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reenkaI was just thinking-- reading a summary of the latest chapter of Youka Nitta's married-couple series ('Haru wo Daiteita') where Iwaki and Katou are always ruminating on what it means to be an actor & how that applies to their relationship-- when Iwaki thought about how 'pointless' (if tempting) it is to compare oneself to others [as an actor] & that he understood this when he 'won against' himself. I think, y'know, this really applies to how I feel about writing, too.
Usually my sense of satisfaction in writing comes from the feeling that I've addressed something I thought was fascinating within my thoughts (about canon, characters, etc) or intense within my feelings (this could have any source & use fanfic as an outlet, so that 'H/D' is really 'The Default Couple' I play with). This is my default, but that's because I'm a hermit-- I think it's really almost impossible to escape when part of a community.
I mean, yes, I felt purged when various conversations & ideas I've had about H/D came together & I wrote that Sectumsempra fic (even though I really couldn't stand the idea of most HBP AUs). It's such a release when things finally percolate and combust forcefully inside your mind to produce a fic out of nowhere, with the right push at the right time. My sense of pleasure is purely personal, feeling I've painted one more corner of my inner H/D cosmos, unrelated to the fact that objectively I think the fic is sloppy, somewhat emotionally overwrought & incomplete :P
Anyway, I was just skimming a few of the holiday-comm H/D fics & recent stuff on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
hd_prophet, and it was pretty depressing to realize all over again just how out of sync I am with fandom (prompting a sense of guilt for writing 'just for myself' 'cause this means I don't communicate the differences/ideas I find important & try to get them out there too).
I don't mean the fics are bad-- I mean people's views, the writers' and the commenters', are just so... completely out of touch with everything I'd ever gotten either from H/D or canon (...to the point where I wonder if we've read the same books that have that same Harry Potter in them). Readers acclaim things as 'in character' and 'refreshing' when they're just-- well, pure recycled fanon, and yet I can't help but feel bad because this is what's popular, and I miss the feeling of being 'in the loop' (not that I ever was, really, and not that H/D was 'better-written' or less fanony before-- just differently fanony). I could understand the meta-concepts behind this-- about wish-fulfillment, people projecting onto characters, people just not 'getting' a character in canon or not caring or not having the same priorities in fanfic-- I understand all this, but on a more personal level, I just don't -get- how people can be that off and still supposedly refer to the same characters within the same pairing. Like, yeah, you expect all these differences in perception if you're putting H/D & H/Hr shippers together (though ideally, you should still be able to meet in the middle! canon, y'know), but... sometimes it feels like there's no common point of reference at -all-, and that's just mind-boggling to me.
I think some people would say 'oooh, it's refreshingly different' whereas I would say 'but if it's that different, HOW DOES IT MAKE SENSE AS FANFIC???' -.- It gets to the point where people's Harry and Draco characterizations seem to share NO common reference with anything I find familiar, and yet! And yet other people think it's right on. I mean, I'm not talking about ff.net-style 'badfic' that everyone laughs at; I'm talking about decently-written stuff that seems to have some level of sophistication, which makes it all the worse when one realizes how it's basically 100%-grade CRACK not in terms of its plotline/style but rather characterization. People definitely notice when something's 'cute crack' 'cause it has obvious markers like Veela!Draco or porn-star!Harry or whatever, but there's definitely a fandom blind-spot when it comes to fanon characterizations that stop short of the flamboyantly ridiculous.
On that note, it's almost like people accept 'normalized' characterizations as 'IC' whether or not they fit those characters; if it's a type of person the reader knows, it's somehow 'realistic', it seems like. This must explain the popularity of Muggle AUs, H/D fics that involve basically no magic or that have them be glorified cops (except without much mystery-solving) or prototypical office-workers and so on. We can accept businessman!Draco whether or not this is likely for Draco simply because businessmen are so ubiquitous, right? And yes, JKR's universe isn't all that exotic or different from Muggle England (that's the point, sort of), but at the same time these characters have a history that a personality that severely distorts/colors any future 'normality'.
I mean, if it's not rainbow-colored Barbies and Kens, it's not crack, right? It's just 'refreshingly different'. Maybe I'd just leave it alone and accept it as 'charming' or whatever if it didn't have the implicit and often explicit endorsement of 'IC'; this, for me, transcends individual fic entirely and gets into meta/fanon issues. In other fandoms, you get 'woobification' and weird role-reversals too, but there's more of a balancing fanon or something-- for all the fics where I've seen love-me!Methos and purely-arrogant-and-distant!Methos, there's still lots where he's a complex and compelling character :/ Draco, on the other hand, works like this: either it's all ice-princey and oh-so-'sensual' and dominant and 'smooth-rich-boy' or it's like 'hi, I'm Harry Potter's love bunny, how do you do?' (...and of course I don't even know where to start with Harry, except to shudder at the persistent idea he 'admires' Draco's Slytherin sexy-coolness in canon).
...Though what really confuses/freaks me out is that the same people who love that portrayal also seem to enjoy fics that completely contradict it, few as they may be-- and then enthusiastically call them both IC. I think that's where people's complaints about the lameness of the label/concept itself come from; I mean, the way people throw that phrase around, I wonder what exactly it means to them. This lack of consistency/any one philosophy is probably my biggest source of asynchronicity, actually; the other is just that a lot of people who -do- have a consistent pov on the characters in their written or favorite fics just... don't really seem check canon, as such. It's like they read it and went 'oh okay, that's what -that- means' in book 3 and happily didn't think of it again. Which... okay, but still confusing -.-; Obviously, most writers tend not to politely inform you that they stopped paying attention around book 5 or 6 'cause, y'know, they didn't like them (as many people didn't). I've actually seen a lot of people verbalize this (outside references to fics)-- the whole thing of 'this isn't MY canon'. So perhaps a lot of people do this unconsciously, too (though for me the whole idea of rejecting canon I don't like is just ridiculous-- whether or not I like it, it EXISTS and anything else is possible but AU, characterization or plot-wise). In fact, the reason I could write my HBP AU was probably -because- I made it so explicit in my mind that THIS IS AU and in no way directly reflects on what I thought went on in HBP -.-;;
Come to think of it, it'd be interesting to study/figure out if this weird character-stasis is a result of this being a book fandom; it seems less prevalent in TV fandoms where character-arcs move lots faster and change is often the name of the game from ep to ep (especially in badly-written shows).
This stuff remains hard for me to process after all this time of struggling with it, even taking subjectivity/interpretation and stuff into account. Just sort of... mental dissonance, y'know. Like, I don't care that people like these fics or write these fics-- I just wish I had a sense they -knew- it was crack. Perhaps this phenomenon is related to anything that's popular with lots of people on an emotional level-- it becomes 'normal' or 'right' just by mass consensus or something. That's pretty scary to me -.- Generally, I try not to fall into the trap of thinking I'm somehow 'better' or more aware of reality or whatever, 'cause thusly are fanatics generally born. >.>
Even when people agree with me on this sort of subject, it's useless 'cause more than half the time they'll like a fic I consider cracked out without seeing it that way. What I mean is, [nearly] everyone's probably guilty of this 'selective blindness'; I'm not claiming I'm not, just that it's harder to see in myself. The more important point isn't to agree 'oh yeah, most fics suck' or 'those fics suck' but rather to admit to one's own bias and try to understand/verbalize one's opinions clearly, so these boundaries between 'my inner canon', 'fanon I like' and 'what I believe is canon' become more visible and capable of being discussed. Maybe.
I used to think fanfic was special compared to 'regular' writing (with its emphasis on solitary work/'unspoiled creativity') because it was more communally creative-- something I could share with others. It seems like comparisons don't have to be self-defeating or creatively draining-- you know, like that cliche about not reading others' work while one writes so as not to get 'tainted'. I remember that feeling of synergy-- where there was a feeling of zeitgeist in fandom, of excitement, and one well-known H/D fanfic was almost inevitably a commentary/meta-continuation of another well-known H/D fanfic. In fact, that's how fanon itself evolves, right? And at its most positive, fanon is just communal creativity... a sort of meta-story that collectively can enrich and adorn one's experience of canon. A supplement. The problem is that so much of it turns wild and goes to weed-- becomes a sort of parasitic rather than a symbiotic relationship with the canon it springs from.
In any case, I think an actor, also, much moreso than a writer, doesn't exist in a vacuum-- and that's a great thing; no man is an island, all that. The trick is really a question of balancing one's personal vision and trying to draw from the inspiration and energy others' creative forces allow for. It's like... two separate but connected things-- being great as a player of one's own instrument and being great as part of a band, or even a whole orchestra. That's exciting; even if the field has narrowed down to a few friends I 'grok' the writing of & vice versa for me, I don't know if I'd really keep going without that measure of support/back-and-forth. A small band that jams together at times is already better than always playing in one's own room to one's cat & houseplants.
I mean, by nature I'm a soloist (and that is largely the nature of writing itself), and I get all tetchy when I listen to others' 'music' that's discordant if it's playing something like the same melody... but oh, that ever-elusive promise of harmony; every instrument having its own part and the overall gestalt being a force in itself. Well, I don't think writing can achieve that the way music, theatre or even visual art could, but I'm just saying that even so, maybe there's something about being an artist that includes that longing for harmony. Not sharing all your notes but rather finding a counter-melody, a balance in other instruments.
On a meta-level, this happens whether or not the writer is aware or supported by it-- simply because of the way stories can't help but touch upon the same themes/ideas/etc-- but it's hard letting go of fandom as a more direct source of inspiration, even now....
More specifically, my last fic was definitely 'fanony' in the sense that it can't help but be a commentary not just on canon, but on various experiences I've had reading similar fics (H/D HBP AUs). It's almost a mini-sub-genre that I feel I've 'tackled', so in a way it's ridiculous to say I 'wrote it for myself', and I'd never try to claim there was any vacuum whatsoever. So that synergy did occur! I mean, not, perhaps, with the recent crop of fics I'd skimmed, but over a longer stretch of time that includes several meta conversations, a bunch of fics and my evolving relationship with H/D that transcends the canon/fanon divide. I mean, just because I feel a continuity within my own fics doesn't mean I imagine I need to feel it within fics that address totally different sorts of issues & are in different genres altogether, that aren't even mine; it's just that I feel there should be -something-. Something 'just because it's H/D', just because it's the same characters. I dunno, I'm not saying it's a practical/reasonable feeling, I'm just still referring back to Iwaki's thing about winning against yourself and how that's never so simple in practice, it seems like.
Usually my sense of satisfaction in writing comes from the feeling that I've addressed something I thought was fascinating within my thoughts (about canon, characters, etc) or intense within my feelings (this could have any source & use fanfic as an outlet, so that 'H/D' is really 'The Default Couple' I play with). This is my default, but that's because I'm a hermit-- I think it's really almost impossible to escape when part of a community.
I mean, yes, I felt purged when various conversations & ideas I've had about H/D came together & I wrote that Sectumsempra fic (even though I really couldn't stand the idea of most HBP AUs). It's such a release when things finally percolate and combust forcefully inside your mind to produce a fic out of nowhere, with the right push at the right time. My sense of pleasure is purely personal, feeling I've painted one more corner of my inner H/D cosmos, unrelated to the fact that objectively I think the fic is sloppy, somewhat emotionally overwrought & incomplete :P
Anyway, I was just skimming a few of the holiday-comm H/D fics & recent stuff on
hd_prophet, and it was pretty depressing to realize all over again just how out of sync I am with fandom (prompting a sense of guilt for writing 'just for myself' 'cause this means I don't communicate the differences/ideas I find important & try to get them out there too). I don't mean the fics are bad-- I mean people's views, the writers' and the commenters', are just so... completely out of touch with everything I'd ever gotten either from H/D or canon (...to the point where I wonder if we've read the same books that have that same Harry Potter in them). Readers acclaim things as 'in character' and 'refreshing' when they're just-- well, pure recycled fanon, and yet I can't help but feel bad because this is what's popular, and I miss the feeling of being 'in the loop' (not that I ever was, really, and not that H/D was 'better-written' or less fanony before-- just differently fanony). I could understand the meta-concepts behind this-- about wish-fulfillment, people projecting onto characters, people just not 'getting' a character in canon or not caring or not having the same priorities in fanfic-- I understand all this, but on a more personal level, I just don't -get- how people can be that off and still supposedly refer to the same characters within the same pairing. Like, yeah, you expect all these differences in perception if you're putting H/D & H/Hr shippers together (though ideally, you should still be able to meet in the middle! canon, y'know), but... sometimes it feels like there's no common point of reference at -all-, and that's just mind-boggling to me.
I think some people would say 'oooh, it's refreshingly different' whereas I would say 'but if it's that different, HOW DOES IT MAKE SENSE AS FANFIC???' -.- It gets to the point where people's Harry and Draco characterizations seem to share NO common reference with anything I find familiar, and yet! And yet other people think it's right on. I mean, I'm not talking about ff.net-style 'badfic' that everyone laughs at; I'm talking about decently-written stuff that seems to have some level of sophistication, which makes it all the worse when one realizes how it's basically 100%-grade CRACK not in terms of its plotline/style but rather characterization. People definitely notice when something's 'cute crack' 'cause it has obvious markers like Veela!Draco or porn-star!Harry or whatever, but there's definitely a fandom blind-spot when it comes to fanon characterizations that stop short of the flamboyantly ridiculous.
On that note, it's almost like people accept 'normalized' characterizations as 'IC' whether or not they fit those characters; if it's a type of person the reader knows, it's somehow 'realistic', it seems like. This must explain the popularity of Muggle AUs, H/D fics that involve basically no magic or that have them be glorified cops (except without much mystery-solving) or prototypical office-workers and so on. We can accept businessman!Draco whether or not this is likely for Draco simply because businessmen are so ubiquitous, right? And yes, JKR's universe isn't all that exotic or different from Muggle England (that's the point, sort of), but at the same time these characters have a history that a personality that severely distorts/colors any future 'normality'.
I mean, if it's not rainbow-colored Barbies and Kens, it's not crack, right? It's just 'refreshingly different'. Maybe I'd just leave it alone and accept it as 'charming' or whatever if it didn't have the implicit and often explicit endorsement of 'IC'; this, for me, transcends individual fic entirely and gets into meta/fanon issues. In other fandoms, you get 'woobification' and weird role-reversals too, but there's more of a balancing fanon or something-- for all the fics where I've seen love-me!Methos and purely-arrogant-and-distant!Methos, there's still lots where he's a complex and compelling character :/ Draco, on the other hand, works like this: either it's all ice-princey and oh-so-'sensual' and dominant and 'smooth-rich-boy' or it's like 'hi, I'm Harry Potter's love bunny, how do you do?' (...and of course I don't even know where to start with Harry, except to shudder at the persistent idea he 'admires' Draco's Slytherin sexy-coolness in canon).
...Though what really confuses/freaks me out is that the same people who love that portrayal also seem to enjoy fics that completely contradict it, few as they may be-- and then enthusiastically call them both IC. I think that's where people's complaints about the lameness of the label/concept itself come from; I mean, the way people throw that phrase around, I wonder what exactly it means to them. This lack of consistency/any one philosophy is probably my biggest source of asynchronicity, actually; the other is just that a lot of people who -do- have a consistent pov on the characters in their written or favorite fics just... don't really seem check canon, as such. It's like they read it and went 'oh okay, that's what -that- means' in book 3 and happily didn't think of it again. Which... okay, but still confusing -.-; Obviously, most writers tend not to politely inform you that they stopped paying attention around book 5 or 6 'cause, y'know, they didn't like them (as many people didn't). I've actually seen a lot of people verbalize this (outside references to fics)-- the whole thing of 'this isn't MY canon'. So perhaps a lot of people do this unconsciously, too (though for me the whole idea of rejecting canon I don't like is just ridiculous-- whether or not I like it, it EXISTS and anything else is possible but AU, characterization or plot-wise). In fact, the reason I could write my HBP AU was probably -because- I made it so explicit in my mind that THIS IS AU and in no way directly reflects on what I thought went on in HBP -.-;;
Come to think of it, it'd be interesting to study/figure out if this weird character-stasis is a result of this being a book fandom; it seems less prevalent in TV fandoms where character-arcs move lots faster and change is often the name of the game from ep to ep (especially in badly-written shows).
This stuff remains hard for me to process after all this time of struggling with it, even taking subjectivity/interpretation and stuff into account. Just sort of... mental dissonance, y'know. Like, I don't care that people like these fics or write these fics-- I just wish I had a sense they -knew- it was crack. Perhaps this phenomenon is related to anything that's popular with lots of people on an emotional level-- it becomes 'normal' or 'right' just by mass consensus or something. That's pretty scary to me -.- Generally, I try not to fall into the trap of thinking I'm somehow 'better' or more aware of reality or whatever, 'cause thusly are fanatics generally born. >.>
Even when people agree with me on this sort of subject, it's useless 'cause more than half the time they'll like a fic I consider cracked out without seeing it that way. What I mean is, [nearly] everyone's probably guilty of this 'selective blindness'; I'm not claiming I'm not, just that it's harder to see in myself. The more important point isn't to agree 'oh yeah, most fics suck' or 'those fics suck' but rather to admit to one's own bias and try to understand/verbalize one's opinions clearly, so these boundaries between 'my inner canon', 'fanon I like' and 'what I believe is canon' become more visible and capable of being discussed. Maybe.
I used to think fanfic was special compared to 'regular' writing (with its emphasis on solitary work/'unspoiled creativity') because it was more communally creative-- something I could share with others. It seems like comparisons don't have to be self-defeating or creatively draining-- you know, like that cliche about not reading others' work while one writes so as not to get 'tainted'. I remember that feeling of synergy-- where there was a feeling of zeitgeist in fandom, of excitement, and one well-known H/D fanfic was almost inevitably a commentary/meta-continuation of another well-known H/D fanfic. In fact, that's how fanon itself evolves, right? And at its most positive, fanon is just communal creativity... a sort of meta-story that collectively can enrich and adorn one's experience of canon. A supplement. The problem is that so much of it turns wild and goes to weed-- becomes a sort of parasitic rather than a symbiotic relationship with the canon it springs from.
In any case, I think an actor, also, much moreso than a writer, doesn't exist in a vacuum-- and that's a great thing; no man is an island, all that. The trick is really a question of balancing one's personal vision and trying to draw from the inspiration and energy others' creative forces allow for. It's like... two separate but connected things-- being great as a player of one's own instrument and being great as part of a band, or even a whole orchestra. That's exciting; even if the field has narrowed down to a few friends I 'grok' the writing of & vice versa for me, I don't know if I'd really keep going without that measure of support/back-and-forth. A small band that jams together at times is already better than always playing in one's own room to one's cat & houseplants.
I mean, by nature I'm a soloist (and that is largely the nature of writing itself), and I get all tetchy when I listen to others' 'music' that's discordant if it's playing something like the same melody... but oh, that ever-elusive promise of harmony; every instrument having its own part and the overall gestalt being a force in itself. Well, I don't think writing can achieve that the way music, theatre or even visual art could, but I'm just saying that even so, maybe there's something about being an artist that includes that longing for harmony. Not sharing all your notes but rather finding a counter-melody, a balance in other instruments.
On a meta-level, this happens whether or not the writer is aware or supported by it-- simply because of the way stories can't help but touch upon the same themes/ideas/etc-- but it's hard letting go of fandom as a more direct source of inspiration, even now....
More specifically, my last fic was definitely 'fanony' in the sense that it can't help but be a commentary not just on canon, but on various experiences I've had reading similar fics (H/D HBP AUs). It's almost a mini-sub-genre that I feel I've 'tackled', so in a way it's ridiculous to say I 'wrote it for myself', and I'd never try to claim there was any vacuum whatsoever. So that synergy did occur! I mean, not, perhaps, with the recent crop of fics I'd skimmed, but over a longer stretch of time that includes several meta conversations, a bunch of fics and my evolving relationship with H/D that transcends the canon/fanon divide. I mean, just because I feel a continuity within my own fics doesn't mean I imagine I need to feel it within fics that address totally different sorts of issues & are in different genres altogether, that aren't even mine; it's just that I feel there should be -something-. Something 'just because it's H/D', just because it's the same characters. I dunno, I'm not saying it's a practical/reasonable feeling, I'm just still referring back to Iwaki's thing about winning against yourself and how that's never so simple in practice, it seems like.
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-10 03:18 pm (UTC)Hehe, I don't think H/D -has- to be unhealthy, but yeah, it bothers me in practice 'cause it's OOC the way people generally do it :> Just like Snape doesn't -have- to be impossible to transform/change, but it certainly wouldn't happen the way people do it :D My only entirely positive experience with a Snape/Harry fic is (dunno if you've read it, but it's classic)
no subject
Date: 2006-12-10 05:29 pm (UTC)I just think his control is far less precarious than she portrays, and I guess the main reason I can't buy this particular breakdown is that I think the professor role is too important in Snape's emotional economy. It's the last thing he'll lose. It's hard to conceive of it slipping except as part of a more comprehensive collapse of his personality. And Snape is never pathetic that way. But it's cool. I definitely respect the fic and I'm glad I read it, which I can't honestly say for most H/S. But it's 60% plausible rather than the usual 30%, maybe.
Thanks also for reccing "And I Get By" the other day, which is 100%! I love that fic and hadn't read it in a long time but any time is a good time to reread it.