~~ bleary fic wibbles.

[reenka]

It's an obvious sort of thought, but.... I wonder if the stories we love best affirm to us the ways in which we were already picturing the workings of the world. The things which continuously upset me in any story or even piece of non-fiction are things which I don't want to believe in, even if they're possible. There's a resistance there, a sense of vulnerability. Like, if I let this idea inside me, it could ruin me.

Maybe this is related to what someone's comfort-zone of emotion is, too. Mine had never been so rigid before I began to care about characters too much. I mean, usually I meet them in a story and it's for the first time, and while it hurts to see them come to a sticky end, it's self-contained sort of thing, and the prose could easily overwhelm the characterization difficulties. The characterization is what it is, and there's rarely "right" or "wrong" to it, as long as it's well-documented.

The more time I spend reading fanfic in a single fandom, the more sensitive I seem to become to characterization over style. The characters (and secondarily, their world) have attained so much definition in my mind that it just hurts me to let go. I want them to remain consistent. I want them to retain some sort of compass of behavior more than anything-- not so much in-character in terms of actions, but more in terms of a sort of emotional range, maybe.

I was reading yet another rec of olympia_m's `Tale of the Shining Prince' & sequels on veelarecs, which is what brought me to this. I think that is one gorgeously written story which I can probably talk about more than any other set of fics in this fandom. I mean, no other work except perhaps the Draco Trilogy, would seem to sustain that sort of comprehensive analysis. I couldn't read it more than once, and I have all these conflicting emotions about it, which is what makes it interesting to me.


Usually, I either adore a fic, am indifferent, or can't stand it for some reason, and the good points don't much matter to me. The only fic I have near as many issues with, that I consider well-written and that inspires me to talk about it in an in-depth way would be ishuca's `Plague of Legends'. They do have certain things in common, unsurprisingly. And the big thing there is my inability to fully accept their emotional range as applied to Harry & Draco. I understand it, I think-- it's not that it's -alien- to me. Nevertheless I rebel against that sort of world, that sort of Harry. It's interesting being challenged this way, though. If, for instance, Ali's `Sins of the Father' has one of my favorite Harry's, that just makes it too easy for me, almost. That fic goes down like ice-cream-- I completely identify with the pov character, and everything else follows. Whereas in the other fics, there's this constant struggle to accept the character as real, to allow them this life that's entirely separate from me & from what I want to know of the world.

I think the stories that I adored the most upon first reading-- `Origins', `Brief Interval Before Resumption of Play', IP, even-- all have an emotional center that I could project myself into. They verbalize a state of being I always already inhabited-- I can step into the shoes of the pov character and feel comfortable there. They felt like old friends, even if they tore my heart to pieces while they sat on my living-room floor. It's interesting, comparing Origins!Harry & TotSP!Harry-- they're on opposite sides of some sort of spectrum, aren't they, and yet. And yet. I can see the thread that connects them-- maybe that's why TotSP haunts me so.

`Origins' had me from hello, and I remember all of it if I read even a snippet, like a warm wet handprint on skin. It dissipates, but it was always there at the same time. `Tale of the Shining Prince', I can't return to at all, simply because I feel like I could get lost in that world and never come out and it scares me. I want to just hate it or forget it or write it off as this-or-that, but I -can't-. And I don't know what I'm saying anymore. In order to explain what I love and what pains me about stories, in a way I'd have to explain myself. This is what I love about literature. It's like finding pieces of myself scattered everywhere, and in saying anything about them I am really talking about things I'd only barely known I was.

Comments

[ashjay.livejournal.com]

Ah, so you are in the same boat as me! Welcome aboard. I'd say not to rock the boat, but considering both of our personalities... yeah, that'd be a waste of breath. *g*

Oh, interesting! Fanfiction as justification for a thousand personal viewpoints! You're right, characterization, although inherently personal, is often treated as dogmatic. That is to say, the way we view a character is right and... there is no and, because it's *right*. That is the absolute unargueability behind every OOC dispute, isn't it?

And after all, the truth is that nearly anyone can do nearly anything if properly motivated. People have killed who might not have ever killed but for one night or a chain of events or a phrase spoken the wrong way, and people's lives so often take sharp right turns that nobody could have expected - A+ students become drug addicts, Aryan gang members become Buddhists, and so on and so forth.

I wonder, actually, if everybody's nearly perfect certainty that they, and those who agree with them, know the Truth with a capital 'T' means that everybody in the fandom has already extrapolated a whole world, a whole future for thse characters, in their heads. If so, it seems likely that most of these worlds are not those of violent change, and that is made more likely by the inclination of others to take violent change in a fiction as a reason to cry foul.

So you're right, fanfiction may very well be unhealthily prone to this sort of thing. Because people who read fanfiction share two things in common:

1) They can get things, worlds, emotions, from the printed world
2) They can believe in worlds that are not necessarily those of the author

Once you put those two things together with the profound fondness people have for, well, themselves, fandom can become something like that experiment with the monkey. You know the one: put a wire in the monkey's brain near the pleasure centers, put a button in the cage that controls the wire... and the monkey will punch that button until it dies.

So people, maybe, find something in fandom that gives them pleasure and, because fandom is so prolific, can *keep* finding things like that over and over and over again. I have to wonder if the pleasure doesn't become dimmed after a while, like smoking or other drugs - you start and it's bliss, but after a while it becomes something you *do* because you have to, because not doing it is difficult.

(Which would lead to a fun theory on fandom as an erosive force on its adherents' ability to enjoy their own genre... which might tie in nicely to the responses to the last book. Namely, the so often heard: "It felt like reading a fanfic!")

I nearly always understand your rambles- or think I do. *g* We'll see if that's actually true, eh? (We either have similar issues or similar training. I'll plump for both. ;)

Also, I would also have problems with Draco cheating, but I believe it could be done if combined well with a story of alienation between Harry and Draco. Especially if there was some reason for Draco to need to be seen publically with Harry, since otherwise, yes, he would probably just come out with it. It would need to be done carefully, and possibly at length...

At least, in my opinion. *laughs*

See? I do it too.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

It seems like some people have the characters live a sort of stenciled-in life in their heads, and some people start from stratch every time they read/write a fanfic and it all depends on how that particular plot works, for them. I wouldn't immediately say there are (just) two kinds of fanfic reader, but-- I dunno. -I- certainly have a pretty good instinct as to where Harry & Draco would probably be going towards... there was even a meme (http://www.livejournal.com/users/reenka/108403.html) about this awhile ago. I mean, I went overboard with that one (I don't actually believe all those things), but still. Yeah. *laughs*

Funny thing is, I do completely believe that people (Draco in particular) could change greatly and unpredictably-- that's, after all, almost requisite to even get H&D together, right. I'm pretty obsessed with the idea of how that works, too-- how do people change, why do people change, etc. How can you even -write- Draco without thinking about that, considering how little of canonical!Draco there is to go around? So it's funny that I'm getting so ornery when it comes to some characterizations, and I think I always -have- been pretty preferential.

But see, even though there's all this range inherent in every human being, there's still a constancy-- something that makes a person that particular individual no matter what. It's like-- you should still be able to recognize them as who they are. That's a balance that fascinates me-- because no, you don't have a blank check. People -are- pretty constant even in their changing. I know that from myself-- people say I'm unpredictable & random & confusing, but to myself I always follow my internal logic & never deviate, really. Even if things -seem- wild and unlikely, I believe they're always still direct consequences of -something- that's inherent within one's character. Maybe it's not apparent to the outside observer, but it has to have been there.

That's where my idea of an emotional range comes from. There's this range of potentiality-- and most people, of course, have no idea as to its true boundaries within themselves -or- others. But it exists. It makes us who we are-- and admittedly it's a fuzzy boundary, but it's still a boundary. People are finite beings, after all.

So, I mean, there -are- valid reasons to argue characterization-- not like it's cast in stone, but still-- there -can- be nonsensical characterizations. Heh. That's what I meant, too-- it's even more complicated 'cause there's actually an excuse to cling to some viewpoints with fanfic. And I'm not even sure what's me being unreasonably vanilla or romantic and what's justifiable all the time ^^;
Have you -read- `Tale of the Shining Prince', btw? If so, what did you think of it? :> hee

And yeah. I think maybe fanfic does have a weird effect on one's perception of everything one reads-- or at least, it can. When -I- read canon, I was perfectly aware of how it was canon. I don't know how anyone could miss it. In fact, I was surprised at how qualitatively different it was from fanfic because JKR followed up so many threads she'd left dangling-- threads which most people forgot about or which had nothing to do with their own fic so they'd just left them unresolved. I was like, whoa, this is a continuous story! And I'd never gotten that with any fanfic. I mean, it was things like Fleur & Bill, y'know? No one bothers with that, but it really added to a sense of continuity for me. I mean, in a way, maybe she's writing fanfics of her own prior canon except with a larger database, but :> Yeah ^^;

I think the only people in fandom who don't have characterization quibbles are either newbies or plebes at this point, ahahahah. um. *coughs*
Also, what kind of training have you had? I'm still in undergrad & have had a sprinkling of random English & philosophy & one linguistics course. And I've read a lot of stuff. Only took po-mo theory this term~:))