~~ deconstructing Harry/Draco. Again. -.-
Oct. 16th, 2003 07:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkaSo am I the only person who procrastinates on actually -thinking- even enough to read recreationally by rambling on about things that require no thinking, like True Love and The Meaning Of Existence? Disturbing thing is, probably not. Heh. A strangely large number of people think of Harry&Draco meta recreationally. H/D: the thinking slasher's drug. Or not, man. Or Not.
I was re-reading a bit from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
idiotparade's reply to my oldish post on how love is supposed to transcend and all that jazz (I didn't bother actually paying attention, just skimmed-- can't concentrate worth beans now). But her saying that when two people in love can no longer live without each other (ala Olympia's `Shining Prince' series), it's co-dependence and thus not healthy just sort of made several things -click- in my head.
In my PoMo lit-crit class, we had a guest lecturer today who liked illustrating the state of existential anxiety and the sudden awareness of the nothingness present within yourself by comparing it to the state of being in love. That totally makes sense to me, because well-- ideally, in my head, Draco is Harry's Other, the person he marginalizes and ignores, the muted opposite. Sort of in the way that the dominant culture would repress the minority culture, would take away its voice-- there's a similar dynamic there, though on a much smaller scale obviously. The Slytherins are The Other-- they are a reflection of everything `right' and noble, and by their very existence they define what's good by not being it; Draco's merely the personification of Slytherin and Harry's personal bane, the person whose voice Harry wants to mute. (Er.... plz ignore the inane lit-crit babble-- I'll grow out of it soon, thnx).
So yes, the idea of love between them ripping away Harry's sense of safety, possibly even his sense of self, appeals greatly to me. I want Harry to fall in love with an unredeemed Draco more than anything, because -that's- what would bring about this peering into the abyss of himself, this feeling of vertigo and the need for complete reaccessment of everything.
I want to write that (though mostly I fail, making Draco too "safe", too understandable to Harry, at least in the fic that's currently in beta, and this worries me). And I want to believe that being in love -is- like that, that it -can- be like that. It's not so much that love would -change- you by having the other -person- change your habits and routines, no. It's more that this state of having the foundation of your previous existence ripped out from under you, this utter sudden chaos of surging emotion -can- be used, harnessed to produce change. Not through the other person's presence, but merely through the power of your own epiphany, I guess. I want to believe that love can be a metaphysical epiphany, a way of getting in touch with The Other and reclaiming them, identifying this anti-you as a part of yourself. Thus you make peace with it and realize that to -be- a whole person, you need to accept that your identity isn't as rigid and static as you'd always assumed.
I don't know if this is "realistic". I definitely realize that most people don't love like that-- most people see what they want to see, in the ones they love -especially-. But what would happen if you didn't? What -can- happen if you don't? What are the possibilities inherent in this basic re-evaluation of self? Since Harry is already on a quest of self-knowledge, doesn't it only make sense that he'd have to confront these issues which most of us spend our lives avoiding? And what about Draco? Doesn't he deserve to see the truth about himself, even though he doesn't seem made for it?
I realize that mostly, it's just that I -want- to see it happen. Nothing says any character is built for it or can handle it, really. In a way, I don't even know what this entails -in practice-, since these concepts are so abstract. I sort of know what I want, but I have a really hard time pinning it down into specifics. I do think one can face the abyss within oneself without love's impetus, merely by allowing oneself to really -think-. I don't even know if this whole concept of nothingness is really useful. I do think there's a binary opposition that's possible to be created with most concepts, but I don't know if it's a useful exercise or just something that obscures the truth.
I must admit I'm in love with binary oppositions (I want to create them just to destroy them, anyway), sadly enough, as well as with over-metaphorizing everything into neat over-arching concepts. Real people don't exist in a state of binary opposition, but in their -minds- they do, that's the tricky part. I shouldn't mix up reality with people's general psychological perception of it. I think whether they're aware of it or not, most people's understandings of the world are pretty binary-- pretty structuralist and hierarchical and fixed. It makes me want to see that challenged, toppled even.
In a way, I want to utilize this concept of opposites to show that all these concepts-- these people-- are actually -similar-. Love and hate, Slytherin and Gryffindor-- these are artificial descriptors which just barely scratch the surface of what they claim to describe. I dunno. In a way, this is a post-structuralist attitude to take to HP, anyway, wanting to fuse these polarities within its highly conceptual (possibly even abstract) characters.
It's so easy to idealize love, because it has all this -potential- it rarely follows through on. It's so easy to talk about what it -can- do and ignore the fact that mostly, it doesn't do it. I think I should try to move away from the fantasy image I have in my head of everything that's -possible- and just think about -people- more, maybe. I'm actually in love with writing that can really transmit the -real-, more than anything. I mean, yeah, I dig on the deconstructing-Harry-and-Draco ideal, but no one, -no one- does it with any rigor, and I'm not stupid enough to think I'm the postmodern-lit H/D messiah, either. Heh. I think well-written realistic fiction really carries all this baggage and implicit power of emotion in the -subtext-, without ever having to put it across as if it was some kind of thesis. I fully believe that if you truly represent these characters, if you bring them to life, then a sort of stable and consistent dynamic will emerge that is separate from any particular author. It's like, the H/D vibe. If you have a certain degree of realism and emotional truth in your writing, the meta will come, basically.
So I guess I don't know if love transcends any more than anything transcends, or if you could show it any better than you can show any other metaphysical concept. I don't know if there's even some basic reality to `romantic love' as a meta-concept, with all its baggage and all its connotations. I mean, so many people compare how they feel to how they -should- feel and how it -should- be, and then it all falls apart because their real life doesn't meet their expectations. I think maybe with the right person, with the right state of mind, with the necessary -readiness-, a person can sort of-- get a glimpse behind the curtain of themselves, of their own perceptions of what they'd thought was `real'. Though that's another obscure and high-minded metaphor, I don't know how to say it more clearly.
On the one hand, I'm always caught up in the search for The Answer, for The Revelation, for some kind of pay-off where you hit the right emotional notes and you meet the right person or you read the right book or you think long enough, and suddenly, you can -See-. At the same time, I'm skeptical as to the realistic value of this whole idea, and think maybe there's just -living- and being as true to yourself as the moment allows you. I simply don't know, I guess.
I realize it's simply human to want people who're -comfortable-, who really -understand- you, who are there for you and who'll support you and who make you feel safe and needed and loved. I understand that, and deep-friendship-between-men stories are very meaningful for me, and I adore thinking about `platonic love' scenarios where you have just about everything you can possibly need wrapped up in this one person-- and it's not -complementary- in the sense that you're missing something and then -they- came along-- it's simply that now that you -do- have them, you need them because they are who they are and they're what makes you happy. I've loved Kirk&Spock and I love the -idea- of Harry&Draco friendship and I love the friendship phase of Clark&Lex, and so on. It's just beautiful, and I want that too, possibly more than anything else. Reading this post bydsudis on the necessary sexualization of male/male friendship in slash, I just remembered how special and beautiful I find such friendship. The pure -togetherness- and bonding that people can achieve together, the way they're reflections of each other, but more smoothly, in that they -accept- that they're part of one another to start with. Sigh.
I mean, no one really -wants- to have their existence challenged, to have to fight with the one they love and not be able to trust that it's "just a fight", not to be able to count on a future, not be able to count on anything at all except a continuing cycle of sex and violence. I mean, that's some people's kink, but it's not really what's commonly considered healthy, is it. It might be masochistically fun to wake up alone, to sleep next to a cold body that doesn't cuddle and doesn't ever let you forget that it's foreign, an invasion, a wrongness-- but if the foundations of your self-image really -are- being challenged and it's not "just some rough sex"-- then no one really gets off on it (except some wacko writers).
I do think my attraction to H/D is at least partly about the wrongness, the jarring nature of it. I realize a lot of romance fics center on how right it is for them almost immediately, how they click impossibly well together in bed, how they understand each other better than anyone else could, how they cuddle in spite of themselves-- but while I definitely appreciate that, I think it's a pretty lie, and it's not what I'd consider realistic, even within an unrealistic relationship like H/D is to start with.
Pairing people who have an intense apparently-non-sexual friendship together (like say, I dunno, Sirius&Remus) is also a pretty lie, in a way, just likedsudis said in her post-- and a lot of people replied, but we -like- the lie, that's what we write fiction for.
And isn't that interesting?
It's not what -I- write fiction (or fanfiction) for, though I certainly binge on way, way more than my fair share of romantic escapist fantasy (in fact that's more than 95% of what I read, actually).
But ideally-- what I -want- to be doing is telling the truth about people and about their relationships and about the universe at large. I think the best writing of the people whose fics I admire most-- Silvia, Aja, Amalin, Ivy, Maya, Penelope-- does have this unmistakeable quality of emotional truth-telling. I -want- the truth. Even if it hurts-- even if it tells me what I don't want to hear. I -need- the truth because without it I'm lost; I don't know who I am.
I think perhaps this "truth" is in itself transient-- impossible to keep still. It always changes depending on my mood when I read (or re-read) the story, depending on my own capacity to take in the information, to search within myself to see what I really believe, inspired by the story. I mean, a story can make me ask the right questions, but only I can admit the answers to myself. And once I do, once I pin them down-- they become next to worthless because if I start taking things for granted (say, "Draco is Harry's Other"), their very transformative power gets lost and diluted. Sigh.
This is why I have to keep asking myself, "why Harry/Draco" and "why love" and "why anyone", over and over. It has to remain fresh or I just... I don't know. I just forget that there aren't any -answers-, and only questions.
So yes, if anyone replies to this post to say, `I agree', I will laugh. And laugh. And laugh. ><;;
~~
That said, and on a completely unrelated note: Starkiller's `The Twelve Days of Christmas' cracked me the hell up, man. Hee. Yes, at the end of the day, I may say what I may, but eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, theirloveissopure!!!11!!1! *dies*
owww. owww, all that not-really-thinking and questioning myself hurt my braaaaain. oooowwwwww. i can only -imagine- what it did to others silly enough to read it all. muwahahah...hah...ha. -.-
I was re-reading a bit from
idiotparade's reply to my oldish post on how love is supposed to transcend and all that jazz (I didn't bother actually paying attention, just skimmed-- can't concentrate worth beans now). But her saying that when two people in love can no longer live without each other (ala Olympia's `Shining Prince' series), it's co-dependence and thus not healthy just sort of made several things -click- in my head.In my PoMo lit-crit class, we had a guest lecturer today who liked illustrating the state of existential anxiety and the sudden awareness of the nothingness present within yourself by comparing it to the state of being in love. That totally makes sense to me, because well-- ideally, in my head, Draco is Harry's Other, the person he marginalizes and ignores, the muted opposite. Sort of in the way that the dominant culture would repress the minority culture, would take away its voice-- there's a similar dynamic there, though on a much smaller scale obviously. The Slytherins are The Other-- they are a reflection of everything `right' and noble, and by their very existence they define what's good by not being it; Draco's merely the personification of Slytherin and Harry's personal bane, the person whose voice Harry wants to mute. (Er.... plz ignore the inane lit-crit babble-- I'll grow out of it soon, thnx).
So yes, the idea of love between them ripping away Harry's sense of safety, possibly even his sense of self, appeals greatly to me. I want Harry to fall in love with an unredeemed Draco more than anything, because -that's- what would bring about this peering into the abyss of himself, this feeling of vertigo and the need for complete reaccessment of everything.
I want to write that (though mostly I fail, making Draco too "safe", too understandable to Harry, at least in the fic that's currently in beta, and this worries me). And I want to believe that being in love -is- like that, that it -can- be like that. It's not so much that love would -change- you by having the other -person- change your habits and routines, no. It's more that this state of having the foundation of your previous existence ripped out from under you, this utter sudden chaos of surging emotion -can- be used, harnessed to produce change. Not through the other person's presence, but merely through the power of your own epiphany, I guess. I want to believe that love can be a metaphysical epiphany, a way of getting in touch with The Other and reclaiming them, identifying this anti-you as a part of yourself. Thus you make peace with it and realize that to -be- a whole person, you need to accept that your identity isn't as rigid and static as you'd always assumed.
I don't know if this is "realistic". I definitely realize that most people don't love like that-- most people see what they want to see, in the ones they love -especially-. But what would happen if you didn't? What -can- happen if you don't? What are the possibilities inherent in this basic re-evaluation of self? Since Harry is already on a quest of self-knowledge, doesn't it only make sense that he'd have to confront these issues which most of us spend our lives avoiding? And what about Draco? Doesn't he deserve to see the truth about himself, even though he doesn't seem made for it?
I realize that mostly, it's just that I -want- to see it happen. Nothing says any character is built for it or can handle it, really. In a way, I don't even know what this entails -in practice-, since these concepts are so abstract. I sort of know what I want, but I have a really hard time pinning it down into specifics. I do think one can face the abyss within oneself without love's impetus, merely by allowing oneself to really -think-. I don't even know if this whole concept of nothingness is really useful. I do think there's a binary opposition that's possible to be created with most concepts, but I don't know if it's a useful exercise or just something that obscures the truth.
I must admit I'm in love with binary oppositions (I want to create them just to destroy them, anyway), sadly enough, as well as with over-metaphorizing everything into neat over-arching concepts. Real people don't exist in a state of binary opposition, but in their -minds- they do, that's the tricky part. I shouldn't mix up reality with people's general psychological perception of it. I think whether they're aware of it or not, most people's understandings of the world are pretty binary-- pretty structuralist and hierarchical and fixed. It makes me want to see that challenged, toppled even.
In a way, I want to utilize this concept of opposites to show that all these concepts-- these people-- are actually -similar-. Love and hate, Slytherin and Gryffindor-- these are artificial descriptors which just barely scratch the surface of what they claim to describe. I dunno. In a way, this is a post-structuralist attitude to take to HP, anyway, wanting to fuse these polarities within its highly conceptual (possibly even abstract) characters.
It's so easy to idealize love, because it has all this -potential- it rarely follows through on. It's so easy to talk about what it -can- do and ignore the fact that mostly, it doesn't do it. I think I should try to move away from the fantasy image I have in my head of everything that's -possible- and just think about -people- more, maybe. I'm actually in love with writing that can really transmit the -real-, more than anything. I mean, yeah, I dig on the deconstructing-Harry-and-Draco ideal, but no one, -no one- does it with any rigor, and I'm not stupid enough to think I'm the postmodern-lit H/D messiah, either. Heh. I think well-written realistic fiction really carries all this baggage and implicit power of emotion in the -subtext-, without ever having to put it across as if it was some kind of thesis. I fully believe that if you truly represent these characters, if you bring them to life, then a sort of stable and consistent dynamic will emerge that is separate from any particular author. It's like, the H/D vibe. If you have a certain degree of realism and emotional truth in your writing, the meta will come, basically.
So I guess I don't know if love transcends any more than anything transcends, or if you could show it any better than you can show any other metaphysical concept. I don't know if there's even some basic reality to `romantic love' as a meta-concept, with all its baggage and all its connotations. I mean, so many people compare how they feel to how they -should- feel and how it -should- be, and then it all falls apart because their real life doesn't meet their expectations. I think maybe with the right person, with the right state of mind, with the necessary -readiness-, a person can sort of-- get a glimpse behind the curtain of themselves, of their own perceptions of what they'd thought was `real'. Though that's another obscure and high-minded metaphor, I don't know how to say it more clearly.
On the one hand, I'm always caught up in the search for The Answer, for The Revelation, for some kind of pay-off where you hit the right emotional notes and you meet the right person or you read the right book or you think long enough, and suddenly, you can -See-. At the same time, I'm skeptical as to the realistic value of this whole idea, and think maybe there's just -living- and being as true to yourself as the moment allows you. I simply don't know, I guess.
I realize it's simply human to want people who're -comfortable-, who really -understand- you, who are there for you and who'll support you and who make you feel safe and needed and loved. I understand that, and deep-friendship-between-men stories are very meaningful for me, and I adore thinking about `platonic love' scenarios where you have just about everything you can possibly need wrapped up in this one person-- and it's not -complementary- in the sense that you're missing something and then -they- came along-- it's simply that now that you -do- have them, you need them because they are who they are and they're what makes you happy. I've loved Kirk&Spock and I love the -idea- of Harry&Draco friendship and I love the friendship phase of Clark&Lex, and so on. It's just beautiful, and I want that too, possibly more than anything else. Reading this post by
dsudis on the necessary sexualization of male/male friendship in slash, I just remembered how special and beautiful I find such friendship. The pure -togetherness- and bonding that people can achieve together, the way they're reflections of each other, but more smoothly, in that they -accept- that they're part of one another to start with. Sigh.I mean, no one really -wants- to have their existence challenged, to have to fight with the one they love and not be able to trust that it's "just a fight", not to be able to count on a future, not be able to count on anything at all except a continuing cycle of sex and violence. I mean, that's some people's kink, but it's not really what's commonly considered healthy, is it. It might be masochistically fun to wake up alone, to sleep next to a cold body that doesn't cuddle and doesn't ever let you forget that it's foreign, an invasion, a wrongness-- but if the foundations of your self-image really -are- being challenged and it's not "just some rough sex"-- then no one really gets off on it (except some wacko writers).
I do think my attraction to H/D is at least partly about the wrongness, the jarring nature of it. I realize a lot of romance fics center on how right it is for them almost immediately, how they click impossibly well together in bed, how they understand each other better than anyone else could, how they cuddle in spite of themselves-- but while I definitely appreciate that, I think it's a pretty lie, and it's not what I'd consider realistic, even within an unrealistic relationship like H/D is to start with.
Pairing people who have an intense apparently-non-sexual friendship together (like say, I dunno, Sirius&Remus) is also a pretty lie, in a way, just like
dsudis said in her post-- and a lot of people replied, but we -like- the lie, that's what we write fiction for.And isn't that interesting?
It's not what -I- write fiction (or fanfiction) for, though I certainly binge on way, way more than my fair share of romantic escapist fantasy (in fact that's more than 95% of what I read, actually).
But ideally-- what I -want- to be doing is telling the truth about people and about their relationships and about the universe at large. I think the best writing of the people whose fics I admire most-- Silvia, Aja, Amalin, Ivy, Maya, Penelope-- does have this unmistakeable quality of emotional truth-telling. I -want- the truth. Even if it hurts-- even if it tells me what I don't want to hear. I -need- the truth because without it I'm lost; I don't know who I am.
I think perhaps this "truth" is in itself transient-- impossible to keep still. It always changes depending on my mood when I read (or re-read) the story, depending on my own capacity to take in the information, to search within myself to see what I really believe, inspired by the story. I mean, a story can make me ask the right questions, but only I can admit the answers to myself. And once I do, once I pin them down-- they become next to worthless because if I start taking things for granted (say, "Draco is Harry's Other"), their very transformative power gets lost and diluted. Sigh.
This is why I have to keep asking myself, "why Harry/Draco" and "why love" and "why anyone", over and over. It has to remain fresh or I just... I don't know. I just forget that there aren't any -answers-, and only questions.
So yes, if anyone replies to this post to say, `I agree', I will laugh. And laugh. And laugh. ><;;
~~
That said, and on a completely unrelated note: Starkiller's `The Twelve Days of Christmas' cracked me the hell up, man. Hee. Yes, at the end of the day, I may say what I may, but eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, theirloveissopure!!!11!!1! *dies*
owww. owww, all that not-really-thinking and questioning myself hurt my braaaaain. oooowwwwww. i can only -imagine- what it did to others silly enough to read it all. muwahahah...hah...ha. -.-
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-10-16 06:35 pm (UTC)There's something about Harry and Draco that pulls me...usually I go for more "positive" slash relationships. I think what I like about them is that I can imagine that they are really the same person. Kind of like the thing I liked about Mulder/Krycek (on the show) was that they were kind of twins gone down different roads or in different universes.
That's what I feel with Draco and Harry. That if they were together they would be looking into the abyss but the abyss would be still. Balanced. Calm. They'd be able to think. It's like...I remember saying once about how I have a cousin who's husband teased her by saying that the big secret of HP was that he wasn't really a wizard at all, he was an abused child who imagined this life as a way of dealing with his own life. That's not true, obviously, but my cousin fell for it because on some level it's possible, of course. That's always the possibility in a story about the orphan plucked from obscurity and thrust into greatness.
What I liked about the idea, though, was that it made me think that if Harry really was imagining the whole thing I wouldn't be surprised if the "real" Harry was a hell of a lot more like Draco. That his evil step-parents were really his parents and there were no fantasy loving parents. That he wasn't brave or noticed or special. Where his enemies really are bad guys who deserve to be punished. It's like that Shirley Jackson story "Charles" where the little boy talks about the bad things Charles does in school and it turns out there is no Charles. With Harry's personality I can believe he'd write a story where he'd take all the worst things about himself and stick it onto this other character who's his mirror opposite. Plus even their coloring is like blood brothers.
On Draco's part...well, it seems like he'd have to have already started to confront that abyss as unsuited as he may seem for it. Obviously he's clinging to a lot of illusions still, but he must have had a lot of moments over the years he can't forget where he was humiliated and alone. Draco's in denial but I think it's more closely under the surface. Also he's the one that usually seeks Harry out which almost implies he WANTS to know the truth even if he's not ready for it. It's like...well, this all goes back to your story that I have not sent you feedback on yet. It really spoke to a lot of basic things I see about Draco.:-)
Since we're in Harry's pov he almost has to be the more clueless of the two, simply because we, as readers, know the truth about Draco. The weird thing is I really can see them doing the whole "cuddling in spite of themselves thing." Whether it's realistic or not isn't really the point, it just seems right for what these characters represent to me. Neither of them seems able to cuddle anyone, really, so it just somehow seems right that they'd be able to do it for each other because they know they hate each other. They can't reject each other any further than they already have. When you've worked through all the hate what's on the other side? The possibilities are exciting!!
no subject
Date: 2003-10-16 07:38 pm (UTC)er.
Because yeah, I feel that too. I do think their differences are largely illusionary, or at least not as glaring as they both probably think, and that it's important for them to realize it. Sometimes I just get carried away with the prelude to it all, with the set-up as it stands, where I could just see them destroying each other and it being all -wrong- and endless and hard to break out of like an abusive relationship would be, too.
And now I'm all inspired to write a cuddle-fic, ehehehe. I guess the cuddling is too -easy- and assumed, usually, that's what I meant, not that it's impossible or OOC, heheheh~:) Just not... immediately, I guess... :-?
Yeah, I do think Draco (probably without knowing it) wants to know the truth. Harry... only seems to want to know about specific things he cares to know, and not others. Then again, Draco cares to know about Harry ~:))
I'm all into them being blood-brothers, btw. Either metaphorically or in the DV sort of way, ehehehe. Though that post on smarm vs slash really made me wibbly about my preference for H/D kissing/etc in DV, though I'll be okay without it. Since usually in friendship-type male relationships, I want them to stay platonic, 'cause usually they're actually more intense that way, I guess. Whereas I seem to always want H&D to go as far as they can possibly go, know as much as they can possibly know about each other.
I mean, romance is a whole different way of seeing a person, I guess, it's not just friendship+sex, really. So romantic friendship just -begs- for sex. Depending on if you think it's a romantic friendship or not~:))
I've had past relationships where it was like, "well, we're so close, why not be closer" and that doesn't work for me. It has to be a -unique quality- about the relationship, whether they're friends or enemies or strangers or actual brothers, that makes me want to take that leap into the unknown, and I think that's when you have a certain `magic' -combination- of likeness and differences that mixes and interacts and presto! Sex is a foregone conclusion, almost.
At least, that's how I want to see it~:)
Hee. And you know I love the idea of exclusive cuddling, man. Awwwww. :D