~~because fic-reccing is second-nature
Sep. 16th, 2002 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkajust when i thought i'd seen most things that can be done with in-character draco.... i find out i'm wrong. this is amazing & believable & it just really, really captures my imagination. yes. this basic question that's bound to pose itself to draco-- the question of control-- the question of empathy (whether or not he has it, or wants it, or believes in it)-- yes. i can definitely see him becoming obsessed with numbers & the Name of god, and destiny. yes, this is the most believable path to what some would call evil!draco, and it's the first time i've seen it looked into.
yes, in order to become Dark, draco would have to become Aware, aware of what and who he is, aware of his stand on things. i refuse to believe it would be "just because he's a malfoy" or "just because he grew up like that". that's a cop-out, that's not a draco i'm interested in. yes, he has to -want- the power, he has to understand what he's doing. you wouldn't think ``the desert god" would fit in the potterverse, or in hogwarts, but-- it totally, totally works. wow.
~~
P.S. ~~yeay for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hackthis & embarrassing schoolboy semi-fluff...! *waves semi-fluff banner & sticks out tongue at the angst people*
angst is misleading anyway.
if by "angst" you mean, "conflict" and "inner struggle" and "pain" in a story, then i love it and i thrive on it.
on the other hand, there's the really depressing, hard-to-read things, that sap your will to live and make you mopey and one of those black-clothed beatnik type people.
i'm probably one of those people, a quarter of the time, so i should know.
if any of you have read dostoyevsky, you'd know what i mean. or kafka.
is that what you mean when you say, angst?
what about anna karenina and war and peace? isn't it GREAT? she threw herself under a train, because she couldn't live with her cheating on her husband. yes. she gave up and she died, end of story. great work of literature, though.
i actually enjoy both kafka and dostoyevsky.
dostoyevsky, in particular, was one messed-up guy. thank all the gods that exist that he never tried writing all-out love stories.
love is about hope, to me-- i mean-- it has to be there somewhere, implicitly-- so it hurts more, at least. i've lost the definition of angst, somewhere. it all seems like there's the "happy" people and then there are the "sad" people and everyone has their "side" to root for. like, "we want pain!!" or, "we want snogs!!". i'm not the most happy-go-lucky person in the world, and am in fact kinda far from it. i would say, though, that i worship humor over angst, because it takes more courage, and implied pain is more poignant than obvious pain. i'd pick a fic about a paralyzed man making fun of everything and making jokes about how his boyfriend dumped him and being all smart-ass and "tough" over one where the perfectly healthy man is cutting himself up emotionally, being a stupid mean bastard, and pushing away everyone he loves & who loves him, with extreme prejudice, without any good reason except that he's a messed up bastard.
if the character isn't multi-faceted and quirky and adorable-- i just don't care about him/her. angst shouldn't even be a separate category. it's just drama. it's just good writing.
now, tragedy is a different matter, and let me just say that it's as hard to do good tragedy as it is to do good comedy. personally, happy endings aside, tragedy isn't my thing unless it's truly of archetypical proportions. say, achilles, or king lear, or the original hercules, or, probably my favorite, wagner's Rhine cycle. mind you, the thing i like about tragedy, in that case, is that while people die and things end, you get a certain amount of Truth, and a certain amount of enlightenment about humanity and people, and a certain amount of insight about your own life. with the ring cycle, all the gods died. doesn't get any worse than that, not by much-- but i consider it a wonderful, amazing story because of the timeless truths implicit in the whys of how it happened.
unless you're going to invoke all kinds of deeply rooted reasons for why Harry & Draco Were Always Doomed (individually & together), i'd rather a story be labeled, simply, drama. angst makes me think of manipulatory string-pulling and "woe-is-me"ing. are harry & draco really that pathetic? harry, i find too emotionally strong and resilient to really just crumble unless something -really- amazingly horrible happens (and some really horrible things have happened already and he's not exactly cutting himself and i doubt he'll start in the next book), and draco is too distanced from his own emotions, i think.
stories aren't truly good if they only ring one emotional note.
i mean, am i wrong?
sadness is yummy, but so is happiness, goddamit.
so is anger. so is humor, so is silliness, so is disgust, so is self-deprecation, so is sarcasm, so is bitchiness, so is hope and so is lust.
mind you, in ficlets it's a bit different. if a ficlet is really short, it makes sense to use it to explore an aspect, a facet of something much more complex. so that's ok, and everyone who's seen me squee over sad, horribly sad ficlets knows this.
what bothers me is this whole "angst for angst's sake" thing.
i like melancholy more than almost any other emotion, except maybe humor and lust. but melancholy is a -feeling- and -atmosphere-, not precluding anything, plot-wise. anything could happen, and melancholy would remain, pretty much, in the background. same with angst, theoretically. i have a problem with "angst" being seen as necessitating some sort of Doom, and sturm-und-drang where no one is ever satisfied and many moans and blood-lettings ensue.
put the damn boys out of their misery, i say!
pair harry with cho!
let them laugh a little. harry isn't the mopey type, anyway, and mopey-pathetic-lovelorn-loser!draco isn't the most sexy of slytherins.
his arrogance, his bitchiness, are sexy, not his pained lashing out because he's unloved and insane, to boot.
see, the heroine of ``serial experiments lain" was messed-up and sad, and bad things happened all the time. on the other hand, that series wasn't about love, or even about lain, but about the nature of reality and god and so on. no one was expected to fall in love with her character, and i'm sure not that many people did.
i admit. kamui, from X, is angst-case incarnate, yet i loff him muchly, and i loff X in general-- but again, blah blah themes-about-reality-and-human-nature blah blah. plus there's several humorous characters, and in the end, "good" wins, kamui's alive, etc. and even if kotori's dead, kamui probably likes subaru anyway *evil grin*
so. i've made my stand. fluff needs no excuse (like little girls and butterflies, according to mr heinlein). whereas angst-- angst needs an actual reason, if it's going to dominate a long story.
well that's all, thank you, and good night.
~~
a tom/mountain slash fic...! *swoons* yes, i have the strangest sense of romance, but thankfully, i'm not alone...! aww. tom. *huggles tom* damn you, why are you evil. if you weren't evil i could almost like you ><;
yes, in order to become Dark, draco would have to become Aware, aware of what and who he is, aware of his stand on things. i refuse to believe it would be "just because he's a malfoy" or "just because he grew up like that". that's a cop-out, that's not a draco i'm interested in. yes, he has to -want- the power, he has to understand what he's doing. you wouldn't think ``the desert god" would fit in the potterverse, or in hogwarts, but-- it totally, totally works. wow.
~~
P.S. ~~yeay for
hackthis & embarrassing schoolboy semi-fluff...! *waves semi-fluff banner & sticks out tongue at the angst people*angst is misleading anyway.
if by "angst" you mean, "conflict" and "inner struggle" and "pain" in a story, then i love it and i thrive on it.
on the other hand, there's the really depressing, hard-to-read things, that sap your will to live and make you mopey and one of those black-clothed beatnik type people.
i'm probably one of those people, a quarter of the time, so i should know.
if any of you have read dostoyevsky, you'd know what i mean. or kafka.
is that what you mean when you say, angst?
what about anna karenina and war and peace? isn't it GREAT? she threw herself under a train, because she couldn't live with her cheating on her husband. yes. she gave up and she died, end of story. great work of literature, though.
i actually enjoy both kafka and dostoyevsky.
dostoyevsky, in particular, was one messed-up guy. thank all the gods that exist that he never tried writing all-out love stories.
love is about hope, to me-- i mean-- it has to be there somewhere, implicitly-- so it hurts more, at least. i've lost the definition of angst, somewhere. it all seems like there's the "happy" people and then there are the "sad" people and everyone has their "side" to root for. like, "we want pain!!" or, "we want snogs!!". i'm not the most happy-go-lucky person in the world, and am in fact kinda far from it. i would say, though, that i worship humor over angst, because it takes more courage, and implied pain is more poignant than obvious pain. i'd pick a fic about a paralyzed man making fun of everything and making jokes about how his boyfriend dumped him and being all smart-ass and "tough" over one where the perfectly healthy man is cutting himself up emotionally, being a stupid mean bastard, and pushing away everyone he loves & who loves him, with extreme prejudice, without any good reason except that he's a messed up bastard.
if the character isn't multi-faceted and quirky and adorable-- i just don't care about him/her. angst shouldn't even be a separate category. it's just drama. it's just good writing.
now, tragedy is a different matter, and let me just say that it's as hard to do good tragedy as it is to do good comedy. personally, happy endings aside, tragedy isn't my thing unless it's truly of archetypical proportions. say, achilles, or king lear, or the original hercules, or, probably my favorite, wagner's Rhine cycle. mind you, the thing i like about tragedy, in that case, is that while people die and things end, you get a certain amount of Truth, and a certain amount of enlightenment about humanity and people, and a certain amount of insight about your own life. with the ring cycle, all the gods died. doesn't get any worse than that, not by much-- but i consider it a wonderful, amazing story because of the timeless truths implicit in the whys of how it happened.
unless you're going to invoke all kinds of deeply rooted reasons for why Harry & Draco Were Always Doomed (individually & together), i'd rather a story be labeled, simply, drama. angst makes me think of manipulatory string-pulling and "woe-is-me"ing. are harry & draco really that pathetic? harry, i find too emotionally strong and resilient to really just crumble unless something -really- amazingly horrible happens (and some really horrible things have happened already and he's not exactly cutting himself and i doubt he'll start in the next book), and draco is too distanced from his own emotions, i think.
stories aren't truly good if they only ring one emotional note.
i mean, am i wrong?
sadness is yummy, but so is happiness, goddamit.
so is anger. so is humor, so is silliness, so is disgust, so is self-deprecation, so is sarcasm, so is bitchiness, so is hope and so is lust.
mind you, in ficlets it's a bit different. if a ficlet is really short, it makes sense to use it to explore an aspect, a facet of something much more complex. so that's ok, and everyone who's seen me squee over sad, horribly sad ficlets knows this.
what bothers me is this whole "angst for angst's sake" thing.
i like melancholy more than almost any other emotion, except maybe humor and lust. but melancholy is a -feeling- and -atmosphere-, not precluding anything, plot-wise. anything could happen, and melancholy would remain, pretty much, in the background. same with angst, theoretically. i have a problem with "angst" being seen as necessitating some sort of Doom, and sturm-und-drang where no one is ever satisfied and many moans and blood-lettings ensue.
put the damn boys out of their misery, i say!
pair harry with cho!
let them laugh a little. harry isn't the mopey type, anyway, and mopey-pathetic-lovelorn-loser!draco isn't the most sexy of slytherins.
his arrogance, his bitchiness, are sexy, not his pained lashing out because he's unloved and insane, to boot.
see, the heroine of ``serial experiments lain" was messed-up and sad, and bad things happened all the time. on the other hand, that series wasn't about love, or even about lain, but about the nature of reality and god and so on. no one was expected to fall in love with her character, and i'm sure not that many people did.
i admit. kamui, from X, is angst-case incarnate, yet i loff him muchly, and i loff X in general-- but again, blah blah themes-about-reality-and-human-nature blah blah. plus there's several humorous characters, and in the end, "good" wins, kamui's alive, etc. and even if kotori's dead, kamui probably likes subaru anyway *evil grin*
so. i've made my stand. fluff needs no excuse (like little girls and butterflies, according to mr heinlein). whereas angst-- angst needs an actual reason, if it's going to dominate a long story.
well that's all, thank you, and good night.
~~
a tom/mountain slash fic...! *swoons* yes, i have the strangest sense of romance, but thankfully, i'm not alone...! aww. tom. *huggles tom* damn you, why are you evil. if you weren't evil i could almost like you ><;
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no subject
Date: 2002-09-16 05:53 pm (UTC)You really went above and beyond with this. I don't know what to say except that I thought this might go over like the well-known lead balloon. This really flowed out of other ideas I have about this verse of mine. I needed an angle where Draco went to this place, and you see what I made to force it there. *g*
Luckily, it's at least somewhat believable.