~~ and lo, I have seen the light, and the light is full of... gay demon owls?

[reenka]

Man, I'm torn, because I recently realized I cannot hold a civilized conversation if the other party is homophobic, and yet I do believe communication is most important between people who violently disagree. This probably also applies to them being a fundamentalist, wildly conservative or like, insane. Um, which is to say, if I happen to think you're a total idiot for holding a certain view, I feel it's dishonest to try and converse with you as if you're not a total idiot, and be polite and everything. Like, 'yeah, I know you're a homophobe and thus I think you're delusional, easily brainwashed and likely stupid, but what the hell, I'm bored'. I dunno.

I realize it's the delusional ones that need 'help' the most, yes of course, I just don't know about the kid gloves treatment where one avoids the whole 'pink elephant' issue (oops, you're a homophobe) and goes for the critical analysis angle like 'well, slash is blah-blah-blah because blah-blah-blah', all the while ignoring the fact that yeah, you can be disinterested in slash without being a bigot, but you can't actually morally disapprove of it and not be a bigot, and therefore, everything you're saying is necessarily going to be skewed by that bias in reception. And I also wonder how one is supposed to have intellectually honest conversations with people while avoiding the biggest issue at hand. But that's just me.

And yet, it's not like I'm all about going out and being an activist and going in the other direction. To me, it's just one of many identity markers a person could have. That it's even an issue annoys the living daylights out of me. Like, that people care who other people have sex with. How annoying is that? Honestly. I think that's my biggest issue, in a way. The way people think they know what's best for other people is one of the most frustrating things in the universe. So it's like, I may not join the Queer Lib movement, but I'll join the Leave Me The Hell Alone Whoever You Are movement. Is there such a movement?? If antisocial people can join, I'm in; or... well, not in, as the case may be.

This is mostly brought on by my feeling bad about ranting, earlier. Sometimes I just... rant. Because it feels good. Um. And now for something completely different.

There was this prayer Tim Hunter said (so as the universe wouldn't be destroyed) that really resonated with me: "Day by day, hour by hour, this I pray.... To those who will the indefens'ble in the name of self defense... and those who claim 'the last resort' to justify the same pretense. To those who war for greed and usur children's limbs as capital... yet bank-roll their campaigns with the wealth of their own people. To those who chokehold good men's faith to ratify their avarice... and turn that faith against good men in name of noble sacrifice. To those who swear on pennants, books and idols to legitimize their crimes... this shall be written of these wretched hollow men. (Though like shall follow like and that "like" will rise again.) Their vic'tries shall be nothing, their glories shall be brief, for death still takes the sinner, the murd'rer and the thief."
    Basically another way of saying, 'burn in hell, fuckers'.
~~

I'm really loving on the new Books of Magick (god, I hate that k) issue right now. It is totally reminding me that yes, I do love plot in stories, hello, it's just that it's not usually why I read fanfic. I read fanfic for the characters, so naturally I like it best when fanfic plot arises from characterization. In actual original stories, I guess I would say I don't mind if they get equal weight, where events influence character and characters influence events. Which is actually what usually happens in real life.
    But yeah... I'm sort of having an existential crisis because while Tim/Molly is one of my all-time OTPs, I so, so, so adore every tiny shred of Tim with demon-owl-familiar boy. There are just. No words. It's just... hot. Wow. No, seriously. And he's textually snarky as hell and gay for Tim and makes jokes about fingers in anal cavities, and. Omg. *brain fizzles*

This got me to thinking about -why- it feels so very wrong for me to really ship Tim with anyone but Molly-- and this touches heavily upon how I relate to characters, stories, and incidentally why I'm an OTP sorta gal.
    See, for me, it's not about Destiny or how you're only ever supposed to love one person-- it's about how a story goes. Like, when I write a story myself, even though I generally don't plot it out in advance, at some point I will know how it's supposed to go, and that's how it's going to go. There's no 'alternate' timeline in my head-- there's only this one way that the story goes. Because it's not reality, where there are multiple choices and no necessary coherence-- because it's a story, it has to go in one direction and that means not another. So it can't contradict itself, basically.


While one of the goals of fanfic is to play with what-ifs, to me, those what-ifs are going to be AU if they play with the basic characterization foundations of the universe. So that anything could change, yes, except who the person starts out being. One person's chemistry leans towards this-and-this-and-this person, and they have this sort of relationship with this-and-this person, and so on-- these are the building blocks of any possible plot. And if a character really has the potential to love either X or Y, or X and Y both, then that potential is always present. You cannot... invent it, really. Or at least, I can't-- I can only ever try to write the One True Story, where the characters realize their Best Destiny and achieve the best possible story as I see it (which may be different from how the author sees it, with fanfic). I've never written this overall Best H/D Story, but I've always wanted to-- and in some way, I think with every particular story, with enough editing, one can achieve the best possible version of that story, and to me as a writer, it's always true that there's only one way it could've really gone, in terms of what ultimately happened.

So I OTP because in my head, this is how Draco is-- he wants Harry. He always wants Harry. Even if I write a story where he's with someone else, he'll still want Harry in some unacknowledged area of his mind. I think, basically, that who we need, what we want-- those things define us as much as haircolor or sexual preference. It's just a fact of our existence, and to eliminate it would be equivalent to writing black-haired!Draco. It doesn't have to be fulfilled anymore than one has to have gay sex when one is gay-- it just has to be present. And this goes for how I see any character-- there are definitely many variations on how they'd act and how a particular situation or sequence of events makes them feel or think, but the untouched parts of their minds are still quietly influencing them. It's sort of... like the concept of negative space. You can't see it, but it's there. Even if you think you've gotten over your past responses and behaviors and feelings, they remain inside you. You can think you've become a different person, but deep inside that grizzled fearless warrior is still the crying bedwetting five year-old.

Which is why people who say they OTP H/D and then write serious omg-romance fic with say, Draco/Snape tend to confuse me-- not because Draco can't have feelings for Snape, but because these fics tend to ignore H/D or overwrite that scenario entirely. I can't help but place hints, I guess-- and maybe they're only visible to me-- where yeah, this might be Harry/Hermione (I actually wrote that once), but Harry still has weird sexual tension/issues with Draco. I mean, sex is nothing to me-- a character could get drunk and have sex with anyone-- but then, I don't consider meaningless sex interesting as a story. Not because it's unromantic, but because it has so few deeper connotations. Like, I consider it a cheap ploy if you want to explore issues like friendship or mistrust or loyalty or whatever. And then you go into my distaste for writing-as-kink... because while I include my kinks as much as the next redblooded fanfic writer, writing -for- kink entirely just produces porn in me, not romance stories.... All of this being the major reasoning behind me always avoiding romantic H/S but reading lots of H/S smut.

On the bright side, I think I figured out a way to reconcile my Molly/Tim vs. Brewster/Tim quandary. They just engage different sides of him; they're different kinds of relationships. Sad as that makes me, I don't think demonboy wants to settle down and have daily sex with Tim in a nice cheap London flat. Though the idea sort of makes me cry from sheer squee factor.

In short: boy, does the new Books of Magic kick arse. Lots and lots of it. Some of it gay and demonic, as it happens. Muwahaha, etc.

Comments

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I do think there are tons of people out there, no matter what their political leaning, who're hypocrites and/or don't know what they're actually saying and/or are full of it. Generally I'd go more by the individual than their affiliation in terms of determining how deluded/messed up their views are, but most fanatics of any caliber are just sort of difficult to have a normal conversation with anyway :>

[balfrog.livejournal.com]

Draco is a very confused boy. He goes around clinging to a lot of people 'cause he doesn't know what he wants, just that he does. (Draco in my head made this up so he can be a bit slutty)
♥

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Oh, verily he doesn't know what he wants... uh... the point of using him in a fic, for me, is torturing enlightening him. Ahem.
♥ :D

[notrafficlights.livejournal.com]

Man, I'm torn, because I recently realized I cannot hold a civilized conversation if the other party is homophobic, and yet I do believe communication is most important between people who violently disagree.

I don't. There's no excuse for homophobia in today's society except ingrained bigoted attitudes that feed a twisted ego. No amount of communication or education can overcome that. Saying that a bigot is "delusional" and "needs help" is just excusing them of their ingrained bigotry. My use and understanding of communication doesn't stretch that far, even though I agree with your "You're a fuckwit, therefore I can't reasonably be arsed wasting time trying to discuss anything rationally with you" line. Those kinds of people are only good for trolling, which I do a lot, though not on LJ.

I hate prayers. They just make the "prayer" as pathetic as the ones they are trying to passive-aggressively attack. Tim Hunter can bite me.

but because these fics tend to ignore H/D or overwrite that scenario entirely.

Weirdest reason for disliking Snaco ever. XD

To me, Draco wants something, but because of his upbringing he's so unsure of what it is that it could be Snape, or it could be Harry, just as I can justify Harry/Lupin or Snaco heh, I love that word as much as I can Harry/Draco (in fact, sometimes I think H/L makes more sense than H/D). But Harry/Snape is like Snape/Hermione and Remus/Tonks to me - as unsexy and as unplausible as it can get.

Like, I consider it a cheap ploy if you want to explore issues like friendship or mistrust or loyalty or whatever.

Except a lot of people end up exploring these in their own lives because of sex.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Well, it's just. There are a lot of people who're violently wrong in some way equivalent to homophobia, so I didn't mean just that... and if you left them to their own devices, they'd keep doing a lot of damage. So it's not so much that they need help for their own good, necessarily, so much as for -our- own good. I don't know if all their minds can be changed-- probably not in most cases, of course-- but any exception would be useful. Especially if they're in any sort of power. I mean... well, there are more people who believe stupid things than not, y'know... not avoiding them, no destroying them. They're everywhere and they outnumber the 'enlightened' ones something like 50,000 to 1, probably. We've got no choice but to deal with them somehow, most likely, that's what I meant.

Anyway, well, that was called a prayer, but it wasn't exactly ummm... praying to god to save them since in that circumstance Tim -was- god and it was more like an incantation to destroy a Faerie Queene's spell to end the universe, so.... I don't know if you could get away with applying your issues with normal 'prayers' to it.

Oh, I have tons of reasons to dislike S/D... calling it Snaco is probably one of them ^^;; It's not like I dislike it because it's "anti-H/D"-- that's not what I meant at all. I just said some H/D OTP shippers who write another pairing (like for instance S/D or Harry/Filch, doesn't matter) in a romantic way easily approach OTPness differently from me. It has nothing to do with S/D. I just pick on it 'cause it's fun. But maybe I should stop 'cause people will always say 'ah! you hate S/D, therefore...'

It's not about whether you just justify a pairing or whether it's more or less realistic than H/D, anyway-- I was talking about people who're already H/D OTP writers. In reality, I mean, yeah. Harry only wants Ginny and Draco may or may not 'like' Pansy, the end. So this can't really be argued in an objective sense is what I mean. I was saying my idea of Draco is such-and-such therefore I write the stories I do the way I do and my relationship to OTPness is the way it is. I wasn't saying 'this is how Draco is', otherwise I wouldn't make such bald statements, not bothering to back myself up with... anything, and only mentioning slash. I mean, in canon, hell no, he doesn't want Harry. Or Snape. Gooo, asexual-wussy-crybaby!Draco ^^;

Also... sure, a normal story can have sex in it, and can use sex to explore other issues, but it wouldn't be -porn- type sex-- it would be written differently, not with an eye for kink or gratuitousness but with an eye for characterization. Though just because it happens that way in real life doesn't mean it translates well to a story... well, necessarily. I was sort of separating real life & storytelling there, anyway.

[notrafficlights.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have tons of reasons to dislike S/D... calling it Snaco is probably one of them ^^;;

Awh c'mon. It sounds like a snack. "Mmmmmm I want me some Snaco!" and "Mum! Where's the Snaco box?". XD