...blaaaaaaah
Jan. 23rd, 2005 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkaSo far in my adventures with yaoi manga, I've realized that one of my favorite things is when the uke is... well... non-ukish-- like, non-submissive, which is weird 'cause recently in HP fandom I've gotten a little too invested in who tops and so on, which is actually funny to me now. I don't know... it's just my luck that recently I keep reading mangas where the bottom boy is all tough-assed and violent and sulky and so on, while the top is gentler and more love-love and such. Ahahaha it's so great. Sometimes it's pretty emotionally unrealistic, but who cares? I love seeing the tough guy be all, *mewl!!1* no matter how much he resists, heeeee. (*sekritly mean*)
Okay, that was random. Also, it seems like one of my greatest joys in manga, if not in life, is witnessing the obligatory (dark-haired!) Expressionless Icy Cool Boy (who's annoying as hell in HP, but let's not go there) get all 'omg, you TOUCHED MY PENIS!! I BLUSH NOW!!'. That's beautiful. It seems like a lot of the High School stories are about the Uber-Cool Cucumber meeting Sunny Naive Dork boy (who is sometimes violent). And I know I said no manga meta for me, but this isn't meta, it's... er... silly commentary, so there.
I played a bit of Final Fantasy X for the first time recently. Okay, no slash yet, but... see, I'm branching out in my dorkishness. Brings out the full-bodied flavor... or something.
~~
The thing about fandom is... it's implicitly about sharing things you're understood to see in a similar way with people, right? You all like something together. I suppose it's easy to feel you understand things together, too, like... suppose other people see the characters the same way I do if they ship them, but this doesn't seem true. Then again, that's what subjectivity is all about.
It doesn't work that way for me, at least. It feels like the roots and the heart of my fannishness are very personal... and its flowers may attract attention, but aren't capable of sustaining me.
I think my base inspiration lies in images and symbols-- in feelings-- in inner associations between words and memories and emotions. It's not about any two people-- it's not about a pairing. It's about the constant fascination with reaching out into the abyss, with needing the thing you cannot have, with desperation and despair and obsession and violence.
What it comes down to is that I don't care what pairing it is... what fandom it is... I don't care, as long as it's telling a version of that story in my head-- the one that haunts me. And in a way, I think there's only one story I'm ever after, telling or wanting others to tell... that story changes during different times in my life, but H/D, for instance, represents something like this fic snippet by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jadedroses. I suppose this is about my love-affair with, well, love, and my tendency to want it to be near-impossible, almost to escape it even as it draws near.
In my head, Draco is always saying he hates Harry, and he means he wants him (to pay attention). He is impotent yet constant-- this is why I always thought ghost!Draco made such perfect sense. He is a ghost-- you cannot truly kill the idea of him, or stop his pain, or even really change him, perhaps. He is everything bright and hopeless, the pretty boy suicide. He's the idiot in me, wanting things too much, never being enough, not seeing the truth until it's too late, clinging to childhood past reason, succumbing to jealousy, living in circles of self-fulfilling prophecies.
I sort of see this boy, and it doesn't matter what his name is-- and he's reaching out, so desperately-- he's reaching out and his eyes are shut and his fingers are cold and there's nothing there anymore but winter wind.
Okay, that was random. Also, it seems like one of my greatest joys in manga, if not in life, is witnessing the obligatory (dark-haired!) Expressionless Icy Cool Boy (who's annoying as hell in HP, but let's not go there) get all 'omg, you TOUCHED MY PENIS!! I BLUSH NOW!!'. That's beautiful. It seems like a lot of the High School stories are about the Uber-Cool Cucumber meeting Sunny Naive Dork boy (who is sometimes violent). And I know I said no manga meta for me, but this isn't meta, it's... er... silly commentary, so there.
I played a bit of Final Fantasy X for the first time recently. Okay, no slash yet, but... see, I'm branching out in my dorkishness. Brings out the full-bodied flavor... or something.
~~
The thing about fandom is... it's implicitly about sharing things you're understood to see in a similar way with people, right? You all like something together. I suppose it's easy to feel you understand things together, too, like... suppose other people see the characters the same way I do if they ship them, but this doesn't seem true. Then again, that's what subjectivity is all about.
It doesn't work that way for me, at least. It feels like the roots and the heart of my fannishness are very personal... and its flowers may attract attention, but aren't capable of sustaining me.
I think my base inspiration lies in images and symbols-- in feelings-- in inner associations between words and memories and emotions. It's not about any two people-- it's not about a pairing. It's about the constant fascination with reaching out into the abyss, with needing the thing you cannot have, with desperation and despair and obsession and violence.
What it comes down to is that I don't care what pairing it is... what fandom it is... I don't care, as long as it's telling a version of that story in my head-- the one that haunts me. And in a way, I think there's only one story I'm ever after, telling or wanting others to tell... that story changes during different times in my life, but H/D, for instance, represents something like this fic snippet by
jadedroses. I suppose this is about my love-affair with, well, love, and my tendency to want it to be near-impossible, almost to escape it even as it draws near. In my head, Draco is always saying he hates Harry, and he means he wants him (to pay attention). He is impotent yet constant-- this is why I always thought ghost!Draco made such perfect sense. He is a ghost-- you cannot truly kill the idea of him, or stop his pain, or even really change him, perhaps. He is everything bright and hopeless, the pretty boy suicide. He's the idiot in me, wanting things too much, never being enough, not seeing the truth until it's too late, clinging to childhood past reason, succumbing to jealousy, living in circles of self-fulfilling prophecies.
I sort of see this boy, and it doesn't matter what his name is-- and he's reaching out, so desperately-- he's reaching out and his eyes are shut and his fingers are cold and there's nothing there anymore but winter wind.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-01-24 11:54 am (UTC)hm, not sure. i was at work and only glanced at the lj-cut ... you also don't seem to get that supposed feeling of unity? well, from what i could see, you still are very much in a fandom in a way i just never manage, for reasons i think you outlined.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-24 12:06 pm (UTC)I feel much more 'like' other HP-type people if I see them in person. Or maybe I'm just so high on glee that I can meet them in the first place :>
no subject
Date: 2005-01-24 01:02 pm (UTC)2. sentence: yup.
3. sentence: true, my feeling exactly.
4-5. sentence: had to reread 3 times. and rethink.
because to me that is what it means to be in fandom, n'est pas? for examply, i'd be thrilled to meet some people but never because they happen to like the same things that i do.
and if you feel a lot like them when you meet them, then you must feel that fandom bond *g* wah, i am soooo alone
no subject
Date: 2005-01-24 08:21 pm (UTC)As for meeting people... it's not that I don't feel the 'fandom bond', it's just that I don't care whether I agree with the people I mean in real life from fandom. It's just fun to be around them and have some common frame of reference and be able to discuss things and squee about things, even if we're squeeing about somewhat different things. But online, that immediacy of squee is gone for me, so all that's left is over-intellectualizing and splitting hairs. Which is why online fandom tires me for the same reason meeting people invigorates me-- it's just different in person. I don't care as much that I'm not perfectly in sync. It doesn't matter. But online, words are all we have, so I feel more alone.
...Or something :>
no subject
Date: 2005-01-25 04:02 am (UTC)yes, i completely agree. frustratingly inevitable.
and i also don't mind about agreeing, as long as it is understood that that is the case ... i know exactly what i mean but i am not sure i should bore you with it.
that is interesting. now you described it i think that is a very individual phenomenon, in that with some people i can communicate very well and enjoyable online but really don't think we'd talk that easily face to face. while with people i know well in rl, the writing is cold and dangerous and confuses issues.
but i don't squee, so that's a difference as well.
i don't, whatever they say