The Ramble Queen_of_Snapes asked for

[therealsnape]

In the 24-question meme, queen_of_snapes chose: just ramble on on something related to fandom - go, go, go. I asked for a bit of time to sort out my thoughts, and she must have despaired of ever getting an answer.

But here I turn up, like a bad Knut, with a not so little ramble. But then, she knows I'm a waffler.



One of the things in fandom that sometimes manage to annoy me a little is the focus on pairings and sex-scenes. There are a great many fandoms in which there might be excellent stories, if only one wouldn't want to come up with a pairing.

I should begin by explaining my ideas of a good fanfiction story. These ideas are strictly my personal opinion; many excellent writers will disagree completely, of course. It's just about what I like to write and read - a personal opinion, nothing more.

I love canon-compliantness - to a degree. I'm not a fan of the kind of stories that JKR once so aptly described as tales beginning with, "Hi, I'm Lily Evans, and you all thought I was dead - but I'm not!" On the other hand, I can live with ignoring the epilogue, since that's so clearly not a part of the 7-year story, but an attempt to rule from beyond the Veil. As to Pottermore and interview canon, I'm firmly of the If you think it's important, write another book school of thought.

But other than that, I like my stories to be possible and believable within the framework of the original story. Which is why I love the Potter-fandom so much: there's this whole set of fascinating older characters, and since the books are told strictly from Harry's point of view, we know little or nothing about their private lives and private interactions. There are a few, small glimpses: Molly and Tonks having a woman-to-woman talk; Minerva who has known Augusta at school; Griselda who is such a great friend of Augusta.

For the others, we are free to make up their relationships as we see fit. But in quite a few other fandoms, in my opinion, the need for pairings leads to 'we must have a pairing; so we'll bed the main characters, regardless of the personal inclination of the character or the intention of the writer'.

And when I say 'intention of the writer' I don't mean: did the writer plan a sex-life for their characters. JKR mostly didn't where her older characters are concerned. It doesn't stop me from writing those relationships, based on what I mentioned above. What I do mean is: given the way the relationship is described in the books, is there any likelyhood that these two might fall in love? This is why I will never write Sybill/Minerva. The books make it perfectly clear that Minerva doesn't even like her - I can't see these two fall in love based on what we know from canon.

Severus/Minerva? Yes. Harry sees the bickering - that may well be UST. Or RST. He just doesn't realise it. What we know from canon doesn't completely preclude the relationship in my eyes.

When it comes to this stress on pairings I mentioned, Downton Abbey, for me, is a case in point. Quite often the discussion isn't 'which stories are worth telling', but 'whom can we pair the character with'. And the downside of Downton as a fandom is that it's rather hard to find pairings other than the canon ones. There's the three daughters of the house, who are at an age in which people usually look for life partners, and sure enough they find one. But those stories are told on screen, and while one may fill in missing moments, and write excellent stories with those moments, one can't change much about the course of things. At least, I, since I prefer to write canon-compliant, couldn't.

And then there's the Downton singletons, but it's not easy to find someone with whom one might pair them realistically.

Carson/Mrs Hughes, yes. I can see how that might work very well.

But O'Brien? Mrs Hughes, possibly, in terms of age and opportunity. Especially since Mrs is a job-related courtesy title - you don't have to explain away a heterosexual backstory and she does refuse the man who proposes. But the downside is, never in the series do I get the impression that Mrs Hughes even likes O'Brien, leave alone that she might fall for her. And on quite a few occasions there seems to be active dislike on Hughes's side.

Or Isobel/Violet? Well, that would take some doing on both sides. Mind, a good author might write a convincing story. But what I'd be really interested in is their back stories. As gen fic. And O'Brien's inner life. Notably how she deals with what she did to Cora, and how it changes her. Or a fic exploring the friendship between O'Brien and Thomas; they are introduced as firm allies from the start, but what makes them so?

Mind, I don't mean to say none of the Downton characters should have a sex-life. But it might have to involve OC's. And for those who don't like to write OC's, there might be very interesting stories if one lets go of the idea of pairing the characters up.

The same goes for the Inspector Lewis series. There's a strong tendency to pair him with Hathaway. But while a good writer could convince me that Hathaway might be in love with (or have a crush on) Lewis, I can't see it the other way around, because we know too much about Lewis's inclinations. Everything we've ever learned about him, both in this series and in Morse, points to the fact that he's heterosexual and self-identifies as such. Pairing him with Hathaway would make him OOC to me.

There are countless other examples. Wooster/Jeeves stories. P.G. Wodehouse wrote countless Wooster & Jeeves stories, but I very much doubt that either of these two characters would truly prefer the other over all other men (and, in Wooster's case, all other women). Of course, if a writer wants to write m/m within the Jeeves stories, theirs are the first two names that spring to mind. (Although I'd find Jeeves/Roderick Glossop much more likely, and doable within canon.) But Jeeves/Wooster feels to me as a 'we must have a pairing; so we'll bed the main characters' case.

So, yes, this tendency to run an online dating agency is one thing I regret. The other thing is the strong focus on the explicit sex scene. Mind, it can be beautifully done; it can be a vital scene in a story; there are all sorts of excellent reasons for writing sex scenes.

But occasionally the reason seems to be 'must have sex scene'. To the point where people almost apologise if their sign up contains a request for maximum PG-13. Or they very carefully hint that 'it would be perfectly all right to fade out at the sex scene'.

In fact, quite a few sex-scenes in my stories were added because the fest had a mandatory rating (my stories for femmeslash day, Yule Balls, and femmefest notably). I didn't enjoy writing those scenes, and I don't think they add all that much to the stories. These days I carefully limit myself to fests where I can do as I see fit. Sometimes that's explicit sex, when the story asks for it, and sometimes it's not. And when the story asks for it, I suddenly find it the greatest possible fun to write.

Well, that was my not so little ramble.

Comments

[twisted-twister.livejournal.com]

Better late than never...

I think you raised here very important and valid points and I'm very happy that you posted this 'ramble'. Seeing all the comments only makes this an awesome discussion; thank you for that. This is one of the things I love most about fandom and about this group of amazingly smart authors I am lucky to follow.

I totally agree with you on the 'must-have-sex' issue; I remember looking at the profile of fests and communities that any of you guys recced and promoted, thinking again and again: this is not for me; they want sex and I can't write that. This is one of the reasons I love Hoggywarty so much - thank you for creating this fest with gen writers in mind; knowing that gen option is not only there but also encouraged, makes writing so much easier and encourages the insecure (i.e. me)!!! And of course, the new addition to the calendar, HP friendship, also helps a lot.

Re canon complicity: I think most of us here are with you on this, and we differ only on what we define non canon moments/situations. [I know you said it yourself and so did others, but let me give my own way of reading the canon]

For me, for example, MM/SS (or SS/anyone) is non canon compliant not because (only yesterday I managed to put my finger on it) the age gap or the rival houses and different backgrounds, but because for me, if I read the canon literaly, he stayed loyal to Lily until he died, and my head canon can't see him looking/touching onother (male or female). But as I was trying to crystalise those thoughts so I can voice them here, I discussed them with Duel, who made just as valid point that Snape's loyalty, to her, is posession more than anything else, and therefore can not contradict any relationship - love or otherwise (sorry, Duel, if I misquote you here). I still stick to my own interpretation, because of Dumby's speech about love and all, but discussing this with Duel made me see how different people, who both place canon above all, and who read the same canon, see canon itself differently. Since my reading of the canon puts Snape's love until death to Lily and his murder by the snake as focal points and essential plot devices for the whole series, I personally can't see how he survives in so many fics, and happily shags (and even become domesticated) in others. What isn't spelled out in canon, like Poppy's private life for example, is fair game. But this, spelled out by JKR as the highlight of the seventh book? Can't pass on that one.

As a side note, let me repeat something that I think was said, not necessarily in those words, somewhere above me here. No matter how my personal canon reading is, as long as the characters behave in a believable way and the situation can fit into the universe with reasonong and creative thought, I think I'll enjoy any fic. Because canon is very important to me, but excellent writing - like all of the people who commented here do an a festly basis - is the key to enjoying a fic.

Thanks again for this interesting discussion.

[dueltastic (from livejournal.com)]

Duel, who made just as valid point that Snape's loyalty, to her, is posession more than anything else, and therefore can not contradict any relationship - love or otherwise (sorry, Duel, if I misquote you here)

It's close enough. :) That's sure part of it: I think he's desperate to hang onto her even as he's leaving her behind himself in many ways, because she's the only good thing he's ever had in his life - that makes her awfully precious to keep, even if it's obvious to everyone else that the friendship is realistically falling apart. I do believe he loves her. I don't think it's a simple romantic love, let alone a lifelong exclusive-of-all-others romantic love - first, he's too damaged a kid to understand love well, and second, the role she has in his life is too much the savior of the small innocent child he was, and she was lost to him when he lost his innocence, so I don't think she represents an adult love. (She's almost literally the symbol of his childhood innocence, really. Even her name; lilies generally symbolize innocence.) He continues to need her his entire life, because she's the only person who cared for him and made him truly, innocently happy, and the only person he was ever a good person with - what she represents, his lost innocence, is too critical to his redemption, too critical to the man he's trying to be, for him to ever treat her as unimportant.

I also think that as a teenager, he probably believed it was (or wanted it to be) romantic love, because it was a way to hold onto Lily forever. From his life choices, it's pretty clear he never put serious thought into a long-term relationship with her, let alone marrying Lily and having kids; that's just not compatible with what he was doing with himself. He never seems to have come onto her or asked her out. It seems like he needed her possessively far more than he was attracted to her. But when he was 15, he just couldn't get enough of her in his life to make him feel loved and good, and that would have been a way to get more of her to himself. He's a needy guy. :)

Fundamentally, though, even if I thought it was primarily and solely a romance - and this is where I disagree significantly with JKR, given her preferred backstory for Dumbles, Snape, and McG - I don't believe in The One True Love, the one you pine for the rest of your life. (In fact, I think it's antithetical to a lot of what Dumbledore wanted to teach about love, which is that love is not a rarity, something that's gone if you miss out on it, but that connecting with and caring for people is what we as healthy human beings do. So I think JKR contradicts her own message there.) Snape may not be the world's healthiest human being, but he does belatedly grow up and want to rescue people rather than hurt them, and likewise I think he becomes capable of connecting and caring for people like a slightly less damaged person, at least. He may always have too much needy-child inside him to ever really love healthily, but I think that's part of why he hangs onto Lily after all these years - it's belated, but he can love selflessly and be that less damaged man that he should have been, and it's not necessarily about romance at all. It's about what's left of his innocence, and his ability to love. (And less abstractly, I think losing someone you love doesn't mean you don't acquire fuckbuddies, friends with benefits, people you're attracted to and fond of, or maybe grow to love someone else, too. People who lose someone they love continue to have human relationships, sexual needs, and even emotional needs that they fill with other human beings.)

And that is my tl;dr about Snape and Lily. :)

[dueltastic (from livejournal.com)]

In fact, the more I think about your phrasing of it, the more I think that, in his teenage years, it was more purely possession than it was for the child or the grown man. The fact that he went to Voldemort to have her spared when James and Harry were killed, and was still willing to trade them for her when he went to Dumbledore, and thought that'd all work out for him... that's very purely possession of an object by that point, she's thoroughly objectified in his head. The child loved her, the grown man loved her, but 15-21-year-old Snape wasn't capable of it, he did just want to possess her. She became the tool that Dumbledore was able to use to teach him that once, as a young child, Snape had been capable of much more humanity, in part because it was so clear that something had gone very wrong in the way he cared for her.

[dueltastic (from livejournal.com)]

And back to the meat of your comment:

different people, who both place canon above all, and who read the same canon, see canon itself differently

and

as long as the characters behave in a believable way and the situation can fit into the universe with reasonong and creative thought, I think I'll enjoy any fic

Those are really the key points, I think. Very few people are going to interpret canon identically, but the fic will still largely work if the reasoning and the fic seem well-constructed, even if it's not a view of canon that's necessarily mine. One can suspend disbelief for the length of a fic, and take on an interpretation of canon one ordinarily wouldn't. (Heck, sometimes that's an interesting challenge to do while writing.)

[therealsnape.livejournal.com]

This is so absolutely true. For instance, while I don't see canon in such a way that I think Snape/McGonagall pregnancy fic believable, I could, for the duration of your story, suspend disbelief and read it with immense pleasure. It worked for me during reading.

[dueltastic (from livejournal.com)]

Oh dear, the Highly Embarrassing Epic... yes, it is sort of the epitome of a canonically difficult event taken on for the challenge of writing it. :) But I think that, as a premise, it works much better when you specifically address the implications of canon and characterization in the story, rather than dodge them, and that was sort of what I set out to prove.

[therealsnape.livejournal.com]

As a side note, let me repeat something that I think was said, not necessarily in those words, somewhere above me here. No matter how my personal canon reading is, as long as the characters behave in a believable way and the situation can fit into the universe with reasonong and creative thought, I think I'll enjoy any fic. Because canon is very important to me, but excellent writing - like all of the people who commented here do an a festly basis - is the key to enjoying a fic.

Great point - in fact, I just used it in a comment on a story I'm betaing right now. Thank you for making it!