~~ 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

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh my god. How could I have never seen the Tom/Hagrid before! That's frightening.

The thing about fanfic maybe is the characters have been developed by somebody else, at least somewhat, so maybe people can bring all that to a fic when they read it. Or not. Because I know just what you mean about the frustration and tension in H/D that's totally there in canon. There's a fic I read a whie ago that wasn't that well-written but still I really liked it because it had Harry and Draco in an established (the prequel showed the start of it) kind of S&M relationship. Not in terms of violence (because frankly, while I do see the poetic violence always present in H/D I'm not into violence itself and I never think it's sexy, I just thinks *ouch!*) but in terms of Draco constantly teasing Harry so Harry would lash out. Harry would insult him and walk away and Draco would crawl on the floor all, "Come back Harrryyyy," and Harry would get angry and stomp back and snog him and push him away etc.

What was cool about it (and what seemed so right about it for me) was that Harry realizes in the end that he was unwittingly getting more and more entwined with Draco until he finally, I guess, got so tired or so utterly spent he was able to love him and wanted to do something for him.

That's what I sort of see in them, I think. Not a generic anger or desire to punch but this compulsion of Draco's to tease Harry to get jumped on and this compulsion of Harry's to pretend he doesn't want to jump Draco all the time when he really does. It's weird you mentioned the Bible because this subject made me think not of original sin but of Jacob wrestling with the angel until he gave him his blessing.:-)

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, Tom/Hagrid. You should read skysorceress' and amalin's T/H fics (here). I think it's all about the way they're written, generally. But the ones that did get written were -breathtaking-.

I know what you mean, I have a fondness for that certain characterization of them that makes me overlook any sort of inadequacy in the writing itself (within reason). I might know which fic you mean, but I think there's more than one (there are a lot, one way or another). Usually my problem with these is how feminine they make Draco in the bargain, but otherwise-- I love how even the most plebey H/D can have this basic insight that they are like, red kryptonite to each other-- irresistible and addictive and personality-shaping and seeded with passion. And then the love sort of follows because one loves what one needs, maybe.

I don't think I'd thought it was a generic desire to punch, at all-- just violence in general, like a way of relating, a way of hurting each other because they want to see the other wince, because they seem to have no sense of fear of the other's pain and instead a wicked Bacchanalian pleasure in it, possibly.
There's just that primalness to it, that's what made me think of original sin-- but possibly that's more fanon-or-actual-slash!H&D than canon-or-non-lovers!H/D, actually :> (http://www.core.binghamton.edu/~lorien/story/_fic.html) ()