Retrospective femslash and OotP
Oct. 20th, 2004 12:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseGoing back through the tangle of my harddrive, I found myself re-reading my first-ever piece of femslash. I remember writing this very clearly. I was a sophomore in high school, and one night at the beginning of final exam week I stumbled upon a femslash archive. I'd never seen any before, never even hear of it, although whether or not this was something to do with me or a bigger fandom thing I don't know. But it hit me like a blow to the gut. It was so sexy, so wonderful, so completely what I wanted. And I got completely carried away by Ginny/Cho.
This was years before OotP, and there was a great sense of freedom in writing these two. You could almost make them up from scratch. And there was enough of a connection to get them together, but also enough distance between them to enable creativity. And ginny was so much fun to play with, back then.
I think that this is why so many fen were so upset by Sue!Ginny in OotP. Before that she had so much potential. The business with Tom in her first year was so filled with possibility! She could be the Gothic herione, slightly mad, a child whose innocence had been taken and twisted when she was so painfully young.
And Cho, too. We didn't know anything about her, but she was a slightly older girl who didn't seem to have been touched by tragedy until the big one. She was the ordinary girl who all of a sudden had to deal with something as horrible as having her boyfriend murdered. She was our first Ravenclaw character, which I mentally focused on to a high degree.
I'm always on the periphery, and I hate it. But I know the texture of moonlight and what roses smell like when they burn.
I'm Ron Weasley's little sister…him, Harry Potter's best friend. But I'm also Ginny Weasley, Astronomy whiz and clandestine writer. People only know me in relation to others, never as myself. No one ever asks me if I still have nightmares about the Chamber of Secrets, which by the way I do, or how I really feel about Harry Potter, which I don't really know the answer to but it sure would be splendid to have someone ask. They simply assume that since I had a crush on him I'm in love with him, and as required by the prerequisite fairytale ending, he'll eventually fall in love with me. How can everyone else be so sure of the unquestionable rightness of something I'm not sure I want? And nobody knows that I write stories late at night when I can't go back to sleep after dreams of Tom, stories that I'll never let anyone read because he's the hero in so many of them, the hero who falls in love with me. Violently, passionately, vividly in love with me, so vivid that his vivacity drains away my life and I don't care because he looks more beautiful as I grow weaker. Nobody knows I'm that twisted.
And nobody knows how ashamed I am of being the only girl in my year that hasn't been kissed. Phantom kisses from memories via diaries don't count. It's contradictory in many ways: I've known the dark passion of a boy who was darker and more beautiful and more wicked than anyone yet living, but I've never kissed a boy willingly, simply, innocently. Not roses and chocolates but blood and scars. I don't even know if I want roses. Boys, they frighten me, big and strong and violent. Even sweet ones like Harry or Colin…I don't know if I could ever let them kiss me, much less do anything else. I don't know if I can ever be that vulnerable, if I could keep from screaming at the tense, tight, burning want that springs up in your stomach when big, callused, male hands run along your body.
My family does the same thing, but there it's because I'm glued into the “baby” niche. I like to think that it's not permanent, but I've been feeling a bit discouraged lately. Especially after these past few months.
Lord Voldemort has risen again. It's hard for me to grasp, but somewhere in him is my Tom, my beautiful shadow-dweller. His face was white, and when he looked up unexpectedly I saw the moon shrouded by ragged clouds. His hair was blacker than Harry's, like raven's feathers. His hands felt like fire and ice all at once. Tom's the only person who ever paid attention to me for me. But he's not just Tom, he's Voldemort, and he tried to kill me, to kill Harry, to kill everyone. He's evil and foul and I do not love him! Did I ever? Did he ever love me back? I don't know I don't know I don't know…no wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that I used to know by heart.
Everything is wrong. Harry is shattered and pretending not to be. Ron and Hermione are hovering. Mum's panicking and growing overprotective. Fred and George's jokes feel forced, like laughter in a graveyard of buried hopes. And no one talks to me about anything. For all practical purposes I have ceased to exist.
The other fourth-years are the worst. They don't understand. They fall silent as I pass, as if I was an emissary of nightmares. They won't mention Tom around me, but his presence is even stronger in his absence. They don't understand. They all seem so young…it makes me feel old and worn out in comparison. How can it be that we have our birthdays within the same twelve months?
I really shouldn't be this close to the Forbidden Forest. Oh well. I am, after all, a Weasley. And tonight I need the trees. They're perpetually peaceful, slow to grow or to change. I feel safe with them. I can feel today's rain clinging to the grass as I walk, smell it in the greenness of the air. Sometimes I think in poems. I couldn't stay inside the castle for another minute, because everyone else's general state of panic was putting me painfully on edge. I felt as if I would fall off if I stayed indoors for another second. I've had nightmares every night this week.
She looks so young. But then again, she is-she's a full two years younger that I am. Perhaps it's the nightgown, lovely and white. She looks like an angel, or a ghost. And I don't know why I'm following her. Is it because I'm…vindictive? Even if I am a Ravenclaw, I don't follow girls I scarcely know when they wander out of the castle late at night. She looked so otherworldly walking through the corridors, as if she was a new ghost who just happened to be painted in color. I stood just inside the library, and I couldn't look away from her. I had fallen asleep on my book, and there was ink on my cheek. Everything this year is streaming backwards…it has been ever since Cedric. It was so perfect, as if the knight in shining armour from the storybooks had come to life and was kissing me as if I was the answer to everything. I'd never been in love before. I was so young.
Ginny Weasley. She was the one…that affair with the Chamber of Secrets. Did it make her feel old? Did she feel like everything had gone slightly wrong? Has she felt what I'm feeling? Because her fairy tale went wrong, as mine has done.
The moonlight is really very beautiful. I don't think I've ever been outside at this time of night, not like this. I can understand the magnetism that drew Ginny out to the open sky…everything seems so big, as if the sky went on forever and there were an infinite number of stars. It's so easy to believe in magic out here. Foolish-I don't need to believe in magic, I know it. But I still want to believe in it. I still need my fairy tales and myth-lore, because it fills some deep elemental need of my soul. And in this moment, Ginny looks magical.
Is she going to the Forest? It could be dangerous…she shouldn't be there alone…I won't let her get hurt, won't let the fairy tale be a horror novel. I won't let any more children die or grow old before their time. Not like my Cedric, please not again. Not now that I can finally do something more than cry. Go back to your bed, child-who-grew-up-too-soon. Go back to your innocence…you must have some left, the way your hair is being turned to spun copper by the moonlight as you pace the wet grass in your little white nightie. You have magic. Your strength is as the strength of ten, because you heart is pure.
I'm not sure how much I like it. In some places the writing is very juvenile. It was qite some time ago. But I do know that I miss these characters. I miss my Gothic, twisty Ginny and my intelligent, observant, shell-shocked Cho. And I'm irrationally angry with OotP and with JK for taking that away from me, especially as I feel that what she gave us in replacement wasn't nearly good enough. Her Ginny and Cho are dull, silly, irritating, and prosaic. In so many ways I wish that we were back in the Three Year Summer. I liked this world better then.
This was years before OotP, and there was a great sense of freedom in writing these two. You could almost make them up from scratch. And there was enough of a connection to get them together, but also enough distance between them to enable creativity. And ginny was so much fun to play with, back then.
I think that this is why so many fen were so upset by Sue!Ginny in OotP. Before that she had so much potential. The business with Tom in her first year was so filled with possibility! She could be the Gothic herione, slightly mad, a child whose innocence had been taken and twisted when she was so painfully young.
And Cho, too. We didn't know anything about her, but she was a slightly older girl who didn't seem to have been touched by tragedy until the big one. She was the ordinary girl who all of a sudden had to deal with something as horrible as having her boyfriend murdered. She was our first Ravenclaw character, which I mentally focused on to a high degree.
I'm always on the periphery, and I hate it. But I know the texture of moonlight and what roses smell like when they burn.
I'm Ron Weasley's little sister…him, Harry Potter's best friend. But I'm also Ginny Weasley, Astronomy whiz and clandestine writer. People only know me in relation to others, never as myself. No one ever asks me if I still have nightmares about the Chamber of Secrets, which by the way I do, or how I really feel about Harry Potter, which I don't really know the answer to but it sure would be splendid to have someone ask. They simply assume that since I had a crush on him I'm in love with him, and as required by the prerequisite fairytale ending, he'll eventually fall in love with me. How can everyone else be so sure of the unquestionable rightness of something I'm not sure I want? And nobody knows that I write stories late at night when I can't go back to sleep after dreams of Tom, stories that I'll never let anyone read because he's the hero in so many of them, the hero who falls in love with me. Violently, passionately, vividly in love with me, so vivid that his vivacity drains away my life and I don't care because he looks more beautiful as I grow weaker. Nobody knows I'm that twisted.
And nobody knows how ashamed I am of being the only girl in my year that hasn't been kissed. Phantom kisses from memories via diaries don't count. It's contradictory in many ways: I've known the dark passion of a boy who was darker and more beautiful and more wicked than anyone yet living, but I've never kissed a boy willingly, simply, innocently. Not roses and chocolates but blood and scars. I don't even know if I want roses. Boys, they frighten me, big and strong and violent. Even sweet ones like Harry or Colin…I don't know if I could ever let them kiss me, much less do anything else. I don't know if I can ever be that vulnerable, if I could keep from screaming at the tense, tight, burning want that springs up in your stomach when big, callused, male hands run along your body.
My family does the same thing, but there it's because I'm glued into the “baby” niche. I like to think that it's not permanent, but I've been feeling a bit discouraged lately. Especially after these past few months.
Lord Voldemort has risen again. It's hard for me to grasp, but somewhere in him is my Tom, my beautiful shadow-dweller. His face was white, and when he looked up unexpectedly I saw the moon shrouded by ragged clouds. His hair was blacker than Harry's, like raven's feathers. His hands felt like fire and ice all at once. Tom's the only person who ever paid attention to me for me. But he's not just Tom, he's Voldemort, and he tried to kill me, to kill Harry, to kill everyone. He's evil and foul and I do not love him! Did I ever? Did he ever love me back? I don't know I don't know I don't know…no wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that I used to know by heart.
Everything is wrong. Harry is shattered and pretending not to be. Ron and Hermione are hovering. Mum's panicking and growing overprotective. Fred and George's jokes feel forced, like laughter in a graveyard of buried hopes. And no one talks to me about anything. For all practical purposes I have ceased to exist.
The other fourth-years are the worst. They don't understand. They fall silent as I pass, as if I was an emissary of nightmares. They won't mention Tom around me, but his presence is even stronger in his absence. They don't understand. They all seem so young…it makes me feel old and worn out in comparison. How can it be that we have our birthdays within the same twelve months?
I really shouldn't be this close to the Forbidden Forest. Oh well. I am, after all, a Weasley. And tonight I need the trees. They're perpetually peaceful, slow to grow or to change. I feel safe with them. I can feel today's rain clinging to the grass as I walk, smell it in the greenness of the air. Sometimes I think in poems. I couldn't stay inside the castle for another minute, because everyone else's general state of panic was putting me painfully on edge. I felt as if I would fall off if I stayed indoors for another second. I've had nightmares every night this week.
She looks so young. But then again, she is-she's a full two years younger that I am. Perhaps it's the nightgown, lovely and white. She looks like an angel, or a ghost. And I don't know why I'm following her. Is it because I'm…vindictive? Even if I am a Ravenclaw, I don't follow girls I scarcely know when they wander out of the castle late at night. She looked so otherworldly walking through the corridors, as if she was a new ghost who just happened to be painted in color. I stood just inside the library, and I couldn't look away from her. I had fallen asleep on my book, and there was ink on my cheek. Everything this year is streaming backwards…it has been ever since Cedric. It was so perfect, as if the knight in shining armour from the storybooks had come to life and was kissing me as if I was the answer to everything. I'd never been in love before. I was so young.
Ginny Weasley. She was the one…that affair with the Chamber of Secrets. Did it make her feel old? Did she feel like everything had gone slightly wrong? Has she felt what I'm feeling? Because her fairy tale went wrong, as mine has done.
The moonlight is really very beautiful. I don't think I've ever been outside at this time of night, not like this. I can understand the magnetism that drew Ginny out to the open sky…everything seems so big, as if the sky went on forever and there were an infinite number of stars. It's so easy to believe in magic out here. Foolish-I don't need to believe in magic, I know it. But I still want to believe in it. I still need my fairy tales and myth-lore, because it fills some deep elemental need of my soul. And in this moment, Ginny looks magical.
Is she going to the Forest? It could be dangerous…she shouldn't be there alone…I won't let her get hurt, won't let the fairy tale be a horror novel. I won't let any more children die or grow old before their time. Not like my Cedric, please not again. Not now that I can finally do something more than cry. Go back to your bed, child-who-grew-up-too-soon. Go back to your innocence…you must have some left, the way your hair is being turned to spun copper by the moonlight as you pace the wet grass in your little white nightie. You have magic. Your strength is as the strength of ten, because you heart is pure.
I'm not sure how much I like it. In some places the writing is very juvenile. It was qite some time ago. But I do know that I miss these characters. I miss my Gothic, twisty Ginny and my intelligent, observant, shell-shocked Cho. And I'm irrationally angry with OotP and with JK for taking that away from me, especially as I feel that what she gave us in replacement wasn't nearly good enough. Her Ginny and Cho are dull, silly, irritating, and prosaic. In so many ways I wish that we were back in the Three Year Summer. I liked this world better then.