~~ficlet. `telling ron'.

so, i've finally read one too many fics with the most awkward, stupid way of coming out that i could imagine, short of giving someone a version of the birds and the bees speech. my god, every time i read one of these, they make me cringe. for one thing, harry potter wouldn't even -know- words like gay, or `bi' especially. even if he -did- know the word gay, i sincerely doubt he'd apply it to himself, immediately or at first, anyway. it always sounds forced and politically correct and neat-and-tidy, and entirely false.

"hello, i'm gay and i will now act all educated and enlightened, and accept myself for who i am." or, "hello, i'm gay and it's wrong and i hate myself."

these are both attitudes of people who've grown up in the modern-day western culture. harry didn't, not quite. and most especially ron and draco didn't. harry's teenage and pre-teen years were spent with a peer-group who mostly don't interact with the modern western culture where these concepts are commonplace. having them use them in conversation sounds forced to me. in fact, the whole "coming out" conversation sounds wrong to me most times. it almost always sounds like the author is telling us what they think about the character's orientation, rather than letting the character tell us what they think of themselves and their emotions-- which is most likely a jumble of confused ideas and misinformation and denial and awkwardness.

i sincerely doubt, also, that there are books about any of this in the library-- muggle psychology is one thing (even that i find iffy), the most recent and up-to-date, sexually permissive muggle psych theory is another. my impression is that hogwarts has a -magical- library, mostly anyway. if they did have muggle-type literature, it'd probably be really old and outdated. this is a school, not a high-level muggle research facility. but whatever.

i was inspired to write something, to challenge myself to sound less dorky myself, if i could. i don't know if i succeeded. in fact, writing ron in -any- context has never been a piece of cake for me (this is probably 90% of why i ship neither harry/ron nor draco/ron-- i couldn't write ron to save my life). so, this isn't really all that ron-like. but at least it's not what you normally come across. i -think-.

( so. `telling ron'- an hp coming out fic. no pairing. w00t! i wrote gen slash, eheheheh. )

~~justify my love.

seeing holographis ask how does one justify harry & draco falling in love, considering harry doesn't care what draco does as long as he stays out of his way, and have them remain in character, i realized.... well. i do, a lot of the time, talk about archetypes and yin and yang and the possibilities of transformative passion and needing your shadow and needing someone who will see you unsentimentally and the way one loves the wrong people, and the way the wrong thing can be the right thing... and so on.

but when it comes to actually -writing- a "how harry & draco got together" story, i'm equally stuck. i mean, i've read a really large number of them now. and i daresay i believe in them as much as is sane and maybe moreso. still, i come across the same problem. they resist it. they don't want to. i'm so aware of pitfalls and cliches, and so aware that if i cheat-- ie, use a potion or some sort of cataclysmic event, or a war, or something-- i'd be cheating and pretending i'm getting them together, just draco and harry, whereas i wouldn't be, really.

it's just funny, isn't it? that i think i really believe in them, but i can't write it. does that mean i don't -really- believe? something's missing then, isn't it.
    of course, i hobble myself, with all the caveats. it has to be in hogwarts. they have to not be forced by magic or circumstance. i think a part of me even has "harry has to -like- draco" as a sort of auxiliary point that would be good. because of the whole, if they're not at all friends, i would be writing a doomed romance, and i refuse to write a doomed romance about them.

( and this is just me going on about my struggles with writing the un-doomed!h/d story of my dreams. heh. )