~~ the hypocrisy of Sturgeon's law & the curse of 'originality'.

I think reading themostepotente's anti-H/D rant should go down in some kind of history as the first time I saw enough of a concentration of anti-H/D sentiment that I felt roused to actually defend. Oh man. Not that I'm about to -here-, since well, mostly I'd be preaching to the choir, but still. A first time for everything, no?

    I mean... the amount of times I've ranted/rambled about H/D is embarrassingly huge, but what I've realized is that I've always been talking to those 'in the know'. I always rant with the assumption that 'well, you know I love them & love oodles of fic & you read me & must know how insane I am'. I can also take a lot of ribbing about things I love-- I agree with people who say Draco's a spoiled obnoxious brat, and all right, I don't take too well to Harry (or Ron or Sirius or Remus) bashing, but um, to each their own.

I know how you... um... some of you feel now, though. There -is- H/D bashing and bad vibes (that I avoid 'cause apparently I'm pretty insulated), and it does feel... yucky to have to be one of 'those' people who like that stupid, cliche, boring, overdone pairing. Meh. So yeah. I'm sorry for the rants, I guess. I mean, what I'm saying is, I rant because I love, and that's not always clear. I love and adore and just-- this pairing means the world to me, and I never want to make any H/D shipper feel bad 'cause I get frustrated with fic. I do love a lot of H/D fics, and by extension a lot of the people I've met who write/read them. So yeah. Hi, I like H/D. A lot. And a lot of you guys have really good taste in pairings, ahahahah. ;))

I'd be the first to say that my own H/D fic isn't anything to brag about in terms of 'well, if you hate H/D, read -this-', though of course that's my ambition. But!
    I think the major problem here is confusing the worth of a potential pairing with how that pairing's mostly written. I mean, I think themostepotente's rant was mostly about the Corollary of Sturgeon's Law-- i.e, 90% of everything is crap-- originally in science fiction. I do subscribe to that, too.

So. Yes. Much with the overall crappitude of everything, but-- I really don't see how this relates to the worth of an idea or of particular fics which may or may not use that idea well. It gets even more indefensible (to me) when one uses the presence of crappy, cliche fic to put down a whole genre or 'type' of storyline-- or even worse, uses one's own bias against that genre wholesale ('but I don't like angerfucks'). Um. So? I mean-- well-- this is a valid opinion, but as far as lit-crit it leaves a little something to be desired.

I suppose it boils down to a difference in approach: an H/D writer might say 'there are difficulties-- and as such, challenges to be overcome', while an H/D 'cynic' would say, 'look at all these obstacles-- omg, why don't you bitches just give up, it'll never happen omg!!1'.
    Yeah, thanks-- clearly that has never occurred to anyone who shipped H/D before, 'cause we all live in the happy-happy-joy-joy land where Draco is a wonderfully kind & loving boy & Harry dreams about sucking his cock every night (thusly, OOC = love). Yeah. Of course, because everyone knows that in order to be plausible, a pairing must be directly implied by canon fact, and every H/D shipper thinks that Harry-and-Draco-luv-each-other-in-the-books-OMG.

Another truism, besides 'the majority of everything is crap' is 'anything can be done well by the right person'. The lack of a commonplace source for the so-called 'right person' is clearly obvious to anyone with a brain, but so it goes in the arts, anyway. It's also funny to me that everyone's complaining about a lack of established-relationship fics (especially post-Hogwarts), whereas that's most of what I've seen, post-OoTP. It's like... you can never please everyone, but... it's still funny that so much kneejerk judgement goes on. Like the 'oh, I used to like H/D but most of the fic I see nowadays sucks'-- that pov really annoys me the most.

( ...How does it annoy me? Let me count the ways. )