Just wondering...

[graculus]

As people who read my journal regularly will probably know, my recs pages have been taken over by Harry Potter recs, mostly because that's the fandom I'm reading the most in recently - while there's some hideously bad fic out there, the pairings I like don't seem to be too bad and there are some writers out there who turn out story after story I really like. But this post isn't about that... ;)

Recently, there's been the latest couple of stories in a series of Harry Potter fics posted where the first story begins with one of the protagonists being at the World Trade Centre on 9/11. They're well-written fic, on the whole, so the issue is not that, it's just that when I was re-reading the original fic when the second was recently completed, I'd forgotten quite how it made me feel the first time around and why I hadn't recced it back then.

For me, even as an observer, not directly affected by the effects of 9/11 any more than the average person in the street, it felt wrong somehow. Not because it took the whole subject lightly or casually (which it didn't) or that it used it as a plot device to get the protagonists together (which it didn't, or at least not directly) but it just felt like an event that was too important to use in that way, as if involving it in fic somehow trivialised it. I'm not sure I'm explaining myself very well...

Would I feel the same way about fic involving the many godawful things I've seen in my lifetime alone (the Boxing Day tsunami, the IRA bomb campaigns, Lockerbie, Hungerford, Hillsborough, the recent London Underground bombs, to name just a few)? I don't know. Are there things we shouldn't use this way? And if so, why not? Is where we draw the line different for fic?

Comments

[graculus.livejournal.com]

But now I hardly ever look for them anymore. We are forgetting.

How do you feel when, for example, movies use stock footage of New York that includes the WTC towers? I know I've been watching my Sports Night dvds recently and it was quite a jolt to see the amount of scene dividers that have shots of the city skyline with the towers right there.

That being said, I usually read HP fanfic for the fantasy and the magic. I haven't read any fic like that (nor have I read any where Draco and Ginny go back in time to sail the Titanic, LOL). Doesn't mean it couldn't be done though.

On thinking about this whole thing more, I think it's how the two scenarios sit together that has thrown me - HP is set in a universe where magic is immensely powerful and affects everything, but here we are in a setting where wizards and witches die because they're unable to save themselves. What use is their magic there, other than for trivial things that make life a little easier but ultimately are quite futile?

The whole 'he's dead and I never got the chance to shag him because I realised I loved him too late!' cliche is a long-standing one in romantic fic of every variety and fortunately it doesn't quite come across as being all about that, but it's a fine line.

[edido.livejournal.com]

Well, when I see a picture, or there's an article about the development plans, it does exactly that, it gives me a little jolt (and makes me a little sad as well). But that's what I mean, it's not part of my everyday consciousness anymore, not the way it used to be.

Romances are often set in sweeping historical settings and all but that event was so very horrific its hard for me to view it in the same way I do events I am disatnced from. But really, my problem with it in HP is that I read fic because I like the Wizarding World as a setting, and it has its own politics that I find quite interesting. I get impatient with fics set too much in the Muggle world generally. And I think the events in canon and what we could imagine for the future are a sweeping enough backdrop for romance as it is.

But a good writer can do anything plausibly. And I wouldn't be offended by its appearance in fic, in any case, even if it wasn't something I wanted to read.