Musings on the whole Harry/Snape thing...

[amanuensis1]

I've been examining why I don't write more Harry/Snape, as a result of discussion with fabularasa as to some of the difficulties that pairing has to surmount to be credible. I talk a lot about how a consensual, mutual Harry/Lucius should never be an easy pairing, but I'm starting to realize I have the same standards for Harry/Snape. The sheer volume of consensual Harry/Snape shouldn't be some kind of compensation. There's the teacher/student problem, the fact that canonically they hate each other, the age difference, the fact that neither is going to find the other devastatingly attractive. And Adult!Harry can be a problem for me, because my fanfiction preference is to use the characters as you find them, not needing a huge amount of background to explain who they are or what has shaped them. Once you start needing to do that, I think you've exited the need to make it fanfiction.

So I've realized that the version of that pairing that I like best is Contrivance Harry/Snape.

Some might say that all fanfiction involves contrivance by its very nature, or that every single F-Q-F plotchallenge is a contrivance. But contrivance is more than situation; it's scheme, it's artifice. A great number of plotchallenges (or just plots) make the assumption that there is at least attraction on one side and the conflict is in making the other character become attracted, or that both have an interest and it just needs to be made plain. That, I would say, is not contrivance so much as it is design, just to explain how I'm using the word.

Contrivance does not require an attraction; it merely asks that you force the characters together. It bypasses all other arguments as to why the characters couldn't fall for each other. And they can be as hackneyed as the dawn; the goal is to see how well you can write them so the initial response of "Oh, not that old thing," becomes "Hey, this one's good!"

My favorites include contrived weddings (one of my very first Potterverse fics was written because I couldn't wait any longer to write a "We have to get MARRIED?" story!), and contrived MPREGs. (There, there's another reason I write MPREGs.) And I especially like what fabularasa calls, and for which I will have to make a freaking icon, it made me laugh so hard, the "Oh no, I have to rape you now!" stories. I eat those up like Cheez-Its. rushlight75's Through a Shattered Mirror got me SO hard that way. (And BTW, if nimori doesn't finish the one she started, I'm sending house-elves to her house armed with feather dusters and she's getting tickled until she finishes the thing. I mean it, Nim!)

This is also why humorous or parody Snarry works for me, because the focus is more on the humor than the logic of the relationship (see those written by Seeker or gmth; you're too busy laughing your tuchis off to ask yourself, "But do they respect each other as people?") and why I have such deep respect for cybele_san who really, really works at making romantic Snarry work. And note that she's not afraid to work with contrivance either, "If You Are Prepared" starts with one of the oldest: two characters forced to be in close proximity who do not particularly like each other. But it's so deftly done you'd think it had nothing whatsoever in common with all those "we're snowbound and must share body heat to survive" stories. (Okay, you got me--maybe some contrivances ARE too overdone for me! ^_^)

Comments

[cursive.livejournal.com]

In addition to the important tensions between them that can be interpreted as lust or affection or other kinds of attachment, I'd want to refine the idea that the pairing feeds a number of kinks simply because of their difference (and so much sex is oppositional in one way or another). The sexualised teacher/student scenario is ancient for a very wide range of reasons, including the relationship between knowledge, power and sex.

Teacher/student relationships -- to varying degrees of cosummation -- happen a great deal, not because either is necessarily attractive to the other outside of that scenario but because of the relationship itself. I'd add to that the recognition that teenagers in particular use/understand sex as power very frequently and that Snape doesn't strike me, much of the time, as being particularly emotionally mature and Harry's relationship to intimacy is at the very least troubled and his attachment to anyone standing in place of a parent figure decidedly overwrought.

Ah, I could go on, but in fact I'd make claims for Snarry on the grounds of realism. Having said that, contrivance is often needed to fast forward through these processes or, in fact, to make a quite banal possibility more interesting.

On the subject of contrivances I note that ladykardasi's selected cliche for HP in her ClicheFest is put two characters in a small space....

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

including the relationship between knowledge, power and sex.

This is a great point, yes! Thank you for putting that in that kind of perspective, because I think we all feel that sort of thing but forget to put it out there, because we either think it is so basic or don't know how to state it.

And I thought the clichefest thing was, specifically, to put them in a snowbound cabin, wasn't it? Eh, close enough.

[cursive.livejournal.com]

No just a small space: A couple of your own choosing gets stuck somewhere together and have to share a very small space. I think some other fandom has the snowbound cabin. Thankfully.