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reenkaAhh, I think I've finally figured out what's wrong with me and why I can't happily read most H/D fics. I mean, I even find one I enjoy, and there's always something to obsess over. Something that reminds me of a million -other- fics that made that same choice that annoyed me then, and that somehow annoys me more 'cause it's so constant and it seems like no one cares 'cause everyone seems to do it like it's nothing (and often enough, it comes down to giving Draco Special Powers™ of any sort, yes, especially if it's not a crackfic written for the sole purpose of playing with that idea in a silly way).
Anyway, my point is that it's all about suspension of disbelief. Everyone and their brother suspends disbelief especially when they read an unlikely (everyone says!) slash pairing like H/D, right? The name of the game, right? It's what you're supposed to do, right? Especially if you ship them, right?? No. Well, not me.
And, you know, there's my problem. Of course I suspend my disbelief too, but maybe 25-50% less than other people do. I have a number of kinks-- things I'm willing to go very far for if they're included in the fic-- but I have ten zillion squicks which throw me out of the fic spitting and clawing at the air. Ten gazillionty million, and at least half to do with how I -don't- want Draco to be & especially in terms of what effect that would have on Harry. :/
I think it goes beyond 'I just want them to be IC', 'cause while it's -true-, I think the real thing that bugs me is certain sorts of fanon which are perfectly valid (that is, possible), but I just know (in a meta sense) what they're meant to -do- in the fic 'cause I've seen it ten trillion times, y'know? It's a plot-device that makes me feel... dumb or something, like the writer is saying 'you don't deserve any better' or 'what, do you expect this to make sense?? fool!' and that's just depressing, especially-- even-- in the midst of a cute crackfic. I dunno how to explain it, really.
Crackfic or not, I just don't want the fanon bits to feel... desultory, like tossed-off little pseudo-reasons for things. Like, insane things (Draco sprouts wings!) are actually much more acceptable to me than too-sudden mundane things (Draco's suddenly become a much better wizard than Harry!)
I think I became really bitter when I realized what I wanted was both an escape (just like everyone else) and porn & snark (yeay!!) but also... something that didn't make me do the work, in terms of virtually the only kind of HP fic I read (which is H/D, though I go through S/R phases repeatedly). With decent S/R, for instance, things just don't work this way-- things don't get tossed off randomly, like 'oh, and by the way, Peter had an evil twin who actually was the one to join Voldemort' as an aside. I dunno. Things are more normal & make more -sense-, even in cracky wacked-out fics about how Remus and Sirius grew breasts and wanked each other immediately. If it's any good, that means it's still going to be Remus and Sirius, and it feels like the writer's less likely to feel they can randomly mess with some significant portion of their character & dynamic right off the bat. I dunno.
Maybe I'm just being ridiculous in comparing a pairing that makes sense even to canon-whorish-type people and a pairing that people say has CRACK written across its forehead in big bold letters.
Maybe that's what's been pissing me off for the last 3 years, too. That very idea, that H/D has to = crazy crack, that's what annoys me. And every time I read a fic that has a wacky/cracky premise (yeay, great-- man, I don't even like overly serious fics) but also lazy little fanon excuses (nooo), I remember how people say it's because H/D itself is impossible that they -have- to do this, and I just get upset because that's not true, it's wrong, it's just been perpetuated by lazy fanon. But it's NOT TRUE.
I mean, it's just a little voice at the back of my head, you know, telling me 'but people don't even realize it doesn't -have- to be like this' that can ruin my enjoyment of what's otherwise an innocuous plot-device. That is, I consciously refuse to suspend my disbelief just because I have a chip on my shoulder, I guess. Something to prove. I want my ship to be... I dunno, normal, because & in spite of how abnormal it is in concept. Like the normality & logic would be there to support the crackiness of it & make it valid. Is that weird?
In a way, maybe it's just that I think the one thing that -makes- a cracky premise (pairing-wise or plot-wise) even work in the first place is a more rigid adherence to the known & established. I think if you're writing something wild and out there (and in a sense, the very idea of H/D is crack enough in itself, forget Veela!Draco or whatever), you're even more bound by the necessity of grounding the action in characterizations that stick to the basics, the known quantities.
It's like, I need that feeling that 'this is them' to go and suspend my disbelief about bigger things in the story. And it's especially hard when a certain plot-device is just so common it's taken for granted, as if it -has- to be this way, as if the relationship couldn't work if -something- wasn't out of whack in the regularly-scheduled-reality dept. That just makes me sad, man. And I don't read crackfic to be sad :/
~~
EDIT - Nevermind, got cheered up reading one of Jei's cute Heero/Duo ficlets. Ahhh, I love friendship-about-to-turn-into-love stuff done right ♥.
Anyway, my point is that it's all about suspension of disbelief. Everyone and their brother suspends disbelief especially when they read an unlikely (everyone says!) slash pairing like H/D, right? The name of the game, right? It's what you're supposed to do, right? Especially if you ship them, right?? No. Well, not me.
And, you know, there's my problem. Of course I suspend my disbelief too, but maybe 25-50% less than other people do. I have a number of kinks-- things I'm willing to go very far for if they're included in the fic-- but I have ten zillion squicks which throw me out of the fic spitting and clawing at the air. Ten gazillionty million, and at least half to do with how I -don't- want Draco to be & especially in terms of what effect that would have on Harry. :/
I think it goes beyond 'I just want them to be IC', 'cause while it's -true-, I think the real thing that bugs me is certain sorts of fanon which are perfectly valid (that is, possible), but I just know (in a meta sense) what they're meant to -do- in the fic 'cause I've seen it ten trillion times, y'know? It's a plot-device that makes me feel... dumb or something, like the writer is saying 'you don't deserve any better' or 'what, do you expect this to make sense?? fool!' and that's just depressing, especially-- even-- in the midst of a cute crackfic. I dunno how to explain it, really.
Crackfic or not, I just don't want the fanon bits to feel... desultory, like tossed-off little pseudo-reasons for things. Like, insane things (Draco sprouts wings!) are actually much more acceptable to me than too-sudden mundane things (Draco's suddenly become a much better wizard than Harry!)
I think I became really bitter when I realized what I wanted was both an escape (just like everyone else) and porn & snark (yeay!!) but also... something that didn't make me do the work, in terms of virtually the only kind of HP fic I read (which is H/D, though I go through S/R phases repeatedly). With decent S/R, for instance, things just don't work this way-- things don't get tossed off randomly, like 'oh, and by the way, Peter had an evil twin who actually was the one to join Voldemort' as an aside. I dunno. Things are more normal & make more -sense-, even in cracky wacked-out fics about how Remus and Sirius grew breasts and wanked each other immediately. If it's any good, that means it's still going to be Remus and Sirius, and it feels like the writer's less likely to feel they can randomly mess with some significant portion of their character & dynamic right off the bat. I dunno.
Maybe I'm just being ridiculous in comparing a pairing that makes sense even to canon-whorish-type people and a pairing that people say has CRACK written across its forehead in big bold letters.
Maybe that's what's been pissing me off for the last 3 years, too. That very idea, that H/D has to = crazy crack, that's what annoys me. And every time I read a fic that has a wacky/cracky premise (yeay, great-- man, I don't even like overly serious fics) but also lazy little fanon excuses (nooo), I remember how people say it's because H/D itself is impossible that they -have- to do this, and I just get upset because that's not true, it's wrong, it's just been perpetuated by lazy fanon. But it's NOT TRUE.
I mean, it's just a little voice at the back of my head, you know, telling me 'but people don't even realize it doesn't -have- to be like this' that can ruin my enjoyment of what's otherwise an innocuous plot-device. That is, I consciously refuse to suspend my disbelief just because I have a chip on my shoulder, I guess. Something to prove. I want my ship to be... I dunno, normal, because & in spite of how abnormal it is in concept. Like the normality & logic would be there to support the crackiness of it & make it valid. Is that weird?
In a way, maybe it's just that I think the one thing that -makes- a cracky premise (pairing-wise or plot-wise) even work in the first place is a more rigid adherence to the known & established. I think if you're writing something wild and out there (and in a sense, the very idea of H/D is crack enough in itself, forget Veela!Draco or whatever), you're even more bound by the necessity of grounding the action in characterizations that stick to the basics, the known quantities.
It's like, I need that feeling that 'this is them' to go and suspend my disbelief about bigger things in the story. And it's especially hard when a certain plot-device is just so common it's taken for granted, as if it -has- to be this way, as if the relationship couldn't work if -something- wasn't out of whack in the regularly-scheduled-reality dept. That just makes me sad, man. And I don't read crackfic to be sad :/
~~
EDIT - Nevermind, got cheered up reading one of Jei's cute Heero/Duo ficlets. Ahhh, I love friendship-about-to-turn-into-love stuff done right ♥.
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-03 10:43 pm (UTC)Okay, sure, all slashfic has to suspend disbelief in one aspect, usually that the characters are gay or bi. Fine, I accept that as a necessary condition, but it doesn't have to go all the way to "and then one day Harry woke up and realized he was gay and WANTED DRACO MALFOY'S BODY..." (or vice versa). I think maybe that's why I tend to write the H/D relationship as a little more singular--like maybe it's not that they are "gay" so much as attracted to each other despite their gender.
I try to write H/D (and other pairings too) that makes a little bit of sense, where the attraction and the accomodation the characters come to is at least a tiny bit believable. It's why I write them 19 years old and older a lot of the time, because I have to project them forward just a little to keep them in character yet changed just enough that it isn't a stretch. The canon has some wiggle room but not that much...
One of the problems with the "Draco suddenly becomes a much better wizard" fics is that in the canon JKR doesn't really give us much of an indication as to how powerful either Harry or Draco are. Harry thinks of himself as average and as much of the book comes through the Harry-filter I doubt he thinks of Draco as much better. we don't really have an objective idea of how Draco and Harry compare. (And Draco fans who want to undo his inferiority complex, and yes, he has one in the canon, overcompensate.)
no subject
Date: 2006-07-04 12:47 am (UTC)I too, write H/D as 'more singular'... though that's also 'cause I don't want to go through the whole 'gay awakening' shtick, as it gets old.
It's true that the books are through a Harry-filter, but he'd probably notice really obvious things even about someone he couldn't stand (like, he doesn't tell himself Voldemort's incompetent or whatever). And Draco fans' tendency to overcompensate is just one of those pet peeves of mine, too. :>
no subject
Date: 2006-07-04 04:00 am (UTC)the whole 'gay awakening' shtick... gets old.
oh yeah. I do still sometimes enjoy a good coming-out/coming-of-age fic, but ... sigh... the "established relationship" cliches for H/D can be just as hard to stomach sometimes.
I think half the reason I like to write Snape/Draco is at least there is some unexplored territory there (not to mention that the events of HBP make it less cracky-seeming).