~~ 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]

Yeah, it does seem to become a certain sort of humor, I suppose, once you become absurd and such. And whatever element in the humor isn't ridiculous, has probably been done before :> I think it depends what your 'threshold' for 'new' is. Like... if you're okay with 'new' consisting of 'old', then you're fine :D

[strawberry-snow.livejournal.com]

I'm okay with "new" consisting of "old", I just don't typically define it as "new". ^_^; But hey, I don't have a problem with it-- I'll willingly read the same tired old plot time and time again, if it's a plot that I happen to enjoy. :D After all, even with the same story skeleton, each author puts something different into it, so eh. *shrug*