Hahaah I think... imagine feeling this way about like, *all* fics (ie, arguing with their meta/base assumptions... no matter what), and you have (I think) why it gives me the shudders to read [very nearly] all HP fic these days. Sort of like how when you're having serious issues in a marriage, everything becomes a reason to nag or argue, haha, and when you're just falling in love, even gross craziness is sort of ok 'cause isn't it just *cuter* that way? haha. I mention this because it's sort of like in medicine, you realize 'oh so this is how a healthy body works' when someone's system(s) breaks down? That's how it seems. Like, my whole 'system' broke down, which establishes the fact that we have to sort of do certain mental maneuvers while reading, esp. fanfic.
When I had a semi-healthy relationship with HP (and... when was that??! a mythical time indeed), I think I had these 'dead-breakers' that pretty narrowly defined, and so it was easy enough to avoid reading 'certain things', and then I just got so sensitized by reading a large enough quantities of fic with a wide enough range of things 'wrong' that I think it's like the very 'fanon'/canon overall 'verse' I saw in fanfic in general... shifted to the left. And after you go far enough left long enough, it's like you can never go back; like, you can't recover from something like... the way X-Files went wrong, say. Imagine if they knew they really messed up and got really great writers to fix it, except after that certain point, what's happened has happened, and there's no fixing it in the viewers' minds.
Anyway, so I think that's what happens to me if I read a series and it sours. At first I just feel a sort of mental disconnect and frustration because of the shifting ground and feeling like they've just got to be kidding, but eventually I allow them their 'canon' and it's me and not they that gets displaced from the 'Narrative'.
Anyway, I have a sensitivity to fics where I can tell an author has *any* serious agenda, whether I agree with it or not. Like, I have no beef with say, genius!Jim Kirk, but the more I see it, the more it annoys me. I think agreeing may just put off my irritation, but I really just can't stand propagandizing or things that are too ornate/too good to be true *unless* you can sell it and/or it's one of my beliefs (in which case I usually like it to be presented realistically but acknowledging it's unlikely but happens anyway). So you can't sell me on things like 'eternal victimhood', but you can sell me on say, Twue Wuv, so maybe it just depends. The true serious offenders (like the Snape Will Save Him people) are just wrong because they don't know crap about human nature, in my view, not because Snape Just Wouldn't. No one is The Answer to anyone's issues in that fashion, a point even JKR got about Snape & Lily (which is just sad, if JKR is more psychologically savvy than you).
Anyway, there's no way to make inherent bullshit really edible, in other words, regardless of character. Original fics where some woman rescues a man through Lurve are slightly more acceptable 'cause they're made within the romance genre conventions without pretense to cross-pollination, generally, so they're to be taken in the same stylized fashion as horror slash films. When you transplant Treacherous Passions to Harry/Snape, you're basically creating a monster. Kind of a fun monster (gotta love fanfic) but still........ Btw, not sure what my point is or was. Crazy premises are crazy??? Um.
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Date: 2010-03-11 04:56 am (UTC)When I had a semi-healthy relationship with HP (and... when was that??! a mythical time indeed), I think I had these 'dead-breakers' that pretty narrowly defined, and so it was easy enough to avoid reading 'certain things', and then I just got so sensitized by reading a large enough quantities of fic with a wide enough range of things 'wrong' that I think it's like the very 'fanon'/canon overall 'verse' I saw in fanfic in general... shifted to the left. And after you go far enough left long enough, it's like you can never go back; like, you can't recover from something like... the way X-Files went wrong, say. Imagine if they knew they really messed up and got really great writers to fix it, except after that certain point, what's happened has happened, and there's no fixing it in the viewers' minds.
Anyway, so I think that's what happens to me if I read a series and it sours. At first I just feel a sort of mental disconnect and frustration because of the shifting ground and feeling like they've just got to be kidding, but eventually I allow them their 'canon' and it's me and not they that gets displaced from the 'Narrative'.
Anyway, I have a sensitivity to fics where I can tell an author has *any* serious agenda, whether I agree with it or not. Like, I have no beef with say, genius!Jim Kirk, but the more I see it, the more it annoys me. I think agreeing may just put off my irritation, but I really just can't stand propagandizing or things that are too ornate/too good to be true *unless* you can sell it and/or it's one of my beliefs (in which case I usually like it to be presented realistically but acknowledging it's unlikely but happens anyway). So you can't sell me on things like 'eternal victimhood', but you can sell me on say, Twue Wuv, so maybe it just depends. The true serious offenders (like the Snape Will Save Him people) are just wrong because they don't know crap about human nature, in my view, not because Snape Just Wouldn't. No one is The Answer to anyone's issues in that fashion, a point even JKR got about Snape & Lily (which is just sad, if JKR is more psychologically savvy than you).
Anyway, there's no way to make inherent bullshit really edible, in other words, regardless of character. Original fics where some woman rescues a man through Lurve are slightly more acceptable 'cause they're made within the romance genre conventions without pretense to cross-pollination, generally, so they're to be taken in the same stylized fashion as horror slash films. When you transplant Treacherous Passions to Harry/Snape, you're basically creating a monster. Kind of a fun monster (gotta love fanfic) but still........ Btw, not sure what my point is or was. Crazy premises are crazy??? Um.