[oh, that green-eyed boy....]

[reenka]

You know how they say you get attached to a fandom, then you drift away, but even so you stay around 'cause of the friends you make. And of course it's true for me too, though it's more like I stay around livejournal for the people, not fandom. Fandom was always mainly a vehicle to see fanfic and fanart and produce some sometimes. And unlike most people who seem to mainly like fanart as a way to see their favorite character or pairing portrayed, the sexier the better, I just like fanart as its own thing, the way I like fanfic as a 'thing'. Uh. If that makes sense.

Anyway... I was on my way to the video store to rent season 4 of Alias, and there's this poster of GoF, and... naturally, the only one I had eyes for was Harry. I literally had to restrain myself from squealing and saying 'BABY!!' out loud. I did sort of mutter it :D :D :D Omg yes, I'm still a crazed fan. Of Harry and/or anyone who remotely resembles him :> I mean, I'm not what you'd call a big Dan Radcliffe fan. It's just that it's 'okay' to think of him as Harry, and I take any excuse, ahahaha. Yeah, I'm that bad -.-

I guess-- I don't miss the H/D fics (much), writing or reading-- and I don't know if I miss the meta or even the fanart (which I still love even though it seems most of the H/D BNF fanartists are gone-- they are, aren't they?). I'm still nominally in touch with most of my old fandom friends (whenever I'm not too obsessed to read my flist), but. What I miss... what I miss now is Harry. Thinking about him, writing about him-- drawing him still comes so naturally.

It's like... it's not like I've ever really had 'something to say' about Harry the way I did with Draco. Draco's the one I could see tons of interesting fics for, the one I could play around with-- but after one reads enough fics and plays enough games, what's left is just pure affection. The simple, uncomplicated love of a character that's the most basic property of being a fan-- the first thing to come and the last to leave. Like fire.

Without even thinking about it, Harry's the one I start to mindlessly doodle. I always start with the glasses, y'know. Glasses + a huge mop of black hair = Harry <3<3<3 It's really that simple. Oh, and he has a wand, a sort of broody expression and he's apparently always around 12-14 in my head :D

I was thinking how even with most other aspects of my fannish love gone, this remains for some reason: a dark-haired boy with a fierce green gaze, staring intently at something he's holding in his palm. Staring unblinking at the flickering green light in front of him, lips slightly parted. He's thinking of the past and the future, of his parents and his girlfriend and his friends, and he's thinking of death.
    I love that boy. I always will.

Comments

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

well, that's what I was telling you, remember? When I said I write things driven by emotion?

That definitely makes sense. And I don't mean to put too much emphasis on the contrast. Although I think with my own weird brain wiring, emotion doesn't necessarily lead me to express anything, it's just something to passively enjoy and maybe try to get more of. :) I think writing for me is about defining things, about taking swirling chaos and getting it partly, provisionally sorted. Although not definitively sorted -- I'm not naive or anal enough to be a rationalist that way, or to even want things definitively pinned down and not moving. It's more that you act as if things can be pinned in place, you can stake out an idea and it gives you one tool you didn't have before, one more place you can pivot on, at least for a moment, before going on to somewhere else.

I think I realized from your reply a few weeks ago that you had read my comment about overly personal reading as though I were telling you to "move on." I feel kind of bad about that and I actually wanted to reply to that one some more. I thought about what to say, back when you replied, and then got sucked up in the usual RL distractions, but the thread really shouldn't have been left hanging. I guess what I would clarify is that I like to compare differences, to think about contrasting ways of reacting to the same thing, but I try to be careful about ever turning it into "advice," you know, because that would just be presuming way too much.

I mean, I really did reach a point personally where I thought my reading interests were becoming too much of an echo chamber for what was in my own head, and tried at the time to find a way out of that. And I don't think I've succeeded as much as I want but I've tried to be more conscious about it. But that's just my own experience and obviously isn't necessarily relevant to anyone else, except maybe as defining a range of possible options. And you also pointed out, very much to the point, that reading and writing call for different kinds of engagement. Although because I don't write fic, I probably invest some of that energy differently when I read and think about stuff that I read.

I think it's just that there's more to say about Draco, more to explore, perhaps because he's a dynamic character, a catalyst, as you said-- whereas Harry's the stable element, the one 'acted upon'.

You know, I actually think it's a different kind of volatility. Draco acts out, is changeable, etc., but I think of Harry as not really stable, but as being this precarious balance of incredible tensions. I think he's potentially incredibly reactive.

And in canon, I can't decide whether I think JKR maybe trivialized that in OOTP and then walked away from the potential in HBP. She seems to take his stability for granted, maybe hinting at darker things, at obsessiveness, but just assuming that it isn't that much of a problem. And I just don't buy that. I mean, she knows he's "damaged" because she's said so, but she seems very wary of really exploring that, or taking it seriously. I used to sort of hope that the series would ultimately be about Harry's struggle to be healthy and normal and emotionally open, despite all he's been through. But JKR seems to be depicting someone who's just doing what he has to and compartmentalizing what he has to and chugging along without any real insight into himself. Which might actually make him more true-to-life, I guess. :)

But I'd rather see Draco crack him open, and watch what happens.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Although I think with my own weird brain wiring, emotion doesn't necessarily lead me to express anything, it's just something to passively enjoy and maybe try to get more of. :) I think writing for me is about defining things, about taking swirling chaos and getting it partly, provisionally sorted.

I was going to say I thought that was pretty odd, because I thinking of emotional expression through narrative as being the sort of 'sorting of chaos' you're talking about in the first place. Like, what sort of 'things' do you try to define? To me, the 'things' that matter (is that the difference?) are the things perturb me most-- that are most chaotic and intense, and those are my emotions and beliefs. Emotions and beliefs are the most chaotic things, aren't they? And it's definitely quite similar with acting 'as if' things were sorted, just on a provisional basis so you can then jump across to the next stone on the path through the stream-- at least, that's what it reminds me of. Jumping stones, trying not to go over.

Perhaps you do the same thing without expressing, whereas to me expressing is intrinsically tied with experiencing, because of that 'sorting' function that expressing has. Like, you know how they say some people think aloud? Heh. I dunno, 'cause you still said you like sorting and yet like to feel things 'as is'. This is really hard for me to imagine :D Though I do also just enjoy things, I feel like I can achieve greater calm and insight through understanding, and I get that through working things out. Anyway, I know we're not that different :>

My stance on advice is actually pretty laid-back... I think I probably give it too much, but then... it's not like I'm a practical person who needs to apply any comparison or analysis to 'real life'-- it's just that I like to look for answers for others as well as myself, I guess? But I wasn't offended or anything-- I myself -want- to get over my writer's block, which is why I -look- for things to take as advice somewhat on purpose, y'know? Maybe I'm not even as invested in what sort of stuff I read, as opposed to write 'cause writing is what's really important-- I like to enjoy and I realize I 'should' think more or challenge myself more, but this is the sort of thing that makes me too bitter of a reader.

Like, the more I think I should be reading 'better things' in whatever sense, the more I start looking around and feeling bad 'cause no one's writing up to my standards, y'know? And I don't wanna leave my genres of choice altogether. It's just really frustrating.

You were actually mentioning something along those lines, when you said that about expecting or hoping for more exploration of Harry's fault-lines in canon. I mean, forget about finding that in fanfic, but yeah-- I wanted that too, and I was both frustrated and resigned when JKR made him all strong and compartmentalizing again 'cause realistic or not, I -wanted- more exploration of my favorite subject, y'know? And in fandom, people think 'dark!Harry' = becoming the next Voldemort or something. It's beyond rare that I feel a fanfic writer really -gets- him, light and dark, gets that it's about tension and anger and distrust rather than something dramatic like becoming power-hungry or sociopathic or something, or even just violent.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

I was going to say I thought that was pretty odd

Yay for oddness! :) I love these moments when people just bewilder one another, because it amounts to hitting one of those rock-hard, irreducible differences between people. Which, maybe paradoxically, I think can be really enlightening because it opens up possibilities I never would have come up with from inside my own head.

Like, what sort of 'things' do you try to define?

Well, to take an example, when I used to babble a lot on NrAged, I was sometimes a little self-conscious about psychologizing the characters too much, trying to theorize about their behavior in terms of an abstract model instead of empathizing directly. So I wonder if that puts me at one remove from a direct engagement with the emotions that were being depicted -- it's like I'm not satisfied with an explanation of behavior or personality until it's expressed as a structure of ideas rather than as a series of moments of connection or sympathetic insights. That's probably too extreme a self-description, because otherwise I'd be busting the Asperger's meter, but it's a tendency I have, a habit of thought, that makes me a little dorky sometimes.

And I think that difference in style is probably part of what contributes to me being a meta-writer rather than a fic-writer. To an extent in fic writing you're doing something more mimetic, looking for moments that come alive, without mediation, like that great riff of Draco's in your last ficlet, where he goes off about being "too young to be a pedophile." Or that phrase in one of your disfigured_draco drabbles a while back, about Michael Corner's "sad little cock," which just instantly crystallized the relation between Michael, Draco, and voyeur!Harry. Things like that are worse for being explained or interpreted, they just work on their own terms.

But even though I can recognize and love a scene like that, my own brain would have trouble constructing it on my own. If I were creating that scene, as opposed to just appreciating it, I would be more inclined to imagine my way into it by somewhat pedantically building up propositions about personalities, feelings, situations, rather than just suddenly visualizing the emotional complex as a whole. I'm just no good at the gestalt! And sometimes that analytical building-up doesn't seem worth doing because it's not adequate to the moment or the vision, you know? So that's where the passive appreciation comes in.

To go back to something you said before, maybe we are talking slightly at cross purposes because you're writing fic and I'm not. I definitely experimented with writing fic when I first got into fandom, and found that I sort of had disconnected images but no aptitude for narrative or movement. And that I was dissatisfied with my own attempts at showing believable personalities in action. So it's just a blind spot, it's not even something that's consciously missing until I compare it with fic writers I admire. It's just, as you said, one of the weird ways people's brains differ.

Maybe I'm not even as invested in what sort of stuff I read, as opposed to write 'cause writing is what's really important-- I like to enjoy and I realize I 'should' think more or challenge myself more, but this is the sort of thing that makes me too bitter of a reader.

Well, there's no reason to do it unless it answers your own needs, or remedies dissatisfactions that you actually feel. I mean, when I talk about reading outside my comfort zone, I don't necessarily put a value on it like "higher" vs. "lower," or "thinking" vs. "laziness." I just sometimes find that I'm very tired of the worn-down tracks in my own mental carpet and that I crave something that knocks me into a new, different orbit. But everyone can answer separately for the state of their own carpet . . . or something . . . :D

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I used to sort of hope that the series would ultimately be about Harry's struggle to be healthy and normal and emotionally open, despite all he's been through.
See-- yeah. Yeah, totally, that would be ideal, though I could always tell that's not the story she wanted to tell 'cause she was never a character-driven writer. it's all about the plot, the adventure, and the friendship saving the day, all that. Which is why I think fanfic is such a great fit with the HP books, and why I used to be so violently disappointed back when I was being demanding in my reading. No one was writing Harry this way, not really-- and forget seeing any fics where Draco truly challenged him emotionally and wasn't just a lust object or a maiden in distress substitute.

There were some fics where there were beginnings in that direction-- like, well, Cassie Claire's post-OoTP cigarette!Harry fic... but they never quite got there for me. I don't know if -I- got there. But even now, I think of the post-OoTP potential and I start to feel the burn of needing to see that uber-fic of my dreams-- or even several, all focused on Harry in one way or another, even if it's through Draco. I think the reason I'm never satisfied is that few people like dark!Harry because this is a way for them to actually explore his strengths rather than his weaknesses.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

I was both frustrated and resigned when JKR made him all strong and compartmentalizing again 'cause realistic or not, I -wanted- more exploration of my favorite subject, y'know? . . . though I could always tell that's not the story she wanted to tell 'cause she was never a character-driven writer.

I think if I didn't see the potential there in JKR I wouldn't care so much. I partly agree that, at least in HBP, she's chosen to keep things more plot driven than character driven. But this almost seems like a betrayal of some really interesting things she has at least started to do earlier in the series.

I remember making a long argument in one of pauraque's re-reads (http://pauraque.livejournal.com/171696.html) that PS/SS was a really profound analysis of the classic problem of whether you can really escape yourself. I mean, the whole tension that book is about whether Harry is so damaged that the WW is going to be a false liberation for him, that he's just going to end up repeating all the failures and humiliations he's gotten used to, and maybe end up as Hagrid's pathetic assistant or something. It's really carefully wrought by JKR and suggests an intense focus on Harry's interior issues. In the same way, the beginning of CoS, Harry's conversation with Dobby, shows very slyly what's wrong with how Harry connects (or avoids connection) with other people. And I bored everyone by arguing over and over, back in the day, that OOTP was a very rigorous analysis of the psychology of anger.

So I think you can come up with all sorts of examples of some really profound things that JKR sometimes takes the time to get into deeply. And when she abandons this sort of thing for plot, plot, plot in HBP, I think the disappointment is about more than just personal reader preferences. I think there's a real case to be made that she chose not to bother further with some very important material that she raised, herself. And daydreaming about a story that was adequate to that material is, as you say, an enduring incentive for fanfic.