[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

Comments

[rubymoth.livejournal.com]

re: Eclipse, I just need to say that I'm glad for your sake that you got what you needed from it! I was disappointed so it ruined it for me, but I'm very very glad it was good for you. :) Kind of redeems it for me a bit to know that you got so much out of it, actually.

Re: Harry's obsession versus Draco's... wow. That's a really interesting point. I hadn't seen it that way. Probably because I'm new, and read all the books at one sitting after HBP came out last year... I am considering what you said very carefully.

Forgive my ramble now here, but I'm wondering if maybe there is a bit of a saving grace here possibly: with Draco being caught up in the more external picture, maybe it gives him some equal footing with Harry, so that he isn't just seeing Harry through the eyes of someone focussed purely on what he sees that annoys him about Potter. After all, their roles ARE reversed in HBP, which gives Harry a chance to see Draco for real, as opposed to just dismissing him in denial. And Draco finally gets to see the world is NOT as simple as he thought; he is forced to confront Harry's issues of possibly being killed by Voldemort.

Anyway, the lack of emotional intensity is something I think many readers would actually agree with you about! I think the insertion of angst is the attempt to deal with it, but simply slapping angst into it avoids the incredible intensity of their dynamic, as you said - the very nature of H/D. gah. So yeah.

I usually don't vent in LJ posts, but I have to say that many versions of fanon draco began to bug me, to see them recycled over and over, because I was reading H/D for a year before getting involved. I sometimes cannot understand where the Draco who wants fluffy mpreg babies comes from, really. At all. It doesn't make sense to me. And having Draco become a rentboy is like...totally Muggle AU. (there are always exceptions, I know. some fics are so good even though they take that fanon and run with it!) But still. Why this obsession with mpreg?! I cannae see it. But I digress. ;P

boy, I'm really feeling for you here...both the canon and the fandom have let you down, haven't they?

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say something that is probably entirely inaccurate, misrepresenational and even untrue, but perhaps....the reason H/D fandom lacks the very things you crave is because it's...a fandom about teens? There are some incredible fics of greater depth in other fandoms, that DO provide the very things one looks for in the ficcage. Maybe it's a necessary element of the fandom's nature that it would draw so much adolescent treatment rather than an adult grasp of adolescent material, you know? Like, if we're all writing about teens, surely we can write from a higher perspective than the age of that teen we are writing about. I'm assuming of course that the writers are of age. ;P I'm not sure I condone 15 year olds writing slash, esp. NC-17.

It's not a complaint, and I'm sure I'm not getting the point across properly. But maybe it's an issue of getting caught up in the 'what it feels like to be 17, or 15, etc' and less of presenting the teens in a more consumable format, enabling the reader to ACCESS their dynamic and see it more clearly? Especially where the teens are themselves in denial?! Doesn't that make the H/D dynamic go? ah well. I've ended up blabbing at you, but I'm not known for brevity. ;) Thanks for this; it's been totally mentally stimulating!

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

There are some incredible fics of greater depth in other fandoms, that DO provide the very things one looks for in the ficcage. Maybe it's a necessary element of the fandom's nature that it would draw so much adolescent treatment
...Huh. This is an interesting point, and I've actually considered this recently with a comment to a semi-fluffy Snape/Draco fic (and btw I pretty much hate that pairing for jealousy reasons, hahah, same way I resent Ron/Draco... though I don't mind Draco het in theory, Draco-and-other-boys-Harry-has-a-relationship-with-of-any-kind... uh, that gets me where it hurts). Anyway, the person commented saying that "most everybody seems to want to play with the noxious fumes of these two mixing" (and doesn't write positive/fluffy fic). And I was like OMG WAH people like noxious fumes?? WHY NOT IN H/D WHY WHY WHYYYYYY WHY IS THYERE MOSTLY FLUFF IN H/D :((

So yeah, a part of it is that the 'serious' people go to Snape-pairings or adult-pairings in general (excepting the Snape/Harry fandom, which is full of awful crap, mostly-- I dunno why Snape/Draco is so much smaller & more serious), or write stuff like AJ Hall's Draco/Neville epic. I mean, that's serious & plotty, though I haven't heard much about it being emotionally in-depth. *sigh* Plus, there's a lot of well-done teenage!Sirius/Remus (not like, a ton, but still!) There's a lot of darkness and emotional intensity there too, but maybe what's made it work is that it's never really been badly Jossed-- Marauder-era, I mean. That was just -helped- by OoTP, there's no way it wasn't. And the R/T fandom angst is just stupid.

So there are probably factors relating to it being -H/D- and not just teenagers-- or maybe more adults are attracted to Marauder!S/R or Marauders in general than H/D?? Most of the people I'm friends with that like/ship/wrote H/D in '03 or so, pre-OoTP, are in their 20s, actually (just like me). But yeah, I feel like people put more effort into Due South or Highlander fics, though there's tons of badfic for Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon too or whatever. I also read several other teen fandoms like Gundam Wing, which there's a lot of crap for, but people -do- tackle the issues. Maybe it helps that the canon is already set there & has been for ages, so it's more of a whole. Plus Heero/Duo aren't quite as difficult, being partners/comrades. Plus, there really are in-depth well-done H/D fics... not that much, in retrospect, but there's been a -lot- of talent in this fandom, y'know? Mostly pre-OoTP, but it was glorious while my honeymoon lasted~:))

I think there are still people trying to be 'in depth' or 'serious writers' in their approach, like geoviki or furiosity (to a lesser degree there's mirasfics, I guess), but it's just not the same 'cause it's so plot-oriented and full of post-Hogwarts stuff, not to mention the fact that people's idea of 'in depth' makes them turn Harry & Draco into little so-mature goody-two-shoes, the both of them, which just... frustrates me. What's the point? Why not write Harry/Neville-- okay, Neville isn't as pretty, but... Anyway, at this point I'd -prefer- mpreg (which is just insane crack) to the subtler, more pervasive forms of fanon which most people wouldn't even -recognize- as fanon half the time -.-;;

[rubymoth.livejournal.com]

I cannot read any pairing but Harry/Draco. I find it hurts my heart too much. like you, seeing them with others within the pairing....it hurts BAD. instant pain/angst.

But omg what you said: the whole point of the H/D dynamic is at its essence the non-fluffy variety! wtf is with the fluff excess?! *shakes head* I can read fluff, I like it, I like to see it in moderation with all things, including angst, and darkness, and plot, but to pretend that nothing ever happened but H marrying D and settling down to have babies and buy curtains is rather...odd to me. It's like they can't SEE the H/D dynamic at all. Some of it is crack, and I need to read it after encountering a very, very painful fic, like the lovely schmoopy one you just posted, but often it is very wearing to keep finding the SAME FIC posted over and over.

Thank you for the rundown on the other pairings, too. I had no idea it was so... um. yeah. *nervous laugh, looking around in public place* Jeezus. just, wtf?! LACKING, is the polite way of saying it, maybe? I don't like to see H or D turned into fluff bunnies, or mature adults, for the most part that is so extrapolated into the future that it doesn't resemble canon much. so yeah. I think I agree with you on this. I need them to be how I read them from the books, not turned into self-projected adults from the author's pov.

I know what you mean about there being a lot of TALENT in this fandom; as I said, reading fics for a year, and getting caught up with all the stuff that's already been written...gives a feel for what's there. I do find geoviki is totally awesome. I would like mirasfics better if the constant WIP wasn't always on the go...it makes me feel stressed to see WIPs that don't get enough love from the author. But that entire last paragraph of yours had me laughing, and NOT at you, at all! but because you are SO right. It's rather sad, come to think of it. I can only hope that new writers that come into the fandom can bring fresh blood and new ideas, and different delivery, esp seeing as OotP the movie will stir some in that direction, plus the book 7 coming out will inevitably do it as well.

to the subtler, more pervasive forms of fanon which most people wouldn't even -recognize- as fanon half the time
Yes, that is it in a nutshell. Fanon is SO contagious. I struggle to find my way out of that trap whenever I sit down to write.

I remember being in multiple other fandoms, and seeing everyone drifting over to H/D all the time, and I was sooooo upset to lose the writers! lol Little did I know that Draco and Harry would steal my heart. :)

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

And... I dunno if the canon let me down so much as... asserted its power over me?? Heh. I can't say I'd want HBP to be -different- whereas I'd definitely want most fics I read to be different. I think Draco's being thrust into the big wide world is definitely a huge positive thing... equal footing, also great... but at the same time, there are Horcruxes, Ginny (and the fact that people make her a total shrew just drives me mad-- plus how Harry isn't really into girls at all-- okay, this was stupid back in GoF days...) and so on, not to mention the whole... thing where you'd have to either deal with all this do deal with the yummy Draco stuff or go AU. It's that boxed-in feeling I was talking about. Pretty issues! Boxed-in pretty issues, heh. Can't complain too much, I should really move on from HP by now, right? That's what I keep telling myself, but it's like... v. rare for me to find a fandom I can write for 'cause I'm not a natural fanfic writer, just a fanfic reader. To give you an idea, the only other 'fandom' I can get the 'voice' of easily is Peter Pan -.-;;;

Still, I -am- trying to play with this for my Death Eater!Draco novella, which I started pre-HBP but am incorporating HBP into :D So it's not all Reena!angst (...even if it's mostly all Draco!angst, ahahah... SUFFER, MY PRETTY!!)

...And um, you're welcome? I keep exhausting the old people I babble about this too, so it's great to get new victims volunteers :)

[rubymoth.livejournal.com]

I find Ginny annoys me as a plot point, but I don't understand demonising her. it is very hostile. There are ways to deal with her that don't make her OOC. That boxed-in feeling you describe is fairly awful, and I think it is part of the constraint that causes most authors to do what THEY want with it rather than bother with Rowling's canon, IMO. But I'm feeling for you here, because I can't help wanting to see you alright, and not suffering over this thing. I hope I'm not getting too personal with this, but I'm always an OTP writer/reader...I can't get into a fandom unless I really love a character or pairing in it, and if you still love H/D, there's no reason for you to move away from them, is there? And hey, Peter Pan? LOADS of issues there! hee!

I have yet to go stalking through your LJ and find your fics (I WILL read everything by everyone at some point! lol! I need a Time Turner...)
your icon is slaying me with the hotness.

About the Harry Not Being Into Girls...I have to agree. that is very OOC. It's like writers need to justify his feelings for Draco by saying that he never had any appreciation for Cho's looks, or that he never felt anything about Ginny. it's so not true. people can change,and he can discover when he's older that he really does prefer men to women, but then we are back into the 'mature' Harry who is so unlike his canon book self that he is AU. i nearly got bitchslapped, Virtually, by some guy recently who told me that I was basically using the term 'bisexual' to confuse the issue with Harry, and Draco. like, wtf? If someone in canon fancies girls, and then fancies a boy, that IS bi. he used all sorts of logical argument that was completely derived from his own fanon-projected version of harry and draco, which further muddied the water. am rambling away now, so I'll come back to it. I think many writers feel the need to justify Harry's attention on Draco by ignoring canon, and that bugs me, because it means they are projecting their own issues onto the character instead of using the canon as their starting point. But it is a personal issue for me to get upset about seeing it. ;P

Do you mind if I friend you, so I can keep up with you?? :) I'll be able to find your LJ easier, and go through your previous fic posts. ;)

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I suppose demonizing-the-female-love-interest is fairly normal as far as slash goes, but it never used to be part of H/D since Harry didn't -have- a girlfriend. My favorite way to deal with her is either a) have her break up with Harry 'cause she realizes he doesn't respect her enough to let her join him/fight/be her own woman or b) have her die for him 'cause of the whole self-sacrificial Lily-parallel and 'possible Life Debt on her part after CoS' thing. Just as long as

And... I don't really wanna write Peter Pan, precisely, it's just that I -can-, whereas I couldn't write say Gundam Wing or Buffy very well even though I've tried (it was... not good). The best thing that came out of my Buffy-writing attempts was actually an H/D fic based on 'Dead Things' (http://lunacy.livejournal.com/163622.html), ahaha. Oh yeah, all my fic is in my memories, here (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=lunacy&keyword=my+fics&filter=all). In terms of H/D... I think I've had a good run, no? I've accepted that fandom's different and I'm probably different too, and that's not necessarily a bad thing-- things change, people move on, etc. Okay, so I haven't moved on as much as most of my old fandom friends, but then I always love the things I used to love, that's just how I am~:)

And my icon's by _lile, from this (http://users.livejournal.com/_lile/19899.html#cutid1)! You don't have to ask, anyone's welcome to friend me, btw, it's a totally public lj and everything, and I'd be glad to talk with you in the future~:))

[rubymoth.livejournal.com]

oh, thank you! (for the memories link!) thanks...

I've had a good run, no? I've accepted that fandom's different and I'm probably different too, and that's not necessarily a bad thing-- things change, people move on, etc. Okay, so I haven't moved on as much as most of my old fandom friends, but then I always love the things I used to love, that's just how I am~:)

Aw, I'm SO glad you said that. :) I feel I have closure on you, and I don't have to worry that you're suffering so badly from the post-HBP issues... It's very nice to know that you do at least have the closure yourself on knowing that it was something else, before, and that even the nostalgia is valuable. :)

and btw: on _lile's pic? HOLY HELL that is beautiful! I'm soooo glad you had an icon of it! *runs to leave feedback omg*

ta, for now! ;) I'll end up spamming you with comments when I dive into your memories. heheh! I'll try to exercise brevity and not talk your ear off!

[rubymoth.livejournal.com]

the artist who did the original for your icon...looks vaguely familiar to me from the style, but I can't place it. WHERE did you get it?! Where is the original, and the artist?! I'm desperate now. it's SOOO pretty...