reading stupid post-hogwarts fics is just bad for my health. it's just... bad. very bad.
okay, was skimming this on a rec, should've known better when draco got married and had adorable kids (hello, hufflepuff!malfoy), but:
In his school days, Harry had toyed briefly with the idea of seducing Draco Malfoy. At the time, he had no idea what seduction involved. Older and wiser, the thought of fumbling his way through an attempted seduction of the suave, cool, beautiful man Draco had become was enough to make Harry queasy. No, he'd be making no such stupid mistake.
*weeps*
no. just. no.
i now swear that i will simply not read any more serious fic that describes malfoy as cool, suave, beautiful, gorgeous, angelic, cherubic, amazingly talented, aloof and alluring (ul excepted). how do these people even... i just have no words. and this isn't about making him pretty. -i've- made his hair shine and given him plenty of pretty smirks. it's not about that. just. harry looking at malfoy-the-sex-god and going, "oh, i'm not worthy" is just.... gah.
what is it with this desire to write about a malfoy who is even more smooth and heroically wonderful than harry ever was?? what is it with making characters painfully perfect? why god, why??!??!
what is this lust for perfection, and why is this angelic perfection having to be created out of narrow-minded hysterical vindictive little gits? why not write about young dumbledore?!? he was probably nearly perfect when he was 31, and you know what, he must've been gorgeous, too. why the hell not? i bet he was a sex-god! i bet he was cool and alluring and angelic!!
of course, this usually involves angelic!harry as well. do people write angelic!ron, too? i bet they do. evil, evil people! gah! hate! *incoherent wailing and tearing of hair*
i can't write about perfection if i tried. no, seriously. i just naturally mock it. the -minds-, the frightening -minds- behind this make me -shudder-. shudder! they go and force these flawed, sad angry characters into these perfect little boxes, like cinderella's step-sisters trying to fit their ugly feet into a pretty, perfect crystal shoe. imagine it! cinderella!draco!! this is what they're all writing!! that, or cinderella!harry and prince-charming!draco. how evil is that??! evil and very, very wrong!
slytherlynx wanted me to be open with what i hate in fic, hehehe. well, i HATE THIS FIC. gar! die, prince charming, die.
EDIT - oh, and did i mention i hate fics where the "man" (the top, usually) is "strong" and resists sexual temptation and "baser instincts" because it's "wrong" or "emotionally dangerous"??! it's like i've been thrust into a harlequin without my permission, and now i'm being taught how to behave properly on a date and with one's children. you love your children and are nice to them, and if you don't, you get divorced. you are gentlemanly and chaste with your date, and you don't rush into things. you dress nicely for your encounters, and remember to wear fresh boxers. did i mention how i dislike being vicariously lectured about clean boxers? and lectured in general?? because, yes.
okay, was skimming this on a rec, should've known better when draco got married and had adorable kids (hello, hufflepuff!malfoy), but:
In his school days, Harry had toyed briefly with the idea of seducing Draco Malfoy. At the time, he had no idea what seduction involved. Older and wiser, the thought of fumbling his way through an attempted seduction of the suave, cool, beautiful man Draco had become was enough to make Harry queasy. No, he'd be making no such stupid mistake.
*weeps*
no. just. no.
i now swear that i will simply not read any more serious fic that describes malfoy as cool, suave, beautiful, gorgeous, angelic, cherubic, amazingly talented, aloof and alluring (ul excepted). how do these people even... i just have no words. and this isn't about making him pretty. -i've- made his hair shine and given him plenty of pretty smirks. it's not about that. just. harry looking at malfoy-the-sex-god and going, "oh, i'm not worthy" is just.... gah.
what is it with this desire to write about a malfoy who is even more smooth and heroically wonderful than harry ever was?? what is it with making characters painfully perfect? why god, why??!??!
what is this lust for perfection, and why is this angelic perfection having to be created out of narrow-minded hysterical vindictive little gits? why not write about young dumbledore?!? he was probably nearly perfect when he was 31, and you know what, he must've been gorgeous, too. why the hell not? i bet he was a sex-god! i bet he was cool and alluring and angelic!!
of course, this usually involves angelic!harry as well. do people write angelic!ron, too? i bet they do. evil, evil people! gah! hate! *incoherent wailing and tearing of hair*
i can't write about perfection if i tried. no, seriously. i just naturally mock it. the -minds-, the frightening -minds- behind this make me -shudder-. shudder! they go and force these flawed, sad angry characters into these perfect little boxes, like cinderella's step-sisters trying to fit their ugly feet into a pretty, perfect crystal shoe. imagine it! cinderella!draco!! this is what they're all writing!! that, or cinderella!harry and prince-charming!draco. how evil is that??! evil and very, very wrong!
slytherlynx wanted me to be open with what i hate in fic, hehehe. well, i HATE THIS FIC. gar! die, prince charming, die.
EDIT - oh, and did i mention i hate fics where the "man" (the top, usually) is "strong" and resists sexual temptation and "baser instincts" because it's "wrong" or "emotionally dangerous"??! it's like i've been thrust into a harlequin without my permission, and now i'm being taught how to behave properly on a date and with one's children. you love your children and are nice to them, and if you don't, you get divorced. you are gentlemanly and chaste with your date, and you don't rush into things. you dress nicely for your encounters, and remember to wear fresh boxers. did i mention how i dislike being vicariously lectured about clean boxers? and lectured in general?? because, yes.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-30 11:07 am (UTC)I laughed many times in this fic at some of the ideas. I mean, first Draco's simply dropped every single thing that was important to him throughout canon and become Mr. Reasonable. Even a bad marriage doesn't ruffle his feathers. One of the first things this kid says in canon is that he'd leave Hogwarts if he got sorted into Hufflepuff and now he's all, "Oh, where do my children with silly names I would probably never give them get their house rivalries?" Plus Hogwarts has changed too, so Malfoys and Weasleys are friends.
Then there's the whole psychiatrist thing. Okay, I admit there are times I've thought Draco could use a child therapist because he's kind of a freak but I don't actually want him to get one! So what is with the suicidal 12-year-old? It's like Draco's suddenly in one of those family dramas on CBS.
I was completely confused when Draco put the brakes on the sex actually. He really did suddenly sound like a girl in a sex ed video or something. And Harry ever thinking he's unworthy of Malfoy is...well, I'll be diplomatic and say it's problematic. Because I think yeah, you can have fun with a Harry who secretly envies Malfoy's upbringing in certain ways. But this drives Harry crazy because he thinks Malfoy himself is the lowest of the low. "Unworthy" is not a word Harry would probably ever use with regards to his feelings about Malfoy.
But then Harry himself has lost most of what makes him tick. He too is patient and reasonable. The kind of teacher who befriends the Malfoy kid and is patiently willing to see a therapist once a week to deal with his problems which he doesn't blame on anyone, btw. No bitterness here.
Um, yeah, I don't get the perfection thing either. What do you even do with characters like that? It reminds of of the MST3K short "A Date with your Family" that's all about you should behave at the dinner table. At one point they're all chatting and Tom Servo says, "A violent argument erupts over who's day was more pleasant." That's what's basically happening here.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-30 01:09 pm (UTC)but then, i take these things much more personally, i dunno why. i suppose it -is- funny, not -offensive-, really, it's just... they're like assaulting his character or something. which is ridiculous, but there you go. i hate it when they write things about my babies which simply aren't true. ahahahah. man, that's messed up. (but i -do- feel protective of harry & draco & luna. it's weird. i mean i don't think it's -just- my attachment to my harry plushie talking. i totally relate to them as if they're real, but then i'm always like that about characters i adore. i remember when i loved spock, reading a book where i thought he was out-of-character was deeply, deeply traumatizing to me. i just couldn't even... i was just hurt and upset. "but he'd never do/say that to jim!!!" i wailed, and -resented- him. i mean, maybe that one book was written by a slasher, i dunno, but i was raised on gen, so to speak, so it was rather disturbing, whatever it was. weird thing is, plenty of canon assaults both spock's and draco's depth and truth of character, but hey.)
but yeah, you've stated the issues in a clear way, yes, and harry is totally ooc as well. a lot of people do that to harry though. not that i like it. very very few writers do a really satisfactory harry as far as i'm concerned. i mean, there's ivy & ali & cassie claire maybe & thess & maybe aja. and of course there's just_harry. also antenora for dark!harry. but man, it's slim pickings.
sigh.
ahahaha sex-ed video, yah. gahd, i -hate- being preached to, that's also it. i hate having morality thrust upon me in fic, it just enrages me. that's why i think i'd go insane in church faster than working in a post office~:)
i think a truly saintly person would have a very difficult life and have a lot of angst, actually. the world doesn't suit saintly people, which is why there's all this catholic/christian lore about suffering and pain and death being associated with saints, i guess. i mean, you would be tempted and persecuted and misunderstood and it would -hurt- you because you're like... er... Good. and the world isn't. which sucks. so yeah.
also, i didn't mean ul!draco was perfect, just that he is my all-time-favorite draco who could superficially fit into the Draco Cult!draco, but really not, so it's okay. i mean... he's shining bright, you could tell that, aside from his silliness. he's just beautiful and wonderful and snuggly and who wouldn't love him? they'd be insane. not that i mind that because maya makes us buy it, she -makes- him adorable instead of just reasonable and nice. you know? hee.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-30 02:17 pm (UTC)Also, I know there have been times I have been just as angry over somebody being OOC so I can't really tell anybody else to calm down about it. It's weird, though, which times I find it funny and which times I get really angry about it. I think here Draco maybe just seemed so straight and narrow and bland I couldn't even really connect him to the boy in canon so it was like reading an OC. But other times I'll just be furious at something the person does because you can just feel the person using "your" character to suit their own ends. I think what bothers me the most is when they're clearly having them act OOC to get at another character. Like one of my biggest pet peeves is when Crabbe and Goyle secretly long to be friends with Ron and Hermione because Draco has to be universally despised. Or Harry is a jerk so that he can hurt Draco and laugh about it.
I honestly think Harry's an even harder character to do now because in OotP he became less perfect. Draco pretty much stayed the same while we were also given little hints at a possible other side in his pleasantries with Snape and pain at Lucius being arrested. Harry, though, was really confronting his darkest sides with his anger and lashing out--OotP really is not your Mary Sue's Harry. If you dream of marrying TBWL who grew up locked in a closet with baggy clothes and being an ickle woobie it's hard to deal with a boy who TALKS IN CAPITAL LETTERS!
no subject
Date: 2003-08-30 02:31 pm (UTC)i dunno when it happened, but i just totally love him madly. it's weird how not-that-common it is in the fandom. people -like- harry or -tolerate- harry or -hate- harry, but not so many -adore- harry, especially after the 5th book, but now i just adore him more. i think the more he gets like tim hunter the more i wuv him. then again, i love hero characters, which most people don't. wah. i love cute-villain characters too. sidekicks, not so much ><;; unless i can identify with them, like willow maybe.
people want harry to be something he's not to fit their bland little idea of a hero. those people make me angry not because they're really connecting -my- harry or draco to this harry or draco but because they're implying they -should- be like that, maybe, you know? it's like, they strip their soul and then they smile about it, like a twilight zone episode. "aren't we all happy here?". see, this desire for happy!harry frightens me as much as the desire for suicidal!weepy!harry. like, why can't people deal or imagine complex, angry, sad, strong, fierce, -human- characters? what is it with the shallowness pervading everything, you know? why do people seem to -want- it? it's like, i don't -want- to know.
i really dislike abusive-jerk!harry but i can shrug that off as a sign of the writers' issues (obviously she/he has issues with past boyfriends and whatever). but this sort of sweeping tidying up of the world reminds me of umbridge, actually. heh. maybe that's going over the top, but yeah.
i hate pretty-shiny-harmless things. like barney. barney frightens us all, but it's the same with kind-and-reasonable!draco. like, what horrors would such a person inflict on the world? i dunno.
it's like, when people are that nice, you'd think they're -hiding- something and then when they -really- blow up, they...well... turn into umbridge. OMG UMBRIDGE FIC IDEA!!!!! >:O
holy crap. can't you see it??! she used to be nice!! and she always played along, and she was very agreeable. and then she SNAPPED! and decided that the nice little children/people needed to be taught a -lesson- in -blood-!! oh my god i'm freaking myself out, oh god oh god.
hehehe. that's why i adore harry, my ickle woobie with the huge towering temper. he's all right, my harry. he'll be fine, you know? :D