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reenkaAll right, I know this'll sound stupid, but bear with me:
I was rereading bits of Prufrock's Levity series, and even reading little snippets of `Levity' hits me where it hurts (and by that I mean: it kills me), and I was actually surprised. Just because I care so much and it's not that I'm as obsessed and fixated on the pairing as I am with H/D, so a part of me thinks it shouldn't be able to hurt me that much.
I mean, I'm not addicted or anything-- I can go months without a single S/R fic, so you'd think I wouldn't be this sensitive, y'know, just because the writing is gorgeous and the characterizations are unbelievable and the emotion is palpable. Right. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Pru is bloody brilliant, of course. All I can say is, thank god for the happy of `Vector' and `Gasp', which I hadn't actually read before today, and ohhhh how happy did it make me?? SO HAPPY. LIKE THE VERY GOOD CRACK, I tell you.
And then it hit me (duh!)-- love is universal.
It's always the same thing, the same emotion being tapped, no matter who the characters are. Love is universal. It seems painfully obvious, but it's so easy to forget, in fandom, among all the ship debates and the way one starts to -identify- with a (one true) pairing to the point that it's like there needs to be a formula to touch one's heart. Take Character A, add Character B, and you have "investment" and therefore (vicariously) "love". And of course we will always have our individual favorites-- but underneath it all-- well, there's the truth, and the truth taps into... well, us. The same source.... Which is why one starts to care about the love lives of original characters one has only 'known' for like, 10 pages. And by 'someone' I mean me. It can't be the -character- alone, precisely.
Of course one cares about some characters more than others, and fact is, some pairings allow a writer to explore certain themes more than others, which some readers may be most drawn to-- but even so, whether one's writing Harry/Hermione, Sirius/Remus, Lucius/Narcissa or Harry/Draco, the journey may be different in each case, but what you have is the same destination-- the human heart. If one steps back, one can sort of see it-- how easily love can be recreated in each case with only that initial leap of faith that one makes, believing in the possibility. Really, understanding the emotional center of a love-story is a bit like falling in love all by itself-- it all starts with a leap of faith. You allow yourself to believe-- you let down your barriers and... fall in love with their love.
That essential moment when something is created from nothing through a sort of metamorphosis of vision. Where before there were only two people, on the brink-- now there are two people falling, the earth dropping away beneath them. That 'moment of seeing' that Aja talked about as being central to the nature of an H/D fic-- I really think it's central to all romance.
It's not who they are. It's how they feel.
It's... it's all the same story, really. I mean, I knew that. But still, funny how one can forget, isn't it?
I was rereading bits of Prufrock's Levity series, and even reading little snippets of `Levity' hits me where it hurts (and by that I mean: it kills me), and I was actually surprised. Just because I care so much and it's not that I'm as obsessed and fixated on the pairing as I am with H/D, so a part of me thinks it shouldn't be able to hurt me that much.
I mean, I'm not addicted or anything-- I can go months without a single S/R fic, so you'd think I wouldn't be this sensitive, y'know, just because the writing is gorgeous and the characterizations are unbelievable and the emotion is palpable. Right. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Pru is bloody brilliant, of course. All I can say is, thank god for the happy of `Vector' and `Gasp', which I hadn't actually read before today, and ohhhh how happy did it make me?? SO HAPPY. LIKE THE VERY GOOD CRACK, I tell you.
And then it hit me (duh!)-- love is universal.
It's always the same thing, the same emotion being tapped, no matter who the characters are. Love is universal. It seems painfully obvious, but it's so easy to forget, in fandom, among all the ship debates and the way one starts to -identify- with a (one true) pairing to the point that it's like there needs to be a formula to touch one's heart. Take Character A, add Character B, and you have "investment" and therefore (vicariously) "love". And of course we will always have our individual favorites-- but underneath it all-- well, there's the truth, and the truth taps into... well, us. The same source.... Which is why one starts to care about the love lives of original characters one has only 'known' for like, 10 pages. And by 'someone' I mean me. It can't be the -character- alone, precisely.
Of course one cares about some characters more than others, and fact is, some pairings allow a writer to explore certain themes more than others, which some readers may be most drawn to-- but even so, whether one's writing Harry/Hermione, Sirius/Remus, Lucius/Narcissa or Harry/Draco, the journey may be different in each case, but what you have is the same destination-- the human heart. If one steps back, one can sort of see it-- how easily love can be recreated in each case with only that initial leap of faith that one makes, believing in the possibility. Really, understanding the emotional center of a love-story is a bit like falling in love all by itself-- it all starts with a leap of faith. You allow yourself to believe-- you let down your barriers and... fall in love with their love.
That essential moment when something is created from nothing through a sort of metamorphosis of vision. Where before there were only two people, on the brink-- now there are two people falling, the earth dropping away beneath them. That 'moment of seeing' that Aja talked about as being central to the nature of an H/D fic-- I really think it's central to all romance.
It's not who they are. It's how they feel.
It's... it's all the same story, really. I mean, I knew that. But still, funny how one can forget, isn't it?
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-24 11:27 pm (UTC)*beams*
Actually, this very same principle struck me very forcibly this morning, in a less concrete and articulated way. It was from reading an old post of Dorrie's, here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/dorrie6/191914.html), that talked about her life and her own experience with love, and in it she wrote: Years later she'd wonder how many times she'd seen love in other places, lurking, unrecognized. The breath in her father's voice when he said her mother's name... the late-night glances between two castmates after a long rehearsal ... Marlies' earnest face when she'd confided, "I love you, Melinda. I really love you."
And there was something about that bit there that made me stop and pause and just soak that in, and go, ... wow. Because it was so true.
I suppose the fundamental difference is that, while love in its essence, is always going to draw us in and make us pause and stop and go, ... wow, every person has a different story, a different reason for how they love and who they love and how they got there. And since every one of us is different, not everyone's stories about love will appeal to everyone the same way.
I look at Remus and Sirius in canon--looked at them long before I knew about the fandom--and went, 'Wow. Their love was amazing.' Remus' and Sirius' story does not interest me, however. No matter how well it is written--and oh, Pru does write it well--their characters and their particular story does not draw me in, can't draw me in because of the way I'm made up, I guess, the way Harry and Draco's story does. They are worlds apart. And love, at its core, is always going to exert that same pull over all of us; but the stories around that love are forever changing, which is why we all write about it so much, and why we all respond to and experience it so differently each time--not only in our own lives but in the stories we read as well.
<3
no subject
Date: 2004-10-25 12:25 am (UTC)But. Er. *coughs*
Yesh, you are right, as of course you would be, since you are so one of my love gurus, you know that, right? *laughs* That is such a wacked out thing to say, and I think my burst of 'deep thought'...ness has somewhat evaporated seeing as it's after 3am, etc. But yes, you totally said what I sort of hinted at except didn't articulate because I was lazy :D :D! That is the best sort of feeling. I do think we're all attracted to different stories, which is why I said that about 'stepping away'-- I do think one needs to let go of ego a bit before one can see underneath one's preferences of vision to the uniting thread and so on. Because of course we're all going to have different 'buttons' and reactions to stories-- and I myself am clearly heavily biased towards H/D of all sorts-- but there's still something... there. Like a secret ingredient that links it all together, or something, and makes it... make sense.
Perhaps it's also significant that to me, one of the major elements of attraction has always been the -way- the story's told (with humor, banter, intensity, subtlety, a flare for language) as much as the characters involved, so I can sort of fall in love with the telling, too. That's really always been how I was able to write all the non-H/D pairings (which I still can't read)-- because it's like, the way -I- tell it, it's also my story, just like H/D is, though there's no guarrantee that anyone else will see it the same way. If -I- told a story about a pairing I'd normally dislike, it'd be... tailored to me, and I think any two characters can be approached in the 'right way' to work for the -writer- in theory, if not the reader, but then it's more like the process of writing original fic, more creation/fusion rather than extrapolation.
Wah. It's that basic contradiction-and-yet-not, about how our stories are one and yet so many & always changing, yes; like a single precious stone with an endless number of facets. ♥
the secret ingredient
Date: 2004-10-25 05:31 am (UTC)well, duh :)you are very right, and not many people see this, methinks. i used to find the kind of love that is what i call love in older novels, then hardly anywhere, at one point in slash, and i am still looking, always very happy when unexpectedly i find it somewhere.
Re: the secret ingredient
Date: 2004-10-26 01:00 am (UTC)Re: the secret ingredient
Date: 2004-10-26 03:56 am (UTC)on the other hand, as the particular kind or expression of love that has been going around the last century never satisfied me, i try to think that maybe something more interesting will develop, away from the dichotomy of 1 and 0, which is also what i am looking for in slash. i am old fashioned enough to want just two people, but the dynamics and expressions, be it het or gay, which i look for and which touch me are rarely seen. although i fear that romantic love developes in the opposite direction, as trends in books, films, and the general backlash against feminism and pc show.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-25 02:47 pm (UTC)We are storytellers by nature, you and I. I think of nights we laid awake telling tales, shadows for the shadows, wide open stories flying out the window like clouds to the moon. You will say, but we never stayed to see the morning. I will say, but I dreamt of you, and isn’t that the same?
When I met you I had a thousand stories and none of them were mine. A thousand doves, no messages; fairy tales with no backbones of truth. Light without quality, shapes without names. I knew time but I did not know its pulse. I knew love, a word on my tongue, but I did not know its taste. I knew you. I did not know you at all. You took my hand, felt the shape of my heart there, clenched between my fingers, ready for the giving. You said, Everything begins here.
Here. Now. The twilight stretching and a thousand stories to be told and between our heartbeats, between the night, the stars, the steps of waltzing time: another chance.
The moral of this story is you.
*
Good-night stories, face-the-morning stories, stories for the days in between. First-day stories. Last-day stories. Past and present and future stories, one on top the other, this tapestry to time. Stop the day, the hour, the moment: pare between the seconds and pull out this ticking photograph. The closer we get to infinity. Snapshots into time, moment to moment, spun together.
Dark: the night winging shadows and you in my arms. I said, Once upon a time. You kissed me like Scheherazade and all of them dissolved.
A thousand times upon this time. A thousand stories and one telling. A thousand nights, one night. You.
I am learning.
*
I dream of things that have never happened: soft gold afternoons, the patterned lights of evening, blue mornings of rain. Time blurs between my eyelids when the day sinks into sleep. I think you are here, wake casting in the open air for a memory or a shade of the future. I think myself back to solidity, settle with an armful of the present, shut my eyes. When I met you there was space without a name. Now I tie its emptiness to yours.
This is a story, too.
When I met you I knew the bright arrows of dawn and the wide slow shadows that streetlights cast, but I could not touch them, dive there, find the pearls of meaning cast amongst the moments. You poured each day into my hands like water. You said, Listen carefully. Or maybe I did. A thousand times upon this time and we rewrote all that was known.
These stories are enough.
Someday. Someday: this is what I have learned, I’ll say, sleep-heavy in your arms. (Past, present, future: does it matter? I loved you today.) This is what I have learned, this tale: I love you. And you will say, but I hate endings. And I’ll say, wait. Wait.
Everything begins here.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 12:57 am (UTC)Man, that's also a lot like the stuff I write~:))) <3
It's all about dualities and the in-betweens-- the way one starts living when one figures out that the words are hiding & obscuring & revealing at the same time, and that first love affair we had with stories is nothing compared to love and yet love encompasses it, recreates it, makes it stronger. Yes, completely.
This makes me think you'd probably like reading John Barth's `Chimera', which it totally made me think of. You should totally read it. I'll find a copy & send it to you if I have to, man :D :D
...Which Queen song?? ~:))
♥♥♥!!
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 09:35 am (UTC)I totally have Chimera, and I know I at least read half of it, but now I don't remember it. When I'm home for Thanksgiving I'll bring it back with me and dive in, I promise!
*laughs* Under Pressure. The whole:
Why can't we give love that one more chance?
Why can't we give love give love give love,
Give love give love give love give love give love?
and
And love dares you to change our way
Of caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
*laughs* No, really. But you know, you know so much about stories and love that sometimes I think you are magic. <3.