~~ 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

[ljash.livejournal.com]

The fetishizing question is complicated because there definitely is some fic where violence is fetishized. Usually it's pretty bad. When it's actually well-written I find myself looking at it, puzzled, and wondering why I didn't like it or why it was somehow different from other H/D with violence. But usually I find that fetishized ones are stories where people who simply write about violence and slap Harry and Draco's faces on it.

There is something interesting about H/D violence. If I were to try right now to say what I'd say it has to do with how they both seem stuck and unable to be passionate or be something outside the roles they have to play. They long for release and passion and can only get to it by going through violence. (The frustration makes the violence easier, as well.) They want, and aren't sure what they want, and don't know how to deal with what they want. Harry, at least, is full of frustration about nearly everything already. We don't know how much frustration Draco feels (in canon) as he has a pretty tight mask, but nothing goes right for him. They're both ready to explode but cannot. They need violence almost like a crutch, like an excuse.

So why is that hot? Erm. I don't know. Maybe because we're all a little bit trapped like that.

Buffy and Spike seem a little different to me. There's been a growing sexual tension since season 4 (maybe even a little visible in season 2), and the way it went in season 5 was gorgeous. "Smashed" was spectacular. Yet after they really got going, it stopped making sense to me. I'm actually prone to blame that on the writers, since many things stopped making sense to me in season 6. But it seems that the later stuff was different from "Smashed." It was less hot, less passionate, and just kind of sad. The times when the show still tried to play them as hot and sexy, it was a little weird.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I find the idea of both of them -needing- violence to break out of their shells of inactivity and passionlessness to be really interesting. Generally, I would say that a masked (icy!) Draco is a fanon Draco, because in canon he's just so transparent and all over the place and always putting his foot in his mouth. Harry has a lot more control, but it's more like he's just repressed by nature rather than by design.
I love the violence-as-a-crutch thing-- rings true. I mean, people do you lust in that way too, but violence seems more boy-realistic, closer to their frustration and lurking rage at the inability to change things.

Thing is, this H/D violence is usually not literal in fic-- just emotional. Just this lurking volatility, a danger of combustion that has to feel real. I love the few stories post-OoTP when Harry snaps and takes everything out on Draco-- Ivy's and Cassie Claire's come to mind-- but in general, it's enough to just have the two of them, setting each other on fire. There's enough violence there for me.

Yeah. Sometimes I pretend everything ended with `Wrecked', though I like the idea of Spike getting a soul for Buffy, 'cause I think that's somewhat inevitable what with his desire to do whatever his girl wants. God, Spike needs a princess to quest for, doesn't he. So wasted on Angel, angst-wise, oh man.
I mean, I agree with you, and it -is- the writing, I think. I meant their potential in my head, which is frozen around `Smashed', is similar in appeal to me to H/D. There's that sense of combustion and delirium, of falling apart and together at the same time. Don't mind me, I'm listening to Ani :>

[ljash.livejournal.com]

About Draco... yeah the cool and collected Draco is fanon, not canon. But while Draco usually shows his embarassment and his foolishness, you don't see much of a burning frustration. That's a different kind of thing, and hiding it would be a different kind of hiding.

Otherwise, eh I'm not sure. It's a delicate thing and I don't know exactly why sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I bet there's reasons, though. I just am not sure what they are.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I love the few stories post-OoTP when Harry snaps and takes everything out on Draco-- Ivy's and Cassie Claire's come to mind--

Thank you! See, I understand why H/S has gotten big since OotP but I just don't get how anybody could say (even if they're obviously wrong when they say it) that everything's been said about H/D. I guess the big problem is there's no duel scene in OotP like the one in GoF and Snape interrupts their final scene and Harry immediately becomes three times as angry at Snape as he is at Malfoy just because he's Snape and so he's connected to what he's gone through. But my god, Harry just hit Draco SO BADLY by getting Lucius put in jail and this guy is this kid's world. How could a fanfic writer not see this as opening things up? I loved CC's "Learning to Disappear." There is nothing sexier than Draco baring his throat to Harry. And what a throat it is.

Harry doesn't see it in canon, of course. Draco's just become less worthy of notice than he was before. Harry doesn't even touch him in the end. Draco simply dares to go after Harry and Harry's army dispatch him. Harry just has to sling him into a luggage rack. But to me that's the potentially cool part. When Harry dismisses the kid just as he's given the kid something real to hate him for...yipes! Being pathetic has never had a negative effect on Draco's slashability before. He should be better now that he's got less to lose.

(Then again, maybe I just get excited because I've always loved the idea of Draco on the dark path to wisdom while Harry's on the light path, the more common one. Harry learns lessons as he goes and gains knowledge. Draco must have everything he believes and relies on stripped away little by little until he's got nothing, a complete Dark Night of the Soul. That's where he'll get wisdom if it's to be gotten.)

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Mmmm. Yeah. I can totally see a throat-and-mouth fixation. See, I once tried to write a fic for my friend Kasi with a hands fixation... and I couldn't really see it. I wrote this whole bunch of overly-detailed obsessive watching-of-hands, but it didn't really ring true to me. I didn't know where I was going because while hands really say a lot about a person and I -could- see Draco being insanely obsessive enough to notice them in Harry, I don't think they have hypnotic power, not for Harry or Draco. They might for Snape or Lupin, mayyyybe, but Harry & Draco would be all about mouth/eyes/neck. Maybe arse/cock/etc but that'd be too obvious, somehow.

But a neck has so much connotations that really fit H/D-- its baring denotes loss of control, being overwhelmed, primal instinct. And I can totally see it being a powerful aphrodisiac for both of them on an unconscious level. A mouth would be further along, you know, closer to romance. It'd progress to the mouth-- the focus on the ease of drawing blood from it, it being where words come from, the way you can shut someone up with it, the way you can -possess- it. Lastly would come the eyes-- the hot-seat of all emotional communication, all the lust/anger/need/etc coming through. But first would be the cock and the neck, I think :> heh.

I love the dark path idea, now that you mention it. I think both of them are on dark paths in one way or another, though. Darkness and light intersect so much, and I think that's where the power lies for both of them-- in the shadowy corners, in the unexpected twists and mergers of meaning. I think they can share a path 'cause both of them are just so unpredictable and wild. And of course there's the thing where Harry's having everything -he's- believed in sptripped away too. They're there in the dark, together. Mmmmmm if only they'd notice they're not alone, things'd start cookin' :D :D :D :D