[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

[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