~~ the battery's leaking...

[reenka]

i know i've ranted quite a bit about my sore spot about characters made too perfect or too pretty (read: bland and boring) in fanfic, but just today it occurred to me that perhaps it would be impossible to convince me that a character's really "in character" unless they're portrayed as significantly unsympathetic. now, this isn't the same thing as the people who say stories should be written with the assumption that snape/lucius/draco is a bastard or ugly or a miserable awful wanker or what have you, especially after ootp, where harry has become significantly more unsympathetic to many readers. his actions and reactions aren't clear-cut: you can read them in widely different lights. this ambiguity is, i think, the hallmark of a "realistic" character, and i would say it would have to be preserved to keep them "real" in fanfiction.

    
i think everyone's emotions and actions can be taken in many ways, and waaayyy too often, authors forego any illustration of this basic truth to make characters who're merely representations of an obvious agenda. you can sort of -tell- that this character is loveable in spite of all their faults (if faults do exist), or conversely, that -this- is a character the author themselves has no regard for and thinks is a bastard.
    this is funny, almost, because i used to have the same problem with the hp books themselves-- it was too clear who the bad guys and the good guys were, initially. i think (with the exception of draco, and even there you can have multiple readings as is blatantly obvious) this clear-cut characterization has undermined itself as the books progressed. there are now proponents and detractors of probably every single character in the books, with textual evidence and personal passion to back them up (ie, plenty of people hate hermione and ron and harry and snape-- well, usually not all at once). this is as it should be.

i was thinking of this especially in relation to maya's `underwater light', which is semi-known for having a rather in-character draco. and anyone who knows me a little knows i -adore- maya's writing, so this isn't a dig in any way, but. i can easily see how while ul!draco has flaws and idiosyncracies and is obviously fallible, there isn't a lot of room for disliking him, and that in itself brings him away from canon.

this isn't to say that you can't write loveable characters.... it's just, the fuller the characterization effort involved, the more they come alive and escape the writer's grasp and start doing stupid things there are no excuses for, just like real people. i don't know. harry, for instance, is prone to snap judgemens, is rash, insensitive, sometimes violent, holds grudges, self-centered and overly protective at the same time, has little patience for people, has severe anger issues, etc. you can still write a harry who's a woobie, but he'd have to show signs of being one -in spite- of being a prick. and not in a loveable way; more in sort of "gahd, that -imbecile-" sort of way.

draco and other "bad guy" characters from the books have an even heavier burden to carry, obviously. i think even if you show how harry never had the full picture on them, you'd still have to avoid excusing them or saying when they grow up or are put in a better environment, they'd become totally sympathetic. unpleasant people exist. they were unpleasant children, and then they're unpleasant adults. they love people too, they have weaknesses and good qualities like everyone else-- but they're not the same as truly kind and emotionally responsive people. it's just not that simple. you can say the character is -deeper- than they appear, and that they -change-, but their darkness and unpleasantness changes to keep up.

in draco's case, you'd have to allow the reader to see the tail-ends or the roots or at least -flashes- of that jealousy, obsessiveness, avoidance, empty bluster, inadequacy when compared to harry or hermione, whatever.
    now i realize this isn't a new concept, but the way people usually say it is: you should make the bad characters stay bad. and what does that mean? that the "good" characters should stay good? that's just simplistic and not conducive to deep characterization.

what i think you should try to do if your goal is an in-character draco, for instance, is combine the draco people hate and the draco people love into one person, because that would come closest to the "original". this seems like it's a contradictory thing, and it is, but i think the truth ultimately isn't a reducible thing. it's in this interplay of contradictory responses and within the basic unfathomability of our hearts that the sense of realness comes through in fictional characters. when they are truly unfathomable-- that is when they're in-character. when they are both sympathetic and unsympathetic at the same time. when they are awful and beautiful and sad and pathetic and inspiring: real. and at that point, yes, you do depart from canon and its rather limited view on draco, but you've also created fanon in the best possible way, by expanding without focusing exclusively on any one particular reading of the original character.

is this possible? i don't even know. but it's an ideal.
    what comes to mind most prominently is the world of comics. basically, every new writer of a character in a on-going comic is writing fanfic. so when john ney reiber came along and wrote neil gaiman's tim, he was doing the same thing we're all doing. and he did a wonderful job at transforming tim and yet keeping him completely tied to his past and all the ways people have perceived him along way, because the effects of been seen in a certain way by someone that matters never truly fade. so yeah. tim was always loveable-- but he was also a complete dork. and i mean-- my -god-, is the boy a moron. heh. not in a small way, either. and oh, he pays for it and he's not forgiven and his world falls apart but it's not the end of the story. gah. one day, i want to be a fifth as good.
~~

    
    so. i still read quite a bit of h/d fic (much much more than anything else... *shame*), but i haven't been reccing because... well.. when you do something for a year... it gets old. so. but! maybe i can once again think of it as linking. yeah that's the ticket.
    `lather, rinse, repeat' by monthofsundays cracked me up immediately, so i decided to rec it (and `better than perfect' which is similarly cute but is actually a deeper, more complex story-- i'm much, much more predisposed to even humorous fics about dorky, wacky-looking deranged characters than smooth sexy ones-- i dunno-- it's just a thing, so a fic about goofy-dork-and-malfoy-knows-it!harry is more my thing than a fic about charming!harry, even though he's actually a bit of both). also, `better than perfect' actually has harry -understand- malfoy's motivations and see through his jealousy and drive to be better, and see the threads between them in a believable, not preachy manner, which is a very, very rare thing. my own versions of introspective/insightful!harry always right false to me, so i'm always delighted to find someone who could have harry retain his natural sort of intelligence and then apply it to malfoy somehow. i think that understanding is really the true background strength of all love, and harry and draco need it more than a lot of other people. that's probably why i'm so hung up on h&d friendship-- if that's not there, then the relationship is basically null.

    overall, i think `human' is my favorite of monthofsundays' fics so far, because it's all about post-ootp harry and brutality and sexual tension and rawness and -yes-, i'm all about that, man. mmmm. as much as i'm like, "wah, friendship", secretly i'm like, "wah, TAKE HIM NOW", or rather, the sentiments and instinctual desires behind it. it -hurts- and it -bruises- and it's not fluffy, it's -visceral-, intense, frightening, irresistible. they can never escape each other or this part of them. the animal self. mmmr. that's the underlying pull of h/d to me.

    now, i also liked `all bets are off', which aja recced... but. humor is a weird thing. if something's written with spirit, i can always appreciate it, but what actually makes me giggle and what doesn't is very idiosyncratic, it seems. allegra's fic is... bubbly and dry but when it attempts dry wit and sarcasm it totally doesn't gel for me. dry wit can easily degenerate into cuteness, which makes one smile instead of laugh. a lot of people tell me my fic is "cute", which bothers me a bit because "cute" is like, funny when its facial mask has melted a little and it's all cracking around the edges. it's nice but no cigar.

i can tell that both this and `lather, rinse, repeat' are trying to continuously amuse with witty little phrasings and cute details and such. the latter seems more subtle even though laugh-out-loud humor is by nature unsubtle in a way. i think `all bets are off' is more of a straight-out parody with periods of melodrama and pseudo-angst, whereas `lather, rinse, repeat' is more a combination rather than a not-always-comfortable mixture, if that makes sense, which i like more. it's more smooth, maybe. i don't know. humor is hard to analyze~:)

both approaches have merit, and i certainly enjoy over-the-top humor and smuttiness and hijinks, but a part of me is just more amused by tongue-in-cheek drollness (i.e.: draco malfoy was having a really bad day: first his non-existent dog died and then he realized he really wanted to fuck harry bloody potter) than rambunctious mad-cap traditional comedy (i.e.: harry showed up in the sitting room in only a towel, and to his utter horror draco malfoy was there, taunting with comments about tartans) and that's just it: idiosyncratic. i think this traditional sort of situational and dialogue-based comedy might work better in theatric form, i'm not sure. `lather, rinse, repeat' seems to depend more on a certain humor built into the narrative style rather than the raging humor value of the particular jokes. this is probably more how i write, so perhaps my mind just works more on tone than substance, though that seems like an over-generalization. oh well.
~~

having seen a rec list with a lot of angst and death-fics on it, the nature of my ongoing issue with a lot of them struck me. i'm particularly thinking of olympia_m's, amalin's and cinnamon's fics, as compared to maybe weatherby's `contrition' and maya's `dark side of light', which are probably the only fics i can think of that significantly break form, mostly because their emotionality could almost be called subtextual. as well as aja's `every second', which i feel is honest and raw and -real-, because it doesn't flich but neither does it dwell on either the pain or the ecstasy of death-- it merely transcribes the emotional maelstrom in no uncertain terms.
    interestingly, i think what i would consider the most `realistic' and honest death-fics have been the rash of post-ootp sirius fics. those have been absolutely brilliant, particularly ivy's and fyredancer's and amalin's and bow's. i think the bleakness of ootp has really inspired some brilliant interpretations.
    obviously, i love all the fics mentioned, so. er. yeah. salut. this isn't con-crit, just me thinking along these lines.


    so many fanfics centered on death or mortality treat it in one of two ways: the awareness of death is a constant influence, souring everything, throwing the characters in a sort of nostalgic loop, drowning in regret and desire and simmering in the bitterness of inevitability and decay. this is more of a mood thing-- death is a presence like sunlight, and there is always this sense of premonition. death is like a dark element hidden in the sunlight itself-- constant and aching and without beginning or end. things degenerate, but the rot has been there from the beginning. life itself is a form of death, and death merely a fulfillment of one's twilight destiny. throughout one's life, one attempts to deal with it, but is unable to due to one's basic weakness as a human being and one's blood-ties to the beloved one, who is always in danger of slipping through one's fingers.

another theme i see is naturally the all-out angst-fic approach, where death is the ultimate horror and it destroys the sanity of the survivor completely. it's all greek wailing and thumping one's head against the floor and tearing out one's hair and ashes and suicide. the whole connection of suicide to another character's death bothers me. not because it's necessarily out-of-character or something, but because of the sheer frequency of this response. this isn't how the majority of people react to the death of a loved one. usually there's a lot more anger and numbness and bitterness and then more anger and more numbness and denial. the inability to deal doesn't directly lead to an attempt on one's own life. people's minds usually shut down completely before that happens: therefore you'd have drinking and beating up other people you love (or don't), self-destructive behavior, yes-- but not -suicide- except by inaction, mostly.

in my opinion, suicide is an entirely different issue with different causes and motivations than one's mourning and grief. also, every character mourns differently, based on their personality type, another thing mostly overlooked in the common drive to have as much angst and drama as possible.

    a less common thing is to have the character get -over- the death in some sort of really short period of time with the help of love. sometimes it happens with a single kiss (scary, isn't it), sometimes with the realization that you really love this other person more, and sometimes because you love the dearly departed and that love is giving you the will to live. all of which is possible-- after a long, long time spent being a total wreck. and not in the suicidal way, necessarily. it's not exciting. mourning is bleak and awful and like the grind of bone on bone, like the screech of nails on blackboards. it's hell, but it's not like breaking up and never seeing someone again, and it's not like having your pet goldfish die. if it's someone you love deeply, someone who had been necessary for your happiness, then the death is a lot like the death of one's own self-- there is no need for suicide, because one's heart just shrivels. suicide is extraneous. pain is everywhere, but people survive it, slowly, slowly, like dragging heavy boots through thick mud. on and on and it only ever lightens slightly, and so on until you die.

death is not inspiring or beautiful, but it's also not something that one can only deal with by screaming and dying yourself. it's the stone at the back of your throat, and you keep swallowing and breathing, but it always remains inside you. something always changes, but that part of you kind of dies along with the person, and yet it doesn't-- it fossilizes. i think it's like a part of you never changes.

you survive it but you -don't- survive. you don't use it to become a better person. it never gets better, and you never really learn to accept it-- it always hurts, in a day-to-day way, and you keep living and even if you're not stuck inside it, it's stuck inside you. even if you move past it, it never moves past you. death isn't something you grow past.
    but no, i don't know what i want to change about the way people write about it. maybe it's impossible to truly imagine the abyss, the way you feel when you stare at your own death and don't blink and don't look away. there's a reason i almost never write about this stuff, obviously, heh.

Comments

[spare-change.livejournal.com]

you survive it but you -don't- survive. you don't use it to become a better person. it never gets better, and you never really learn to accept it-- it always hurts, in a day-to-day way, and you keep living and even if you're not stuck inside it, it's stuck inside you. even if you move past it, it never moves past you. death isn't something you grow past.

I didn't get a chance to go through your post in detail yet, but this part really stuck out for me. I've spent 10 years trying to express this very concept, and you finally did it for me. This is something that I think a lot of people don't get. The discourses of "catharsis" and "getting over it" really don't apply, 99.9% of the time.

I have a very low opinion of most (not all) death fics in the fandom, mostly for the reasons you mention. I had a long discussion with Olympia and P-Z about this, many months ago, my argument being that if you don't have the emotional range to write about something without resorting to cliches, you probably shouldn't do it.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

heh. actually, i thought the getting-over-it thing was the least common of the types of fic-- i see the suicidal response much more often, and it doesn't exactly make me happier. i did read a h/d & h/s fic once, where harry had this mind-bond with draco and then draco died and harry was all broken but then he found this deeper love with snape and realized that it's okay (i don't know why-- i think it was a lot to do with snape's being sexier and more loveable). god. that was... deeply unsatisfying.

a lot of people just notice the angst factor. like, "well, this made me cry therefore it is good", which bothers me too. i particularly like the death-fics that disturb me rather than make me cry, simply because crying is like, an escape from facing the issues involved, maybe. i mean... i always wondered why i don't write about death or immigration, having experienced both as significant parts of my life, and i realize that it's simply too difficult. i'm still kind of er... not getting over it. so it's weird to me, this prettifying and dressing it all up as angst approach. i mean, death doesn't equal angst or "darkness" or an easy way to get characters to crack or what have you.

but i wonder if what i'm wanting is to get the writers to write -honestly- whereas they probably wouldn't write h/d fanfic if they wanted to write from some place deeply honest and raw inside them. or maybe it would just be too unreadable. i wrote this (http://www.livejournal.com/users/witchbabie/17174.html) yesterday trying to express similar concepts in ficlet form and my one reader said he simply had nothing to say about it. so many the truest discourse is silence...?

then again, catharsis of any sort is awfully tricky to write subtly about -.-

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Ooh, just have to comment on the whole good character/bad character idea. I know this will shock you, but I totally agree!

I don't know if you read nocturne_alley (for all I know you're a player!) but it's been making me think about exactly this same thing. The Remus and Sirius of this rpg have just broken up and it's fascinating how it's split the audience with everyone feeling strongly and being shocked and appalled by one character's behavior or defending the other. But one of the things I've loved about it is the way to me it just seems like it's not that one character is being good and the other bad, but that the characters are just acting on the same impulses they always have. Sometimes that makes them do things that people think of as "nice" and sometimes they aren't. Sometimes it's hard, I think, for people to discuss motivations without balance. Like, if you point out something one of them might be doing people immediately have to file it under your thinking they are the good one or the bad one. In real life it's never like that. Dealing with other people we're probably rarely on opposite sides of good and bad. More likely we're all on totally separate paths and occasionally smash into each other.

I do think that Harry in OotP could easily be a kid you might describe as a stuck-up jerk if you were just a kid in his class, just as Draco might be the kid you remembered as the funny kid with the big mouth. From a slightly different perspective you might remember Harry as being kind of intimidating and Draco as a vicious little brat. I can't think of anybody in my high school I now remember as "good" or "bad." To write either character I honestly don't think you can think of them as any of those things. You just have to see things from their pov and know how they react to what and why. I've got no more problem imagining Harry and Draco forming a more positive relationship after OotP than I did before--in fact, at this point I think Harry's probably got a better chance with Draco since he probably scares a lot of other people away!

So yeah, Draco could grow up to be a much better person in a different environment depending on his experiences, but you're right, he'd still be unlikeable sometimes. In fact, he'd still be unlikeable ALL THE TIME to certain people because everybody rubs somebody the wrong way.:-)

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

i read n_a sometimes, though not this summer, and then i mostly only follow harry, draco and millicent. mmm, millicent.
er, anyway. yah i'm just more -into- unlikeable characters... or at least slightly unlikeable. prickly. antisocial. ones who annoy everyone and like it, and don't care. actually, i don't know if i do, but an unlikeable character has never put me off once, and apparently, it does put most other people off. don't see why. everyone sucks :D :D

this is a quote from a newspaper review of ootp:
Reading this book makes me realize how unlikable Harry really is. He is full of self-pity and unrepentantly takes pleasure in the troubles of even his friends when they displease him. He's not your typical hero.

i was laughing because it's like, ahahahah. they are all completely ignorant about human nature, because every remotely-realistic person is deeply annoying in one way or another.
is it just me? then again i'm deeply annoyed by like, all of existence half the time, so.
yah. i was thinking, though, that in -fanfic- i don't remember really seeing the type of "gah, what a jerk" characterization for main characters without having them end in grizly angst and tears, which jkr doesn't shy away from. well, not that there's too little angst, but. yeah. i think people's misanthropic tendencies are too hidden in fiction :D :D

*laughs*
okay, no, but that sounded extreme which pleases me~:)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

One of the things that's really struck me post-OotP is how nice Harry tends to be in fanfic. If he's not nice he's crazy or under just too much stress, but in OotP it's clearly not that. I mean, there's plenty of times when he'd be fine if he'd get over the notion that he's owed a different life than he has. But think how boring he would be if he just always took the high road. A friend of mine was telling me about this book she was reading where the characters play a game where they have to list characters they hate and the one rule is that the character has to have been intended to be sympathetic--all those perfect, sad characters you just want to kill.:-)

Sometimes I wonder if the author's own natural annoying tendencies help too. Like I remember giving an editor one of the first longer things I wrote and she went on and on about how annoying the main character was. I had a defense in my mind for everything she brought up and the reason was...well...she was always doing what I would do. I was totally annoying!! Which was a good thing to know and, um, think about. But also I guess this is why it's important to inhabit all the characters of a world so you can see things from different povs.

Maybe that's what makes me so nervous about Draco in canon. I sometimes feel like he's always written about from the outside so he's not really consistent. He's always doing the bad thing just because it's the bad thing. That's why fanfic sometimes actually does flesh out Draco's character. Not by making him good or a sex god but by giving him a consistent personality that can't help but be right at least occasionally. In canon he seems to only ever be right about Hagrid's teaching, but that points out Harry's softer side, not his darker one.

It's scary, though, how eager people are to cast everything about the good character into a good light and vice versa with the bad guys. Like in OotP Draco was bad for looking "hungry" at the idea that Harry was going to be crucio'd (although really he looked hungry just at the idea Harry would be punished--we never saw his reaction to it being via crucio which perhaps suggests JKR wasn't ready to go there with Draco after all), but at the same time pretend that Harry, who knows more about the reality of crucio than anyone, didn't cast one. Really, Crucio!Casting!Harry is way more interesting.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

heheh, the idea of post-ootp nice!harry amuses me. i haven't seen it, but i guess all harry's are nice, except ivy and aja and cassie claire's. which raises the question of what -other- post-ootp fic i've read, which i haven't, a lot.
but yeah, i remember when i was reading the book and got to the draco-watches-umbridge-about-to-cast-crucio, i was -really- upset. i don't even know why, i think it's just that i'm a ninny after all (ahahaha all talk, that's me), in that i was like, begging jkr not to have draco enjoy it if it happened. i suppose it would be all in-character and at least it would horribly destroy all the actually-good-guy!malfoy apologist people's fics, but. then again, apparently ootp didn't destroy the nice!harry people, so maybe there's no hope. but i was very relieved when she didn't say anything. because that was one of the few times i was actively thinking of fanfic, how usually, unless you have an angstfic with war and unhappiness everywhere, one has draco care if harry gets hurt as some sort of sign that they aren't totally enemies. or something. like, they -think- they're all "wah, die!" but they don't mean it. it would suck if they meant it. *laughs* which you know, malfoy probably does. of course, meaning things isn't the worst thing that could possibly happen, you can get over it. it's scary to think of liking/loving anyone you know is cruel, though (and here i am, all projecting onto harry). sigh.

i have this theory that you have to love a character in order to understand them. of course, this is well and good until you realize one simply can't love every character the same, and that the ones you don't love are going to suffer, and not in that angsty way, but in that underdeveloped fetus sort of way. that was why it's interesting for me to write dark!hermione and pansy and snape (though i haven't done much of that). i wrote narcissa & lucius once. it's a weird experience, distancing yourself that much from your writing. i mean, those characters weren't me, and yet i could imagine them. maybe all it takes is the will to imagine them -without- judging them as you yourself would. i wrote about pansy with no judgement, and even now i can't judge her as well. it's like there's this space in conceiving of human beings as a writer where there's only action and reaction, and everything is shades of necessity.

and yeah, i like the contrast between the ambiguity of draco's reaction to crucio and harry's willingness (but not -really-) to cast it himself. i find it interesting that there hasn't been a rash of fics centered on harry's darkness, but then, i don't think there are many people who can write about it sensitively.

and you know, maybe i lie, about pansy. there's probably some pansy there inside me, ehehehehe. i think most people have a part of them that's really vicious and shallow and petty and jealous and delusional. it's all a question of what you act upon, but really, there's a bunch of contradictory personality traits in most people, i think, and a good number of them are rather annoying. although if i wrote about what -i- would do in a given situation, it'd be awhile before my character actually interacted with any other and stopped hiding in their room, ahahahah~:)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Actually, the only post-OotP fics I've read have been good ones with Darker!Harry--Ivy's and the one Cassie started and I am secretly dying for her to continue (with the cigarettes...?). But it's weird to go back and read pre-OotP stuff and see how people assumed Harry would deal with the events of GoF or how they'd so often have Harry just decide to reach out to Draco because he's such an empath and, well...no.:-)

The Umbridge-Crucio scene is really interesting because of course Draco wouldn't do like Fanon!Draco and throw himself in front of Harry so he wouldn't get the curse (and then give him a blow job). And the idea of Harry getting crucio'd would probably sound great to him just like the idea of Snape getting crucio'd sounded nice to Harry before. Most boys would probably want to see a crucio if nothing else.

But still, the idea of Draco laughing evilly or smiling while Harry was crucio'd seems wrong to me even in canon because as obnoxious as he is he just isn't on that level of darkness and I don't think he wants to be. If Umbridge did that I feel like Draco would immediately shy away from her because she crossed a line. It seems like he'd want to get as far away from that as he did from Voldemort in the forest or Harry's disembodied head in the Shack. It just seems impossible to imagine Draco in a scene of that seriousness. That's maybe not a deep psychological revelation but it does say something about what role this character is supposed to have. In order to put Draco on that level he would have to develop one way or another. Does that make sense?

Oh, and here's a little rant I did on children's lit (http://www.livejournal.com/users/sistermagpie/15986.html) that sort of applies to things down below.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

*grins happily*
i've read your children's lit rant before, and i thought it was wonderfully put :D :D
it makes me want to read your books, heheh ~:)
and i totally empathize with making the first books i read "mine". i still have all this affection for them just because i read them back then. and that quote... man. inspiring. and also, i remember reading cereal and toothpaste and everything else with equal fascination, hee. it also makes me wobbly because there's a "writing for children" course this semester but i slept through the first class so it was too late to petition. wah. and now i'm all inspired to try again. it's just really hard for me to get up by 10:05 y'know? heh. and i don't even know if i want to write for children. but i do love children's lit. and it reassures me that i like fantasy for the "right reasons", since i started reading it when i was a child, and back then i had "nothing to escape from" :D so it must be because i just like to use my imagination :D

ahahaha "because he's such an empath", that cracks me up. harry-as-empath. actually, i can see draco-as-empath. *cracks up* he is sometimes, too, ridiculous as that sounds. one -could- do it well, but not post-ootp. but like... yeah. i mean, he seems sensitive in a more outgoing way than harry. hee. harry may be an empath but he's like me, totally withdrawn about it~:)

i was totally thinking of fanon!draco during the umbridge-crucio scene. i felt ashamed, ahahah, but also rejuvenated because like, hey, this -isn't- fanon, -cooool-. that's why it surprised me that ootp read like another fanfic. i was like, dude. DUDE. what book are you -reading-?! what -fanfic- are you reading, 'cause i want some of it! *laughs*

though yeah, him laughing evilly would be off too. though i mean, he must've been having -some- emotions, he could've been laughing evilly on the inside for all we know. sigh.
It just seems impossible to imagine Draco in a scene of that seriousness.
i totally get what you're saying; that's the sense i got, too. i mean, maybe not verbalizing it exactly that way, but yes. totally like, WOW, if she DOES say something about draco right now, that would be MAJOR. that's the sense i got. and then she didn't, and i was partly relieved and partly disappointed. i mean, whatever he felt right then, i think is -vital-.

then, and when harry was beating him up, i think.
that was why i was like, dude, why is EVERYBODY focusing on the goddamn wineglass, which is bloody -obvious-, why god, -why-? except maybe the obviousness explains it.
when i read that i was like, "oh look, harry made draco have a boo-boo", heeheee.
it didn't seem major to me.
maybe that's why silvia's & maya's & cassie's draco's seem so popular and so resonant of canon!draco, because they're all at least partly comedies, and it's difficult to write drama!draco and keep him in-character?

though the last scene in ootp with draco in it (well, not the slug bit) was rather serious, though predictable. exciting, though~:)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

LOL! Oh, you won't find any of this in my books. Not yet anyway. When you're writing mass market fiction you kind of have to stick within the guidelines--Dexter's Laboratory has so far never dealt with anything more serious than...well, there's a lot of gender confusion in that series. As in the cartoon, Dexter tends to wind up either naked or in a dress on a regular basis.:-) Though his arch-enemy Mandark does have a softer side.

You're totally right about the "big" Draco scenes in OotP (as opposed to the wine glass, nice as it is) which are so mysterious you don't know what to do with them. We have no clue to how he reacts to anything throughout the book until that scene after Lucius is arrested--I guess that's why it's so right that the two of them should both stop and stare at each other for a second. Draco's staring at Harry not believing what he's done, Harry's probably just realizing in that second that Draco might care that Lucius is in prison! Draco just gets erased in the scene as soon as he's served his purpose. I understand on one hand that Umbridge and Harry are having a one-on-one moment there but still, Draco's there.

You know, I think you're right about Drama Draco. In canon he's a clown, there's no denying it. Even his taunting is clownish, usually including an overly loud voice or impressions or a poem or a song. Will that change now that Lucius has been taken away? It's hard to imagine him being as goofy as he seemed to be in a lot of OotP but at the same time you have to wonder who he is without that. I hate to see him reduced to trying to be tough because that's just not him. Draco being tough (except his one shining moment in GoF when he and Harry dueled in the hallway) is just shorthand for Draco being a slug. In order to keep from spending the whole of Book VI in the infirmary he'd have to do some serious developing over the summer. I hope JKR doesn't just hit the reset button by saying Lucius got out and have Draco come bopping into the train car again in September like nothing ever happened.

Now that I think about it it would be really interesting to see a story that showed Lucius dealing with Clown!Draco. I mean, how does Draco act around Lucius, beyond that scene in CoS? Does he try to make him laugh? Does he make a fool of himself without meaning to? Does Lucius just look at him and think, "That boy ain't right."

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

ahahah, i totally love the idea of draco being a clown to his father, simply because it's so ridiculous. and lucius being bewildered :D :D
especially with me immediately thinking "durendal" :D

i don't think he seemed much like a clown in the dark arts shop, exactly. maybe it's just that it's so ridiculous the way he reacts to being threatened or bested. i mean, that never brings out the best in people, i guess. though of course it's amusing to think he's a moron all the time...wah. no, see, he takes himself so seriously, he has to actually be allowed his follies by someone, he has to be positively reinforced there somewhere, or else he'd be rebelling all the time, which just seems weird. maybe it's only in potterworld that he seems skewed, and in malfoy-world he's perfectly normal. which is disturbing, but then, his father shrieks and the dark lord cackles, i'm sure, so draco's positively tame and sane for a slytherin :D :D ahahaha. *coughs*

and oh! you write dexter's novelizations?!
they have such things? wow -.-

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It's just funny trying to imagine Mr. Baddie Lucius Malfoy getting a quasi-howler from Draco that sings "Weasley is our King" at the top of its lungs. "Look what I did, Dad! Right before I lost the game and got beaten up by Harry Potter!" In the Dark Arts shop Lucius seems, to me, to hold Draco in a kind of unrelenting contempt. Like everything he says gets a negative response: No, don't touch that. No, you can't have that. No, your grades are terrible. No you ought to be ashamed. He himself is being really sulky and peevish, of course, but we know he's not always like that--he's quite giddy at times. I guess this kind of comes back to the age-old question with Draco. We know he worships his father, but does Lucius like him back? People are so annoyingly quick to point to the Quidditch brooms as proof that Draco is adored but to me Lucius seems pretty adamant about not giving Draco any kind of "present" in the shop. He's agreed to buy him a racing broom. If Lucius did buy the brooms to get him on the team (a concept which I think just produces too many holes--he can still be spoiled *and* have made the team) it seems like it would be in order to get him to shut up and it would come with a big talk on how ashamed he should be to have needed the help.

Lucius' first words to Draco in that scene are, "Touch nothing," which makes me wonder if Draco doesn't have a habit of getting into trouble in stores. Obviously he's learnt to be seen and not heard when he's with his parents in public (by GoF anyway) but I can easily imagine him at some Pureblood Country Club and he's sitting at the table with the other kids and Lucius looks over and Draco's telling one of his stories and the kids are in stitches and he's rolling his eyes and acting things out and Lucius shows displeasure later. The one thing Draco is usually able to do effectively is captivate an audience in some way but does Lucius like that?

I am very sad now, btw, that slytherincess says she is no longer interested in H/D because it's been killed by Fluffy!Harry and Draco. Canon!Draco is off having a temper tantrum about it right now, I can tell. "Not fair! Not fair!" yells Canon!Draco. Perhaps he's the one who vandalized the Hogwarts Express (http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2003410530,00.html) in green and silver protest to say, "I AM HERE!!"

Yes, I do write Dexter novelizations and I love them! I've done 6 of them but only 3 are out so far yet.:-)

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

hehe, i like the idea of a bipolar!lucius-and-draco relationship. like, sometimes they're hot, sometimes they're cold. i mean, no one's ever thought of that, but i can definitely see it, since you can definitely see both of them as bipolar individuals (ahahah an explanation for them just not making sense and contradicting themselves, i guess).

so that draco would never know when father will be like, "ahahah that's funny" and when he'd be like "YOU IMBECILE DON'T YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOOD FOR YOU?!? SHUT UP!!". i bet he takes out his frustrations on draco rather than on narcissa. no way in fucking hell is draco sexually abused, though. that is just... yergh. if you don't -need- something for an explanation, then it's just a complication :D :D

i think his father is as emotionally wackt and unbalanced as draco is-- over-the-top in some ways, really reserved in other ways. he projects and emotes but doesn't know how to connect on a one-to-one level, just like draco doesn't. like, draco & lucius both follow & have followers, but they don't seem to have true friends. i think that's because they're not like gryffindors, ahahahah.

also, i think i just made a very pointless post -.-

[shatterglass.livejournal.com]

Eee! I could ponder Draco all day. By all means continue.

The one bit of this that really stuck out for me was the bit about writers and their obvious agenda - and I've been trying to decide whether authors should write fictional characters who are completely real, or if they should just hide their agenda more completely. It seems like when you write a book, and especially a novel, and especially especially a fantasy novel, you are writing about something, and to do that you have to take some liberties with the humanity of your characters. You have to 'drag them by the scruff of their necks'. *g*

And then there is the half of me that is screaming that a true novel shouldn't be full of characters that serve a role. They should be full of people, and the people interact, and the interaction and some random factors make a believable plot and a touching tale. But I think that perhaps this is much more possible if you are writing for an older audience, because writing the truth usually ends up being writing something that has elements of ugliness. Ugly and true and touching and provocative, but ugly. JKR is branching out by making Snape a believable person, Harry a little snot (in a w00bie sort of way), and Sirius someone who loved Harry but was incapable of being what Harry needed. I applaud her for that. There is such depth to the characters, now, these same characters that started out as boy-hero and evil-git and boy's-mentor. I think this may be as far as she is going to go, though. I think that maybe she is drawing the line at letting us see the sympathetic parts of the baddies and the not so good parts of the goodies, because the little children would be confused if all of the sudden Draco was a snot because he had an abusive childhood, he hated Harry because Harry was [the one he always thought would be different/the first person who had ever told him no/the reason that his father is constantly angry with him].

Or maybe I am underestimating her. Gods, I hope so.

So what conclusion am I drawing here? Or is this all a bunch of mindless junk? I'm very wordy today, aren't I. :D I guess I think that the reality infused into fictional characters is an important element of a piece of writing, and that it makes it worthwhile. This is why the Potters are so wonderful - because JKR has taken the children's fantasy genre and brought so much depth to it. But she is still limited by the fact that she is writing children's books, and while I agree that there are nasty people, and they cannot be excused, I think that they all have a reason somewhere or another. Us Draco lovers like digging around for that reason, is all.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

well, the argument can easily be made that one should always be writing "about" something, and that children's literature has a great tradition of complexity and depth. how much pre-1950's children's lit have you read? i'm mostly thinking hans christian andersen (the uber-genius of all time), dickens & twain & carroll & j.m. barrie & kipling & pamela travers (mary poppins) and the waterbabies & the gorgeous astrid lingren & the secret garden & robinson crusoe & dumas & even the christian-type stories of lewis & tolkien have many many shades of grey & levels of meaning. tolkien doesn't seem like a children's story at all, and it certainly gets read to children. i think underestimating the possibilities in children's literature is what's created the really really dumb overall children's lit marketplace we have today. as well as there not being too many geniuses around. though there are notable writers, like pullman and perhaps diana wynne jones & tanith lee & francesca lia block for the adolescents, who are also writing more challenging stuff. i definitely don't think there's any excuse for simplification whatsoever. children will understand a deeper work on their own level, and then see more in it when they grow older. this is how it works.

"writing for children" is a stupid mindset. andersen didn't write "for children", and neither did lingren or carroll. children love them and they loved children, but their works are deep and as full of breadth as any other example of literature, and oftentimes much, much moreso. children's literature is more full of metaphor and fantasy, but the fantasy itself allows for greater flights of fancy, more paints to use on the canvas, more situations to explore, not less. fantasy is my favorite genre, of course, so of course i think it's the greatest :D :D

the sort of stupid modern children's lit you're comparing jkr to isn't worth beans. it's stupid, stupid, stupid. don't compare something you like to stupid things, it's unfair~:)
i'd rather say jkr is almost as good as lewis than say she's much better than author X who wrote about timmy's day at the beach.

as far as a reason for behavior-- well, of course, naturally. truth be told, that's not what most fanfic writers actually -do-, ideal or not. they usually -explain away- his behavior (often perfunctorily) or change it retroactively or with some stupid plot-device rather than -explain- anything. mostly because most people's insight into human nature is close to zero :D :D

ahhaah. *WIELDS EVIL CRITIC'S STAMP OF DOOOOOOOOM*
*sings the suck-suck-you-all-suck-we-all-suck song*
well, we do. compared to the "real writers", most of us... well... do, especially since there is no completed significant h/d wip other than olympia's, amalin's, saber's, sadie's or rhysenn's to even -talk- about (well, there might be a couple of others i'm missing). none of these explain draco. NONE.

it's a great ideal of course.

i actually don't know the "why" of draco anymore than the next person.
do you? i haven't seen anyone who did. just a bunch of conjectures everyone disagrees on. no really really great analysis of why he's not-so-bad that is both canonically-based and seguing into h/d. all of it basically says, he could be okay IF this-and-that catalyst and/or great life-changing event happened. what this event or series of events should be, people have varying accounts of, and no one has actually written it -out- for me to ponder without descending into cliche and rampant use of plot-devices as well as ooc-ness on harry's side (oh draco, WOW, you're not so bad, LET ME SNOG YOU).

to hell with that. harry wouldn't forgive and forget so easily, or maybe at all. i think they'd -never- really "get over it". i think they'll -always- mistrust each other. realism! realism ho! muwahaha, etc.

neither would harry fuck draco just out of the blue (I AM SO ANGRY AND YOU MAKE ME EVEN MORE ANGRY, MALFOY or, alternatively, OMG, I NEVER NOTICED HOW HOT YOU ARE OR HOW GAY I AM, MALFOY), without thus seriously screwing up any future healthy relationship. olympia m wrote unhealthy!h/d in a really stellar longfic series, and so i recommend that, but. her draco is pretty ooc, as well as her harry~:)

what am i saying? i'm a bitter, bitter h/d-er. ahahaha.

[shatterglass.livejournal.com]

Bitter, bitter, bitter. *dances around* :D!!

I have about fifty voices in my head that are talking right now, telling me what I think about children's literature. And I have read, er, about half, maybe more, of what you referred to in the pre-1950's area, and I see exactly what you mean. They are all wonderfully provocative stories - I have a special fondness for LOTR and the Chronicles.

I am stubbornly sticking to an odd sort of point, though. I think I may have a point because it seems different today than it was then, because those authors didn't write to an audience at all. Yes, they knew that they were writing children's lit/allegories that could be read by children, but they didn't have what we have around the Harry Potter books- this whole swarm of fans, the huge publicity, the merchandising, for gods' sake, and maybe I'm imagining the pressure on JKR? But I think that she has these sort of guidelines that she pretty much has to stick to if she doesn't want to be widely shunned, (Which is awful! Society today is awful, the way that we are restricting what she can write and be accepted for! Well, not us, speecifically... *g*) and she's already testing the borders, which I approve of. But if she would go somewhere completely unexpected, there would be all of these huge repercussions, and I just can't imagine...

And I know what you mean about the dinky children's lit. I too like Tanith Lee and DWJ and how I love the His Dark Materials trilogy! But I'm not so much comparing the Potters to the stupid stuff that is out there as pointing out how caged in JKR is by her producers and her managers and the public.

And back to Draco.... my favorite subject. :D Nobody knows the why of Draco, and so he is so entirely mysterious. His actions as seen by Harry are so mask-like that people feel that he has something underneath that might be worth writing about, and from there on in it is a matter of what liberties you take with his character. Can he change? For the better? Or is it limited to giving some information about how he came to be like this, and making 'like this' a tolerable thing for Harry? Harry needs to be able to understand people. I think that one of his huge issues is that he can't see things from other peoples' perspectives very easily - so I think that H/D is sometimes a necessary thing for his character, because it involves him blurring his rigid lines of good and bad...

Whee! Rambling is fun! And I continue to feel new to the fandom, recognizing only half of what people say is the best of the best. Why do they all say something different? *grumblegrumble* I am going to be reading on your recs alone well into my next life. :D ...kidding.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

...as far as jkr being "forced" to write the books a certain way...
from everything i know of jkr, that's not true. first of all, she'd written the first two books and i think plotted out the rest (at least written the first one), before anyone knew anything about her, she was a complete nobody sitting in a scotland cafe, as the legend goes. also, she's already pissed off a hell of a lot of people (as you say, pushing boundaries) so i don't know why you think she would stop at pushing them further. i wouldn't be surprised if she killed off half the characters, including harry (she -has- promised a bloodbath). she's done lots and lots of unpopular things, particularly in characterization choices (harry in ootp, sirius in ootp, james in ootp, dumbledore in ootp, etc). i don't think you have to worry about jkr being too soft for the harsh world of children's publishing ^^;
i think she's said that if she finds that the merchandising is detracting from her message somehow, she'd stop them, and i believe she has that clause. and i don't doubt it. she has way enough money to do whatever the hell she wants already, and she was doing it -before- she had any money, too, so there's no reason to suspect her.

another person, maybe, but not jkr as far as i can tell.

as far as modern children's lit being dependent on whatever, i do think sistermagpie's post (http://www.livejournal.com/users/sistermagpie/15986.html) addressed that wonderfully~:)

i totally think that harry needs to understand people/slytherins....er.... but er.... yeah. this doesn't -excuse- any sloppiness, just gives writers a motivation~:)
but i'm much less forgiving than i used to be, and much too used to all these arguments.
it's funny, because i still talk about draco & h/d so much more than the other `old timer' people in the fandom... i mean, i've only been here little more than a year, it's not like it's 2 or 3 like for some of the people i hang around, and i'm already impatient with the "obvious" things, whereas for all i know -i'm- saying the obvious things.
wah -.-

[shatterglass.livejournal.com]

Wah. You're right. I just see her as having fought battles already, and tired, and maybe not having enough energy to completely overturn the entire stupid-fiction people. I think perhaps I am romanticizing everything, because, well, romanticizing is fun. Harr.

And it completely doesn't excuse sloppiness - nothing excuses sloppiness. But this perhaps is my main motivation in Harry/Draco - I want the perspective on Harry's part to be more forgiving, at the same time lessening the starkness of the contrast of Harry's black and white world and opening his eyes to what horrors life really can hold. Maybe I don't know what I want, and Harry/Draco is everything, so I can write it and have everything. Or nothing. Wah. School and only a few hours of sleep makes me completely incomprehensable. :D