[eh, hell with "plot" & 'forward progression'...]

[reenka]

Because I just Cannot Leave It Alone, I shall have to address the common question rubymoth raises, meaning that she writes porny fluffy crackfic & feels guilty she's not writing more 'serious' canon-extrapolative fic which she "could" be.
    What bothers me with this is sort of self-centered, meaning that I may or may not have gotten a reputation for wanting said 'serious' fic involving things like the Ministry and Horcruxes (*yawn!!*), if nothing else 'cause shaggirl & I came up with the idea for the Big Bang and stuff.

But. These things have to be taken in context, you know? Fandom changes all the time. At that time, the years after OoTP, no one wrote what I would remotely call IC or canon-compliant (forget extrapolative, because people can and do extrapolate without being compliant, and can be characterization-compliant without being plot-extrapolative).
    
The only light in my tunnel was mijan's 'Eclipse', which had its own (stylistic) issues, but it was literally the only then-WIP longfic there was for post-OoTP H/D before the Big Bang. All the others were small hatesex vignettes or unfinished-yet-promising stuff like the cigarette!fic by Cassie Claire.

Maybe Big Bang made people feel guilty without precisely knowing what they're feeling guilty for, I dunno, but I personally never intended that. All I wished would happen, far from killing snark & Harry&Draco's whiplash-hot dynamic-- all I wanted is to add a measure of characterization plausibility, not subtract hotness, wackiness or snark (which is a question of genre rather than substance).
    The reason why that seemed so imperative was because I thought there were such serious huge psychological issues you couldn't ignore post-OoTP without ignoring the natures of both Harry & Draco-- stuff that's been building since GoF & hadn't erupted in canon until HBP. So there was this full, pregnant feeling I had which HBP actually justified.

In retrospect, when we tried to explain what we meant by 'in-character' in the post-OoTP Big Bang, people started saying we were 'telling them what to write' & being overbearing dictators, but the fact is that it seems otherwise people just assume that 'canon-compliant' => 'canon-extrapolative' => plot => 'writing like JKR' (which is -ridiculously- far from what I meant, personally). I just wanted a bit of context to my hatesex, really; of course, what I didn't realize is that my 'context' is another person's 'wtf, this is depressing' or 'THAT'S NOT CANON!HARRY, BITCH!'... not that anyone said that to me, but. :/
    It's kind of hard to explain now, because what I wanted isn't a forward progression but a past reckoning. I basically wanted to feel like the past events existed and colored the characters' interactions; in regard to what those interactions -were-, I would say that I'd prefer 'everyday' stuff like Quidditch & Potions classes and corridor dust-ups & Hogsmeade, 'cause that's what shows us the natural state of being of the characters without the distraction of Big Events & the compromises one makes in wartime, etc. I mean, I like adrenaline in terms of 'Harry&Draco bonding while facing danger together', but there are many ways to summon that danger without shifting focus to the wizarding world at large.

I actually can't stand how post-HBP, people got all 'serious' and mature about the H/D dynamic like it was inevitable, because that loses the flavor of what the pairing is all about, as far as I'm concerned. Their attraction will always be totally tied to their being schoolboy rivals, both being snarky bastards, competitive, immature in their own ways, both ridiculously obsessive & stubborn and horny as cats in a sack. That's basically what it's all about.
    It's funny, I mean-- a lot the reason I didn't feel inspired to write H/D post-HBP is because I felt the grown-up reasonable 'vibe' threaten my peaceful hate!angst pairing & Draco wasn't obsessed anymore and omg-no, not 'pity', etc. :O!! I felt the threat of necessitated 'plot' re: the Horcruxes & it was just like 'nooooo, canon, I want CANON horcruxes, noooo, not a zillion fics about horcruxes...'. And of course I was right, my worst predictions came true, and there -were- a zillion mind-numbing fics about horcruxes and suddenly-mature!Draco & hurt-comfort. Which wouldn't be so bad except I've -always- hated H/D hurt-comfort, even back when post-GoF there were fics where he went blind. DIE blind!Draco, DIE! :P

    What I thought was missing post-OoTP is just... stuff to up the internal angst & conflict factor (and thus the post-OoTP realism), not the maturity or plottiness factor. There was -so- much angst in canon, I felt sort of insulted when it disappeared like Harry never turned into a raging bastard and beat up Draco and started ignoring him, and like Draco never hated Potter for putting his father in prison with the fire of a thousand suns. -That's- what I wanted.

When I say 'realism', basically I mean internal realism (which is totally compatible with crazy hijinks & porn, especially hatesex), not 'plot'. Plot != realism. Plot is just... well, plot. :P It's what -happens- if you write a fic where enough time passes rather than say, 2 days (usually), since you can't fuck -all- the time; plot is dependent on genre or "objective" rather than the subjects/characters, for most writers.
    Bottom line: a lot of times, 'plot' is a crutch writers use to pretend they're being canon-realistic-- or like, reality-realistic, whereas really the characterizations are seriously on crack and/or not even paid attention to because they're All In The Service Of Plot. :P

EDIT - I'm not saying it's somehow easier or more common to see in-character H/D PWPs or vignettes; I mean, maybe a -little-, but I don't think it's inherently easier to do, just perhaps more vignette-writers are more -interested- in characterization. That is, fact remains that whether or not you're interested, it's a hop-skip-and-a-jump to what I like to call the 'Bad Crack', 'cause people have some pretty weird ideas of what canon is; and no, 'bad crack' isn't just 'obviously stupid cliches', it's any characterization that takes ridiculous short-cuts, ignores history, white-washes conflict, etcetcetc, given you're not writing future!fic, which I'm not interested in anyway 'cause I got burned so many times. Though I still like Antenora's post-war!Harry fics; it's literally the only variant I can remember where he's even remotely badass (& I don't mean dom!), though, besides maybe 'Transfigurations' & some stuff by shaggirl & marksykins. :P
~~

And now... back to reading crack!porn and writing angst!porn, so that life is a beautiful healthy balance. :o