What are your H/D squicks?
Jun. 4th, 2008 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lomonaaerenI'm talking about squicks specific to Harry/Draco fic here (like a certain type of characterization), rather than to squicks that could apply across the board (like bad grammar or spelling).
1) Reading a fic in which the author portrays "bottom" as meaning "weak." Just ugh. So the minute Harry and Draco get into bed, even if the one bottoming has been strong, argumentative, complex, and equal to the other up until that point, now he must start crying and being scared of penetration and doing whatever the one topping tells him to do even if he's uncomfortable with it? I know there's a power dynamics to sexual relationships, but stripping it down to power and only power bores and disgustes me. In extreme cases where the one on the bottom is also very feminized, I think there's more than a hint of misogyny. Women can never be powerful unless they're the ones penetrating men? The penis is almighty? Please.
I don't mind stories where, say, Draco finds more pleasure in bottoming, or where Harry or Draco has a psychological quirk that inclines them to one or the other. Even there, though, I want it to fit in with previously established characterization. If Harry and Draco are perfect equals out of the bedroom and then suddenly have a D/s relationship inside it with no prior hint of that, simply because the author assumes the bottom is less powerful and under the control of the top, I'm clicking the back button.
2) This one is more nebulous. I can't really call it "one flawed character, one perfect character" because I've seen stories where both Harry and Draco were flawed that still hit this squick for me. Maybe I'll call it "one character hopelessly mistaken, the other always right." In any case, what happens is that the author sets one character on a pedestal and makes the other one into a hopeless mess as he chases the idolized one, dragging him relentlessly through past mistakes, making him apologize for the most minor things, cursing him with awkwardness at tasks he can do perfectly well, and treating mistakes as deadly and unforgivable until he's groveled and pleaded. It seems to happen more often that Draco is the perfect one, and Harry is the one who has to do something to "deserve" him, but I suspect that's not true and it's simply that I've run into more stories that do it; I've seen it the other way around, too, and it squicks me just as hard. Now, in canon they've both made mistakes, but saying that Harry must apologize and grovel and never be good enough for the author's perfect, beautiful, snarky, witty Draco because he used Sectumsempra on him, while it's just fine that Draco almost killed Harry's best friend (if you want to limit it to events in the same book), strikes me as deeply silly. The excuse I've seen offered is "Well, Draco didn't mean to kill Ron, he was trying to kill Dumbledore!" And Harry didn't know what that spell did; it's not like he lingered down the corridor rubbing his hands together, cackling gleefully, and imagining Draco all over blood. If you're going to focus heavily on the canon mistakes that will keep Harry and Draco from an easy relationship with each other, why in the world is it limited to one side?
I suspect that, in the end, this squick is largely the same as the other for me: I want to see Harry and Draco have an equal relationship, and the author weakening one or idolizing one prevents that from happening.
What are your H/D squicks?
1) Reading a fic in which the author portrays "bottom" as meaning "weak." Just ugh. So the minute Harry and Draco get into bed, even if the one bottoming has been strong, argumentative, complex, and equal to the other up until that point, now he must start crying and being scared of penetration and doing whatever the one topping tells him to do even if he's uncomfortable with it? I know there's a power dynamics to sexual relationships, but stripping it down to power and only power bores and disgustes me. In extreme cases where the one on the bottom is also very feminized, I think there's more than a hint of misogyny. Women can never be powerful unless they're the ones penetrating men? The penis is almighty? Please.
I don't mind stories where, say, Draco finds more pleasure in bottoming, or where Harry or Draco has a psychological quirk that inclines them to one or the other. Even there, though, I want it to fit in with previously established characterization. If Harry and Draco are perfect equals out of the bedroom and then suddenly have a D/s relationship inside it with no prior hint of that, simply because the author assumes the bottom is less powerful and under the control of the top, I'm clicking the back button.
2) This one is more nebulous. I can't really call it "one flawed character, one perfect character" because I've seen stories where both Harry and Draco were flawed that still hit this squick for me. Maybe I'll call it "one character hopelessly mistaken, the other always right." In any case, what happens is that the author sets one character on a pedestal and makes the other one into a hopeless mess as he chases the idolized one, dragging him relentlessly through past mistakes, making him apologize for the most minor things, cursing him with awkwardness at tasks he can do perfectly well, and treating mistakes as deadly and unforgivable until he's groveled and pleaded. It seems to happen more often that Draco is the perfect one, and Harry is the one who has to do something to "deserve" him, but I suspect that's not true and it's simply that I've run into more stories that do it; I've seen it the other way around, too, and it squicks me just as hard. Now, in canon they've both made mistakes, but saying that Harry must apologize and grovel and never be good enough for the author's perfect, beautiful, snarky, witty Draco because he used Sectumsempra on him, while it's just fine that Draco almost killed Harry's best friend (if you want to limit it to events in the same book), strikes me as deeply silly. The excuse I've seen offered is "Well, Draco didn't mean to kill Ron, he was trying to kill Dumbledore!" And Harry didn't know what that spell did; it's not like he lingered down the corridor rubbing his hands together, cackling gleefully, and imagining Draco all over blood. If you're going to focus heavily on the canon mistakes that will keep Harry and Draco from an easy relationship with each other, why in the world is it limited to one side?
I suspect that, in the end, this squick is largely the same as the other for me: I want to see Harry and Draco have an equal relationship, and the author weakening one or idolizing one prevents that from happening.
What are your H/D squicks?
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-05 01:00 am (UTC)Although I dislike OOC behavior, there are so few authors who really portray them how I see them canonically, that I've come to be able to put up with more than I used to. Primarily this applies to Harry because we know so much more about him. With Draco, there is a great deal of room to develop his character and add eccentricities or habits that explain his canon behavior.
Above all, the one sure-fire way of getting me to drop a fic is making one of them into a caracature. It seems that so often, one or the other or even both of the boys are written one-dimensionally, almost as if the author didn't read the books at all and doesn't really care about the characters.
This is particularly true with the emotional moments; Harry is perpetually stuck wrecking Dumbledore's office or Draco is still crying in front of that cracked mirror. Both of the boys had incredible pressures placed upon them, but those were single moments out of more than a million words of story.
On the other hand, those moments cannot be ignored. Harry does have a fairly violent temper and Draco is a coward when it comes to physical confrontation.
Does that mean that Harry will always punch (or hex) anyone at the drop of a hat? No. Does that mean Draco will roll over or go down without a fight? No. It's the subtleties that matter; all of them.
All of this factors in (for me) when I think of their bedroom roles. Harry is a doer; he jumps right in and he's off. He's privately insecure, but it doesn't stop him doing in anything else and I can't see that it would stop him in sex either. Draco is sneaky and underhanded and that fits the stereotypical role of a bossy bottom; I can see him drawing Harry in and then telling him what to do.
But again, subtleties matter and this isn't ONLY who the boys are. It's like in all other parts of their character; there are times when they both will have a need to take care of things and a need to be taken care of; there will be times when one is passive and the other agressive but not always the same one and not always in the same way. One or the other can top from the bottom or bottom from the top both physically and emotionally.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-06 03:56 am (UTC)My main objection to top and bottom roles is that they tend, as you put it, to ignore the subtleties. It's not that I really object to Draco bottoming, because I've read and enjoyed a lot of stories where he does. I just don't want to get the impression that the writer thinks the stereotypical behavior of a bottom defines Draco and all that he is.