~~ the visceral aesthetic

[reenka]

It's not really a confession, because I believe it's rather obvious, but: ever since I could read, I've been in love with words, and especially with the twisty images in them, the metaphors. I'd thought of myself as an aesthete, a stylist-- someone who looks for style in writing over other concerns by nature. My first favorites in the HP fandom were very metaphorical, imagistic writers-- just like in general, my favorite authors have been rather... heavy on the lyricism. My own writing had long been practically buried under an avalanche of metaphor and simile and analogy. And then... it kind of stopped. I don't remember, in fact, the last time I used a metaphor more than twice in any fic. It's sort of worrying, but also... odd.
    On top of that... I have this weird feeling of impatience when I read metaphor and imagery-heavy writers, like say imochan with S/R-- I really enjoy it still, but it doesn't make me happy the way it used to. I feel the words are obfuscating rather than revealing. I have no great will to savor them so much as a desire to see through them to what's going on. And it's not-- definitely not-- that I care more about the 'action' or the plot these days. Because I don't.


Actually, that's just it-- that's what I realized.
    I'm still an aesthete-- I still look at style first. The only difference is, my stylistic allegiances have shifted, and not actually towards realism, per se. It's just that now the old imagistic approach seems... too smooth, somehow. Too... oblique to capture the rawness and emotional power that I'm looking for. And that is my aesthetic, I think-- I'm always looking for that which is most visceral, most uncensored and vivid and bruised with emotional power.

That's why, I think-- that's why I'm so frustrated with the run of H/D I've been reading. Not even because it's OOC (though much of it is)-- but because its emotional goals and aesthetics are so different from what I'm after. I think that's why it's nearly hopeless for me after HBP-- because the aesthetics of sixth-book-inspired fics are just too far from where my heart lies, just as post-OoTP found most of fandom floundering, unable to connect emotionally to the very rawness and bloodthirsty viciousness that invigorated me.

It's not like I want everyone to be mean or actually cruel-- what I'm after is a sort of... ruthless kindness; beauty (and humanity) stripped to its barest essentials. Something balanced on the knife-edge of two extremes-- an epiphany, really; a state where pain and pleasure are means to the same end. It's just that I think we -are- all mean bastards, when stripped of defenses, or when forced to rely upon them. Not that I feel that people are entirely inherently selfish, but that their vulnerability and generosity and altruism shines brightest in the shadow of their mockery, their fear and their deceit. And in the end, if a writer of a drama fic doesn't show me that ugliness without either flinching or excusing it (ala most Dracofic), I will basically refuse to suspend my disbelief-- I will refuse, for instance, to believe that Harry is so understanding or that Draco is so reasonable, because it's just not true, at least in my experience of people.

It's sort of... a relief, realizing that it's not that I'm so bent on Draco being vicious-- it's that I always want everything to... well, sting. Not in that swoony-sadness melancholic way of roses in the rain, missed chances and lullabies for the dying or anything-- no, what I'm after isn't sadness (is it possible to be sick of sadness? if so then I am) but that furious feeling of being truly alive. Because I look for it in R/S fics, too-- I have that same fascination with Remus' bitterness that I do with Draco's, much as they express it differently, the same love of Sirius' temper as Harry's. I get frustrated when there's no playful friction between them (though some snarky!fluff always goes over well), as well as getting rather bored if they're just... all... civil and loving and not dysfunctional whenever they cohabitate. I'm like, that's nice, but... but... but....

This sort of brings me up short though, and makes me wonder just how much of what I look for in H/D is a question of personal aesthetics and how much is just how I see the characters, and whether it's even possible to separate these things by this point. I mean, it's very possible I don't like post-HBP fics because I simply don't like their most plausible dynamic post-HBP, so I can't blame the fics for not being likely in that case, now can I. I know I insist on non-limp-noodle!Draco (and non-limp-noodle!Harry plzkthnx!)... but where, exactly, does my bias end and sloppy writing begin?
    (I definitely feel like a cat trying to catch her own tail here.)

Also: _lile's Sirius painting kind of... owns my soul. o_0 ...Oh wait, did I say I was over lyricism/imagism...? I was, um, just taking a break....

...And really, I have to say, 'Paddy' is second only to 'Siri' in awfulness. And reading old-school (pre-OoTP) James makes me laugh. Oh my god, stumbling dorky well-meaning Prefect!James. It's so hilarious it hurts, kinda. It's funnier that people -preferred- him, too. I mean, it doesn't even make sense that he was a Marauder in retrospect, in that case. Oh man. OoTP was really a Very Good Thing for R/S, fanfic-wise, clearly. And now I'm wondering if Sirius would've rather been dead than a soppy bastard called Paddy... and sometimes Siri....

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

Might be similar to when I started finding things pretentious when buried in an avalanche of unnecessary words.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Yeah, definitely something like that. I sort of cringe though, because 'cut the adjectives!' was the battlecry of my v. pretentious first bf. It's hard to tell whether I'm closer or further away from the dominant English academia stance on things... probably closer... *facepalm*

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

*is amused about Linguistics bf*

It's not so simple though. But when I have to read a sentence 5 times to find the verb, something is wrong. Mostly these fics are the highly praised ones though.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

You may be even more amused to know he was just a lil old English major, possibly a first-year (or a sophomore) at the time, and he said this while reading an early H/D fic I wrote :D Man... in retrospect, it really was that bad.....

Yeah, um...this all started when I was like, 'but why do you have to specify the paper is -white-'??

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

Men *sigh* just a minute ago I was wondering once again why talking with most of them is so hard.


*ggg* Well, usually it's light blue and scented.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

He was right, though, about the adjectives & adverbs if nothing else. Though when I read the omg-adored imagistic writers these days, a part of me is like... Oooh, I can do that... and then EVERYONE WILL LOVE ME, SURELY. But then I tried, actually, and felt a bit... um, embarrassed. Or... just weirded out. Poetic!H/D just sort of makes me laugh now. Even my poetry is less poetic than it used to be. It's -odd-.

...well, then I realized maybe it's because it was for a pot cigarette?? Um... *confused*

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

I think that's what happens when your mind matures or keeps maturing. .... Just take care that - in old age - you don't get religion and regress back to pointless poetic pulp.
The bad thing is that, unlike cutter/suicide fics, these ppps have fans of all ages and intelligence.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I think I just giggled for a minute straight at the idea of any part of me being 'mature' :> It's nice to have the ability to write in different styles though, I guess-- the usage depending on what you wanna do in that instance.
I do feel that the better ones are less pointless than, um, overburdened perhaps.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

I knew that'd amuse you *g*

Yeah ... I surprised myself by writing in very different styles lately, only to serve very different purposes.

But there is still the constant question of when it is enough, if I used too many or too few words. I think from the inside it's hard to judge, as you know the whole story and backstory - and even from the outside, some readers prefer the beautiful bare bones approach, others the long wallow.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

With me, these days-- I -generally- prefer the 'bare bones approach', like Silvia does, for instance, but-- I read this H/D fic (http://www.randomleaves.com/hp/fanfic/allaboutyou.html) yesterday and was all ready to rec it, but... it was actually -too- bare bones :)) And, well, subtly OOC. But I think wallowing (in terms of prose) is just... automatically bad, 'cause it means there's all this... extraneous stuff. I think when language only serves to distract you from meaning rather than creating it, something's definitely going wrong. When language itself is the point, I mean, that's a valid way to write, but not a) when you're writing fanfiction & not b) when you're trying to actually convey something else.

I do think a lot of my stylistic shifting has been dependent on me writing fanfic about characters I find... um, not exactly poetic... or pretty for that matter. And also getting to the point where beautiful!Draco (in any sense) makes me TWITCH (like, big-time). I think beautiful!Remus also makes me twitch. Maybe I'm just frustrated with (falsely deep) surfaces-- which makes sense to me, but I dunno about anyone else :>

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

It's not just the type of words though, it's really also content. I read Lemony Snicket's foreword to a story collection today (linked from Neil Gaiman's blog, who also is a great propegator of using just the words you need to serve the STORY), and his "tedious excerpts" were basically examples of tedious styles, easily recognisable in a sentence or two. I find many long fanfics that do NOT actually use too many adverbs tedious because they just fill in "then this happened and then that happened" and it's not badbad in the sense of "then they had sex, the end" but for my discerning eye it is BAD because it has no meaning. It is also just a falsely deep surface. IYKWIM.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, extraneous descriptions become extraneous events :D Sometimes a fic feels the need to describe -everything- and I'm like 'why do I need to know this? I do not need to know this, go away'. Ahah, like when people tell you 'and then so-and-so brushed his teeth and put on his pink pajamas' and I'm like, why do I -care-?? Well, in its worst incarnation, we actually get descriptions of the whole outfit, and I literally imagine the (girl) writer sitting there and drooling and going I SO WANT THAT I SAW IT ON SALE OMG. And I just want her to like, buy it and get over it.

...But really, I think I'm just as bad in some ways 'cause I'm still always looking for my aesthetic... it's just a different one than everyone else's ^^;