(no subject)

[reenka]

Reading this,
    i understand and respect your need to rant about something you dislike, but please keep in mind that there are people like me who do like this genre, and who don't appreciate it being put down as slash's "slutty cousin." imagine someone would take apart and ridicule your favorite genre like that--how would you feel?

...made me seriously think, for the first time in fandom, "man, I really need a sockpuppet journal [just to make crude remarks to people like this], don't I."

I R s0 meen and insensitive -.- I don't get to play in the pretty sandbox anymore :( And yeah, uh, before you lose all respect for me or whatever, I meant that as a joke. -.-;; I'd say it as myself if I actually had something to say, but as it is, I feel the need to act out-of-character just 'cause that statement is just kind of begging for it like a two-penny rentboy, I swear. The Cult of Nice in action, ladies and gentlemen. On some level, I'm mostly offended at the implication that if I don't take people's amusing little rants on -mpreg-, yes mpreg, to heart, I'm some sort of insensitive bitch with no delicate feelings or something. I... I really hate it when people use their so-called sensitivity to manipulate others. I hate it a lot. It makes me wish I was mean.
    (And the funny part is that I still have no real impulse to be mean, but now that I -can't-, it makes me feel like I have to or something. Oh, fandom. It'd be so much more fun if everyone had a sense of humor. But then, that's life in general for you.)

To be disgustingly fair, I have to say that rants with a side of 'you should write -this- way' are also wanky, pathetic and more importantly, useless. It's not like you can make anyone care about Earth logic in so-called 'fantastic fiction' if they don't already. Logic is just not most mpreg-readers' cup of spiked tea. On the other hand, see above re: having a sense of humor when someone makes lots of references to assbabies, multicolored colons and the mechanics of ass-birth. Honestly.

And, just in case y'all didn't know: I have no great issue with mpreg anymore than I do with Veela!Draco (whom I actually like more than fanon-without-any-explanation!Draco, about whom I will never be sorry for having written 10,000 rants on how I wish he would die, die, DIE and then die again-- and yeah, if that hurt someone's feelings, I'm sorry, but we're talking about fanon!Draco, not women's rights in Ethiopia). What I do have an issue with is people who actually take it seriously, like it's Omg Arte, because Omg Assbabies Are Serious Business, didn't you KNOW?! -.-

PS: I fear I've gotten hooked on the Hana Yori Dango J-drama. Someone save me before it's too late--!

Comments

[ethrosdemon.livejournal.com]

Wait, are there people who take mpreg fic seriously, as in don't think it's crackfic? This I was completely oblivious to.

However, I would like to say there is no Cult of Nice in HP fandom, and I do think that there is serious oppression at work with in with all the OOC stuff and "Draco is like *this* and only this* within the H/D section of the fandom, which I have a very hard time taking seriously because Draco being with Harry to begin with is *absolutely* out of character.

And on to me rambling about that:

Any Draco pov is automatically not canon Draco because we have NO IDEA what he thinks. HP is not written by a universal, omniscient narrator--it's written firmly from Harry's perspective, with his prejudices and inclinations threaded all the way through it. There is no way to authoritatively discuss "draco's motivations" or "draco's character" without first taking a position and then speaking from said position. All we know of Draco is that he's BAD (and that it's bad child-rearing that made him that way) according to Harry and his friends.

Some people (a lot of people) appear to think that Draco would see Harry as something other than the bain of his existence and the source of all that's wrong with the world. Why that is, I am STILL not sure (aside from they think Harry and Draco are cute together OR they are subsumed by the romance trope of "rescuing" someone from themselves and "redeeming" them). This perspective has confused me from my earliest days in HP because I just don't understand how one can fundamentally challenge the canon personality of the character and *then* say that others write fanon. Well, yeah. But Draco with Harry is always already a fanon construction.

I assume by fanonDraco you mean the guy who cries all the time, is a potions genius, was abused by his parents, and is secretly just a snotty gentleman (any or all of these)? Yes? That character is total crap, but isn't that character usually married to Ginny? (ok, taking the piss now)

Also, Veelafic is automatically crackfic, too, innit?

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I do think we differ slightly in that I definitely think we know more than just that he's 'bad', especially in HBP, ahahah. Like, from his actions aside from any of Harry's commentary, you can make a sort of sketchy portrait of him, the sorts of things he's likely to do (around Harry and once around Lucius), the sorts of things he actually -says-. We know things like his opinion of Hermione, Mudbloods, his attachment to his father, that he's the sort of person who'd make badges and sing stupid songs, that he hates being humiliated like with the ferret thing, that he's good at Potions, that Snape favors him, that Crabbe & Goyle are willing to polyjuice as girls for him, that he has Pansy fawning over him-- etcetc. It's not a 'deep' character like Harry or one of the Trio or even Snape, but he's not a total blank slate.

That said, I -was- talking about the fanon!Draco you meant, mostly-- though I assumed people who read this lj would just know what I meant, ahahah, I've certainly ranted about it enough. :> I mean, lots of people use the 'but we could do anything' excuse or whatever to write him -really- crappily, and at some point in fandom I've gotten fed up and started needing more logical thought & plausibility put into people's fic. Because it's not just about Draco being OOC or not-- it's about context. It's about how other people -react- to Draco, what his known beliefs are, how fast people in general change their tune, how boy sin general act & so on. When Harry is like 'omg Draco is so cool' at the start of a fic-- well, that's OOC.

And I know you say H/D in general is OOC, but I think any pairing can be made plausible with good enough writing, I guess. It's just a difference in the level of difficulty involved. It may be so hard as to be not worth the effort (apparently, even to shippers), but I don't think any story is impossible to make happen. I don't think that feelings/relationships are part of one's basic 'personality', though acknowledging these feelings if you're going to change them is necessary; I also don't think any change is necessarily OOC -if- you 'sell' it and give it a plausible progression. It's the constant lack of progression that I myself find OOC/fanon/badly done. Well, I also find omg-so-cool-smooth-and-gorgeous!Draco OOC/fanon, especially where Harry & the Gryffindors are total losers in comparison. I mean you-the-author may think so, but in reality Gryffindors aren't the ones who actually -lose- (so far) so if you start having them lose, you have to acknowledge it's not like they have a long history of it.

I know people who don't know what they're talking about randomly point at things and say 'that's OOC', and I know 'fanon' is too vague of a term and may apply to 'everything-but-canon', which is just plain useless, but.... I just need a way to differentiate fics which take canon events/relationships into account and fics that-- don't. Basically, I've started using a shorthand for this and I say 'fanon!Draco', meaning any characterization that glorifies or white-washes or prettifies him into a suave smirky sex-god and/or someone who's not pathetic/obsessive/immature in the least. That's just a bad characterization whether or not it's 'IC' for Draco. I mean, people like that don't even exist, I think, ahahah. -.-;;

Though the 'Cult of Nice'-- I always thought it existed everywhere just 'cause people are always the same.