~~rambly again. dark!harry and warfic and angstfic as salt and general wibbling.

[reenka]

i was wondering how angst vs sap would compare, using food. if sap is like sweets & ice-cream & strawberries & chocolate.... what would angst be like? carrots? pepper? salt? salt, i think. i'm all about combining the virtues of the two. a little of both, because reena is a glutton. hee.

i'm all about the sweet saltiness of life, like the tender tears of the one who loves you, like the whisper of forgiveness as you walk away, like the promise of forever when you're running out of time. like running in the last rain before the snow comes. it's all sweet. and it's all painful. painful in its fleeting, ever-present beauty, like all of life.

am trying to sum up `armchair slash' angst-month in a soliloquy-type thing~:) i always thought that love stories, by nature, contained delirious happiness within them. i mean, yes, they all end sometime-- eventually you die, and one of you goes first. but love itself-- that is a happy, glorious feeling, that fills you and makes you as warm as spring. and-- as long as you love-- you have that spring somewhere within you.

and so it's a bit disappointing to see pure tragedy be made out of two people in love. it's like, they're negating their love that way. the natural state of love is happiness, and misunderstandings can always be overcome with knowledge and forgiveness borne of love. and so on. maybe it's unrealistic, but it's still true enough, that if you truly let it, shared love alone can be all you need. it's easy to write that badly and make it sound like a lie, like a platitude. it's easy to point out that one's personal problems can overshadow any redemptive power love has to offer.

and yeah, i suppose i'm thinking of amalin's fics. it's easy to say love is just a feeling you get, of affection for another person, and it isn't some sort of primal force that can overcome years of psychological issues and the convoluted paths of a person's past. you can't just kiss it better. logic dictates that as soon as harry realizes it was malfoy whom he kissed (yes, as per earthquake1906's fic), they'd be back to square one.

wouldn't they?
~~
    this got started with ishuca's post about the alternate ending amalin wrote to `two lost souls', but i've been thinking about the way warfics portray harry & harry's relationship with his inner darkness (and inner light) for awhile now. that is to say, i'm largely dissatisfied with the way harry turns out in a lot of warfic. corrupted, defeated, tarnished, sad, no longer the old adventurous laughing considerate optimist he was. broken somehow. and one could say that war does that to a person. but this isn't "a person". this isn't just any war. this is harry, and the battle isn't so much between armies as between Dark and Light. the symbolism can't just be ignored if you're going to really play with these (pretty archetypical) characters as they stand in jkr's books.

i want to see warfic going beyond the horror, and giving a third choice beyond wimping out or diving in full-force. i want to see a harry that can retain his essential nature even when facing the worst war and human nature can throw at him. i want harry to still laugh even though he cries just as much. i want a harry who can feel. where even though he's a warrior, he's not willing to do evil, no matter what. where the human soul wins over the huge meme of War.

as unstasis put it, saying "war corrupts" is dwelling in the problem instead of looking for a solution. but to really end the war-- you either obliterate everyone who opposes you, which makes you no better than anyone else, or you have to somehow change the conditions.

i guess it's a question of whether the character of harry potter has the strength to win the war of not being corrupted by the war. i would argue, long and hard (and have), that indeed harry has to have the strength, if he were to fulfill the promise inherent in his character. if harry defeats voldemort, he has to be able to do it on his own terms, without becoming that which he is fighting. he can't do it without sacrifices-- everyone makes sacrifices-- but no matter what, the point is to remain yourself, to retain that joy and delight in living, in being just a boy like any other, that gave you strength. love (his mother's) was always supposed to give him strength. and maybe he can't save everyone, and redeem anyone but himself (ie, draco), but he can retain his nobility and innate sense of rightness and restraint. all times are dark-- all times are light. just like people. *sigh* i just want a fic that truly explores those boundaries and faces these dilemmas and has harry remain himself, and keep laughing, all the way to the end.
    and i love zoshak's reminder that people don't laugh in hard times because they need to, as a defense mechanism, but because they -can-. yes, that's what i would love to see-- the way that we remain ourselves in the midst of the worst horrors, in the midst of the most unbelievable atrocities-- we remain ourselves or we perish in the only way that matters.

~~


it can be so tempting to get lost in the online "love" thing. i've had people casually throw it around-- like, i make friends online, we like talking to each other-- usually this happens with girls, lately-- ok, totally girls, really-- and we start with the *hugs* and the *huggles* and the *cuddles* and the "i wuv you"s. and i like it, and i say i wuv you back.
    and you get closer, and you enjoy that person, and they seem warm and sweet and you enjoy sharing the wuv so you kind of just say it. i mean, if it's male/female (if the people are straight), then these same warm fuzzies can feel more romantic, more meaningful.
    i mean, if i felt this cozy/affectionate towards a guy, and not a bunch of girls, would i think i had a crush? would saying "i wuv you" mean something different?

now, if that was a guy-- he might take it the "wrong way", easily enough. i'm not saying that that's all it is, just affection plus hormones, but there's a lot of unconscious play-acting online and editing of personality and it's easy to feel like you know someone just because you read their words and connect with them on some level. it's easy to send cyber-hugs
and even cyber-kisses.
    and then if you see/hear that person, and they're sexy-- boom! you're
attracted too, so it seems even more real, convincing. i've heard several girls' voices through voice-chat and i was like, oooh, sexy/cute. i mean, i'm not really "straight" but what if it was a guy, and what if it was a guy i particularly connected with the words of, and exchanged some comments with? would that be a crush?

i just dislike and distrust the ease with which you can go from 0 to lovey dovey, with this stuff online. in real life, it takes time and there are barriers, and you're unlikely to just be getting even remotely emotionally intimate from scratch with several people at once, unless you're a real don juan. but online, you can juggle all this stuff and the reality is
lost somewhere amidst the pleasure of all this positive-feedback emotion going on. *sigh*

not to say that these aren't "real emotions" and you (and the other people) aren't really feeling them, because that's self-evident. i'm just saying the ease and no-strings-attached indulgence of it bothers me.

~~
wah. olympia_m wrote a this, sort of response to penelope_z's `carnivorous house'-- and my gahd, it just totally completes and contrasts and-- wow. i always want the "other side" in limited-pov fics, especially if they really touch me. and this is just heart-wrenching. on ghosts and lies and comfort and-- the threesome fic rash that's been going around gets even more interesting (well to me), with draco in the mix. and you know, i'd have said it couldn't be done (well).
     and on a totally different (much more cute-and-giggly) threesome/draco note (haha, oh gahd, another pairing), there's this one from a threesome of drabbles from hackthis today. i can so totally see it, and that is just not good ^^;;

miss breed is truly a h/d goddess (that is pretty much a title i give to someone who writes fic that makes me fall in love with the characters completely on its own merits, while retaining the sense that these are -those- characters, these are harry & draco; plus it helps to make me laugh a lot-- love=laughter). she introduced me to SophieB, which looks to be a v. good thing (bratty!malfoy fics -and- a soulless-eyed!malfoy pic? <3~! hee). her every story is just-- sooo in character. yargle. i read `beware the fury of a patient man' and realized that this is sort of a ``standard-bearer" fic, as in, something that is so believably canonically flavored, it -deserves- to be fanon. well. some things do.

"Did you get what you wanted for Christmas, Potter?"

Harry was startled by the question. It was alarmingly . . . normal. "Er, I guess. Not really. I don't know."

"I didn't," said Malfoy, flatly. "I did manage to get a cheap imitation though, which isn't saying much."

hee~:) that's probably my favorite part, in retrospect. *grins*