Rambly Rambly Rambly

[erastes]

I'm not decided what to do about The Latest Wank.  I'm already not paying for my accounts - gawd knows what I'll do when mine runs out and I have to revert to 9 icons.  I'm uncomfortable staying here even with a free account, but hells bells I'm not here for the writely promotion , I'm here to read my friends list. I LIKE my friends list and if everyone runs in different directions I'll really feel like an era has ended. I may start using my blogspot as that seems to be where more writers/agents/publishers hang out but there's no way I can see everyone on one page - I suppose the alternative is having everyone on RSS feeds which isn't a great solution. Gah. 

All I know is that for the last year things have been getting worse and worse, and it's not just 6A. I feel sorry for anyone coming into Potterdom at this juncture.

 I've just seen that people on JF have been wanking over a vaguely amusing fic which purports that Sirius and Remus are still gay even though JKR has written them as not being so.  I can't see why the fic was so offensive and got wanked over. No more offensive that I insist that the real love of Lucius' life is Severus Snape and not Narcissa.  Even though his marriage works and he loves her - but  in a different way.

I can understand why some people think that Love can only be for ONE person, but in reality it just ain't so.  I'm writing a novel about a married man, been married for about 10 years and he's not particularly happy but then none of his friends are either, really.  It's what married life is like.  Kids, Tupperware parties, work, work, work, takes over from the passion and there wasn't much of that but it's not been a bad marriage.  They are friends, were friends before they married.  Just because a person's life explodes when he meets someone else, doesn't mean that he doesn't stop loving the original person - no matter how much the OMG UNFAITHFUL IS EVOL brigade like to think it does. 

But that's not how I see this scenario with Remus and Sirius, anyway.  Remus should not have married Tonks.  He was unhappy right from the start, he was unhappy BEFORE he married her - and who's to say or not say what that unhappiness stemmed from?  Yes, he was angsting about the werewolf stuff, and he was right to do so, werewolf genetics are a bit vague, there's all sorts of jokes about them having puppies, and none of them knew what the child would inherit from the parents.   I think he says something in HBP that no-one knows what the effects of the werewolf bites and scratches he got from a non-transformed Greyback would affect Bill.  This sounds to me insane short sightedness, with a Werewolf Containment Unit you really think someone would have been researching these things, wouldn't you?  But noooooooooooo. Wizards don't do that sort of sensible stuff do they?  (well yes, they do, actually - Snape was a researcher, there must have been someone researching werewolves somewhere, surely? - I was very happy that in my dystopian novella Shoulders of Gods that the Muggles were researching werewolves very thoroughly - Poor Remus.

Getting married in secret wasn't a great idea - started things off on the wrong foot, and it's implied that the Ministry might be after them for having got married at all. Perhaps they wanted to do tests, to keep an eye on Tonks until the child was born. Seems to me that it was a very rare event, a werewolf marrying in the first place, but conceiving?  Horror!  I can't see that a female werewolf could EVER conceive, but a man obviously can.  And Remus would - of course - be frantic that he'd made a horrible mistake to allow Tonks get pregant - the curse that has ruined his own life passed on to a beloved child?  The pre-birth guilt must have been dreadful. How could he pass on the life that he's led - no job, no hope - to his son - every parent wants better things for their kids after all.

Anyhoo. Yes - Remus was thrilled to bits to find Tonks was pregnant - understandable - completely. But being thrilled to become a father and having your marriage turn around is two different reasons.  Having a child doesn't save your marriage, and I don't think that Teddy would have saved that marriage, personally.  I've seen far far too many marriages where my friends (often but not solely the woman of the pair) are convinced that "once the child comes it'll be different, it will."

And it is - the emphasis is taken away from the mirror reflection of the mother/father - there's someone else to concentrate on, and any problems they've been experiencing are glossed over. It's easy for both partners to think that the problems have gone away.  I hate to say it, but we all know that emotions (negative emotions) can affect the strength of the magic, and I hope that Remus and Tonks didn't die because their marriage was in trouble and they both weren't on top of their game. Tonks couldn't have fought her way out of a paper bag in HBP.

As for Sirius?  The Seventies weren't an easy time to be gay in London, despite how many fanfics there are of leather bars and young nubile men in tight leather trousers and eyeliner. Yes, there were places to go - but HEAVEN was three years off and gays were still beaten up in the streets. Easier to dress as a punk and then you could get away with the tight leather trousers and the eyeliner.  Not outwardly gay - but "a follower of Adam Ant, mum."  I can't see any reason why Sirius' pictures of half naked girls on his wall weren't a smokescreen.  In the same way I had a layer of underwear over my cigarette holder and lighter, and I kept my Playgirl in my riding boots whilst having pictures of show jumpers on my walls.

I'm fully a believer that you can love more than one person - and some people on my flist who are in polygamous relationships prove that to me daily - and that as Heinlein says the more you love you more you CAN love.  I just don't think - and this is purely subjective - so don't scream that I'm a mysogynist, because like - that would be dumb - that Remus loved Tonks as much as she loved him.  I'm not saying he didn't love her - he may have done, but not enough. And he knew it almost straight away.

Didn't mean he didn't love Sirius too.

And yes, Lucius does love Narcissa. He didn't meet her until quite soon before their wedding (by that time it was all arranged) and he was very opposed to it ("this is the 20th century, Pater.") and Abraxas was very opposed to Lucius' seemingly scandalous liaison with a half-blood teenager and his subsequent refusal to give him up, even after his marriage and their marriage was very rocky for a few years.  But notwithstanding Draco's birth (which taught Lucius more about love than he'd ever known before) he grew to respect Narcissa - for her strength, for her poise, for her Slytherin willow-like flexibility, and eventually his feelings turned to love.  Not "in love", but something probably more real, no matter what he tells me. *G*

Comments

[rmanley.livejournal.com]

Blogspot would be my preferred blog, too, as I'm not that keen on GJ. As far as an flist goes, I think you can link to different blogs via your link list. But, yeah, you still don't have a friends page and would have to go to those links to read other people's blogs.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I guess I'll just have to do it. No reason why I can't still read my flist over on LJ and continue to blog on blogspot. Not many people read me these days anyway, I think.

[rmanley.livejournal.com]

Gimme your blogspot URL, so I can link with you there. :) There's a quietness over at blogspot that I like, too, even if it means not having a friends page. When I experimented with my first blog over there, I really felt more freedom in expressing myself, knowing that I don't have a real audience. Then again, that's my paranoia that's speaking.

[paintedponyxox.livejournal.com]

Hm, I can't understand why people would get so worked up about a fic like that either. As much as I can't manage to buy into your "personal canon", I think this kind of explanation in a fic would make it so much more believable than the kind of fic written in complete disregard for obvious canon that solves the problem of characters already being in other relationships with radical changes in the characters' attitudes and the author's blatant character hate showing through. I think if you're writing a fic with a ship like Lucius/Severus that would seem to have no evidence in support of it in canon, you have to at least start with things that are true to give it some base in believability and work around that. That's how I've always prefered fic to be, anyway. A writer shouldn't just take for granted that I already like the characters they're shipping together - they need to make an effort to make me really believe Will could choose Jack over Elizabeth or whatever.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

That's exactly how I liked to work, I take the established facts and then work around them. There are very many hints to Snucius in the text (accidental, I know) and the final and pinnacle of them was when Snape sat next to Lucius and got a pat on the back in DH. I don't much like ships that patently don't exist like Harry/Hermione, but then again, I would never wank over people having that as a ship - I've never understood anyone who does that kind of thing

[slashpine.livejournal.com]

Yeah, a pointless wank. "Ships are love," they say. And they are: there's no accounting for what ship somebody sees in the text. The textual support may seem slight to nonexistent but let's face it, with a canon whose author denies all the slashy subtext already in it, anything is plausible!

I agree with your seeing Remus/Tonks as incredibly complex! Not just b/c of the lycanthropy, though that would put unbelievable guilt/longing/fear/compensation into Remus' relationships. Especially for Remus, conscience-stricken, ethical, over-thinker that he is :-) There's also Tonks' metamorphism and being half a Black, and half-blood ... she's a rather flat character when not thrown in (so to speak) for slapstick humor. But logically, there would be enormous issues for her, as well.

What I've seen in a few too many marriages where the spouses are friendly but not (or no longer) in love, and have a child, is another thing too: Once the child is there for them to "display" their love and caring for (quite genuinely, too), that can free them to be open about no longer having love for their spouse. Their love of child keeps them from feeling, or appearing, to be "the badguy" and they can go ahead and have a nasty divorce.

Hey, I've always loved your Snucius -- it's definitive. I thought of YOU when I read that page in DH :-) But where did Narcissa Black grow up, if Lucius hadn't ever met her??

[slashpine.livejournal.com]

P.S. I'm going to try to settle at IJ, even though a lot of my flist seem to prefer GJ. GJ doesn't seem to run as well as IJ, and I'm on JF now but they're several kinds of >meh<. I'll just keep reading my LJ flist while I wait for fandom to reconfigure, which it's already done N times already.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I consider that Narcissa was either home-schooled or was sent to Beauxbatons. Andromeda's behaviour at school made this choice for her parents. She (like Princess Diana for Charles) was probably "set aside" for Lucius at a very early age, and Lucius had always known he had to marry her, which didn't make him any happier about it, he resented her for a long time. Of course, Severus and Narcissa had real problems with THEIR relationship - which made "Spinners' End" all teh more poignant for me, if you read it through my eyes. Narcissa's behaviour seems all the more desperate. She even appeals to Severus THROUGH Lucius and that just made me squee like a mad thing.

[slashpine.livejournal.com]

Oh, that makes sense! (doh) Narcissa is one of my favorite characters. I can totally see her home-schooled, or in France :-) Flirting with wealthy industrialists and attending fashion shows ...

Severus/Lucius/Narcissa is a believable and power-packed dynamic. Must have been hard on Draco to grow up with, or "match", actually. I think it's indicative that the Epilogue doesn't say who he married; how will he equal any of these three?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Luckily jKR hasn't ruined my backstory for me, which makes me very happy. I haven't had the heart to write Lucius' reaction to the news that Snape is dead yet. I'm trying to think of some way that it's a set up between them, which makes sense and is plausible.

I think (sadly) that Draco will always be a disspointment to his parents, never quite the golden boy they wanted him to be. They had a daughter one year after the war so they have great hopes of her.

*G*

[slashpine.livejournal.com]

Of course it's a set-up. Snape would never be killed by a snake he's seen in action for years. He's way too paranoid and prepared; the quintessential Slytherin. And thus, also, he's had multiple back-up plans for a long time --certainly since discovering what Dumbledore planned for him and for Harry!-- and those plans, of course, all land him in the clover.

Because he's a Slytherin, and they're smaaaart. I'd think Lucius will know exactly where to find Sev, too.

A daughter! Awwww. Just so they don't name her Scorpia ....

[gunderpants.livejournal.com]

The reason people wanked about the fic was

a) because bisexuality totes does not exist, obviously,
b) creepy women-hating messages were thrown right in there - because obviously women are too stupid and emotional and objectified to be loved, and
c) it was just really fucking bad issue!fic.

I'm sure people could write a fucking funny, IC fic where Remus and Sirius get back together in the afterlife without bashing women or certain characters. This fic just wasn't it.

Remus is a grown man. If he's too much of a pussy-willow to get hitched, then he should have backed the fuck out. The whole relationship was dreadful, but it's too fucking bad for him if he's too much of a passive-aggressive idiot to own up to his actions and either get a divorce or shell out a couple of bucks for a pack of frangers at a petrol station.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

But sadly, men do that thing. I've known men who absolutely didn't want to go through with it, but the whole juggernaught is in position and they were too chicken to do anything about it. Same with women too obviously - slightly more so, once the dress has been bought and the guests invited.

But then, I have some really fucked up friends. Remus has nothing on them. *G*

[gunderpants.livejournal.com]

I might say before I proceed: I think Lucius and Narcissa were probably one of only two marriages in the series that I actually thought was handled well AND a good match. Actually, the whole Malfoy family just endeared themselves to me totally in DH.

I know men do it, but it's no less fucking irresponsible and thoughtless. I have sympathy for men who feel societal pressure to be married and straight, but that said it does take courage and balls to do the right thing and either get a divorce or not get married in the first place. But I suppose it's a moot point, given that the Remus and Sirius in the fic in question don't even act like people, much less males of any specific sexual orientation.

[copperbeech.livejournal.com]

I share your concerns. I had been renewing all of my LJness for a year at a time, and the best solution I could come up with was a 6 month renewal this time, until I could get more perspective and learn what everyone else is going to do. Damn. That was all one sentence. I, too, think this moralizing nature is going to seep into other similar venues. Until fandoms pay for their own space what's happening here is just going to creep on. I'd say I'm here half for fandom and half for the ease of being able to post once and connect with about 30 people that I otherwise wouldn't get to interact with very often at all. They aren't connected to fandom, so they aren't going to just plod along behind me and my pr0n. :|

What you said about R/S. The whole R/T thing was not well-done, but aside from that... R/S feel canon. No matter what air time R/T got... they didn't feel canon. Regardless, some of us do love more than one at a time. Thank the gods for it, too.

Hope you are well!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

It makes me all so mad. Yes the server is in the USA but sheesh, is my looking at pictures of a seemingly 16 year old Harry being shagged by Lucius Malfoy so very evil? Not illegal here! It makes me want to preface every post with I LIKE LOOKING AT 16 YEAR OLD FICTIONAL BOYS HAVING SEX WITH EACH OTHER.

Evil evil erastes. Waits for strikethrough.

I agree - and that's what fandom is all ABOUT after all (or it was for me) taking the little clues that the author left (in this case accidentally it turns out) and making them work for your own fevered imagination. And if Remus was unhappy after his marriage, I think it's perfectly logical to put my own spin on it. Yes, it doesn't make Remus a perfect man, but show me a perfect man and I'll fall about laughing with your delusions.