~~ willy & nilly & all that jazz.

[reenka]

It's funny the way people keep saying, "but in canon, it doesn't [present tense!] work that way", to explain why a pairing wouldn't [future tense!] work or why a character wouldn't act a certain way. I mean, obviously it makes sense, but.... It always strikes me how people assume that in the future, everything will be the same. That things just kind of... don't change. And my first impulse is to laugh.

So if you're a naive bumbling idiot at 13, you will be at 21, and if you're someone's hated rival at 11, you will be at 17 or something, right? And if you're an asshole-- well, born an asshole, die an asshole. Actually, I keep thinking about this, and I can't quite decide what the best way to prove it one way or the other would be, really.

I could say, "but in a fanfic, one could make it so that it's not quite as true anymore," so Draco is less of an asshole and everyone has lots of sex, but.... It's just so idiosyncratic. A part of me thinks that people never -really- change, but mostly I just don't know how and why any more than the next person. It's one of the great mysteries, sort of, isn't it? Why do some things change in us but not others?

It's easier said than done, regardless. You could easily say "oh, I could just make it so that so-and-so is different now", but most people screw that up, don't they. Then again, one hopes that the actual author is going to change things too... in a way, it's inevitable that a good story won't have the same character starting out as the one they end up as. It's all so intuitive for me. Like, I never write a story -intending- to have any character change in some specific way... that is, I'd never write H/D meaning to redeem Draco or some such, or even meaning to make him less of an asshole. It just sort of... happens. Or doesn't happen. Though I don't think I've ever actually written asshole!Draco, just because I'd never label anyone whose motivations I empathize with an "asshole".

Maybe it's all a question of circumstances. We are all simultaneously all our possible selves, and we just need a certain situation to shine a specific light on our characters to bring out one aspect or another. So if one lives a certain kind of life and that remains fairly constant, nothing changes and one's still an asshole, for example. But then if that same asshole gets shipped off to holy war in China, for instance... yes, imagine Draco forcibly put in a Muggle Crusade... well, things change, don't they. Willy nilly. Or something like that...?
~~

EDIT - kissmeagain wrote Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fic....
    Just how ridiculously cool -is- that, anyway??

Comments

[dorrie6.livejournal.com]

I've seen a lot in my almost-35 years. A girl who bullied me in junior high reappeared as a completely nice, insecure high schooler... A man in his early twenties who I could not tolerate at all became someone I liked enough to date in his mid-twenties. A woman I was best friends with at twenty-five, I don't think of at all now. I've seen people "change" in ways I never imagined possible. I think, however, that it isn't so much that people change- that our personality traits actually change, as that as we stumble through life, the way we learn to deal with our own personalities change. Our insecurities and fears manifest themselves differently as we grow. Most destructive or hurtful behavior, and even some kind and brave behavior comes out of fear, after all, out of not knowing any other way to deal with the things that seriously freak us out. So a person who lashes out to protect himself from things that threaten him at 11 may have found other ways to deal with the same issues at 17, and so on. I think that is really what changes about people, and almost everyone changes in this way. I wouldn't wish any less for characters in fiction. To doom a character to his or her 11-year-old self forever is just cruel, in my opinion. :)

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Wah! Coolness. I'd not thought of it that way at all, and it makes perfect sense, actually. I love how you say that both "negative" and "positive" behavior comes out of not knowing how to deal. I've always had people label me "kind" (sometimes) and negligent and/or cruel (not as much, but)... and I'm always me, y'know, never really trying to be one or the other, always stumbling along, yes. I think maybe people pin all this conscious intent on people where there isn't any, necessarily.

I mean, what you said kind of ties in with the circumstances-drawing-different-aspects-out hypothesis I had, but this is much more... er... cleanly stated~:)

Personally, the things that used to matter to me still matter. I think that's why I'm confused about this issue-- I haven't changed very much at all. The people I cared about, I still care about. The way I was shy at 11 is the way I'm still shy. I mean, it's slightly different in result, but... from the inside, at least, it looks pretty darn similar. I may not feel those same things with identical intensity, but they're all still there. I still miss my best friends from all the time-periods in my life, and I still resent that silly incident in Junior High, and I still kind of want the things I'd wanted at 16.

Then again, I'm a really bad example, 'cause if one knows me well, one knows that I'm a throwback, kinda... I guess I haven't matured much. My mother thinks I haven't grown up since I was 15, and while I don't think it's -that- bad.... I mean... there -do- seem to be slightly different principles that apply to me compared to other people. And Draco definitely seems to be like me in that he clings to things and isn't growing up or changing very much, y'know?

Whether that's bad writing or not is another question, naturally, but fact is, that -does- happen too. Heh. Any bad characterization can probably find some parallel in "real life", come to think of it, 'cause people can be pretty messed up.

Yeah, so Draco in particular is a difficult case 'cause he seems to still be dealing with the same issues in much the same ways, 5 years later. Ahhh, emotional basketcases. Gotta love 'em ^^;

[shatterglass.livejournal.com]

People and change -- this is what H/D is about for me, my fascination for the potential for people to change (whether I'm in an angsty Harry-goes-dark mood or a fluffy Draco-goes-[kinda]-light mood). I don't know what I think, so perhaps this post is completely pointless. I do think that circumstances can bring out qualities in people that we haven't seen before.

But is this change? Or was it always there, latent, and it's just being brought to the surface? Then, do some people not have the capabilities to be brought around to the light (or the dark)? Or does everyone have all possibilities inside them, somewhere?

Er. That's kind of an important question. P'raps I'll go ponder it some more.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Heheh, yeah, that's what I meant about the Great Mystery, that question about whether some people just don't have the capacity to be/do some things, or whether everyone has the capacity for... well, everything. And clearly, it'd be hard to prove it one way or the other, 'cause how many people get tested by life that thoroughly? In "real life" most bad apples (so to speak) don't get second chances, and most model citizens don't get tempted by the devil any more than modern society already does (well, y'know, the awful spectre of web porn, heeheh).

Generally, most things aren't on that order of importance (ie, usually it's not about Good and Evil or anything like that)... but yeah, life does seem to reflect it in small ways. I mean, this comes down to the basic question of "what -is- identity" and "who are we" and "how much does our past define us" and "how much does our ancestry define us"-- throughout our lives, that is-- and people have been struggling with that for ages.

*sigh* That's why I think making either Harry or Draco "light" or "dark" just over-simplifies it all. You can have Harry -go- dark 'cause he -is- already dark, and if you totally throw out the rest of him to make him darker, then it's horribly OOC. And Draco isn't dark to start with, so ^^;

...And now, I'm off to read some Kant.

Not ^^;

[shatterglass.livejournal.com]

Or just Rousseau, and throw out our silly light and dark definitions altogether--
who the heck came up with that, anyway? I can't see myself as either, and I'm not sure many people can, so while we're fine with labelling characters and others we're not with labelling ourselves? And that makes sense?
Ah, silly distinctions. "Maybe I should put a bucket over my head." And something in each ear, but I can't remember the rest.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Heheh, I like the bucket solution. That's always a solution. Though, for lack of a bucket, I just pull the covers up to my ears :>

Yeah... it's pretty much a sign of bad fiction is someone's writing Dark!Whoever, ahahah. I should make a list. "You write sucky fiction if..."

But I have a feeling that'll just piss people off ^^;

Then again, the concepts of "Light" and "Dark" are pretty iffy in general, methinks. Much intermixing there, all that. And now I feel like Yoda.