~~rambly again. dark!harry and warfic and angstfic as salt and general wibbling.

( h/d fic rules: angst is like salt and truth is like poison. hard to disprove and harder to prove the converse. i'm still looking, of course )

    this got started with ishuca's post about the alternate ending amalin wrote to `two lost souls', but i've been thinking about the way warfics portray harry & harry's relationship with his inner darkness (and inner light) for awhile now. that is to say, i'm largely dissatisfied with the way harry turns out in a lot of warfic. corrupted, defeated, tarnished, sad, no longer the old adventurous laughing considerate optimist he was. broken somehow. and one could say that war does that to a person. but this isn't "a person". this isn't just any war. this is harry, and the battle isn't so much between armies as between Dark and Light. the symbolism can't just be ignored if you're going to really play with these (pretty archetypical) characters as they stand in jkr's books.

i want to see warfic going beyond the horror, and giving a third choice beyond wimping out or diving in full-force. i want to see a harry that can retain his essential nature even when facing the worst war and human nature can throw at him. i want harry to still laugh even though he cries just as much. i want a harry who can feel. where even though he's a warrior, he's not willing to do evil, no matter what. where the human soul wins over the huge meme of War.

as unstasis put it, saying "war corrupts" is dwelling in the problem instead of looking for a solution. but to really end the war-- you either obliterate everyone who opposes you, which makes you no better than anyone else, or you have to somehow change the conditions.

i guess it's a question of whether the character of harry potter has the strength to win the war of not being corrupted by the war. i would argue, long and hard (and have), that indeed harry has to have the strength, if he were to fulfill the promise inherent in his character. if harry defeats voldemort, he has to be able to do it on his own terms, without becoming that which he is fighting. he can't do it without sacrifices-- everyone makes sacrifices-- but no matter what, the point is to remain yourself, to retain that joy and delight in living, in being just a boy like any other, that gave you strength. love (his mother's) was always supposed to give him strength. and maybe he can't save everyone, and redeem anyone but himself (ie, draco), but he can retain his nobility and innate sense of rightness and restraint. all times are dark-- all times are light. just like people. *sigh* i just want a fic that truly explores those boundaries and faces these dilemmas and has harry remain himself, and keep laughing, all the way to the end.
    and i love zoshak's reminder that people don't laugh in hard times because they need to, as a defense mechanism, but because they -can-. yes, that's what i would love to see-- the way that we remain ourselves in the midst of the worst horrors, in the midst of the most unbelievable atrocities-- we remain ourselves or we perish in the only way that matters.

~~
( ...just me going on about the perils of liking people virtually. beware: am bitter and probably not the most objective observer that ever was, heh. )

~~
wah. olympia_m wrote a this, sort of response to penelope_z's `carnivorous house'-- and my gahd, it just totally completes and contrasts and-- wow. i always want the "other side" in limited-pov fics, especially if they really touch me. and this is just heart-wrenching. on ghosts and lies and comfort and-- the threesome fic rash that's been going around gets even more interesting (well to me), with draco in the mix. and you know, i'd have said it couldn't be done (well).
     and on a totally different (much more cute-and-giggly) threesome/draco note (haha, oh gahd, another pairing), there's this one from a threesome of drabbles from hackthis today. i can so totally see it, and that is just not good ^^;;

miss breed is truly a h/d goddess (that is pretty much a title i give to someone who writes fic that makes me fall in love with the characters completely on its own merits, while retaining the sense that these are -those- characters, these are harry & draco; plus it helps to make me laugh a lot-- love=laughter). she introduced me to SophieB, which looks to be a v. good thing (bratty!malfoy fics -and- a soulless-eyed!malfoy pic? <3~! hee). her every story is just-- sooo in character. yargle. i read `beware the fury of a patient man' and realized that this is sort of a ``standard-bearer" fic, as in, something that is so believably canonically flavored, it -deserves- to be fanon. well. some things do.

"Did you get what you wanted for Christmas, Potter?"

Harry was startled by the question. It was alarmingly . . . normal. "Er, I guess. Not really. I don't know."

"I didn't," said Malfoy, flatly. "I did manage to get a cheap imitation though, which isn't saying much."

hee~:) that's probably my favorite part, in retrospect. *grins*