[humdehum... so sad, too bad, no mojo to be had]

[reenka]

You know, if I had to pick one reason for why I don't really pay attention to the fandom at large anymore (both fic and meta), it'd be because I'm so very sick and tired of seeing rehashed arguments, stale debates, and (what I think of as) done-to-death-and-back silly characterizations being brought back from the dead (in unoriginal ways) over and over again.
    But the thing that makes me groan and click away the fastest is probably the overwhelming amount of enthusiasm inevitably directed at bashing character Y or bemoaning how pairing X/Z makes no earthly sense and can you please explain your not-earth-logic, and just basically pulling some uber-subjective opinion/idea from your arse and running with it just for fun, not because it really makes any sense upon longer consideration. And actually, I do that all the time, but-- the point is, I'm not clamoring for attention as if I -am- making sense. Granted, it's a rather fine distinction, but... since I can't expect everyone to pack a disclaimer for every paragraph, naturally I avoid. Simple enough.

Anyway, since I tend to feel this amorphous sense of distance and discord with the majority take on... things in HP fandom, I was pretty surprised when I saw this thread where people defended H/D to charges of being unstable and unrealistic and not "healthy" for basically the same reasons I might give. I was like, wow, so I guess there -is- some definite common ground here (at least among fellow shippers) that I've just been missing-- but then the question arises: if all these people do actually see these characters in a similar way, why do the fanfic I see being written not bear out these views--?

If H/D shippers are all a-okay with the ship not being fluffy or stable or likely to result in a happy ending, if we're both aware and all right with Draco not being a 'nice person', then why is he constantly made so attractive and utterly sympathetic in nearly every fic I can think of--?
    Basically, is there an implicit, conscious disconnect involved between how people perceive canon/fanon and the characters & how they actually want to see them in fic--? If-- if a large number of shippers seem to actually -like- the ship for not being a typical eventually-fluffy romance, why then do most of the fics end up being written that way? Why would people actually not write things the way they see/imagine them in the first place, realism aside? I've long been confused by this.

This also reminds me of the entry on fanon!Lucius where most people agreed that yeah, he's not 'really' a pimp-cane wearing S&M enthusiast in canon, but, y'know, clearly that's more fun to read/write about, since pretty much no one writes canonish!Lucius that I've seen. Though to me, it's much more obvious why fanon!Lucius is more fun than why would fans ignore their -own- preferred fanon of their OTP.
~~

Also: holy &*@! on a platter, this Draco pic and all the other HBP bathroom scene fanart totally gives me my fandom mojo back, if only for a minute <333333!!1 Woooow.... *___*
    And omg, omg, OMG I've not read Sirius/Remus fic this good in far too long!! Mmm, even the title: 'All This Blood (Under My Skin)'. Yes. *sigh* I do love them so; my two idiots ♥♥

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Wow--What an awesome picture. I've always wondered why more people didn't do that moment. It's so visual. One thing is that I wish he looked more like he was crying with the puffy and the tear tracks. But still, it's great.

There's got to be some certain, standard form of passive-aggression between the "please explain to me how you think this works when it doesn't at all," posts. I don't mind the "this is why this doesn't work for me." Sometimes that's interesting. There's a pairing in TDiR that I, well, I don't really despise it and have read things where it's just mentioned, but I am glad to say why I dislike it as canon when people try to say that it is canon (besides the fact that there is no canon in a book where the characters might never see each other again, much less get married 20 years later), but that in itself is me talking about how I see the characters. It's not so much that I don't see X because it's crazy, it's that I see Y.

I don't even know what to say about that great fanfic/meta divide but really it's a totally interesting thing. I mean, I only write meta, but it's funny to think of someone seeing one thing in meta and then having it just come out as something else in canon. That said, I actually don't think that H/D *must* to end in something totally unhealthy and disasterous so I don't read *all* future!fic where they're a functioning couple (not perfect, but functioning) and think it's just bizarre and to OOC to handle. But neither do I see all that many fics that really seem to be about the way these two could go from what they are to being good for each other and not unhealthy. So you do have to wonder--and I think this is true for a lot of pairings--why, if you like the dynamic of canon enough to write slash for it, you always want to change it for the slash!

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Haha, and here I have like, 3-4 other pieces of fanart for that-- though perhaps that's not much, but yeah, there's a good number of that and the Astronomy Tower scene (and notsomuch of the nose-stomping, which makes me Really Sad Indeed). I've linked them at the time, I think, but I haven't saved them for some reason. Bad Reena. ;__;

I'd like the 'this is why I don't like this' if it wasn't so frequently veiled attempts for calling other people stupid, ahaha. Though, honestly, the things (pairings, characters) I really don't like enough to rant about, I do tend to uh, find other people misguided for liking, but. If you have any intelligence and can observe other fans, generally it's not that much of a mystery why people like a certain pairing/character, and indeed it's not usually intelligence that's the problem but rather a lack of -desire- to see why other people like it. If you do know why and just rant anyway-- that I can respect, if it ever happened, ahahah.

But yeah, otherwise it's just a personal ramble-- like the reasons why I dislike the pairings I do, they're all personal, not because I seriously think they're 'wrong' or 'wouldn't work' (WTF??!). Except honestly, some things (...Lucius/Hermione? Dobby/Ron? etc) probably wouldn't work unless you...er... were -very- creative, let's just say. The constant habit of projecting motivations ('this is what people want from a pairing, so') just really annoys me, though. Life is hard enough without thinking everyone's like you ^^;;;; (I should know, I constantly beat my head against the wall for that very reason and then wake up and go, COME ON REENA, WHAT CRACK WERE YOU ON WHEN YOU DECIDED PRETTY MUCH ANYONE WAS LIKE YOU??! -.-)

I don't think it's about any 'objective' decision that H/D has to end up 'badly' or dysfunctionally long-term, but rather just given that people believe it, why don't they write it like that? Although quite true that they don't really write it the other way either, not realistic-progresion-wise at least (they sort of skip ahead and mix up a few steps and then cover their tracks and call it done). They can certainly be functioning-- the question was more about 'happy' (in the classic homebody sense, I guess) and 'stable'. And then people rather correctly pointed out that 'stable' is different things for different people and I was feeling hopeful about fandom until I remembered that famous 'great fanfic/meta divide'. Le sigh.

I mean, there -are- always a couple of people (http://www.dm-pureblood.net/) (....) who really believe outlandish and/or v. v. fanon things about the characters, but generally people seem sane, y'know-- so there must be a -reason- they're thinking one thing & reading another. I suspect it's something like what one person said in response to that fanon!Lucius post-- that they read fanon!Lucius because they can separate what they read from what they know of canon (or like, reality in general, I guess). And I do get that, 'cause I do do that with genre fic (like, romance stuff) a lot, but at the same time, there's not that same divide between envisioning one thing (ie, 'H/D would be like this') and constantly reading/writing another with that. Meh, in other words :>

[notrafficlights.livejournal.com]

If H/D shippers are all a-okay with the ship not being fluffy or stable or likely to result in a happy ending, if we're both aware and all right with Draco not being a 'nice person', then why is he constantly made so attractive and utterly sympathetic in nearly every fic I can think of--?

Because that's what H/D is about: No matter who you are, you can still get teh hot buttsex teh love.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

....well, this would be more true if people didn't keep changing characters' er... character before said buttsex!love occurred....


though I'm pretty mellow right now since merry_smutmas actually had several good H/D fics... :>