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

[emony.livejournal.com]

It's very interesting. I read an HP fic recently which was about the London bombings. I really wasn't sure, before I read it, if it was going to upset me or just seem wrong. I'm still not entirely sure whether it was right, and I've no idea how you would draw a line between acceptable and unacceptable integration of real events of this nature in fic. I suppose I'd see it as a way for the author, and also maybe the reader, to work through some feelings about the events at a slightly removed distance. I found the footage of the London bombings extremely harrowing and very difficult to see, but it was the fic that really made me cry over the human loss that had occurred in real life.

I also saw that programme on BBC2, The Rotters Club (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0426367/), when it was on a year or so ago, one part of which involved the boyfriend of the main character's sister being killed in the Birmingham pub bombings. It's the same sort of thing really, I think, providing an access point to a subject that might otherwise be difficult for the reader or viewer to fully process. I know that with that programme, and with the fic too, part of my reaction was seeing the pain that those characters were going through, but part of it was also recognising the real pain that people went through when their lives were destroyed in those, and other, events. The Birmingham bombings, for example - my parents were living in Birmingham at the time. They could've both been killed. It was something fairly abstract until I saw that dramatised version of the events. Then it became something real.

I don't think I'm explaining very well. But I think absorbing real events into fictional situations can be a way for viewers or readers to access the events on a different level. As long as they can maintain the distance to realise that the events within the fic are not themselves real, and as long as the subject is very sensitively handled, I think it can be okay.

[mer1973.livejournal.com]

I can see that. It is uncomfortable to read about 9/11 in a fic, and unless I really trusted the author, I'd probably pass a story like that by. That said, people have been issues fiction to work out their issues for ages. Some of it is legitmate self-therapy, some of it wanking, and some of it the mental equivalant of cutting. I really don't know where the line is.

[xochiquetzl]

I think time is part of it. For example, I'm not ready to read Hurricane Katrina fic. Some of that may be time, some of that may be geography. I mean, I don't think people would be upset about a story which referenced the Titanic, or Pompeii.

I don't think there's an exact formula, though. Number of people dead times amount of time past in years equals how appropriate it is to use a real-life event...

Question: Is the line for original fiction different than for fanfic?

[musigneus.livejournal.com]

That's a very interesting question. Assuming that we're talking about relatively serious and thoughtful stories, I think my answer for fanfic is the same as it would be for professional fiction - which is that I don't think there are events that we automatically should not use. Novelists and screen writers have been basing stories on horrific events for years; Patriot Games and In the Name of the Father, for example, are the first ones that come to mind that use the IRA. And as the commenter above said, I think reading and writing about such events can be useful for some people, as a way to come to terms with things on a personal level. I don't think such stories are for everyone, however, because we all react differently depending on our proximity to the events (whether through space or time or personal involvement) and our personalities.

I should perhaps say that the story that sparked your question was written as a gift for me in a fic exchange, and I thought it was well done and I enjoyed it. But had I been closer to the events of 9/11 - had my sister-in-law decided to finish her paperwork for her internship at the WTC that morning instead of sleeping in - then I don't think I could have read it.

[watersusurrus.livejournal.com]

Very interesting. Is there a time delay with this, do you think? What about Nazi-era fic? Just curious!


(I don't know how I'd feel about London bombing and 9/11 fics, as I haven't read any yet)

[bitmaxmouse.livejournal.com]

I think I might cringe if real life disasters were applied to any fic, book, or TV; so I usually avoid them like the plague. Except in the case of Law and Order. That was the only show I've ever seen that has tastefully taken various sides of a crime case that was intimately involved with 9/11 or train bombings and such.

[baseballchica03.livejournal.com]

Honestly, it would bug me more if Harry & Co. weren't the appropriate age for the storyline. It happened... How is it any different from using World War II as a plot device? It is a major historical event, despite its terrible nature.

[jedirita.livejournal.com]

Here via the Snitch.

When it comes to tragedy, everyone deals with grief in their own way. Some people deal with it through writing fic, because fiction becomes a way to sort out and experience your feelings but in a slightly removed way. My aunt was killed in a car accident shortly after I started writing an HP fic set during the summer after OotP, and the grief that Harry and Remus felt over Sirius's death became a way for me to express my grief over my aunt.

But precisely because fic is used as an emotional outlet for some, is why other people are not comfortable reading it. It can bring all those emotions to the surface again in a way that we're not prepared to deal with. As another example, I thought about writing a fictionalized account of the road trip that my mother and aunt had been on when my aunt was killed, but I hesitated to do it because I thought my mother would have a really hard time reading such a fic. Because it would have been about *my* grief and not about hers. You know what I mean? Our own pain can be hard enough to deal with, let alone someone else's.

So it's perfectly natural for you to feel a bit put off by that fic; but at the same time it's natural for that author to deal with that tragedy through fic.

Here via DS

[auctasinistra.livejournal.com]

to say ... the weird thing is, I agree with you that it feels wrong, and, like you, I can't put my finger on why. My inclination is to go "Oh god" and hit the back button whenever a "recent" catastrophe is referenced in fanfic, so it's not that I know they're trivializing it -- I can't know, as I generally don't read it. I suppose I'm assuming by definition that fanfic will (or is likely to?) treat the subject in a way that I, at least, will find exploitive, however the author meant it. I can't really see Snarry plus 9-11 as being anything other than wrong. Possibly because it's all too much of a stretch? That may be the only reason; why do the huge reaching necessary to place fanfictional characters in a place there's no good reason for them to be in the first place? It feels like artificial gravitas or artificial angst, I guess. The London bombings would be more realistic ... except HP characters don't travel on the Tube, do they? But it could be pulled off.
Again, I'm not saying the authors intend cheap drama by inappropriately pulling in a recent catastrophe, only that I see it and some part of me reacts that way, so I tend not to read it.

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

I think for me the problem is that the HP universe doesn't fit our universe well enough for me to see 9/11 fitting (Dumbledore and WWII possibly depending on the author).

I've seen it done well for the Buffyverse because that fits our reality better, but it does depend on the characters and the writer(s) -- most of those I've read have been part of big series, where the disaster in question is referenced when the timeline intersects with it.

Same goes for original fiction -- at some point I'm sure Richard will be on a dig, or researching an indigenous population when a natural disaster occurs. I'll research that the same way I'd research anything else that impacts on my characters.

Gina

[edido.livejournal.com]

here via the Daily Snitch...

You know this is a really interesting question. I live in lower Manhattan and for quite a while, even after the smoke went away and the missing posters came down, I thought that a day wouldn't ever go by without thinking about it, or noticing the absence of the Towers as they were quite visible as I made my way home each night, and I always used to use them to figure out which direction I was facing when leaving the subway on the West Side. But now I hardly ever look for them anymore. We are forgetting. It's rarely even mentioned. So I think the time is probably right for art and fiction to explore it a bit.

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.

[seanchaidh.livejournal.com]

Drawing a bit of a parallel, I felt sort of the same way when I saw the premiere of CSI:NY where Gary Sinise's character had lost his wife in the WTC attacks. That just... I dunno, I guess my suspension of belief kind of couldn't handle it.