i'm just being childish now. not everyone is me. even -i'm- not me all the time. alas.
~~
i'm slowly compiling a whole bunch of stupid recs, which i haven't posted 'cause i haven't reviewed/feedbacked/anything most of them and the guilt consumes me and so i will and -then- i can share. but.
kissmeagain (aka charli j), writes hp fic so rarely, and i adore it so much, i had to say something. `one thousand instances left this'. i don't know -why- i love it. okay, i know why, but. see, this is my guilt-free rec where i didn't review, but. okay, i don't know what i'm thinking. gah. some people need to write more h/d. charli j is right up there on my List Of Doom. oh yes. oh yes.also, i love swamps. love swamps, i do. and moors. and weird marshy places. mmm.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-04-28 10:16 am (UTC)but see, non-heavily-plotted, intensely emotional, personal stories are my idea of what -i- want to read as "real literature".
and just-- using "slash" or "het" as being synonymous with low-res romances and gen as the worthwhile, thoughtful fic, was setting off alarms in my head, simply because i've always looked for that melodrama and grand passion in stories, and a lack of focus on romance doesn't make a good story to me (but neither does a presence of romance, obviously).
i -know- you've described PoL as gen before, yourself, and i don't know if i agree or not. hm. it has a central slash pairing so probably not. even if it was a het pairing, it probably wouldn't be gen because of the blatantness of it.
i wasn't bringing up the normal-lit vs. non-normal-lit as much as responding to what i've noticed being there in the post, whether it was there or not.
i mean, i don't know. even in books where romance isn't the be-all-and-end-all, i personally want to care about it. i want it to matter, to make sense, to make me sigh. i dunno. i just want emotion.
romance isn't a -corner-, something in small print (to me). i don't want it to be. i want it to be vital, intrinsic, no matter how much "screen-time" it gets.
like, reading the third cat book by joan d vinge, i was disappointed-- i love reading about cat, his coming of age, his issues. i felt the romance was tacked on, unnecessary. it didn't convince me-- it was relegated to a corner. i suppose dreamfall is gennish sci-fi fantasy. i loved the first two books because they were full of emotion, full of passion-- it's the passion that makes the romance-- the romantic edge-- the romantic -tale-, not really the kissing.
but in the third book there was an actual romance, and it fell flat because it -was- just on the sidelines, just another plotline. i was like, meh.
i don't like that sort of thing, and if that is gen, well, i guess i avoid it for a reason. even though i -do- read "gen"-- ie, "just" fantasy, just scifi, just fiction. but usually, i don't read it for plot, anyway.
man, i'm making less sense than usual today ><;;
no subject
Date: 2003-04-28 10:19 am (UTC)it always means, "reena? you're about to get into hot water because you've been playing around with definitions again, -haven't -you-?". heh~:)