~~ willy & nilly & all that jazz.

It's funny the way people keep saying, "but in canon, it doesn't [present tense!] work that way", to explain why a pairing wouldn't [future tense!] work or why a character wouldn't act a certain way. I mean, obviously it makes sense, but.... It always strikes me how people assume that in the future, everything will be the same. That things just kind of... don't change. And my first impulse is to laugh.

So if you're a naive bumbling idiot at 13, you will be at 21, and if you're someone's hated rival at 11, you will be at 17 or something, right? And if you're an asshole-- well, born an asshole, die an asshole. Actually, I keep thinking about this, and I can't quite decide what the best way to prove it one way or the other would be, really.

I could say, "but in a fanfic, one could make it so that it's not quite as true anymore," so Draco is less of an asshole and everyone has lots of sex, but.... It's just so idiosyncratic. A part of me thinks that people never -really- change, but mostly I just don't know how and why any more than the next person. It's one of the great mysteries, sort of, isn't it? Why do some things change in us but not others?

It's easier said than done, regardless. You could easily say "oh, I could just make it so that so-and-so is different now", but most people screw that up, don't they. Then again, one hopes that the actual author is going to change things too... in a way, it's inevitable that a good story won't have the same character starting out as the one they end up as. It's all so intuitive for me. Like, I never write a story -intending- to have any character change in some specific way... that is, I'd never write H/D meaning to redeem Draco or some such, or even meaning to make him less of an asshole. It just sort of... happens. Or doesn't happen. Though I don't think I've ever actually written asshole!Draco, just because I'd never label anyone whose motivations I empathize with an "asshole".

Maybe it's all a question of circumstances. We are all simultaneously all our possible selves, and we just need a certain situation to shine a specific light on our characters to bring out one aspect or another. So if one lives a certain kind of life and that remains fairly constant, nothing changes and one's still an asshole, for example. But then if that same asshole gets shipped off to holy war in China, for instance... yes, imagine Draco forcibly put in a Muggle Crusade... well, things change, don't they. Willy nilly. Or something like that...?
~~

EDIT - kissmeagain wrote Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fic....
    Just how ridiculously cool -is- that, anyway??