~~ the dream of safety....
Sep. 2nd, 2004 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkaI was thinking about the reasons why I seem to have such an instinctive need to 'subvert' the dom/sub (or top/bottom) dynamic in most pairings, but especially Harry/Draco. Given, I think a submissive, feminized little Harry (the way he's often written with older characters) is massively OOC so I cringe at bottom!Harry fics a lot of times (so I basically have gotten to the point where I actively only seek out bottom!Draco in pornfic), but I consider that a question of bad writing/characterization as much as anything. I don't think any character -has- to have a pre-defined sexual role in fanfic (any more than a sexual preference in any other sense).
I see the self as fluid, with some definite directions development is most likely to take. So if one works around Harry's natural assertiveness and personal history of dominating over Draco in many ways, one could perhaps write a believable fic where he's the one being penetrated (though seeing him as submissive in other ways is something else entirely).
I don't generally feel the need to use fic I read or write as a means to subvert/resist some dominant meme I see going around, but I make an exception for fics which contain what I see as stagnant, repressive interpersonal power relationships. I don't care if it's just porn or people like it/get off on it/whatever-- it bothers me on some meta level when applied to H/D. In terms of other people/characters, anyone can do what they want as far as I'm concerned (and it'd be great if that was true in general), but in terms of H/D, because of how archetypally heavy and meta-loaded the pairing is for me (i.e., for me, with H/D, it can never be 'just sex' so that's my bias), it just seems -wrong- to confine them to set roles, sexually or otherwise.
This is just me trying to figure out what bothers me, not me saying people should stop what they're doing, of course (though that should go without saying).
It's just.... Harry&Draco's relationship is so intensely -visceral- to me that to make it ritualized and safely confined to completely defined roles is to ruin it completely, since they're already mutually defined as The Enemy or The Gryffindor/Slytherin. Lucius, for instance, is The Father to Draco, that is his role & influence on Draco's life. I don't want Harry to be defined as the equivalent Father or as The Dom Lover because that allows Draco not to think, to just accept. I want him to keep not -accepting- Potter; to keep fighting him and making Harry fight him.
I want their sex scenes (whether shown or not) to be vital, full of energy and power-play dynamic and the sense that they're always trying to get a one-up on the other; that notion of safety & stability, that confidence that a set relationship dynamic gives you-- that's not for them. Not with all the volatile passion between them that could consume them; will consume them. They can never rest, never accept each other all the way-- never be entirely happy even when-- especially when?-- they're together. So I want the porn to contain some smidgen of this fighting energy; otherwise it's just not H/D and I don't get turned on by it, 'cause it becomes just two guys rubbing their cocks together (which is Of The Good-- but not H/D).
I suppose if one likes plain old gay porn too then one wouldn't have as much of an issue with it just being two guys acting in a certain way, and hey, I used to read gay porn long before I got into fanfic or H/D or any of that, and got off on it (though it wasn't very kinky unless you think exhibitionism/voyeurism is very kinky). I think I'm not a very kinky person :> Though vanilla stuff, if it's rigidly vanilla, bores me 'cause it lacks that -energy- I crave; that emotion. Any really emotional sex is going to read as kinky to me, 'cause there's that imbalance, that drive, that need, desperation, desire-- real desire. That's what I dig in porn: that headiness of want, and that's what H/D can provide so well; that's the major way it differs so much from say, Lucius/Draco, because whereas Draco 'wants' his father, it's not mutual; when it's mutual, then something ignites and then you have something indescribable, something blindingly powerful and important and hot.
So yes, this is all about a desire for the raw, the real (which can be 'dirty' or whatever, too), but for me the 'real' has to be emotional at center. The emotional rawness is much more important and vital than any possible sexual luridness, because if it's not emotionally raw but is lurid, then it's lost its driving attractive force, to me. It's fake, empty, it's not raw. See, I want the raw beating intensity and -that's- rather lurid-- it's full of thick, 'disgusting' fluids, screaming/needing/craving, and of course it's full of power, too. But what draws me isn't the trappings of power (dom/sub/blahblahblah) but the raw thing itself: the energy, the interplay, the conflagration of two individuals whose bodies and minds are on a collision course with themselves and each other. That's-- that's the source of so much power. That is power.
People often tell me I write 'raw' stuff (whether or not it's porn), but I really hope it's not 'lurid'. True rawness, whether emotional or sexual, isn't dirty, really, it's just real.
It's the blood and bones and fluids and emotions all together, it's sex and it's life; it's what happens to us, to our bodies, to our hearts. It's hardcore life-altering shit, man. That's what fucking -can- be like, anyway.
I guess it's all part of my drive for realism in fiction-- the bad breath, the being-overwhelmed, the premature ejaculation, the conflicted, messed up tangle of emotions, the power-over-you one moment and power-over-me the other. It's the sheer contradiction; the inability to ever settle.
Some (most?) people think their lives/roles are all figured out and that's just how they -live- (so it's realism), I know. My point is that I think they're deluding themselves; they're not living, not really honest-to-god living in what I see as the messy/crazy/delirious/too-bright world of the real.
They've put labels on things; they think they are, themselves, 'real', but they're making believe; they're living in glass houses next to paper airplanes and plastic-doll neighbors. They think they know who they are and what their 'function' in life is, but it's a myth they tell themselves. A legend. None of us know who we are, not really, because we are part of the wide, wide universe; we are stardust. Within us, we contain everything that exists or has ever existed; we are everything.
So Harry is Draco and Draco is Harry; yin = yang, and the whole world is in a dance of balance; everything is always in flux, always changing; always.
Everything-everything-- always dancing the dance of life & death & sex & crazy crazy love. Always on fire yet calm as the currents of eternity flowing through every soul; and that is sex, to me, that's what it could be and that's what it should be. That's the heat and the fire and the need and the orgasm that continues on and on, unstoppable, burning down your mind and setting you free. That's what it can be like but isn't for most people; isn't, yes, but they could do it; that's what Harry & Draco could do in a story, in a symbolic archetypal yet so very real sense, because they somehow have become love/lust/desperation/desire/want & everything else that's important to me.
Somehow, it's almost become an insult to limit them to some orientation/type/subcategory of any kind of sexuality, or just to limit their potential in any way, because love/lust should be beyond categories; life itself is beyond categories, isn't it? I want it to be. I want/see/believe that everything & everyone is in flux, is one thing that's always changing and revealing itself to be something else. Always something different & beautiful & necessary, dependent on the moment.
They might be like 'this' now, in canon, yes; Draco (or Harry) needs this-or-that now, when they're 16/17.... But maybe (maybe...) they can change-- that's my dream-- and they -will- change, of course; who doesn't? So they'll need something else from life & from each other, 5 years from now or 10 years from now or 1 year from now, and if they're still together, they can evolve and adapt and always give each other what they need, because at center they are fused; they need each other, and their want/need/resentment/violence/everything-they-feel can keep them together-- I want to believe that.
It can keep them held safe in each other's arms; safe yet in mortal danger at the same time, because there is no safety. There is never any safety, and that's what love is about, that's what it felt like: unsafe. Never safe or stable or stagnant or easily defined/known and only -touched-. Only felt, moment by insane impossible fantastically painful/beautiful/scary moment.
There is a poem, which I really love, that Aja posted once, here.
...
A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap:
Our dream of safety has to disappear.
-- W.H. Auden
I see the self as fluid, with some definite directions development is most likely to take. So if one works around Harry's natural assertiveness and personal history of dominating over Draco in many ways, one could perhaps write a believable fic where he's the one being penetrated (though seeing him as submissive in other ways is something else entirely).
I don't generally feel the need to use fic I read or write as a means to subvert/resist some dominant meme I see going around, but I make an exception for fics which contain what I see as stagnant, repressive interpersonal power relationships. I don't care if it's just porn or people like it/get off on it/whatever-- it bothers me on some meta level when applied to H/D. In terms of other people/characters, anyone can do what they want as far as I'm concerned (and it'd be great if that was true in general), but in terms of H/D, because of how archetypally heavy and meta-loaded the pairing is for me (i.e., for me, with H/D, it can never be 'just sex' so that's my bias), it just seems -wrong- to confine them to set roles, sexually or otherwise.
This is just me trying to figure out what bothers me, not me saying people should stop what they're doing, of course (though that should go without saying).
It's just.... Harry&Draco's relationship is so intensely -visceral- to me that to make it ritualized and safely confined to completely defined roles is to ruin it completely, since they're already mutually defined as The Enemy or The Gryffindor/Slytherin. Lucius, for instance, is The Father to Draco, that is his role & influence on Draco's life. I don't want Harry to be defined as the equivalent Father or as The Dom Lover because that allows Draco not to think, to just accept. I want him to keep not -accepting- Potter; to keep fighting him and making Harry fight him.
I want their sex scenes (whether shown or not) to be vital, full of energy and power-play dynamic and the sense that they're always trying to get a one-up on the other; that notion of safety & stability, that confidence that a set relationship dynamic gives you-- that's not for them. Not with all the volatile passion between them that could consume them; will consume them. They can never rest, never accept each other all the way-- never be entirely happy even when-- especially when?-- they're together. So I want the porn to contain some smidgen of this fighting energy; otherwise it's just not H/D and I don't get turned on by it, 'cause it becomes just two guys rubbing their cocks together (which is Of The Good-- but not H/D).
I suppose if one likes plain old gay porn too then one wouldn't have as much of an issue with it just being two guys acting in a certain way, and hey, I used to read gay porn long before I got into fanfic or H/D or any of that, and got off on it (though it wasn't very kinky unless you think exhibitionism/voyeurism is very kinky). I think I'm not a very kinky person :> Though vanilla stuff, if it's rigidly vanilla, bores me 'cause it lacks that -energy- I crave; that emotion. Any really emotional sex is going to read as kinky to me, 'cause there's that imbalance, that drive, that need, desperation, desire-- real desire. That's what I dig in porn: that headiness of want, and that's what H/D can provide so well; that's the major way it differs so much from say, Lucius/Draco, because whereas Draco 'wants' his father, it's not mutual; when it's mutual, then something ignites and then you have something indescribable, something blindingly powerful and important and hot.
So yes, this is all about a desire for the raw, the real (which can be 'dirty' or whatever, too), but for me the 'real' has to be emotional at center. The emotional rawness is much more important and vital than any possible sexual luridness, because if it's not emotionally raw but is lurid, then it's lost its driving attractive force, to me. It's fake, empty, it's not raw. See, I want the raw beating intensity and -that's- rather lurid-- it's full of thick, 'disgusting' fluids, screaming/needing/craving, and of course it's full of power, too. But what draws me isn't the trappings of power (dom/sub/blahblahblah) but the raw thing itself: the energy, the interplay, the conflagration of two individuals whose bodies and minds are on a collision course with themselves and each other. That's-- that's the source of so much power. That is power.
People often tell me I write 'raw' stuff (whether or not it's porn), but I really hope it's not 'lurid'. True rawness, whether emotional or sexual, isn't dirty, really, it's just real.
It's the blood and bones and fluids and emotions all together, it's sex and it's life; it's what happens to us, to our bodies, to our hearts. It's hardcore life-altering shit, man. That's what fucking -can- be like, anyway.
I guess it's all part of my drive for realism in fiction-- the bad breath, the being-overwhelmed, the premature ejaculation, the conflicted, messed up tangle of emotions, the power-over-you one moment and power-over-me the other. It's the sheer contradiction; the inability to ever settle.
Some (most?) people think their lives/roles are all figured out and that's just how they -live- (so it's realism), I know. My point is that I think they're deluding themselves; they're not living, not really honest-to-god living in what I see as the messy/crazy/delirious/too-bright world of the real.
They've put labels on things; they think they are, themselves, 'real', but they're making believe; they're living in glass houses next to paper airplanes and plastic-doll neighbors. They think they know who they are and what their 'function' in life is, but it's a myth they tell themselves. A legend. None of us know who we are, not really, because we are part of the wide, wide universe; we are stardust. Within us, we contain everything that exists or has ever existed; we are everything.
So Harry is Draco and Draco is Harry; yin = yang, and the whole world is in a dance of balance; everything is always in flux, always changing; always.
Everything-everything-- always dancing the dance of life & death & sex & crazy crazy love. Always on fire yet calm as the currents of eternity flowing through every soul; and that is sex, to me, that's what it could be and that's what it should be. That's the heat and the fire and the need and the orgasm that continues on and on, unstoppable, burning down your mind and setting you free. That's what it can be like but isn't for most people; isn't, yes, but they could do it; that's what Harry & Draco could do in a story, in a symbolic archetypal yet so very real sense, because they somehow have become love/lust/desperation/desire/want & everything else that's important to me.
Somehow, it's almost become an insult to limit them to some orientation/type/subcategory of any kind of sexuality, or just to limit their potential in any way, because love/lust should be beyond categories; life itself is beyond categories, isn't it? I want it to be. I want/see/believe that everything & everyone is in flux, is one thing that's always changing and revealing itself to be something else. Always something different & beautiful & necessary, dependent on the moment.
They might be like 'this' now, in canon, yes; Draco (or Harry) needs this-or-that now, when they're 16/17.... But maybe (maybe...) they can change-- that's my dream-- and they -will- change, of course; who doesn't? So they'll need something else from life & from each other, 5 years from now or 10 years from now or 1 year from now, and if they're still together, they can evolve and adapt and always give each other what they need, because at center they are fused; they need each other, and their want/need/resentment/violence/everything-they-feel can keep them together-- I want to believe that.
It can keep them held safe in each other's arms; safe yet in mortal danger at the same time, because there is no safety. There is never any safety, and that's what love is about, that's what it felt like: unsafe. Never safe or stable or stagnant or easily defined/known and only -touched-. Only felt, moment by insane impossible fantastically painful/beautiful/scary moment.
There is a poem, which I really love, that Aja posted once, here.
...
A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap:
Our dream of safety has to disappear.
-- W.H. Auden
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just
Date: 2004-09-02 02:58 pm (UTC)Mummy...Make the psychic girl stop...
Date: 2004-09-03 03:33 am (UTC)But on another matter...
and if they're still together, they can evolve and adapt and always give each other what they need, because at center they are fused; they need each other, and their want/need/resentment/violence/everything-they-feel can keep them together-- I want to believe that.
This is an interesting bit though. The interaction would be so intense between the two, that the fights would have to be pretty spectacular as well, and the breakups, well, I can see them lasting a while as well. And yes, fightsex!H/D is like manna from heaven for me.
It's funny. I like futurefics with older versions of them meeting up and getting on and such, but trying to imagine really really longterm!H/D is difficult for me, because at the same time as the energy (which yes, as you are psychically sucking from my mind, is what I love about *good* H/D) could be good it could also be bad. And maybe my mind is still tainted from reading OotP recently and I'm therefore feeling dark and gloomy, but I can see it going sour easily if they weren't careful *shrugs*. But that could also be because I'm a cynic too... yes that's probably the reason. *ahem* But still (scuse all the buts) I guess it depends on what they really need- if it's a challange, it'll be a challange, if it's a cuddle... well, okay, maybe not a cuddle but you get what I mean. Yeah... evolve is a good word.
If I want to get intellectual about it, the whole equal/Other/opposite is perfectly H/D. But that could simply because I can't find Godric/Salazar anywhere, so I project my desire for an odd-couple ship onto them instead.
Re: Mummy...Make the psychic girl stop...
Date: 2004-09-03 01:08 pm (UTC)I'm pretty cynical about their future myself, though being a romantic at the same time (isn't there a definition somewhere that a cynic is just a frustrated romantic?) I do -want- there to be a chance for them, no matter how difficult or unlikely (don't want to depress myself -too- much, after all-- just enough for spice). Almost all my H/D that I've written since OoTP has been darkish & much more violent than ever before, too-- it's interesting, 'cause I've written two H/D non-con fics, right, one before (http://www.livejournal.com/users/reenka/91282.html) OoTP and one written after (http://www.livejournal.com/users/reenka/132492.html), and they're really different. The second one, you could tell I actually believed it could happen, that Harry could do that, whereas before I didn't give him any motivation at ALL (ahahah) 'cause I was like OMG HE'D NEVER >:O
So, yeah. It's gotten a lot darker, but the evolution is what interests me in human beings, in a lot of ways-- the redemption and/or freeing effect of love. No one has really -written- it 100% convincingly, but that's the dream, right :> :>
Heheh omg I totally ship Godric/Salazar like whoah. Cassie Claire has some in the DT, but it's not enough :D :D OMG *heart!!1*
Re: Mummy...Make the psychic girl stop...
Date: 2004-09-03 06:25 pm (UTC)What's the DT? *is so not snappy with all the acronyms for the HP fic depositories everywhere* But guh, I must have those fics! The only Go/Sa I've seen anywhere has been a doujinshi that was on sale at the HP slash LJ community. I just can't believe people haven't written more of it yet...
Re: Mummy...Make the psychic girl stop...
Date: 2004-09-03 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-07 11:21 am (UTC):)
no subject
Date: 2004-09-07 12:15 pm (UTC)