~~ deconstructing Harry/Draco. Again. -.-

So am I the only person who procrastinates on actually -thinking- even enough to read recreationally by rambling on about things that require no thinking, like True Love and The Meaning Of Existence? Disturbing thing is, probably not. Heh. A strangely large number of people think of Harry&Draco meta recreationally. H/D: the thinking slasher's drug. Or not, man. Or Not.

I was re-reading a bit from idiotparade's reply to my oldish post on how love is supposed to transcend and all that jazz (I didn't bother actually paying attention, just skimmed-- can't concentrate worth beans now). But her saying that when two people in love can no longer live without each other (ala Olympia's `Shining Prince' series), it's co-dependence and thus not healthy just sort of made several things -click- in my head.

In my PoMo lit-crit class, we had a guest lecturer today who liked illustrating the state of existential anxiety and the sudden awareness of the nothingness present within yourself by comparing it to the state of being in love. That totally makes sense to me, because well-- ideally, in my head, Draco is Harry's Other, the person he marginalizes and ignores, the muted opposite. Sort of in the way that the dominant culture would repress the minority culture, would take away its voice-- there's a similar dynamic there, though on a much smaller scale obviously. The Slytherins are The Other-- they are a reflection of everything `right' and noble, and by their very existence they define what's good by not being it; Draco's merely the personification of Slytherin and Harry's personal bane, the person whose voice Harry wants to mute. (Er.... plz ignore the inane lit-crit babble-- I'll grow out of it soon, thnx).

( Er... gah, all this `Other' stuff embarrasses me, btw. -.- )

It's so easy to idealize love, because it has all this -potential- it rarely follows through on. It's so easy to talk about what it -can- do and ignore the fact that mostly, it doesn't do it. I think I should try to move away from the fantasy image I have in my head of everything that's -possible- and just think about -people- more, maybe. I'm actually in love with writing that can really transmit the -real-, more than anything. I mean, yeah, I dig on the deconstructing-Harry-and-Draco ideal, but no one, -no one- does it with any rigor, and I'm not stupid enough to think I'm the postmodern-lit H/D messiah, either. Heh. I think well-written realistic fiction really carries all this baggage and implicit power of emotion in the -subtext-, without ever having to put it across as if it was some kind of thesis. I fully believe that if you truly represent these characters, if you bring them to life, then a sort of stable and consistent dynamic will emerge that is separate from any particular author. It's like, the H/D vibe. If you have a certain degree of realism and emotional truth in your writing, the meta will come, basically.

( ...So then off I go into a tangent on realism & the need for friendship-based love... )

I do think my attraction to H/D is at least partly about the wrongness, the jarring nature of it. I realize a lot of romance fics center on how right it is for them almost immediately, how they click impossibly well together in bed, how they understand each other better than anyone else could, how they cuddle in spite of themselves-- but while I definitely appreciate that, I think it's a pretty lie, and it's not what I'd consider realistic, even within an unrealistic relationship like H/D is to start with.
    Pairing people who have an intense apparently-non-sexual friendship together (like say, I dunno, Sirius&Remus) is also a pretty lie, in a way, just like dsudis said in her post-- and a lot of people replied, but we -like- the lie, that's what we write fiction for.

And isn't that interesting?

( Er... well, -I- think so. Hmph. )

~~

That said, and on a completely unrelated note: Starkiller's `The Twelve Days of Christmas' cracked me the hell up, man. Hee. Yes, at the end of the day, I may say what I may, but eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, theirloveissopure!!!11!!1! *dies*
    owww. owww, all that not-really-thinking and questioning myself hurt my braaaaain. oooowwwwww. i can only -imagine- what it did to others silly enough to read it all. muwahahah...hah...ha. -.-