An abominable genre
Jul. 19th, 2004 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbI 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-22 06:26 am (UTC)Your remarks on my style come close to being anti-intellectual. You criticize me for "obscure" sources (such as St.Augustine, hey!) and - what a terrible sin! - for referring to things I had said elsewhere (that, in English, is what your "vainglorious displays of previously-noted garrulousness" amount to). In other words, I should not assume that anything I have said before had been worth saying (which assumes, from your part, that I speak only nonsense), and I should come down to the level of whoever takes it on him/herself to write to me, even if said level is a moron's.
Actually, I have done too much of that. In the last three days, I have been called upon to answer getting on for a hundred comments by complete strangers, most of them hostile and most of them unmannerly. My temper is naturally short, and one of the reasons why I delete people is instead of answering them in their own terms. I admit that I should not have deleted yours (though I knew perfectly well that you would do exactly what you did - promptly go and post it on a backstabbers' thread somewhere), but it was something like eleven at night where I live, and I was tired. Incidentally, if you are so tender of your sensitivities that a mere remark about your age sets you off, how do you justify such prose as "You, my dear Fabio, are full of it..." [yes, I do know what "it" is] "...get your head out of your ass, read "The Elements of Style", and get a clue"?
I write the way I want. Nobody is paying me to do this, and I do it because I like it. If you have an objection don't read it. If you want me to change my style, employ me, pay me, and become my editor, and I will follow your views. For as long as I am a free agent, I will do what I like - and invite you to practice what you preach in terms of withdrawing your head from your lower parts.
What really takes the cake is simply this: that, having refused to use the no-comments facility as I easily could have, I get blamed for dealing with my own letters page as I see fit. I may do it right or I may do it wrong, but you have no claim on my time and patience, and you should be grateful that this "troll" has consistently rejected the suggestion that has been made to me, so far, at least five times, and simply closed this page to further discussion.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-22 09:29 am (UTC)Did I ever tell you not to respond? I know perfectly well that this is your lj and you can do as you please. I was merely informing you that I see through what you're doing.
. If you had bothered to look at the thread, you would notice that I have allowed some thirty comments to stand, practically every one of which disagrees with me.
Yes, after attempting to show them and the world what idiots they are for disagreeing.
If you have an objection don't read it.
Oh, believe me - I stopped.
Also - stop flattering yourself. It takes more than remarks about my age (I'm 20, by the way.) from someone like you to truly set me off. I wasn't all that mad with that post. Like I said before, I was merely informing you that I see what you are trying to do.
Besides - let me reiterate that *you* started the mudslinging, in this instance at the very least. You might want to stop getting so indignant when you get what you give.
As for screencaps - People save them because your hijinks are actually quite amusing. The crowd over at fandom_wank has been having a hell of a lot of laughs over this post. No more. No less. *shrugs*
Plus, I said "semi-obscure". Not "obscure." As in - not quite as widely-read as Shakespeare, but not almost unknown. There *is* a difference. You may want to re-read what I wrote.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-22 09:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-23 02:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-23 03:23 pm (UTC)she will promptly post it on a backstabber thread somewhere as evidence of my inevitable depravity
I'd be willing to bet that almost everyone has moved on, actually. This post was a "Flavor of the Day" sort of thing, but right now, lots of people at f_w have other wank to laugh at. Fandom_Scruples and other fandom hijinks are far funnier at the moment. I only dropped by now because I noticed yet another notification of a reply from you in my inbox, and was curious to see what insults you'd have for me this time around.
So, you'll likely be left in peace. Or, at the very least, you won't be bothered as much.
Unless, of course, another wankstorm like this one happens. That's the nature of Fandom_Wank. *shrugs* So much wank, so little time...
You call it amusement
Date: 2004-08-23 03:26 pm (UTC)Re: You call it amusement
Date: 2004-08-23 03:40 pm (UTC)Goodbye, my dear Fabio.