[something like... fannish resentment of character change, the suckiness of]

[reenka]

According to this poll, at least, it's not fashionable anymore to be a crazed Harry/Draco shipper who BELIEVES (in all caps) that Harry & Draco are SUPPOSED to be together and anything else is a TRAVESTY and also incidentally makes Draco a CHEATING BASTARD (the caps have to be there, you see). I mean, possibly fandom's gotten saner. Or more apathetic. Or-- well, both. Ahh, maybe it's like someone-or-other said & uber-OTP-shippiness itself is on the decline... except for some pairings it would be weird, like... if you OTP Harry/Snape, I can see liking Snape with other people, but I think the shippers there have always generally been Snapelovers, so it'd be odd to me if they were like 'ooh, Harry/Ron'. Same with most R/S-ers suddenly going for R/T, but I guess that's more of a canon bitterness thing.

Anyway, what was my point? I think I just miss the old... attitude, where discussing the Sekrit Nature of Draco wasn't passé, what with HBP having laid it all out for most people, I guess. I miss 'fanon' meaning 'beyond canon' (ie, 'not hemmed in') rather than 'against canon'... though that's hard to define. Maybe you know it when you see it?
    I randomly glanced at the interests in the userinfo of an old Draco RPG journal, and it just reminded me how I wanted to get away from that sort of Draco in my own writing, mostly just 'cause a self-satisfied, overly confident character is pretty boring long-term. Sure, he's a delusional prick, but that's why you don't -feed- that & take those delusions away from him. I still think canon hasn't really done that-- it just started to rip the band-aid away. And a lot of my beef with most H/D is that it often functions to put a -bigger- band-aid over Draco's booboo (Harry-as-band-aid... *cringe*). Ergh.

I mean, there's a difference between tough love & really wanting to hurt a character....


Still, all I see is either gratuitous pain or pleasure or just... coddling (of both author, character & audience).

    Maybe I'm wrong in thinking some people need their asses kicked in the right way so they're healthier later. I dunno. I just feel like there didn't used to be -this- rampant a sense of protectionism, before. Or maybe the senility is setting in early, who knows. I do know my biggest pet-peeve in fandom is the way characters get both glorified/white-washed as well as babied to death. I mean, it's not like Draco was a nice boy in HBP, y'know? And this isn't to say that no one writes him as an asshole, but rather that I get fed up with the stagnant self-satisfied assholishness on his part (or anyone's part, but really this gets me the most with Draco)-- the lack of movement. I mean, he's barely 17. Am I the only one that hopes he won't grow up just to be better dressed and more polite yet smoothly manipulative?

This actually is a round-about way to touch upon another central issue I have with fandom, and that's how many people resent character change.

Seriously. No wonder people didn't write Draco changing the way he did in HBP but more and harder and longer and dirtier (not either brushing it off or hobbling under Harry's wing like a wounded baby bird-- seriously, EWWWWWW). This just struck me, actually. Most people don't want that. It's like either they want Draco to go back to his mod-and-posh posturing while settled in a nice Italian villa or have ickle Dwakey-wakey's cares buggered into oblivion. (He has a delicate constitution, y'know. Boys like that just need LURVE.) Huh. Most fans would freak out & cry foul and/or OOC if the creator herself went too far with the 'evolution', forget a fanfic writer. We know what we like, I guess, and what we like is predictability (nicely spiced with the pretense of suspense).

People were actually saying this in regards to Spike's arc straight out in ethrosdemon's recent post, here. They mostly liked Spike better when he was a two-note villain in seasons 2-4, man. Back when you knew everything he was gonna do before he did it. Man, that's just depressing-- though admittedly those weren't really Spuffy or Spike-centric fans, but still. I always thought that Draco -could- have a vaguely similar arc to Spike in fanon, even if he's not really -like- Spike, obviously. It's also an arc about choices, and love, finding your moral center and not depending on the Hero You Know to contrast yourself against-- just -being- different.

I thought it was actually -good- that Spike became less cool, regardless of the writing disasters of Season 6 & 7. Spike was always pathetic, and it's ridiculous to pretend otherwise-- and Draco was always pathetic too. That's definitely something they have in common. But the potential for overwhelming love as a motivating force is also something they have in common, I think-- Draco with his family at this point, but. Yeah. They can change; those pathetic jokers on a quest for the Answer, looking for someone to love.

Eh. Well, all this isn't fashionable anymore, so. It's not like I quite wanted to leave fandom, precisely, it's more like people are talking in terms I don't mesh with these days, or something.

Ahh, I haven't wanked on about this in awhile, so I dunno what it is. At least this subject is nothing if not predictable for me. :/

Anyway, all this basically inspired by the fact that I should stick to my guns and stop reading H/D fic (worse! fluffy porny H/D fic) when I know it's not my bag these days. Uh. -.-
    EDIT - Umm... I feel rather embarrassed admitting this, but right afterwards I found 'Another Beautiful Day' by janicechess, which is cute & snarky & porny, and... okay, I only skimmed it, but I guess it's -sort- of my bag. Sometimes :P Maybe. :P!

...Possibly I wouldn't be so uptight if things were more cute more often. Hmpf.
~~

In other news, I was thinking about how I'm almost tempted to write for the feedback sometimes, just to get a little positive reinforcement or whatever and have people pet my ego, but then I get a comment like 'ooh, hot', and I'm like 'eh, fuck it'. I mean, what I wrote -was- mostly porn & snark, and it's not that I regret that, but I just realize I should just shut up if I can't put my fic where my mouth is.

Aaaand, first art rec in ages: nassima's Sirius and Remus as teenagers made me happy, especially the Remus. He just looks -warm- somehow.

Comments

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I think... it's not that the Draco I see most often (in angsty/serious fics, at least) is a 'dunce' in the 'haha silly in-denial boy' sense-- that's actually the more IC quirky-type fics, generally. Like, he takes things seriously, but because the uh, patheticness is seen as 'that thing that funny!fics do', he just... doesn't even -have- that to deal with. That's where you get the white-washing to go along with fucking up his actual life in the external sense, if you see what I mean. People seem both afraid to make him unsympathetic-- or unable, perhaps, to reconcile his negative qualities whatever equates to The Draco They Lurve (hotness!)-- yet also unaware of what is it, exactly, that actually -makes- him sympathetic in canon in the first place, maybe.

Like, sometimes I'll find a self-professed 'Slytherin-centric' fic where we the readers do see why Draco supposedly has stuff invested in Voldemort, etc, but-- that tends to be presented as so... self-satisfied and unquestion, like I was saying with that userinfo. If it's a Slytherin-sympathizer fic where our motto is 'Death Eaters Are People Too' (or whatever), of course the other side of the equation will be ignored, just like -this- one is swept under the carpet in Gryffindor-centric fics (for lack of a better term), where Draco is a charity case reminiscent of middle-class people adopting children from Ethiopia, y'know? Eeeew, that's really what's it's like, come to think of it!!

I mean, fact is, I've never come across a post-HBP fic that shows Draco on the fence in that murky sort of half-light, or really a post-OoTP fic besides perhaps 'Eclipse' (which -attempted- this, whatever its flaws). I mean, I know -just- what you mean by 'they know Voldemort sucks'-- you can just -tell- the writer takes certain things completely for granted as self-evident, to the point where the less nimble writers will just call it 'the Light Side', all the meta like a ton of bricks.

I don't think the 'fuck-up!Draco' fics try to show him as a fool, really; I think it's just that he's really unfortunate and they don't even realize he's tougher than this to start with, so they're not even insulting him, I think. Not that I think he's a cynical hardass, either, because -those- fics tend to make him Mr Smooth and totally impervious to everything (Harry included), which leads to uber-fanon!Draco and horror, utter horror :>