~~ the hypocrisy of Sturgeon's law & the curse of 'originality'.

[reenka]

I think reading themostepotente's anti-H/D rant should go down in some kind of history as the first time I saw enough of a concentration of anti-H/D sentiment that I felt roused to actually defend. Oh man. Not that I'm about to -here-, since well, mostly I'd be preaching to the choir, but still. A first time for everything, no?

    I mean... the amount of times I've ranted/rambled about H/D is embarrassingly huge, but what I've realized is that I've always been talking to those 'in the know'. I always rant with the assumption that 'well, you know I love them & love oodles of fic & you read me & must know how insane I am'. I can also take a lot of ribbing about things I love-- I agree with people who say Draco's a spoiled obnoxious brat, and all right, I don't take too well to Harry (or Ron or Sirius or Remus) bashing, but um, to each their own.

I know how you... um... some of you feel now, though. There -is- H/D bashing and bad vibes (that I avoid 'cause apparently I'm pretty insulated), and it does feel... yucky to have to be one of 'those' people who like that stupid, cliche, boring, overdone pairing. Meh. So yeah. I'm sorry for the rants, I guess. I mean, what I'm saying is, I rant because I love, and that's not always clear. I love and adore and just-- this pairing means the world to me, and I never want to make any H/D shipper feel bad 'cause I get frustrated with fic. I do love a lot of H/D fics, and by extension a lot of the people I've met who write/read them. So yeah. Hi, I like H/D. A lot. And a lot of you guys have really good taste in pairings, ahahahah. ;))

I'd be the first to say that my own H/D fic isn't anything to brag about in terms of 'well, if you hate H/D, read -this-', though of course that's my ambition. But!
    I think the major problem here is confusing the worth of a potential pairing with how that pairing's mostly written. I mean, I think themostepotente's rant was mostly about the Corollary of Sturgeon's Law-- i.e, 90% of everything is crap-- originally in science fiction. I do subscribe to that, too.

So. Yes. Much with the overall crappitude of everything, but-- I really don't see how this relates to the worth of an idea or of particular fics which may or may not use that idea well. It gets even more indefensible (to me) when one uses the presence of crappy, cliche fic to put down a whole genre or 'type' of storyline-- or even worse, uses one's own bias against that genre wholesale ('but I don't like angerfucks'). Um. So? I mean-- well-- this is a valid opinion, but as far as lit-crit it leaves a little something to be desired.

I suppose it boils down to a difference in approach: an H/D writer might say 'there are difficulties-- and as such, challenges to be overcome', while an H/D 'cynic' would say, 'look at all these obstacles-- omg, why don't you bitches just give up, it'll never happen omg!!1'.
    Yeah, thanks-- clearly that has never occurred to anyone who shipped H/D before, 'cause we all live in the happy-happy-joy-joy land where Draco is a wonderfully kind & loving boy & Harry dreams about sucking his cock every night (thusly, OOC = love). Yeah. Of course, because everyone knows that in order to be plausible, a pairing must be directly implied by canon fact, and every H/D shipper thinks that Harry-and-Draco-luv-each-other-in-the-books-OMG.

Another truism, besides 'the majority of everything is crap' is 'anything can be done well by the right person'. The lack of a commonplace source for the so-called 'right person' is clearly obvious to anyone with a brain, but so it goes in the arts, anyway. It's also funny to me that everyone's complaining about a lack of established-relationship fics (especially post-Hogwarts), whereas that's most of what I've seen, post-OoTP. It's like... you can never please everyone, but... it's still funny that so much kneejerk judgement goes on. Like the 'oh, I used to like H/D but most of the fic I see nowadays sucks'-- that pov really annoys me the most.


First of all-- dude, fic always (mostly) sucked! There was just less of it to wade through and more 'first-wave' writers were blazing trails and doing whatever the hell they wanted with canon (less canon! less angst!). Bleh. Try re-reading some of the old stuff now and tell me how IC it is. Go on. It's well-written & poetic, but if you think the early Dracos were really IC any more than they are now, I will laugh. And laugh. And then also laugh. 'Fanon' came from somewhere, dude.

Secondly-- I know what it's like to like a pairing -because- of the fic (that is, every pairing I've ever liked, I've liked because of the fanfic rather than canon). So I dig how fic used to make y'all happy & now it's not 'cause it's 'not as good', but-- hopefully one gets a 'sense' of a pairing dynamic after the first few fics, and decides whether one likes the potential in that pairing-- enough to check out other writers. Once you check out other writers, you want more of the pairing, not more of the 'good fic'. Thusly, you liked the -pairing-, not the fic. You can go off a pairing, but you can't blame the fic, then.

Thirdly-- if you don't like it? Write it yourself. Or-- shockingly-- do a better job looking for stuff, because while a lot of my own favorite writers have left fandom, certainly, some haven't. Maya & Sara & Aja & Penguin (off the top of my head)... and hey, a lot of them are still whacking away at their WIPs, like, y'know, Lasair. So y'know, encourage, dudes. Encourage.

In a way, it's rather amusing that so many people are like, 'woe, there is so much fanon (and fanon cliche), how will I ever write something original', whereas I think it's dirt easy to write original things using this scenario-- 'cause dude! One of my biggest sources of rantage is how this-and-this-and-this isn't being done right. This idea of bemoaning the amount of cliched fic out there actually makes me wonder if the person would like to be the one writing the initial cliche, but now it's too late for that. Oh yah, too bad you can't be the first one writing that love-potion!fic. Omg, I feel so bad. Not.

So actually it's rather easy to avoid cliche by just not falling into the obvious characterization traps and doing it the hard way, 'cause almost -no one- does that. You're on your own! Go ahead, explore!! It's a bright new country! Write IC!H/D like no one's really done, not in a chaptered fic! Meh. There's -nothing- either in writing or in romance or in H/D that cannot be improved. So yes, there's cliche-- that means it's easy to do better! If H/D was all brilliant amazing works of genius?? Then yeah, I guess it would be hard to write.

Again, this kind of attitude is typical for people critizing some type of lit in general-- like, 'oh woe, it's all been done in [insert genre here]'. Hell, people have been saying The Novel itself is a tired old genre and there's nothing more to say, period. Let's be nice and post-modern, now-- 'cause clearly, the only things worth saying are things no one's ever said before. Who needs wisdom of the ages when you can have the half-assed arrogance of the young?? Because hey, clearly we don't have thousands of years of Story behind us anyway! But who wants to think about that? No, we'll just putter around bemusedly within the supposed constraints of a single pairing in a single fandom and be like, 'oh, if only I could be out -there-, among the greener pastures, where no one's ever gone before!'

It just really annoys me (witness my overuse of exclamation marks), because this quest for 'originality' is so cliche within itself, and it's so 'cool' to say it within a certain subculture of academia. God, it makes me grit my teeth. If nothing else, because my favorite type of story has always been one with 'mythic themes' (basically, half of the fantasy lit out there)-- so basically, I adore retellings and spins on old legends and fairy-tales-- and my god, fanfiction itself is but a variation on a theme. How hypocritical -is- that stance, anyway? Meh.

It makes 'originality' sound like a curse-word of some sort, seriously. There can -be- no 'true' originality, and fanfiction only makes that more clear. Everything under the bloody sun has been said before. Why is this not obvious to everyone? Why does it make me so upset?? I don't know. But it really does. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.

Comments

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Hee, beta is such an intimidating word, isn't it? You could decide if you feel up to betaing it, or just want to give your opinion or like... stuff. I'm not really all that uptight about what a read-through entails and often post without any beta at all, but when things get this big I get intimidated & want some sort of outside view, y'know.
As far as getting involved... I usually separate a beta/read/edit experience into two stages: first you just read & have your normal reader response (otherwise it's no fun!). And then you let it sit a day or two or whatever it takes and you come back already 'primed' (whether or not you've thought about it actively, it's sunk in by then, generally) and one can read it with a more 'critical' eye, ie with distance~:)


Hahahah poetry isn't dribble, man-- at least, not for people who want poetry :D And you've never really done things that were cliche 'cause like, not many people wrote 'poetry dribble' anyway :D :D
The point is to stretch your own horizons & write what interests you, not worry about what others are doing unless it inspires you or makes you want to do better~:)

[ex-monochro174.livejournal.com]

It's going to take time for me to digest this, but I wanted to say, yes. Yes, yes, yes, because this is it, right here. No wonder you talk so much about love-in-spite-of and breaking fate and the sheer fire in them, because dear god, if this is what you think about all the time when you say H/D, I'm surprised you haven't like, dropped dead. I'm not making sense. This is H/D. This is the rawest thing I can remember reading. Sometimes I wanted to cry for Draco and other times I wanted to punch him, and Harry, oh my god, this fic is just, everything.

Just so you know, my heart was in my throat on page 7 and I thought it must be nearing some sort of resolution but then I looked and it was page 7. But. Oh god. The second section was the worst, I think; I mean, situationally, not writing-wise or anything like that. Just, ah. So much hatred there, it doesn't just disappear. And I loved how it kept going, how all the things he hated kept reappearing, even the little things, morning breath and wet fabric and ah, ahh, you.

And the fucking rose. I love your Harry beyond comprehension. It's not that he's good, I don't want to say he's giving or something because he's good, but because he's - Harry. He can be there and take it and tell Draco he forgives him and flirt with him and tell him he's free after everything, and sometimes that's what makes me think most, this is why he's Harry, because of this. Not because he lived or because he was sorted into Gryffindor or what have you, but because incomprehensibly, he can do this, and oh.

I have just given you three paragraphs of incomprehensible babbling, but ah, Reena. Talk about originality and doing things right. a;slkdfj. For awhile I liked to believe, no, maybe H/D isn't right. But this - it's like diving headfirst into your H/D, and I'm left reeling, knowing, There's nobody else, they have to be meant for each other because who else could live up to this? This H/D, it's a whole other world.

Also, there's so much growth here, I absolutely love how you've written that into the fic. Like - at school, they're so obviously school!them. Harry and his "I like you," I - ahh. But looking back to the Snape conversation in part four, I was struck by how different school!Draco is, and it's simply that, the experiences between them, the growing up. And you've done that and it's brilliant and I need to go to bed now, but I thought you should know.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

*merbles!!*
Wah...!! I... man. Am speechless <3333333333
I just. Wah, am relieved like crazy that it works outside my head(!). This fic has just grown & grown like crazy & taken on a life of its own, so now it's THM!H/D rather than 'just' H/D, if that makes sense. I mean, I did I lot of things I'm generally against doing (Death Eater Draco being the major element I tend to avoid, not to mention omg Voldemort)... but it demanded to be written like that, so I did. I can't really even see it as a whole at all, still being at that stage where I want to micro-edit everything and mess with the details without -thinking-, so I'm all o_0 wow it's a whole story, really? Change? Whuh--?? But! Happy! <3 And yeay, you get it and. *hugs*

No worries about it needing time to settle, man, I'm prolly gonna add a scene or two within the next few days anyway, ahahah, probably relating to how Draco 'lost' his wand to make the 3rd part ('the burning wand') make more sense & stuff.

I know exactly what you mean about dropping dead, though. Man, they drain me ><;; But it's also why I keep writing, y'know, 'cause otherwise they'd like, eat my brain, etc, not happy. <3<3<3<3 *squeezes*

[ex-monochro174.livejournal.com]

It is the morning. All this yields is, OMG DRACO. WAH. :D I think I'm mostly astounded (read: madly in love with you) that you took them so far. Like, DE!Draco was just - ahh, so much larger than his school counterpart, and by the end Harry had just. Uhm, evolved, really. He's more tired and knows things and ahh, it kills me when he says, "We're too old for this," a;lsdkfj, that whole scene, ahh.

So um. You. Massive love. This fic leaves me exhausted but it's the sort of boneless right feeling because man, H/D.

♥♥♥!

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

<3333333333! Man, you make me feel... accomplished or something ^^; I think in school there are a lot of things that make him trapped in a box, y'know, and he can get away with it so he does. In some really awful perverse way it's more fun to write him as a Death Eater 'cause he has to actually confront different sorts of things. It's like-- experience is necessary for growth, and I can't really -see- Death Eater Draco while in school. The whole idea just makes me laugh.
Hee, one of the things Harry knows (probably?) is that Draco didn't really do much more than shuffle paper, really. Um. But he only figures that out at some later point. I didn't know whether to make it clear so I just figure one can assume he'll find out eventually... :-?
<3!