fpb | An abominable genre

I am an unashamed Harry Potter fan and keen fan writer and reader. Nevertheless, there is one sub-genre I will never touch, that I have never read nor reviewed nor ever will, that I loathe from the depths of my soul: Marauders slash. Other kinds of slash I can put up with; indeed, I tend to write a gay Harry myself. But this particular slash seems to me revolting, an assault not only on the characters and their relationship, but on a basic kind of human decency and kindness on which rests much of our happiness on this Earth.

In Joanne K.Rowling's novels, the Marauders are a group of four teen-age friends at Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft. The group forms when childhood friends Sirius Black and James Potter, the stars of their year, handsome and successful, befriend the lonely Remus Lupin and accept the somewhat star-struck friendship of the feeble Peter Pettigrew, a fat little boy with a need for strong friends. Remus is a boy with a terrible secret (he is a werewolf); his friends discover it, and, far from rejecting him, support him. The whole is a celebration of what a blessing is a warm, unconditional friendship for a lonely teen-ager. Friendship is the operative word: the four are happiest together, pulling pranks and breaking rules, learning magic and playing Quidditch.

I do not think I give much away when I say that this depiction of free, warm, luminous friendship, of the happiness of meeting and talking and doing things together, means an enormous amount to me. Friendship has been one of the great things in my life, and I regard it not only as a source of joy but as a positive value.

Anyone who reduces this world of mutual unselfish contact to sexual desire simply has no idea what friendship is about; has never had a friend, and is probably incapable of having any. As for the Marauders themselves, anyone who has read JKR's wonderful account of what the friendship and acceptance of James, Sirius and Peter meant for him in his loneliness, and still can conceive of their relationship as in any way sexual, is as grossly insensitive a reader as anyone can conceive. It simply shows a brute failure to understand any of the higher functions of human nature; a failure which is first and foremost a failure of taste, a failure to understand and appreciate what is in front of their eyes. A good book is a shared experience, an experience in which the author involves the reader. A reader who claims to love what the author has done, and yet, in her own work (for, in this case, it is pretty nearly always a woman), distorts or perverts the very experience that the author provided - in this case, the splendour and refuge of friendship, the discovery of this wonderful world of equals in one's teens - is a person who is not only out of touch with the author, but with herself. She has read; she has had the experience; she has even enjoyed it. Yet, when it comes to elaborating the experience in her own words and adding to it, she does not elaborate, but perverts it. She has failed to appreciate her own experience; in effect, she is lying to herself about herself. The failure is a failure of the self, even before it becomes a failure in relating with others.

This is not only, of course, in evidence in the miserable and ever-growing breed of Marauder slash fics. Just as blatant is the sheer and incomprehensible refusal to come to terms with what the character of Draco Malfoy represents. Anyone with a sane appreciation of storytelling would think that, after the events of ORDER OF THE PHOENIX, it would be impossible to conceive of Draco as anything but a particularly loathsome villain. Every sentence Mrs.Rowling puts in his mouth deepens his moral abjection. He is not only a monster, but a recognizable monster: my God, how many Dracones there are in classrooms and offices, workplaces and clubs, families and regiments. And yet the tide of "redeemed Draco" fics keeps flowing relentlessly onwards, and hundreds of writers write as if it was simply natural that this loathsome toad of a boy, who has done enough to imprint himself indelibly in the memory of all his victims, will marry either Ginny or Hermione or have a homosexual relationship with Harry. (An admittedly brilliant variation, in the context of an excellent story, has him in bed with Neville Longbottom.) Not only is this perversion of the Rowling canon carried out routinely, but it is treated as obvious, as natural; most writers of Draco/Ginny and Draco/Hermione romance fics hardly feel the need to justify their stories.

Nonetheless, there is more to be said in favour of redeemed-Draco fics than of Marauders slash. For one thing, the idea of former enemies getting either physically or metaphorically in bed has an undeniable piquancy; and the better redeemed-Draco fics at least show him dealing one way or another with his abominable previous character.

But for Marauder slash there is no justification. It is simply the result of a brutal and narrow, old-maidish mentality, that cannot see a few men showing a pleasure for each other's company without imagining that sex must be at the heart of it. And as this kind of fic is written largely by women, one also suspects a sort of creeping suspicion and jealousy for an all-male circle of friends: the writer sees a group of men going out alone together - of course, they have to have a reason other than just pleasure in each other's company! Of course, sex is at the bottom of this. After all, we know that men are incapable of thinking of anything else.... Well, actually, experience of certain female writers on the FICTION ALLEY site has convinced me that it is a certain kind of woman who is incapable of thinking of anything except in sexual terms. I will say no more about this; and as this entry has already taken so much space, there will be no piece of writing other than this today.

Current Mood: aggravated
Current Music: Beethoven - Sonata op.106 - Maurizio Pollini

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From: (Anonymous)

I personally like Sirius/Remus a lot myself because they remind me of two guys (from a larger group of friends; five if you count me) that I knew in school. They were close friends (duh) in school, but didn't come out until during college, after most of us had split up because they went to a quasi-military school (good engineering program) and we went to more regular (liberal arts) schools. But they had had feelings for each other since they were sixteen (long time!). So, yeah, sex and attraction definitely aren't behind most male friendships, but sometimes it is there. Not very often though.

James/Sirius and James/Remus are real weird though. I mean, James married Lily, so (duh again) he likes girls. It's right there in the books. But it isn't the same with Remus and Sirius.

So I sort of see what you mean and sort of don't.

FYI - I'm only commenting because I miss my friends and thought you might profit by their story. Bye!

From:

midnightbex.livejournal.com

Usually I don't hop aboard the f_wank train, but in the case I fear I had to put my proverbial foot in it.

Now, having no background to your reading or slashing experience I'm afraid I can't bring specific pairings that you favor into this argument, but I hope you still hear me out.

Based on you logic, how could anyone pair Harry and Ron? Or Harry and anyone who's nice to him? Or Dean and Seamus? Ron and Hermione? Aren't their canon relationships all based on friendship? How is that so different from the MWPP era fiction?

I also think you have a misunderstanding of much of the MWPP fic. By your own admission you have never read nor 'touched' any MWPP fiction. How do you know the basis for it?

While admittedly there are those who only write PWP or fluff or smut in the era, that's not the basis for why people write these fics. They see this wonderful relationship between the four boys that is based on all of the higher human emotions that you so eloquently stated above. They see Sirius and James as the 'stars of their year' and their kindness in befriending two loners in their house. These people don't believe that their friendships are based on sex, they just see the possibility that this 'depiction of free, warm, luminous friendship' could breed another of the higher human emotions, namely love. How is that perverted or wrong?

I also have to raise a point about your dislike of Draco. He's admittedly a bastard in canon, but that's how Rowling writes all of her dark characters. She has a penchant for two dimensionalizing characters she doesn't like and discrediting their possibilities. Regardless to this fact, I still think he'd be a bastard, but thats not why I like him in fiction. There's only one simple reason I do: he has possibility. Canon!Draco has a whole side to him that simply never gets explored. There are so many possibilities and directions to take with his character. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of redeemed!Draco. I just feel that he has options Rowling won't take. As both a reader and a writer I couldn't possibly pass that up.

From:

fpb.livejournal.com

In other words, what you want to do is reverse what JKR has to say. This is not what I do with my fics. If you think you are wiser or cleverer than JKR, don't use her characters parasitically: write your own. Oh, but then you would have to look for an audience....

...from sleep and from damnation,/ Deliver us, good Lord!

An abominable genre

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