you suck and I hate you, so let's dance.

[reenka]

I wonder if it's possible to write H/D fic I'd read on a bad day (ie, a total and unavoidable ennui day-- pretty much every day currently) without feeling the way I do/did about the pairing. Like, I wonder if how you feel about love, the characters, canon-- how much all that Authorial Intent stuff matters insofar as it inevitably reflects itself in the manner of the writing (as I believe it does). I wonder if I'd ever read any fics I truly loved without them being written by someone either a) in love with passionate, insane, you-and-no-other-even-if-you're-not-so-good-either love or b) in love with H/D to the total exclusion of any other pairing (though perhaps a few runner ups that certainly didn't involve either Harry or Draco).

I have no patience even to give H/D fics a chance anymore, honestly though, no matter who writes them. I just feel a little less guilty about it if I see the person writes primarily non-H/D, hahaha. I say this because I actually started a random fic today just to write something, and inevitably it was a Draco-pov H/D fic-- post-Hogwarts, no less. As usual, if I write it myself, it's nowhere near as boring/stupid/annoying to me, hahah. Also, Draco the mobile salesman-- had to be done. ♥. :D

Anyway, I do wonder. I think this is partly an unanswerable, philosophical question, but at the same time it's not meant as rhetorical. I always felt like H/D encapsulated the sort of relationship (in my mind) that you can't be casual about. You can't be a swinger and really get H/D; not unless you're the kind of swinger that only really craves one person like a drug but either likes denial or totally separates sex & love, haha. You can't be polyamorous and get H/D, on a gut level I mean. You can't even be a non-romantic, in some ways, and really get some aspects of H/D (not to say it's a shmooshy sort of romance like James & Lily or even Sirius & Remus, but it's high romance ideally, if only the sort that breaks bones & takes no prisoners even as it rolls its eyes at itself). As an interesting corollary, I don't think you can fully get H/D being naive or... entirely nice, either; it'd help to have some burning heartbreak and rage under the belt, that's for sure. I mean, I like my H/D realistic and hardcore, even unsentimental, but the thing is that if you write it honestly, the romance and sentiment will shine through clearer. That's my philosophy: imitate life/truth, and the situational pecularities will shine through naturally; or in other words, the point of faithful representation is that it shows without telling.


Which is why I'm not sure. Do you need an actual dedication to the ideal, a vision?

I think to write any pairing very well you probably need a vision-- not just an understanding of the characters or a workable plot in mind, but something to say. And to have something to say about a pairing like H/D, don't you need some dose of delusional frenzy? Or is that a pre-HBP point of view? I honestly don't know. I mean, to me, my love of H/D and even HP in general peaked hard post-OoTP, when most people gave up and I became more passionate because of everything in the way. The more blood, guts & tears you need, the more genuine and artful your eventual work. In theory. In theory, of course.

And you couldn't really write post-OoTP Draco (or Harry) without blood, guts and tears-- without burning vision. Anything without that passionate certainty of purpose would flop-- and did. Now... things seem easier, and it's more believable to have the characters have other things on their mind, more everyday business, more practical concerns to do with survival and their own separate problems. I don't know what I'm looking for, or how to spot the presence of passion quickly enough in a fic before I get too far in and even more bitter and disappointed with things in general. A slow and reasonable approach is more... well... reasonable. I don't mean friends first-- because Harry & Draco would make some pretty intense and conflicted friends-- I just mean the mundanity of it all. I dunno, honestly. What am I talking about? What do I want?

If you think I always write over-the-top intensity and angst, though, you'd be wrong. Earlier today, my H/D effort was mostly tongue-in-cheek irony and droll and bitter Draco-pov (my favorite). So it's not even that I'm looking for angsty passion in the fic so much as in the writer(!), in the... atmosphere, I guess. I don't think I can read H/D fic dry, out of context, without reference to fanon, without... without a connection to fandom, maybe. Without feeling like this fic is one part of an ongoing conversation that I'm participating in somehow. I still love writing it, but after awhile, with any pairing, I just get to the point where I want to see a certain interpretation, a certain... wink-and-nudge-nudge background. I want to recognize that particular Draco & feel his familiarity; I want it to feel like coming home-- effortless.

So maybe this whole entry was me apologizing to myself, because I really can't go home again. No duh.
~~

As far as what I've been up to-- I've been reading urban fantasy & being glad there are no fandoms for those books that I (want to) know of :>

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Of course I can easily imagine many arguments to a lot of this--like of course people can write H/D and other pairings and write it well...but still, I know what you mean. This weekend I was doing my presentation and even as I'm reading it--and it wasn't about H/D--I'm thinking, "OMG, this whole paper is such an argument for H/D. It just always comes back to it. And meanwhile I'm sort of explaining them as being locked together in that same way...

There is something about the pairing that kind of depends on "it must be you, even if I want it to be anyone else!" or "it could only be you and be like this." In general I really like pairings like that--they don't always have to be hate-pairings. I think I just get off on the whole understanding thing where there's the two people a bit separate from the rest of the world in a way that I like.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Hah yeah... most of the pairings I like have some variation on the 'it has to be you' theme-- isn't that the nature of romance, even? I mean, most Sirius/Remus fics are certainly built on a similar dynamic in that sense even though Sirius has all this investment in James & later Harry, canonically. Even though there's all this evidence to the contrary (and Harry is also highly invested in his friends in a way many H/D fics gleefully ignore), if you're not writing Tragic Luv, why are you writing it?? Heh. I get disheartened when I see this attitude that H/D is just another pairing like Harry/Cedric or something. Then again, since most H/D fics seem to make things too easy and to misunderstand the characters... what is the difference in practice, really. ^^;;;

I totally know what you mean-- I have a hard time talking about either of them for any length of time without derailing into H/D, even if only in my head .Which is why the other pov (where H/D is 'just a pairing') confuses me on some level. I mean, isn't it -obvious- how... obvious it is?? What do you mean, it's just one version of fanon? Oh man. :>

[bookshop.livejournal.com]

maybe this whole entry was me apologizing to myself, because I really can't go home again.

you know, that's what i thought, honestly. But three days in New Orleans and all I want to do is read H/D.

So. Yeah. I think you always can, if you really want.

[bookshop.livejournal.com]

There is something about the pairing that kind of depends on "it must be you, even if I want it to be anyone else!" or "it could only be you and be like this." In general I really like pairings like that--they don't always have to be hate-pairings. I think I just get off on the whole understanding thing where there's the two people a bit separate from the rest of the world in a way that I like.

Yes, yes to every bit of this.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

So what you're saying is, I really should make enough money to go to the British con :D :D