~~ an actual pro-darkfic post, whadya know.

[reenka]

I suppose, as Aja said, the fandom -is- writing darker H/D these days, but. I still don't see any seriously realistic H/D out there-- I mean, is there something I'm missing? If so, what? Is there some realistic recent H/D someone wants to rec me? Hahah that sounds like a challenge, doesn't it. Maybe it is, at that :D

Anyway, here's a question I know oodles of people have been asking themselves (or... not)-- Why doesn't Reena write more fluffy H/D?
    Ah, yes. This reminds me why I resent the labels of 'angst' and 'fluff'. Human emotion is all created equal, in terms of influence; writers are not. I suppose sadness/anger can be easier to write for H/D, since they already have bad blood between them, and no development (or heavy-duty extrapolation) is needed. So laziness explains most things, as per usual.

However, another fact is that most of the 'fluff' I see is blatantly, painfully, extremely out of character. I mean, it's enjoyable to be sure (I do have a heart, you know), but unless you write a novel-length fic to back up those lovey-dovey boys, the suspension of disbelief required is steep. It all seems to take place in 'the happy place' where OoTP didn't happen. Or hey, GoF either, while we're at it. Remember the Good Old Days, when fics actually referred to the events of canon in specific??! How long ago was the last short story to do that?? No, seriously, man. Seriously. Remember when there was mention of the Triwizard Tournament, the Train Threat, the Warning In The Forest and even The Robe-shop, all in every third fic, fluff or angst? Well, no longer!

I actually really like writing soft & warm & intimate & sweetish things, just because angst can drain one. If one reads my non-H/D writing, one can easily see where all my fluff escapes to, ahahah. Just earlier today, I wrote what might be the fluffiest H/D snippet I've ever done, and it was a weird experience. It felt like a release-- like I was looking into the future and touching base with the dream I'm working towards. Generally, I write about beginnings rather than endings, so naturally I end up having to write angst. So yes, I'm seriously saying that having a non-angsty beginning for H/D at this point, particularly if you're starting from the beginning (years 6 & 7) is... well, pretty much unrealistic.

However, swtalmnd's anti-darkfic (sort of) rant doesn't address the issue of H/D realism, precisely. The issue was stuff like non-con & 'hatesex' (vs. sex between consenting individuals who like each other-- which makes me laugh, since I doubt Harry & Draco will ever like each other, but anyway). I've been called 'queen of H/D hatesex' or some such at one point, which is a label that bothers me; I don't -write- 'hatesex', man. I write sex between people who have issues that go much deeper than that. I hope.


    Usually characters don't have hatesex unless they are a) attracted to one another & b) don't accept this fact. I find this an interesting & valid dynamic, and I also find that most people don't seem to really -understand- it when they write it, and just have it be unemotional and flat (i.e., more -empty- than hateful). Actually, what I see a lot of lately is indifferent!sex for H/D, because hatesex should really be much more intense & riveting.

This reminds me of themostepotente's rant on a similar subject-- cliches that mostly centered on how H/D is all-hatesex-all-the-the-time (and by the way, I see way more ranting about hatesex than actual hatesex-- DUDE, who's writing all this hatesex?? WHERE??). Which... I mean... all right, if you don't want antagonistic fucking, you're going to have to put in a lot of work getting these characters to that point, and you're going to have to explain/work out why they're not touching each other while they still resent each other (early on). What, they only begin to find each other sexy when they accept each other as OK individuals?? That kind of cracks me up.

I don't know where the meme/fear that 'hatesex = deep' came from. I also don't think that hatesex has to equal 'unemotional' or 'all about a power trip'. Hatred is a powerful, visceral thing, and it -can- be actually a -part- of love-- or related to it. So... are there anti-fluff and pro-hatesex rants out there I'm missing? Uh... I mean... not that I -care-, precisely, but I would have a laugh. I do have issues with equating 'fluff' with '(real) love'. I don't think the H/D-in-love!sex snippet I wrote this morning was fluffy, man. Granted, no one has read it... oh, to hell with it. I posted it here; so someone tell me-- is that fluff? If so, I'll eat my hat (and it's an old hat) :D
    Even then, the definitions for what constitutes 'darkfic' or 'angstfic' or 'fluffy' fic seem to change based on people's whims; there's no multi-fandom accepted guide, as far as I know. One person's fluff is another's sap, and is yet another's perfectly believable drama. Ahhh, the eternal beauty of semantics debates.

Though actually, I think this whole entry was misguided (but then, I'm just procrastinating anyway). swtalmnd seems to be writing slashfic to feel good and perpetuate positive romantic feelings in herself-- and she admits that while the characterization involved may be 'unrealistic' in objective terms, she doesn't care because she writes for her own pleasure. In fact, many, many angstfic writers have the same attitude-- they twist and fudge and stretch things to fit some 'angsty' (or non-con, or whatever) framework. And that's fine (for them), but that's not why -I- write fanfic or fic of any kind. I do, of course, write for my pleasure (why else??) but my pleasure consists in writing well, not in the degree to which I can kink myself up. I'm not looking down on people who write just for kink-- that's their thing; this is my thing.

Perhaps we are speaking entirely different languages here; my pleasure in reading and writing is also bone-deep, and I am also an incurable (and often sappy!) romantic-- but I (nearly) always want to have things feel real. That tends to mean they have to come through the 'hard way' way-- i.e., using hard-earned realism (though I'm not claiming I'm -good- at that, just that it's what I -want-).

Basically, I think loving-kind-awkward boysex has its place-- within pairings for which it is 'in character' like friendship-based ones, say. In fact, with Harry/Ron, say, I'd usually find a darkish rapefic to be way offensive and OOC. Every pairing has its own intrinsic dynamic, and if you're not going to care about that, why would you choose one over the other, if not for looks or something?

Well, unless you're writing everything as if it's a Harlequin romance. In which case, more power to you. Um. Good thing, that freedom of choice, isn't it? Yep.

Comments

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah... monotony is definitely the mindkiller (and I've written plenty of rant-type-things on the things I saw as stagnant in angstfic, actually). Statistically (or, in terms of percentage, anyway), it seems like there's more fluffy crap-- but that might be because more fluff gets written by inexperienced writers or something. And there's nothing painful in quite the same way as a really lame darkfic :>

So yeah, to me, it's definitely all about quality-of-writing, and I just get pinged into defensiveness whenever I feel like generalizations get made by people (who're often being rather defensive, actually). There's no so much of a 'bad' genre or type of fic as a writer who doesn't know how to do justice to a particular situation or concept at that particular point in their lives.

Oh, when I was talking about 'realism', I didn't mean 'gay man' realism. I wasn't bothering to define my terms 'cause I was talking to people who generally read my lj, and I've talked about these things before. Same goes for 'kink', which I use rather generally, to mean 'hot-button of literary satisfaction', so to speak. A lot of people write to get off emotionally if not sexually, and while I see that as valid, I try to get away from being dominated by it.

As far as realism, I meant emotional realism for the particular character in the sum of their parts, not 'as a gay boy' or man or what have you. I don't know what gay boys act like-- I just know that there are -some- general gender/orientation/character-trait guidelines that go into any portrayal of a character, y'know. It's not about pleasing any constituency at all, to me-- just about not 'cheating' whatever you yourself see as that character's 'self' in canon and what that could imply in the future (assuming one connects the dots).

I do -enjoy- writing romantic/intelligent/etc characters and find them easiest myself (since I can directly identify with them), but feel that my chosen characters (Harry, Draco, Ron), don't exactly lend themselves to introspection and romanticism, at least in a direct sense. But I like a challenge. So I've tried to make them less introspective and so on, because I do love them even as I love the act of writing about them itself. But like I said, my own amusement is often a matter of being 'real' or true to the source (though I'm not a canon-whore by any means).

It's not so much a question of following canon (to me) as extrapolating from canon-- so that the characters stay themselves-- like, recognizable. I mean, I only write characters much if I suddenly get a muse for them, anyway, which means stepping beyond canon and Harry's pov in a major way-- it's a leap of imagination. I still try to-- well-- make sense, though, on my own terms if nothing else. Adding to canon is what fanfic -does-; it's just... if you ignore canon in whole swaths that you'd run into problems with believability (with me). Heheh. Far be it from me to say things against gratuitous porn, man (though I try to make that IC, too-- well, I mean, I -try-, at least).

I definitely don't mean to say there are rules to follow in terms of writing (besides 'pay attention to what you're not doing as well as what you're doing', i.e., be self-aware I suppose). My issue was almost entirely focused on saying that I suppose in -H/D-, I think to start with, darker fic would be more believable, and fluff would need a lot of background work that most people don't do. Each situation requires its own context, so any judgement of a type of fic as 'overrated' or 'underrated' just gets me suspicious :>

~reena