[duh. -.-]

[reenka]

I read dorrie6's comment on Sister M's post on Harry-bias in canon about how Draco's understandable and could be made plenty sympathetic in fanfic without white-washing his choices and experiences/beliefs (or making him a pathetic whiney baby or boring and uptight or too serious or... *grumblegrumble*), and I was like YES! and I AM NOT ALONE, I KNOW THAT! and SO WHY ARE THINGS THE WAY THEY ARE??!? and why do people say this on a canon post and only argue till they're blue in the face on most fanon posts.... I just realized: it's because these issues themselves (including my reaction!) aren't really analytically based. I really can't sit there and go, 'okay, so I was thinking about this and it's not like I'm about to scream in frustration or anything... um....'

I mean, we may love the HP books, yes, but we can (sometimes) discuss them calmly 'cause we're not -as- invested as we are in our work or that of our friends or y'know, "our" porn and reading kinks or whatever. That's the bottom line, probably; bigtime fans don't like it when you diss HP (unless it's v. subtle/intellectual and goes over their heads), but they'd probably like it even less if you said their favorite porny fun-fun-happy-time fic sucked & was lazy & OOC. :/ It's hard to say 'this sort of fic SUCKS ASS' in a subtle & intellectual way, I guess :>
    (And it actually never ceases to amuse me that as an actual reviewer, I'm a total verbose squee-monkey and never snark or say snide things... I love fanfic not because I'm so critical/analytical but because I'm just IN LOVE so I notice tons of bad -and- good things the way girls obsess over their butts and notice that light pink rash on the far-off fold of their left buttock...)

So no one says it unless they want to whine, don't care about stirring up shit or are somehow untouchable in fandom. But yes, regardless: point is, it's fic so it's about passion whereas discussing canon can easily-- and is easily-- made purely intellectual in fandom (when it's not a jizz-bottle of pure wank). DAMN IT ALL TO HELL ANYWAY.

The sad sad truth is, I'm probably more -attracted- to fanfic meta than canon meta because it's more emotionally meaty and volatile as a subject in the first place, because it's more -fun- since it's tapping into my creative self, my dreaming self, my wanting-fun-fun-happy-porn self. Canon, to me, is just like 'oh, that's interesting... oooh, I LOVE Harry... oooh, Draco... huh... wow, Snape sure is fascinating, I wonder what's going on... tralala... oh look, it's a zombie!!' -.- Oh, self. *groan*
    PS. I don't mean I like fanon more than canon, I really do just mean I like fanfic more, which is a subtle difference but it's there. Or perhaps I should say I'm v. picky about what sorts of fanon I like & how they relate to canon?? I like a certain kind/flow of canon/fanon relationship, because to me it really is all about relationships between things and never 'the thing alone', which is why I secretly would want most canon meta to be more fanony and of COURSE I want all fanon meta to be canony(!), and I don't just mean romantic relationships, btw. :P

Comments

[scoradh.livejournal.com]

[sucks at teeth] As far as that goes, I think people have spaces in their minds for 'Draco' and 'Harry'. How big or flexible that space is depends on the reader, which is why people can squee over what other would lambast as hopelessly OOC. I've stepped back from my own fic and said "No way in hell would Draco ever say/do that; not to mention he'd never touch Harry'. But I can still do it because my mind-space can accomodate him doing that. Or something.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not like I don't have some give or don't allow room for interpretation... I mean, I don't think I have a solid immutable ideal I'm trying to uphold or anything. It's also true that I've written things I consider highly unlikely or cracked out or whatever... however, I've been here too long and seen too much stuff that is just plain STUPID, and people gimme things excuses like... well, the excuses are just so transparent and stupid, and also don't even deal with canon at all. I don't care what your interpretation is of canon, as long as you acknowledge rather than deny it. When people are like 'oh, Draco always hated his father' (hello, 95% of H/D, probably) or 'oh, Draco never really disliked Harry, it was all an act'-- okay, I'm flexible, but I'm not INSANE.

See, when I start ranting or whatever, people assume I'm so picky and am hating on their buzz or whatever, whereas to me, I'm just pointing out things that are painfully obvious. You cannot sanely read canon and go 'okay, Drakie-wakie is a soft-hearted, misunderstood little moppet, AWWWW'. And yet. And yet.

Point being (as I'm sure I've made a zillion times before), it's not in what they do, it's in how you explain/build-up/set-up what they do. Of course he wouldn't touch Harry in canon, so that's why you have to convince me he would in your fanfic by adding circumstances, changing ideals/prejudices, messing with his mind, etcetc-- as long as you acknowledge you start from point A (he hates Harry), it's FINE and IC as all hell. It's not about what you-the-writer or you-the-reader thinks-- it's about what you can realistically portray-- which is -anything-, as long as enough work to connect the dots is done. Anyway, ummmmm, I wasn't trying to talk about Harry & Draco specifically so much as my interest in discussing fanfic in general...

But this actually illustrates why it's difficult, 'cause people always say 'but it's in the eye of the beholder', whereas with canon people don't get proprietary, I guess. I don't care who thinks what is OOC-- what you need is an -argument-, a good reason rather than just an opinion. Not to mention, while Draco may be ambiguous in canon, Harry isn't, and in some ways Harry is -more- mangled and mischaracterized in fic and is -more- unlikely to touch Draco than vice-versa. Just watch the absolutely maddening fandom insistence that HBP!Harry is actualy (sexually) obsessed with Draco in HBP, like it's actually true. It's seriously not even tongue in cheek, people just forget what canon IS.

...aah, I've gotten off-topic. I just mean that it's really more about the process than the end-result characterization, with any fic. The process is what's interesting to me, like 'how do you make this happen?' But people give up-- a lot like you just implied-- saying 'well, in reality, canon Draco would never do this', when he so would. It just takes a lot more effort to show him doing it than just saying 'to hell with it, Draco Malfoy Woke Up Hot & Also Gay'. :)) Plus there's all this resistance to taking fanfic as seriously as people take canon, which is seen as pretty rock-solid even if it isn't, so that if I insist too much, people are like 'but it's just fic, I can do whatever I want'. Not that that isn't true, but it's a deflection-- of course anyone can do whatever, but they don't have to act like there's no other way....

[scoradh.livejournal.com]

As far as 'argument' goes, I would never consider writing a fic without one! It's just ... you can go so far with that, in building up some sort of relationship but in the end, there's always that one final leap. It's a leap, it's not a logical stepping stone. I always think of that fic I wrote -- Drawing down the moon, that's the one -- and how I went from those two hating on each other to being in love with each other. And that point, where Harry started fancying Draco and vice versa; no matter how much I built up to that, it's still totally ... unreal. I guess if you give people enough sticks they'll see a house, though.

What people don't remember about fanfic is that it is all original. Fine, the characters and settings aren't yours, but you could say that if you wrote about a famous film set or something. Your words and your phrases and your situations; and they say that's not serious? Very silly. I see fandom as a writing apprenticeship, it's invaluable, and I would never belittle it that way.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

You're right about the leap... and I'm probably not the right person to ask 'cause I'm in love with them, so I just want a bone(r)? But. Like, the fics I really can't take are the ones that take that leap right off the deep end, sort of insulting my intelligence rather than asking me to be a romantic. My favorite fics are so subtle about it, about when the leap happens and where, which is why I'm obsessed with friendship!H/D. I'm sure I've already told/asked you to read Silvia Kundera's 'And I Get By', but that's why it's utter brilliance-- like, when did Harry fall for Draco there? Or did he? At the beginning, when he was all shocked Draco actually -smiled- or at the end, where Draco was all 'okay fine, I'll save your ass, POTTER' or in the middle where they were fighting like two horny cats?? Ahh. I wish all fic was like that :( Anyway, the thing is-- yeah, with the sticks-- like, using all these plausible elements to 'sneak in' an implausible one and make it fit with the others as if it belonged there even though you know it really doesn't-- or does it? That takes a really good writer, of course.

But then there's fic like ATBT (and yes, I don't even care about saying that in public anymore), where from the very beginning, patently untrue things are used as foundation for everything else. Like, bam!-- ATBT!Draco had no clue his father's into the Dark Arts (hell, HE was into the Dark Arts in SECOND YEAR, hello), bam!-- Draco's merely 'irritated' with Potter, bam!-- he switches sides and changes gears utterly because, what?? He was shocked and dismayed his father hexed POTTER whom he's merely IRRITATED by and doesn't care about. Ugh. That's not a leap, that's a gaping canyon. I think the job of a great/believable/working fic is to tighten and tighten the leap until it's as natural as it can get, and if that means never getting H/D to luffy-wuffies & cuddly-bunnies & love-confessions, that's probably what it means :P That's why I so totally love 'And I Get By', 'cause "so fuck off after him" = TOTALLY BELIEVABLE DECLARATION OF LOVE. All things considered :D :D