~~ loving to hate....

[reenka]

ethrosdemon just raised some issues in her latest post, on fetishizing of sexual violence in people's reactions to the Buffy/Spike pairing.

This concerns me mostly because it rings true. The appeal of Buffy/Spike (and Harry/Draco in many ways) to me has always partly been the violence inherent in their attraction. It's not the power-struggle dominance/submission angle-- it's purely the emotional underpinnings of this-- the anger, the rage, the need to lash out. A power struggle would imply a struggle for control, whereas the appeal of this fetishized violence is the -loss- of all inhibitions and control for both parties. Both Buffy and Spike were losing it when they attacked each other (though really, Buffy attacked Spike) in `Smashed'. There is a parallel here to my own interest in the Harry-Draco fight in `Order of the Phoenix' and my own perception of it as `sexy', as cathartic, as... a sign of H/D, of some sort of twisted potential.

I don't write H/D with them physically attacking each other, usually, but ever since I've felt I'd gotten a "handle" of sorts on their characterizations, I've written them as increasingly visceral and violent (emotionally) with each other. And yet to call it "fetishizing" seems to suggest a sort of... singular fixation upon anger itself which seems problematic. It my mind, it's merely an emotional valve, a release of tension, two people with roughly comparable physical strength venting their frustrations with each other in the most natural way for them.

I'm unsure where I'm going with this, only that it concerns me. If it's the violence itself that's being fetishized, then it sort of makes the characters' full selves less than important-- beside the point, even. It reduces things to basic drives-- anger, fear, lust-- and seeing it that way, I can see someone's objection to Buffy/Spike. This is still a couple with a lot of potential (as is H/D), but to establish it using violent emotions is basically wreaking mental violence upon them. They may invite it or welcome it, but fact remains, writing them that way strips them of their full selfhood.

Something about both B/S and H/D seems to be about the annihilation of self-- that dance with death, maybe-- simply because it really strains the very basis of the character to act in this way towards the other. I see it in a more abstract way, I guess, but it is also frequently an actual sense of people's reactions to Spike/Buffy relationship (possibly) constituting destructiveness. I tend to hope that creation comes from destruction, but that's ideal more than reality. Maybe this is close to the Christian idea of Sexual Love as Original Sin-- wanting/needing the Forbidden, the dark and twisted and -wrong-.... Although I see the exile from Eden and the fruit of knowledge as being positive, life-affirming. To me, this basic conflict of unconscious urges and their conscious consequences is at the root of being human. From folly, wisdom follows. Well, one hopes....?
~~


1. Feedback shouldn't mean praise. It annoys me because when I do give positive feedback (as I often do), it's taken as praise, whereas I'd never actually -praise- anyone in the sense of purposefully doing so.
    If everyone only says "I love you" in response to a piece of art to the artist, it's basically the same as saying "I hate you" or "I splatter you in goose-down and egg-cream"-- that is, meaningless. In other words, worshipful squeeing sucks (yes, I do it, yes). Constructive criticism = love. No thought behind comment = no love (unless the commenter is a friend, then one loves them anyway, of course).

2. People whose journals are nothing but quizzes, cryptic announcements without context and squeeing just really really really annoy me. This ties in with my dislike of oblivious dumbness, non-in-jokey plebishness and let's-all-be-lemmingsness. Lemmings must die. DIE I TELL YOU, DIIIIIIE >:D

3. Plebe H/D makes me ill, though I hate myself for being desperate enough to read any.
    Did I even need to mention my hate-on for lowest-common-denominator!H/D shipping? Or lowest-common-denominator shipping in general? Lowest common denominator, btw, means "most fangirls' idea of The One True Way". Most people's idea of what H/D is so far from mine as to be almost completely incompatible and only my rabid adoration of the pairing in my head allows me to go on without defenestrating myself.

4. Perfect people aren't sexy, man, grow up.
    Every character has their good side, their bad side, and their ugly side. Weasleys and Malfoys, Potters and Blacks-- you know what? They're all (potentially) equally pathetic and brilliant. Blatant favoritism and bias makes you look like a moron (not that there's anything wrong with being a moron-- you can be moron and proud!).

5. Fangirls are actually really annoying.
    It's painful to watch. Fangirling (the verb) is different-- it involves t00bing, squeeing, being a moron (always a good thing) and generally watching your last ramaining braincell combust-- my idea of A Good Time. -Being- a fangirl involves being painfully sincere, quiet and silently resentful and insecure. That is just sad.

6. Hype has exactly -zero- to do with a fic's worthiness one way -or-(!!) the other.
    There's no such thing as a "fanfic goddess", only a person with a roughly similar potential to the rest who'd thought harder, tried longer, wanted to improve more intensely and ignored their own urges for the easy fix better. Conversely, neither is there such a thing as "overhyped garbage" when applied to fics with evident effort applied to them. There's no such thing as "The One Fic To Rule Them All", but neither is there such as thing as "That Well-Written, Deeply-felt Piece-of-Garbage-Because-I-Say-So". Not naming names, but y'all dig me, don't you.

7. Het is neither better than nor worse than slash, and constantly setting them up against each other in the first place can be seen as homophobic.

8. Sexeh-Snake-King!Lucius is ridiculous (and boring). And transparent (and boring) and small-minded (and boring) & did I mention uninteresting? Because, yeah. :>

9. Being stupid/immature/not "into" canon/a bad speller/"sensitive"/not "into" slash/temperamental doesn't excuse a) acting like a 12-year-old monkey on crack; b) writing bad fic and actually posting it. 'Nuff said.

10. Mmmm, Tom/Hagrid. Feel the LOVE. It's canon, man.

Comments

[sarahtales.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's violence *per se*, but you know... the idea of somebody being the particular person who's jagged in all the right places to rub you up the wrong way (oh that's wrong dirty bad do it again! - ahem, excuse me, illustrating point) to the point where you just lose all control... it feels somewhat similar. I think. You know. Because of loss of control and violent emotion and pounding blood and desperation.
Not, hopefully, because 'ow! dammit! do it again. Ow! Ow, that really hurts! Okay, do it again.'
Or the annihilation of self. It's all about *you*, and your most primal emotions, and being able to *be* yourself at a primal level with this other person even if it feels raw and terrifying, and hating it butyouknowyouloveit.
I'll get my kinks off your lj, now. Swear to God.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Heeeeeee. <333333 What's really kind of surprising is the way that for a second I'm not sure what you mean and then like BAM and I know you've gotten what I was trying to say and didn't and felt like saying and generally was gnawing at ~:))
I do think it's the "violent emotion" thing more than the violence (though I mean, Buffy/Spike was violent in a physical sense so I can see where the conclusion could be drawn, but it was only emotionally charged in `Smashed'-- the other times were like, nothing, jokey almost-- and then it quickly turned to emotion & lust & not violence at all, except violence still).

Yes! That's really what attracts me, it's the idea that by the destruction of former boundaries, you can reach some more primal level of being where there is no more fear and only -life-, the way it's meant to be experienced. I mean, it's annhilation-but-not, because the loss of control/inhibitions feels like nakedness and loss of some surface level of self, but it's really different when one -wants- it. A part of me was wondering whether being just your most basic self was... I dunno... detrimental, taking away from the truth of the surface layer where obvious identity would lie. Whether it's -good- to be who you think you are generally.

But well, in some cases it's like a shell that one out-grows or -needs- to out-grow, and in those cases it seems like violent emotion and desire/need/love/lust in particular would be the only thing strong enough to shock one into living truthfully.
I used to characterize Draco as a liar, as someone who made things up and manipulated things consciously, but I mean, there are different sorts of lies, and the most dangerous ones are the ones we let ourselves believe, and both Harry & Draco are doing that. And that's where the blood starts to pound, remininding them that they're not getting away that easy :>

Heeeeeeeee. I love my meta kinky, I really do >:D