~~ to sum up: wibble.
Jun. 3rd, 2003 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkathis is stupid, but.
i just realized that the hardest thing for me to write, hands down, out of all possible plots and all possible stories, is h/d where draco doesn't really love harry.
i can write about them dying, i can write about rape, murder, disease, disillusionment, break-up, jealousy, apathy, hatred, abuse, evil, anything, anything, even if i haven't yet.
but just a sincere, simple lack of love (given they're together to begin with) makes me want to run away screaming into the night.
i don't care if the character never shows it, or never realizes it in himself, or in fact believes something completely false. i don't care if they never get together, remain antagonistic, become friends-but-not-lovers, leave each other, hurt each other, betray each other, kill each other.
the idea that the thing is, one of them simply doesn't love the other is like... armageddon. i simply can't deal with it. my mind shuts down. i gibber and whine and want to cling to the skirts of somebody suspiciously maternal and non-existent because i never -did- that when i was -three-, forget now.
i'm not sure if this is a function of how i see having an otp, or just me being a basketcase, or what. but fact remains, i read and write romance because i -need- it. i need to believe it. i realize that as a serious writer, i need to be able to write about all the range of human relationships, which includes false love, deceptive love, love that never works out or really -flowers- into anything -true-. people are together for all sorts of stupid reasons. sometimes yes, for comfort, for reassurance, just not to be alone, just because they need -somebody-, somebody to validate them, somebody to hold them, just because it's easy. yes.
maybe it strikes too close to home, i don't know.
this is when it becomes obvious i've invested -way- too much into them. at the point where i can't let them go, play with them this way and that, the way any author plays with their characters. they're not free to not love each other, and that's just scary. sigh.
maybe it's just that i think pretending is the worst possible of all fates, when it comes to love. playing at it, imagining you have what you don't. that's a complete nightmare, worse than any other betrayal, even though mostly, it's a consenting sort of thing where people just need the fiction to feel better. but that doesn't make it any more palatable, to me.
it's sort of like finding out that you're really not special at all. it's like, there is no beauty. if they're not in love, how does love even -exist-? and if love doesn't exist, what's the point of anything? what's the point of them existing at all, if they don't love each other?? i may as well kill them off and put them out of their misery.
that is why.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hackthis tends to call me the eternal optimist of h/d, because anytime she'd write a fic where it all falls apart and for instance, harry realizes that draco and him just don't work or it's not really real and was all based on a lie-- like `anatomy of a dysfunctional relationship', most recently-- i'd say, but no, see, this can't be the entire story, and in the future... and what they don't know yet is....
i guess i'm just terrified, more than anything. terrified of this black hole, this place where love doesn't reach, where the thing i put so much faith in is null and empty. sometimes it had seemed like i love them almost as much as they must love each other. if i wrote them not-in-love, i would be sort of mutilating my own heart. which sounds extreme. but it's true.
i mean. maybe i can write it, but i'd have to have them break up and be -happy- about it, in the end. i dunno, be friends or something, and closer for it. sometimes these things don't work out, and you realize a relationship doesn't work, but then it was never -supposed- to, and that makes realizing that a -good- thing.
it's also just that-- in the end, i think love is so easy. you can say, well, this draco doesn't love harry, he just loves that harry loves him, and needs what harry gives him. but... but... false love turns -into- real love. by going through the motions of loving, if you're sincere, you do, in the end, love. all you need is to open up your heart, and someone's love can kindle your own. love breeds love. you can grow to love somebody, especially somebody as beautiful as harry. how can draco not?? how can he not? how? is he completely dead inside? if so, what makes harry love him in the first place? harry wouldn't waste his love on draco, not with their history between them. something strong, something irresistable would have to pull them together, like a force of nature. how can the connection be weak or one-way, and still bring together people with as much reason to stay apart and in hate as harry & draco?
when i was younger-- i dunno, when i was 13-16 or so-- i -hated- the idea of "growing to love" somebody. hated it. made me think of arranged marriages and cultured love like cultured pearls. i realized it -could- be done, but -why-? what's the point? artificial beauty, stripped of the wildness and unpredictable force of love seems flat and pointless. sigh.
gahd, i can't believe i'm freaking out about this ><;;
back to um... beta-then-qaf-because-even-i-know-there-are-more-important-things-than-gay-sex. or not, 'cause i'm betaing gay sex. heeee. ^^
i just realized that the hardest thing for me to write, hands down, out of all possible plots and all possible stories, is h/d where draco doesn't really love harry.
i can write about them dying, i can write about rape, murder, disease, disillusionment, break-up, jealousy, apathy, hatred, abuse, evil, anything, anything, even if i haven't yet.
but just a sincere, simple lack of love (given they're together to begin with) makes me want to run away screaming into the night.
i don't care if the character never shows it, or never realizes it in himself, or in fact believes something completely false. i don't care if they never get together, remain antagonistic, become friends-but-not-lovers, leave each other, hurt each other, betray each other, kill each other.
the idea that the thing is, one of them simply doesn't love the other is like... armageddon. i simply can't deal with it. my mind shuts down. i gibber and whine and want to cling to the skirts of somebody suspiciously maternal and non-existent because i never -did- that when i was -three-, forget now.
i'm not sure if this is a function of how i see having an otp, or just me being a basketcase, or what. but fact remains, i read and write romance because i -need- it. i need to believe it. i realize that as a serious writer, i need to be able to write about all the range of human relationships, which includes false love, deceptive love, love that never works out or really -flowers- into anything -true-. people are together for all sorts of stupid reasons. sometimes yes, for comfort, for reassurance, just not to be alone, just because they need -somebody-, somebody to validate them, somebody to hold them, just because it's easy. yes.
maybe it strikes too close to home, i don't know.
this is when it becomes obvious i've invested -way- too much into them. at the point where i can't let them go, play with them this way and that, the way any author plays with their characters. they're not free to not love each other, and that's just scary. sigh.
maybe it's just that i think pretending is the worst possible of all fates, when it comes to love. playing at it, imagining you have what you don't. that's a complete nightmare, worse than any other betrayal, even though mostly, it's a consenting sort of thing where people just need the fiction to feel better. but that doesn't make it any more palatable, to me.
it's sort of like finding out that you're really not special at all. it's like, there is no beauty. if they're not in love, how does love even -exist-? and if love doesn't exist, what's the point of anything? what's the point of them existing at all, if they don't love each other?? i may as well kill them off and put them out of their misery.
that is why.
hackthis tends to call me the eternal optimist of h/d, because anytime she'd write a fic where it all falls apart and for instance, harry realizes that draco and him just don't work or it's not really real and was all based on a lie-- like `anatomy of a dysfunctional relationship', most recently-- i'd say, but no, see, this can't be the entire story, and in the future... and what they don't know yet is.... i guess i'm just terrified, more than anything. terrified of this black hole, this place where love doesn't reach, where the thing i put so much faith in is null and empty. sometimes it had seemed like i love them almost as much as they must love each other. if i wrote them not-in-love, i would be sort of mutilating my own heart. which sounds extreme. but it's true.
i mean. maybe i can write it, but i'd have to have them break up and be -happy- about it, in the end. i dunno, be friends or something, and closer for it. sometimes these things don't work out, and you realize a relationship doesn't work, but then it was never -supposed- to, and that makes realizing that a -good- thing.
it's also just that-- in the end, i think love is so easy. you can say, well, this draco doesn't love harry, he just loves that harry loves him, and needs what harry gives him. but... but... false love turns -into- real love. by going through the motions of loving, if you're sincere, you do, in the end, love. all you need is to open up your heart, and someone's love can kindle your own. love breeds love. you can grow to love somebody, especially somebody as beautiful as harry. how can draco not?? how can he not? how? is he completely dead inside? if so, what makes harry love him in the first place? harry wouldn't waste his love on draco, not with their history between them. something strong, something irresistable would have to pull them together, like a force of nature. how can the connection be weak or one-way, and still bring together people with as much reason to stay apart and in hate as harry & draco?
when i was younger-- i dunno, when i was 13-16 or so-- i -hated- the idea of "growing to love" somebody. hated it. made me think of arranged marriages and cultured love like cultured pearls. i realized it -could- be done, but -why-? what's the point? artificial beauty, stripped of the wildness and unpredictable force of love seems flat and pointless. sigh.
gahd, i can't believe i'm freaking out about this ><;;
back to um... beta-then-qaf-because-even-i-know-there-are-more-important-things-than-gay-sex. or not, 'cause i'm betaing gay sex. heeee. ^^
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-06-03 04:52 pm (UTC)i kind of reallyreallyreally hate draco-with-anyone-but-harry (although pansy is ok in theory... temporarily... as a default... something). the problem that i don't have with pansy is that he doesn't have to -love- pansy to be with her. but, if he were to be with hermione or ginny, he'd have to go through a similar transformative process as to be with harry. he'd have to reallyreallyreally love them, in order for those relationships to work at all. he'd have to change. he'd have to....well, do all those melodramatic and near-impossible feats that in my mind only harry could inspire in him, 'cause that's why i'm a shipper after all, it's because i think only harry could inspire those things in draco.
like, what does -harry- need -draco- for? except, i dunno, hot sex?
i mean, yes, -harry- might grow to be fond of draco if he got to know him, but love........
love would need a push, i think.
it's only within a mutual passionate love that harry would discover the moral fuzziness and the "other side" and what it's really like to leave everything you knew behind because the whole world is different now that you love this person. you know?
if they were friends... and draco was being in love with someone else, too... there wouldn't be a lot of room for harry's being transformed by draco in quite the radical fashion i want to imagine.
like... i suppose it's just that i think they both need -all- of each other. half-way doesn't really -work-, because they have so little to start with. i mean, dv!h&d work for me (even being hetero) because they -do- both have -all- of each other. if draco isn't in love with harry, then the concept isn't deep enough, because he simply doesn't feel-- neither of them feels for anyone else, what they feel for each other. that's the important thing.
so if draco did love a girl trulymadlydeeply, their relationship can't help but suffer. in my head, anyway. sigh.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-03 08:37 pm (UTC)hahahahaha. Word on that. I cannot handle Draco/AnyGryffindorButHarry. When I try to read a D/Hr or D/G or D/R fic, my brain just seems to shut down, and everything inside me starts screaming, "This is wrong! Abort! Abort!" Or, you know, something a little less geeky. :) In my mind, Draco is plain too obsessed with Harry to really love anybody else. Reading about it makes me want to throw up, actually. I hate myself for being this narrow-minded sometimes, but I can't help it, as when I read those fics it simply feels as if I am going against the natural law, or something. Although I do read those fics once in awhile, why I do not know. Self-torture? :D (But yes, outside the context of a relationship, I can imagine Draco not loving Harry--but NOT him not loving Harry yet loving another Gryffindor.)
Funny thing is that I don't really mind reading Harry/Other at all, even "really in love with each other" Harry/Other (unless it's H/G *blanch*). And you're right, one of the main obstacles of H/D is why does Harry give a damn about Draco? Harry's not the sort of person who'd waste his time with someone who's not worth it. This is something that must be overcome--but I'm actually quite willing to suspend my beliefs sometimes, for that. I think one fic that does it really well is fearlessdiva's Tissue of Silver, though. I can really believe where it is that Harry begins to love that Draco.
Because I don't believe that Harry *can* fall in love--really really fall in love--with someone who's incapable of it. I think he will only really reciprocate that love when he's seen you (or believes you to be) deserving of it. And it's not really an arrogant thing, I think he just can't do it. If Draco doesn't love Harry, I think there is no relationship. And I think Harry is someone who can move on from love whole, or somewhat so. He will be okay, even if love ends. But Draco is one of those suffocatingly-intense people (he is so a water sign, ha) who gives absolutely everything in love and if it is taken away he will break apart. This stuff really fascinates me, the way people react so strongly, and so differently to H/D and other people...
I've friended you, by the way. Have been in the mood for more meta, haha. *waves*
no subject
Date: 2003-06-04 11:21 am (UTC)while i'm sure that's possible (any number of things are, after all, possible), something in me just hates it so much i can't deal.
which makes me think maybe i -should- (the whole open-mindedness thing).
lots of h/d have them together where for the longest time neither admits to being in love. and you know, that's fine.
because there's an open-endedness there. not... a sort of author's intent sort of thing where we -know- how draco feels now and will feel in the future, and he just doesn't have the love -in- him to give, and nothing could be done about it.
although, taken that specifically, it's a very very rare scenario, so there's no rational reason to freak out 'cause basically, no one does write that, really. this last case may be the third time i've ever seen it. fifth at most.
but it's probably my least favorite of all possibilities. you know, that sort of grown-up disillusionment where we realize that baby, sometimes love just ain't enough. siiigh.
basically it's undercutting the fairytale in the most vulnerable spot. the vulnerability isn't in "will they or won't they", it's in the possibility that maybe it -will- happen and it'll turn out to be tinsel and not gold, just like so many other things. and that's probably the scariest thing to allow yourself to believe, if you're invested like i am ^^
hee. oh, and ... i'm burning out on the meta, btw. i surprised myself with my vehemence here, actually, since i'm all about the brian/justin lurve right now. hehehehe >:D but hi anyway >:D