(round and round we go)

[reenka]

Okay, sekrit confession time: sometimes I like H/D fluff. :( It... doesn't happen often, but. :( It's the -cuteness-... it's like... the way I read fluffy shoujo against my WILL. I cringe and groan and yet... there it is-- drawing me in, mesmerizing me. Fluff... fluff is truly evil.

But yeah... there are times when I just have to look at myself sternly and say: Reena, you -have- to start liking more nice people. And, you know, in reality, I have a number of friends I'd say are, um, even -too- nice, you know, so kind and generous and considerate it hurts (though honestly, they tend to have rather killer dark sides, too-- I should know, I look for them). I mean, many people also think -I'm- a Hufflepuff (and yes, you're all wrong, muwahaha, etc).

Anyway, it's less that I don't like lovingkindness in a person and more that I hate any sort of lip-service paid to it, perhaps. So when people -praise- another person's lovingkindness, I get suspicious. It's like, if it were genuine, somehow I feel you wouldn't need to speak of it-- or, I dunno, preach it, maybe. You wouldn't need to isolate it as if it's intrinsically superior to say, oh, -logical thought-; point and coo, so to speak. Like, oh, he's so -sweet-, I wish -I- had a boyfriend like that, waaaah. Bleh. That really puts me off my supper, actually. (Not that the sexualization of cruelty is any more appetizing, really.)
    Though possibly this raises the question of what -doesn't- turn me off (but then, I'm feeling particularly grouchy at the moment.)

Regardless, I suspect I see kindness differently than most-- as in, I don't either worship it like the touchy-feely types would or scoff at it like rationalist types would-- at least, I don't think it has to be the opposite from justice or reason or -truth-. As in, the so-called cold truth. As far as I'm concerned, either you have honesty -and- kindness, or you have neither honesty -nor- kindness.

All of this is to say, I love Lucifer and I'm not about to say, 'even though he's unkind'.
    
    Hahah, yeah, unsurprisingly to anyone who knows me, I'm currently deeply in love with `Lucifer', the Sandman spin-off. Naturally, it has all sorts of riffs on Christian mythology (which I'm vaguely obsessed with), the nature of dirty bastards and possibly also the symbolic nature of the universe at large. Which all sounds pretty pretentious to most people, I guess, so I guess I should also say there's lots of fighting and this fallen wise-ass cherub straight out of a Joss vehicle. But me... well, me, I just love this Lucifer, personification of Will, first, best, ultimate Rebel With A Cause, and all-around hardcore individualist. *sigh* Remember that part where I said my highest ideal is being true to yourself...? Yeah. Hi.

Which, according to this review, means he's "utterly chilling in his penetrating intellect, cold gaze, and utter lack of empathy or compassion". Me, I find it amusing to the point of stupidity to fault Lucifer for being only and entirely what he was made to be, much as he struggles against it. I mean, in this universe, the Christian god and Michael Demiurgos aren't necessarily forgiving or compassionate either. Maybe I just don't think having unfounded expectations of people or angels ever got anyone anywhere pleasant... but then maybe I'm just bitter.
    More likely, it's just my usual distaste for people judging any character by outside values that have nothing to do with who the character is. When that character is basically the personification of a concept (Will-- whether will to Power or will to Know or will to Become)-- it's just ridiculous to then fault that character for not containing that element of likeability that is supposed to come from 'humanity'. Though I see humanity in him; or perhaps him in humanity. It's just rather... distilled.

Man, after this, I'm never going back-- this is now my Lucifer, though I've written him once before. It's just got that classic ring of 'this is how it -should- be'. He's probably philosophically intolerable to a lot of people, and that might be because there's a definite overall philosophy in this book to start with-- I could probably write essays about it, but I'll try not to. -.-
~~

By the way, seeing this post by kindkit really put a finger on a disturbance I've had for a while-- namely, the equating of slash with m/m subtext itself-- basically, the complete focus on subtext as exciting and satisfying and... -enough-. I guess this whole mindset would only bother one if they saw the fanon pairing of choice as the most 'right' for the characters. If one, in fact, believes that Kirk and Spock or Harry & Draco or what have you -should- be together, then any storyline where they never -could- be becomes... well, unsatisfactory, doesn't it.

Just as kindkit said, the problem becomes "subtext being treated as though it's a perfectly acceptable substitute for text".


I guess I'm just not -happy- having my pleasure in a story being relegated to subtext, while the main storyline keeps being frustrating and 'not quite right'. A story is a story; it shouldn't matter (at least, to me it doesn't) whether the main pairing is hetero or homosexual, as long as it -works-. It also depends whether romance really matters to the storyline, though-- the best or most satisfying romantic subtext, I think, is between people whose other main relationship (friendship, rivalry, partnership, whatever) is really the glue that holds the narrative (or them) together. It depends on whether there's a valid -reason- why these two people aren't ready to be together at this point in the story.
    I suppose mainly it's just that I see a difference between an unspoken bond which is nevertheless at the center of a story (like, Kirk/Spock, Frodo/Sam, those sorts of pairings, and maybe something like Heero/Duo in Gundam Wing, too), and something that might be alluded to or hinted at while at the same time not really explored for no obvious other reason except it's a homosexual pairing (like Seth/Ryan in The OC or maybe even Clark/Lex in Smallville).

Not that there's anything wrong with a subtextual pairing per se-- like, I was rather happy with the way the subtext between Mulder and Scully was handled back before it became text; in other words, sometimes things just don't -need- to become text, even though one can't help but want them to (as I did). This is how I felt about Harry & Draco post-HBP, btw-- I felt that their relationship in canon reached that 'satisfactory subtext' point where their present relationship issues were more vital than possible romance. This is something I'd like to discuss with other (former??) H/D shippers, but wouldn't know where or with whom; the only person who seems to see eye-to-eye with me on this is Amalin, though, so I suppose I'm content.
    With Sirius and Remus-- I don't really feel it's really a subtextual pairing within canon any more than H/D is (the H/D is just a question of my own issues, there). You could make a semi-valid case that Remus reads as homosexual within the text, for example, but it wouldn't matter because it's not important to the narrative whether he is or not. With Harry, any potential homosexuality is also moot, because his sexuality in general was largely moot throughout the story; he was asexual if anything. Sure, you could go on about how he notices how Sirius is hot or whatever, but that in itself is not enough to make a serious impact on the story or Harry's character. Sirius' significance to Harry was obviously as a link to the past, to his parents, not as any potential love interest. There's no sense of incompleteness with Sirius' death except in the sense that Harry never got what he wanted from him (ie, parenting), but the case could easily be made that Sirius was never fit to give it to him anyway.

Basically, it's not that I like the homosexual over the homosocial-- quite the opposite. I almost always wish brotherhood-type bonds remained asexual, somewhere at the back of my mind, simply because that tends to make it... firstly more realistic and it highlights different intrinsic problems, ones that get shunted aside with a romance, which has its own typical progression. I'm almost always focused on what I think makes sense for the characters, either way-- where it seems they would want to go, given the circumstances of their feelings and their lives. People are always different-- their relationships unique to them. One person would clutch a feeling like love close to their hearts all their lives, content never to realize it in the presence of all the things they already have and fear to lose, and another person would be waiting, endlessly waiting for the other person to open them up like a door with a secret key they'd given away without the other person ever knowing.
    What I'm saying is, the question of whether or not I would feel cheated by subtext remaining subtextual all comes down to context.

If it has anything to do with the slashers just looking for the pretty homosexual lovin' or the canon writers avoiding the same for that reason-- well, that's what I'm tired of.

Ideally, I guess, subtext should be something that should -remain- subtext in order to be effective as a story. Like, in order to make something Mulder/Krycek text, for instance, nearly all of the X-Files arc would have to be rewritten to some extent, see? Because, really, the story depends on them playing their roles as they played them. You'd need an AU to alter it, and you'd have to alter all the other relationships in the bargain. The same could be said of H/D, actually-- though the whole -point- of that pairing, really, is to shake up canon, to write AUs. You can't seriously write successful H/D (where it's more than some drunken encounter in a closet) without challenging JKR on a basic level and calling her out on a number of things. You just. Can't. Period.

And the thing that pisses me off so mightily with 99.9% of all H/D out there is that people write it so obliviously, as if you can plop Harry with Draco, mix, stir, and POOF! Look! They're snogging! (NO. And did I mention no?? Because NO). You're plotting canon revolution by writing H/D honestly, and there's no way around it. And yeah, if you're not going to write it honestly, I don't really see the point of writing it at all, because there's much easier pickings out there as far as porn goes. Maybe it's just me, but I prefer my porn to come easier than squeezing blood from a stone (aka H/D). And so of course it bothers me even more to see Harry & Draco's interaction in HBP as sexually subtextual-- meaning, of course we saw more of their relationship, but we really really really didn't see how 'omg Harry wants Draco so bad' (and yeah, no use arguing with me on this, I'll just get more rabid, ahahah). Okay, I'll go rinse out my brain now.

    With S/R, say, it's totally different-- the draw there is that you literally don't have to alter anything in canon to make it work. It -could- have happened, even if there's nothing in canon, really, that implies it had to or should have or any of that. So I wouldn't quite say it's a subtextual pairing in the sense something like Seth/Ryan or Spike/Angel is-- I mean, I don't think them hugging in the Shack is 'wink-wink-nudge-nudge' territory. With S/R, there's not enough -known- about their relationship in canon for us to judge whether it's better or worse off (story-wise) as friends or lovers-- we just know their personalities and the facts of their lives, we haven't actually watched them interact that much.

Anyway, I forgot what my point was, if I ever had any. Maybe that I really hate it when subtext is seen as text dying to be born-- like, that's bad subtext and bad text both. If it's really dying to be born, then it -should- be, and if it's not born anyway, that means there's something wrong with the text, and if there's something that wrong with the text, then why bother playing with it? But then, I'm just bitter.