(But I'm not cerebral! I swear!!)

[reenka]

First things first: I hereby solemnly declare today to be Aspen Loff Day (wheeee!!1 confetti for aaaaallll!!) because the glorious, lucid and also hamster-possessing Miss cursescar has updated(!!) her site with two new (and pornalicious!) H/D fics: `The World' & `Let It Snow', which is so sweet & sour & eeeee realistic & omg delicious in many many ways. She's also put up a Peter/Wendy ficlet which deserves loff, same as all her writing. Therefore, anyone so inclined should feel free to spread said loff to Aspen in the form of squeeing and possibly detailed reviews, as well as tasteful worship and promises of first-born children for some goggle!sex, because it would only be proper. There's no need to thank me for this announcement; you may now go forth and smother Aspen with adoration. Tell her Reena sent you!

Also, hahah, I found a ficlet by malafede about Draco the Crybaby which I felt I should also pimp. 'Tis great! And interesting, considering my own questions as to how/whether Draco would cry. And stuff.
    Oh, and I just wrote a much belated Percy/Oliver grocery shopping drabble for my drabblethon in June -.- ahahaha. Um. Right. And now on to the disgustingly cerebral part of today's post. Skip, skip, skip on ahead.
~~

This is sort of sparked by the discussion on dorrie6's post asking for reasons why we ship H/D, right. And my answer (eventually) condensed down to: I (want to) believe it's possible for Harry & Draco to 'get over' things and see each other clearly (or something like it). So, it's a question of 'faith'-- or idealism-- vs. 'cynicism'. Because supposedly it's my idealistic 'faith' in love or humanity that makes me believe unlikely things could happen and that people could change (or should change). I did comment at one point to say that I consider myself a mix of an idealist and a cynic, but I don't think that goes far enough.


And I just realized that 'idealism' means something like 'a person who follows their ideals'. And this goes back to Platonic philosophy, where one has a abstract formulation of how reality is, and then one applies that abstract to the imperfect and fractured 'real' world of people and events. So the ideal is basically disconnected from reality at an essential level, and the striving towards the initial form (of Love, of Beauty, what have you) is something worthwhile but ultimately doomed as far as human beings go.

Basically, nothing I believe or want to believe about people or fictional characters is ever something I think up with no regard to reality. Instead, I perceive certain patterns amid the myriad events and stories I come across, and I match them up and interpret them and so on. The perception comes first, and the interpretation follows. That's the only way that makes sense to me; whenever I notice myself making assumptions about how things 'should' work, I try to backtrack and see where the source would lead me. I want to understand people and the world in general; I don't fancy the idea that my ideas are somehow disconnected from reality just because they're not proven at the moment or might never be.

What it comes down to is an inherent difference in method: an idealist or a cynic both sees the world through a defined, preconditioned framework of starting theories. I myself try to perceive things as they actually are while retaining a sort of... vulnerability, I suppose? A hope for the unexpected. A sense of wonder, maybe...? And then, naturally, I formulate opinions (though not conclusions, generally).

I think the capacity to believe in the impossibilities of love (which can be neither proved or disproved) isn't a matter of -faith- but rather interpretation and what your value system is. What does one value about people? What does one think is worthwhile in love-- passion, longevity, understanding, chemistry in general, degree of complementariness? What does one believe one's 'Ultimate Goal' in life & love 'should' be?

In the end, it does come down to what one thinks 'should' be true. I actually hate the word 'should'. I think it's... well, oppressive. I also think lots of people somehow imply it in regular discourse, whether or not they mean to. And in talking about love especially, I don't see how there's a place for that word, really. One may talk about predestination and archetypes and kink and that's all well and good, but love-- as any other emotion-- is irrational and wild (though able to be understood, of course). To predict or decide its course with any certainty seems laughable to me. Who can know what we will-- or can-- become? And why is it idealistic of me to say that?

I have two base principles: one is that of uncertainty. I don't know, so I hope. The other is of balance. I see an overall tendency towards balance in nature itself-- it seems to me that every aspect of the universe, from emotion & consciousness to ecosystems to human bodies strives towards a state of balance, or homeostasis. This isn't an ideal: it's a working hypothesis. There's a difference, isn't there?

So this is what I perceive, witholding judgment: every system I see has checks and balances. There is no presence without a corresponding absence somewhere else. Nature abhors a vacuum, they say, but I've found it also abhors excess when it continues 'too long'. Every naturally evolving system (and human relationships are naturally evolving) only comfortably exists while in a state of equilibrium. In a world where there are Slytherins, for instance, there will always be Gryffindors, and vice versa. In a world where there is good, there will always be evil, because without their mirror/shadow, things lose their definition of identity and become basically amorphous.

Anyway, the way I ship (and the appeal of H/D in particular) does relate to this, actually. I see Harry & Draco as elements of a balanced set-- in fact, I see every single ship I've ever really liked as being elements of a balanced set. Meaning, if you put them together, it's not that they're -equal- (in strength), but that they reach equilibrium. Imbalance can never survive, because nature would eventually compensate by either expelling/trimming the excess or emphasizing the differences (even in relationships which started off with the other person -liking- those differences), often leading to the destruction of said relationships.

The only reason I 'see' them together is because I think it could work (in the 'real world' or whatever passes for real for me at the moment, because there -is- no other world). In the end, any two people -could- be together, and of course none -should- be, but some pairings of two individuals resonate more with me in the sense that they seem more real: i.e., more in tune with the identities of the people involved and with the way the world... works. What I mean is, some pairings are more balanced than others.

Homeostasis is a concept that would mostly be associated with chemistry, perhaps, but I still see imbalance as being temporary in nature rather like an unstable chemical element. It may exist, but it won't last. It will either bond with a stabilizing element to form a balanced system, or it will cease to exist (and some really unbalanced elements need to be forced to exist under extreme laboratory conditions, no less).

H/D is an interesting pairing in that regard. You might say that you would need a special sort of life laboratory to initiate the reaction-- but as far as my perceptions of both their personalities go, I see it as a balanced system once it's given a chance to really -initialize-. That moment of 'seeing' one another that Aja talked about in Dorrie's post-- that's the moment the new element is created. And, I mean, you tell me: am I being purely idealistic or just really abstract? :D

Comments

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Oh, I was totally getting off the H/D track with the balance thing... I was more wondering if I was an idealist or not. I wasn't implying that H/D -has- to be some wondrous representation of balance-- just that as a starting point (a theory) I think that all natural systems -eventually- balance if they're to last, meaning even if things start out unbalanced or similar, one will become more of a quality (or less) depending on the other. Er.

I actually agree that Harry & Draco (in particular) do have many similarities in terms of emotional motivation that they react to & express differently. I think that's pretty central to them, yeah. Just because my ideal/perception of a working natural system involves balance doesn't mean that every story will be about that, of course; (I mean, how could I generalize anything about all the fic out there, even if I wanted to).

So, hahah, I was actually being more extreme than just saying 'H/D is balance' & saying 'all lasting love is balance'. H/D isn't always lasting-- or love-- by any means, so of course it wouldn't work to describe all fics.
What I love about H/D in particular is the necessity-- and the capacity-- and the hope for change in both of them... as well as a bunch of other things, I guess. I was just having issues with seeing belief in the pairing-- or seeing myself-- as 'idealistic' because that made me think of Plato's ideal forms, whereas I tend to perceive first & abstractify later :>

[aiglet.livejournal.com]

I think, though, that on some level believing that H/D can change enough to even come together as anything other than angsty one-night-stands is very idealistic. It's a belief that they really can change that much, and in the power of "growing up and getting over it." (Of course, that's using the modern definition, not the interestingly philosophical one.)

I don't agree with you that "all love is balance," either, unless we're positing an inherent balance to the relationship, and not a "both partners are equal" type of balance. I've been in several relationships where we *weren't* equal, and they were still love. I guess it's a question of what you're positing as "being balanced."

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I think, as usual for me, I use my own definitions without first thoroughly explaining my context.... *sigh* Anyway, I use my own definitions for almost everything. This probably gets confusing, heh.

I was questioning the definition of 'idealistic', though~:)) I get my abstractions/imaginings/etc from a combination of observation and projection, so... I just think it's possible, and not in some perfect uber-world of my dreams. Just because most other people might think it's very unlikely or even impossible doesn't mean I'm being 'out there'-- it might also mean that people lack vision ;)

I did say that I don't think of 'balance' as being a question of 'equal strength', but perhaps I didn't go into that enough. I think of it in terms of 'equilibrium', meaning that unequality reaches (homeo)stasis by filling in the spaces the other leaves open-- it's like with all systems, you have a need and something fulfills it. Usually, a mechanical-model balance would be something like a scale, right? You have different substances that 'weigh' the same amount on the scale. But-- I was specifically talking about balance as seen in natural systems, which involves evolution and constant motion-- there's no constant 'amount' involved on either 'side', and indeed the sides blur as they balance each other.

I mean, maybe there's some other word for it, but I don't know what it is except 'balance'. Now I'm tempted to start talking about open systems vs. closed systems, and that confuses even me. -.-

A natural balance almost never involves equal quantities, because total equality (i.e., identical amounts) very rarely occurs in nature, I think. It's a question of sustainability-- when every element of a system feeds into that system and gets what they need-- and thus the system is balanced as a whole, rather than some coarse dividing up of its parts. The fascination of love, to me, is how imbalanced individuals with vastly different qualities or amounts of said qualities can come together and form a balanced-- or sustainable-- evolving system. Er. I sound sooooo... something. Sorry about that.

[aiglet.livejournal.com]

I think I'm just questioning what the balance is *of*, really. I see (or think I see) what you're getting at, but I'm not sure that "balance" is the best way to describe it. I tend to think of relationships as binary star systems -- stasis rather than balance. Except that it's an evolving stasis... I think we're getting at the same idea here, and just thinking of it differently.

I suspect I'm objecting to the word "balance" because on some level it implies equality (or wholeness, depending on whether you're looking at it on a micro or macro scale), and I've seen and been in some relationships with power imbalances like you wouldn't believe that were very loving (at least, for a while).

I think that a certain amount of the modern notion of "idealism" has to do with having more vision, though. It's the idea of seeing some kind of goal or "ideal state" and then going for it, even if no one else seems to believe that it's possible. Whether you're creating that before or after observation doesn't seem to matter, and I think sometimes it doesn't matter if *you* have the abstract notion of what "ideal" you're serving at all, if other people can see it.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I looked up 'balance' on m-w.com (just wondering if I was crazy for using the word), and here:
5 b : equipoise between contrasting, opposing, or interacting elements
6 b : the juxtaposition in writing of syntactically parallel constructions containing similar or contrasting ideas
7 a : physical equilibrium

So basically... yeah, there's that 'equal quantities'-- or similar amount-- aspect to it (in the definitions I left out), but there's also that 'contrast' aspect where you reach 'equipoise' or 'equilibrium' through the use of various (unnamed) methods. It's more of an abstract rather than a literal interpretation-- instead of directly observable 'balancing' of like amounts, I'm referring to the state itself-- where the two (or more) parts are in balance, regardless of individual power. That is to say, I think wolves and sheep are 'in balance', even though wolves are much more powerful and actually -eat- sheep.

That is a natural model-- where you have sustainability (of both wolves and sheep) as the goal rather than it being an issue of comparing the life and power of one sheep as compared to one wolf. Does that make any sense? Overall, both wolves and sheep co-exist and flourish-- and in fact sheep need wolves to keep their population down (and whatever) just as wolves needs sheep for easy feeding. I suppose I could just say 'equilibrium', but I like balance better... for no discernable reason except I'm used to it :> But yes, I think we agree except on terms, heheh.

Man, that's depressing. Now having vision beyond the obvious is supposedly enough to make you an idealist?? Damn.