An abominable genre

[fpb]

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.

Comments

[falco-conlon.livejournal.com]

Ok first off, I commend you for stating how you feel in such a sensible and (semi) respectful way. Thank you for not saying "OMG merader slash is soooOOooOooOOOooOO gross!!!!!!11!!1oneone!!1!!!"

But (you saw it coming. You know it, I had but face) I really have to disagree. I do understand where you're coming from about the whole "reducing friendship to sexual desire" thing. But that is a bit of a generalization. I know for a fact that not all Marauder slash out there is just Sirius and James going "oh em gee you are so hawt lykwo lets screw." Most of what I have read is two of the characters realizing that maybe what they feel for each other is more than friendship. This is no more wrong than Harry and Hermione realizing the same thing. The two characters slashed may have sexual desire for each other but this in no way means they aren't friends anymore.

It seems like what you're saying is that because the two characters have had sex together they can't still have that same fantastic bond of friendship that you seem to love so much. Two people in love (or lust) can't be friends? When did this happen, and why didn't I get the memo?

I get that some of the fiction out there is purely for the sake of some english guy on english guy action but you are generalizing and frankly that pisses me off. Feel free to rant at me but please, let me keep my respect for you and respond intelligently if anything?

Love and Waffles
Falco Conlon

PS I agree about the redeeming draco thing. What a load of crap. The guy is evil, get over it.

PPS since when does a girl with a taste for hawt man six have a problem with all male groups of friends? Why can't she just like gay sex?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You have given yourself away when you used the expression "more than friendship". What an extraordinary idea: that a voluntary sharing of mind and destiny, that can be lifelong and that enlarges the mind and the soul of each of its members, is somehow "less than" a storm of sexual desire. Do at least use the expression "something else than", and you will not be suspect of doing exactly what I charged Marauder slash authors with - downgrading and insulting the emotion of friendship, which is one of the highest and noblest things in life.

This is a short answer because I do not have much time. Maybe I will give a more extensive one later. Meanwhile, thanks for treating me courteously in spite of the fact that we disagree so widely on such basic matters.

[sbbo.livejournal.com]

While I believe that the diction could have been better, the basic point is that there are stories where the mauraders have their friendship, and in addition to that friendship, they also feel love. They aren't quantifying the strength of the feelings, merely showing that there are multiple types that go into the relationship.

I think that your post as a whole had valid points that could have been expressed better, which would have decreased your anger spam a little bit. The one main argument I had was that you spoke too broadly while your few concession statements were very narrowly specific.

Also, you treat their friendship like it was some sort of holy foursome. To give JKR credit, she gave the boys a more rounded characterization. She actually purposefully showed that they weren't perfect. James and Sirius antagonized eachother into hassling other students. Sometimes they treated Peter like he should thank god they ever noticed him. That is how children and teenagers act. While I'm not saying that it had to happen, I can understand why some people would like to take this basis, especially since JKR has already made them into full-on characters, and portray them as sexually curious. For someone like Peter, who isn't use to having the attention, he would feel far more comfortable discovering how he interacts with other people sexually, in the security of frienship. That he would go to his friends for help, rather than making out with a random Hufflepuff under the bleachers, would be a testiment to their friendship.

I don't think it's very likely, but I am saying that I think people can make the argument, and as such, should be allowed to make it. At the same time, I do think that saying Draco is evil and will only ever be evil, is another such instance. He is 15, and he has spent his whole life with a megalomaniac genocidal father criticizing any statement that doesn't agree with his own views. Given that, there is the possiblity for him to move from his bastard book 5 personae, into 'redeemed draco.'

Again, I don't think it likely, but there are authors who make the case, and make it well. I have enjoyed hearing you make your case, and it was well done. I love thinking about new things. Also, a friend linked me, which is why you have no idea who I am or what I'm doing here. I wasn't even going to comment, given that you have had so much traffic from strangers, but here I am anyway.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The nice thing is that - cutting out and cutting out and cutting out the flamers - some decent people are turning up, writing in decent human tones. Would it be too much to ask you to write to me at my e-mail address, and we can continue this discussion without involving the kind of people who comment on the size and shape of my penis? And yes, there have been that kind of people. The thing is that, when I wrote this, I had never received so much as a single comment and I did not have any idea that anyone would even pay attention. Perhaps I should have expressed myself differently, but I am afraid that anything that touches on certain contemporary pieties is inevitably going, if certain people take hold of it, to produce flames.

[latxcvi.livejournal.com]

The thing is that, when I wrote this, I had never received so much as a single comment and I did not have any idea that anyone would even pay attention.

You posted it on the Internet, though. And while yes, this is your 'personal' space, it is not, in fact a 'private' space. It's understandable, to a degree, that you'd think to yourself, "Oh, it's my journal, I can say whatever I want" and of course, you *can* say whatever you want in your journal. But, by virtue of your journal being on the *Internet*, you're still saying whatever you want in a vast, *public* forum; you're still standing in the marketplace of ideas saying something to which other people are going to respond because other people are also in the marketplace to hear what you're saying. If you wanted to say this in the virtual, Internet equivalent of your living room, then you probably could (should) have locked the post so that only those you'd invited inside could see it. It's a lesson a lot of people, with the explosion of LJ, have had to learn (and some have learned it in a harder way than others): 'Personal' no longer automatically equals 'private'.

Perhaps I should have expressed myself differently, but I am afraid that anything that touches on certain contemporary pieties is inevitably going, if certain people take hold of it, to produce flames.

Yes and no. It's true that some people are simply jack-asses; they're going to be unpleasant and descend to ad hominem attacks regardless of the topic because that's merely how they are. However. Lots of other people are going to expect a person making somewhat controversial statements in a public space to be ready, willing and able to defend those statements. Honestly, there is quite a bit in your original post that can be criticized. The logic, for example, behind your distinguishing of a "gay Harry" from other people writing what, for all intents and purposes, are "gay Marauders" is somewhat specious, particularly when the basis of your criticism of Marauders slash is that it messes with Rowlings' canonical portrayal of their friendship. Carrying the logic of your argument to its natural conclusion dictates that gay Harry also should not be possible, as many of the other canon characters with whom Harry could possibly be slashed - Ron, Hagrid, Sirius, Neville, to name but a few - are people who are also his friends. It's reasonable for someone to expect you to defend the logic of your argument - as well as the basis by which you're drawing a distinction between slashing Harry and slashing the Marauders - because you've put the argument out there where other people can see and consider it. I don't think you should be personally insulted for holding this or any other opinion, but I absolutely think you can, and should, be expected to defend it when you put it out there for other people to see.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

If you had read further down the thread, you would notice that I have in fact slashed Harry with a canonic character - Moody. And I repeat, you have no idea of the viciousness and stupidity of the stuff I deleted. As for my views about JKR characters, I am thinking of writing another essay; it gets a bit stupid to say things by bits and bobs in response to mostly hostile and frequently uncomprehending posters.

[falco-conlon.livejournal.com]

I do see your point and I agree. And maybe I should use the term "something else than" but the point I was trying to make was that you are generalizing. Most of the Marauder slash I have read isn't just plain smut, it's about two of the characters being in love.

I guess you have just been looking in all the wrong place.

PS props for answering. To be honest I wasn't expecting anything more than what one usually gets from something they found on Fandom Wank.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Had I not had a crash course in what passes for manners in this hunting ground of the prejudiced, ignorant and stupid, I would be rather surprised at your surprise that I answered you. Considering the filth I have had to deal with in the last 48 hours, however, I see your point. As far as I am concerned, the matter is simple: you be nice to me, I be nice to you. You be nasty to me, I either delete you or flame you or both. Still, our views remain too distant to allow a debate, especially within the confines of a thread such as this.

[(Anonymous)]

The term "more than friendship" generally implies emotions in addition to friendship, not emotions theoretically "better" than friendship.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

If you say so. That is not how I would use it in my prose. If I read that "in all these things we are more than conquerors", I do not mean that "we are something else BESIDES conquerors;" I mean that "we are SOMETHING BETTER THAN conquerors." If I say "she is more than a friend," I do not mean "she is something else BESIDES a friend, I mean "she is something MORE IMPORTANT THAN a friend." And I think that if you look for other authorities, you will find more that agree with my interpretation than with yours.