Review of Drop Dead Gorgeous
Feb. 21st, 2007 04:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flyingskullAs promised, though tardily, here it is, my review of Drop Dead Gorgeous.
"… Commodified fantasy takes no risks: it invents nothing, but imitates and trivialises. It proceeds by depriving the old stories of their intellectual and ethical complexity, turning their action to violence, their actors to dolls, and their truth-telling to sentimental platitude. Heroes brandish their swords, lasers, wands, as mechanically as combine harvesters, reaping profits.
Profoundly disturbing moral choices are sanitized, made cute, made safe. The passionately conceived ideas of the great story-tellers are copied, stereotyped, reduced to toys, moulded in bright-coloured plastic, advertised, sold, broken, junked, replaceable, interchangeable. What the commodifiers of fantasy count on and exploit is the insuperable imagination of the reader, child or adult, which gives even these dead things life - of a sort, for a while. "
(Ursula K. LeGuin – intro to "Tales from Earthsea")
Why do I start with a good healthy dose of bad-fantasy-writers bashing a critique of Maya's latest – and funniest – adventure in fanfic writing? Because, once again, a decent author who thinks about the meaning and function of what she writes has hit the nail on the head: when fiction is bad in the way she describes, good writers will feel the urge to correct the superficialities and give life to the dead things, even if only for awhile.
I realise this is a very general statement to make and it's more a defence of fanfiction than a comment on Drop Dead Gorgeous, but it always starts here for me: giving life to dead things. Which![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mistful does… in abundance.
So Harry and Draco as the Odd Couple of Aurorland works perfectly well. It's so SO delightful that it transcends crack and becomes fic becausemistful is incapable of writing true crack. Humanity keeps intruding. Which is as it should be, really. It's not witty or humorous or laughworthy if there's no humanity in it; even parody – or crack!fic, if you prefer – has to have real people in it to work.
Of course, what makes it parody is the constant intrusion of meta that underlines the sheer idiocy of canon: the monster in Harry's chest, the Harry Had Changed Over The Summer Into a Sex God cliché, the What Heroes Do Is Always Good By Definition amorality. She also parodies the ever-popular fanon idea that If You Are Dead Sexy You Have It Made, Mate, as exemplified in all the Happy!Veela!Sub!anyone stories.
It's not all meta, of course, as I said, humanity keeps intruding. Being on the verge of being constantly raped because you're irresistible is not funny; being a borderline sociopath who has no idea of how to function in a society is even less funny: there are the makings of tragedy here. Yet Maya writes it funny because the other face of tragedy is farce, as she knows very well, and laughter will make the Dousing With Ice Cold Water of personal tragedy all the starker.
It'smistful's compressed and lucid style that makes it work so well. Consider this:
Malfoy turned towards him, his left eyebrow and the left side of his mouth both flying upwards in that lopsided quizzical look he got sometimes. Harry ran his fingers through his hair twice, and only twice. (emphasis mine)
See how many things are expressed in two sentences: Harry's inability to read Draco's expression, to understand what emotion lied behind it; Harry's yearning to touch and his refusal to yield to it, Harry's rigid control of his reactions and the way his very control expresses his affection. I'm probably over-psychoanalysing the character here, but, at the same time it's all there, in two ironically lucid sentences.
Maya quotes constantly, not direct quotes – alright, there's a DW Watch direct quote in chapter 3 – but allusions, implications, refenceres to anything from old TV shows to fairy tales. One reversal of fairy tale cliché I particularly loved to pieces. This:
Malfoy had worked flat out for two and then fallen asleep abruptly by his desk. He’d started to coo, and Katie, with circles under her eyes, had knelt down and kissed him into silent sleep.
She’d looked up and seen Harry watching, and given him a rueful smile.
“It’s the only thing that keeps him quiet,” she said, and then laid down beside Malfoy. Even sleeping, he’d slid his arm around her.
Princess Charming kisses her Snow White Auror to silent sleep. And ain't it lovely that he coos like a dove?
And talking about old TV shows… It was true of Starsky and Hutch and it's true of Drop Dead Gorgeous – a truth universally acknowledged, I might add if I was feeling Austenish – that, no matter how many beards one throws at the protagonists, the only relationship that's central (I had typoed 'ventral', shades of Freud?) to their emotional and social life is the one they have with each other. It's so central and basic that, even if they never kiss or even hug, they are to all effects and purposes a couple, spouses, soul-bonded and double-tied in mutual dependence.
This is acknowledged here:
They were just - odd together, that was all. When Malfoy was with her he was gentle and considerate, and it seemed incongruous, as if he was a lynx trying very hard to pass for a housecat.
Which can well be Harry's jealousy talking – in a sense it is just that – but it's also a comment on how the only 'natural' relationship, the only one not fraught with trying very hard to pass for something one's not, is the one the joined-at-the-hips partners have with each other. True, Harry doesn't declare his undying passion to Draco, but he wouldn't anyway and besides he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to understanding his own jumble of violently self-centred emotions.
Right, Maya gives Harry a more-than-canon honesty about that which is why the fact that he can recognise the problem and correct his behaviour because of it doesn't jar.
To end this long and unbrilliant critique, there's a thing that… no I tell a lie, two things that intrigue me a LOT in DDD.
One is the conundrum of Draco's perceptive capability. Apparently he can read subtle signals that Harry is not aware of transmitting – alright, they could be huge anvil-like flashing neon signs as Harry is fairly oblivious of his own facial expressions – and can react accordingly, BUT is he aware of Harry's all-consuming passion? One is tempted to say that yes, he is and he's not reacting to it because he's trying not to complicate matters and would do nothing to jeopardise this 'beautiful' friendship he has with Harry now, a thing that, according to Pansy – and canon – he's wanted since he was eleven. But it's not a given. Not at all, o subtle and wise Maya. I just love to see how that will resolve, I love puzzles and this particular puzzle gives suspense and thrills in the whodunnit of the boys' ultimate personal fate.
The other is one of THE most hilarious mistake by absent-mindedness in the history of fanfics:
Malfoy had righted Dixon’s chair and was lounging in it. When he caught Dixon’s eye he smiled in a truly horrible way he’d perfected, rolled down his sleeve and showed him the Dark Mark.
Rolled DOWN? rolled DOWN?? MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Sorry, sorry but the image is totally absurdly funny. I can see Malfoy, Draco, Auror and ex Death Eater, ripping his sleeve from his shoulder to make a cloth ring around his wrist to show the Dark Mark (TM) to right bastard Dixon.
All the other characters are either extremely IC with amistful slant or delightful OCs, all – and this is extremely important – are real, fully flashed out people, even if they are kind of extras. I feel immensely for poor Chrysanthemum; I could cheerfully strangle Cuthbert (who's a very Pratchettian kind of character); I could, and in fact did, cheer Harry for punching Theophilus (who's a very Austenian character) and so on.
The one I love best, though, is Pansy. Maya is the only fanfic author I've read that can write a Pansy I can believe in, a Pansy who won't admit in public she loves unicorns, but can wear in public a PINK frilly dress, a Pansy who's intelligent and earthy and who can move on from things, a Pansy Ron deserves because in Mayaverse he's got the nous to finally move on from hero-worship and star-junkie to become his own man.
Oh, and because I'm a Draco-loving woman – no surprises here – I absolutely love Maya!Draco, the White Dove Unicorn of Sarcasm and Hiding Behind Words. And you know what? Harking back to the one real quote in the series – so far - I can actually see Draco in the Watch drawing Carrot absolutely crazy, flirting with Angua, doing impressions of Nobby and Detritus and things.
So, leaving you with this cheerful image, I conclude by saying: Your Original Works have absolute precedence, Maya dear, but please don't stop writing fics, don't stop writing DDD and, to me MOST important, don't stop writing QOM, your fanfic masterpiece. We need you to give life to that dead thing: canon.
"… Commodified fantasy takes no risks: it invents nothing, but imitates and trivialises. It proceeds by depriving the old stories of their intellectual and ethical complexity, turning their action to violence, their actors to dolls, and their truth-telling to sentimental platitude. Heroes brandish their swords, lasers, wands, as mechanically as combine harvesters, reaping profits.
Profoundly disturbing moral choices are sanitized, made cute, made safe. The passionately conceived ideas of the great story-tellers are copied, stereotyped, reduced to toys, moulded in bright-coloured plastic, advertised, sold, broken, junked, replaceable, interchangeable. What the commodifiers of fantasy count on and exploit is the insuperable imagination of the reader, child or adult, which gives even these dead things life - of a sort, for a while. "
(Ursula K. LeGuin – intro to "Tales from Earthsea")
Why do I start with a good healthy dose of bad-fantasy-writers bashing a critique of Maya's latest – and funniest – adventure in fanfic writing? Because, once again, a decent author who thinks about the meaning and function of what she writes has hit the nail on the head: when fiction is bad in the way she describes, good writers will feel the urge to correct the superficialities and give life to the dead things, even if only for awhile.
I realise this is a very general statement to make and it's more a defence of fanfiction than a comment on Drop Dead Gorgeous, but it always starts here for me: giving life to dead things. Which
mistful does… in abundance.So Harry and Draco as the Odd Couple of Aurorland works perfectly well. It's so SO delightful that it transcends crack and becomes fic because
mistful is incapable of writing true crack. Humanity keeps intruding. Which is as it should be, really. It's not witty or humorous or laughworthy if there's no humanity in it; even parody – or crack!fic, if you prefer – has to have real people in it to work.Of course, what makes it parody is the constant intrusion of meta that underlines the sheer idiocy of canon: the monster in Harry's chest, the Harry Had Changed Over The Summer Into a Sex God cliché, the What Heroes Do Is Always Good By Definition amorality. She also parodies the ever-popular fanon idea that If You Are Dead Sexy You Have It Made, Mate, as exemplified in all the Happy!Veela!Sub!anyone stories.
It's not all meta, of course, as I said, humanity keeps intruding. Being on the verge of being constantly raped because you're irresistible is not funny; being a borderline sociopath who has no idea of how to function in a society is even less funny: there are the makings of tragedy here. Yet Maya writes it funny because the other face of tragedy is farce, as she knows very well, and laughter will make the Dousing With Ice Cold Water of personal tragedy all the starker.
It's
mistful's compressed and lucid style that makes it work so well. Consider this:Malfoy turned towards him, his left eyebrow and the left side of his mouth both flying upwards in that lopsided quizzical look he got sometimes. Harry ran his fingers through his hair twice, and only twice. (emphasis mine)
See how many things are expressed in two sentences: Harry's inability to read Draco's expression, to understand what emotion lied behind it; Harry's yearning to touch and his refusal to yield to it, Harry's rigid control of his reactions and the way his very control expresses his affection. I'm probably over-psychoanalysing the character here, but, at the same time it's all there, in two ironically lucid sentences.
Maya quotes constantly, not direct quotes – alright, there's a DW Watch direct quote in chapter 3 – but allusions, implications, refenceres to anything from old TV shows to fairy tales. One reversal of fairy tale cliché I particularly loved to pieces. This:
Malfoy had worked flat out for two and then fallen asleep abruptly by his desk. He’d started to coo, and Katie, with circles under her eyes, had knelt down and kissed him into silent sleep.
She’d looked up and seen Harry watching, and given him a rueful smile.
“It’s the only thing that keeps him quiet,” she said, and then laid down beside Malfoy. Even sleeping, he’d slid his arm around her.
Princess Charming kisses her Snow White Auror to silent sleep. And ain't it lovely that he coos like a dove?
And talking about old TV shows… It was true of Starsky and Hutch and it's true of Drop Dead Gorgeous – a truth universally acknowledged, I might add if I was feeling Austenish – that, no matter how many beards one throws at the protagonists, the only relationship that's central (I had typoed 'ventral', shades of Freud?) to their emotional and social life is the one they have with each other. It's so central and basic that, even if they never kiss or even hug, they are to all effects and purposes a couple, spouses, soul-bonded and double-tied in mutual dependence.
This is acknowledged here:
They were just - odd together, that was all. When Malfoy was with her he was gentle and considerate, and it seemed incongruous, as if he was a lynx trying very hard to pass for a housecat.
Which can well be Harry's jealousy talking – in a sense it is just that – but it's also a comment on how the only 'natural' relationship, the only one not fraught with trying very hard to pass for something one's not, is the one the joined-at-the-hips partners have with each other. True, Harry doesn't declare his undying passion to Draco, but he wouldn't anyway and besides he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to understanding his own jumble of violently self-centred emotions.
Right, Maya gives Harry a more-than-canon honesty about that which is why the fact that he can recognise the problem and correct his behaviour because of it doesn't jar.
To end this long and unbrilliant critique, there's a thing that… no I tell a lie, two things that intrigue me a LOT in DDD.
One is the conundrum of Draco's perceptive capability. Apparently he can read subtle signals that Harry is not aware of transmitting – alright, they could be huge anvil-like flashing neon signs as Harry is fairly oblivious of his own facial expressions – and can react accordingly, BUT is he aware of Harry's all-consuming passion? One is tempted to say that yes, he is and he's not reacting to it because he's trying not to complicate matters and would do nothing to jeopardise this 'beautiful' friendship he has with Harry now, a thing that, according to Pansy – and canon – he's wanted since he was eleven. But it's not a given. Not at all, o subtle and wise Maya. I just love to see how that will resolve, I love puzzles and this particular puzzle gives suspense and thrills in the whodunnit of the boys' ultimate personal fate.
The other is one of THE most hilarious mistake by absent-mindedness in the history of fanfics:
Malfoy had righted Dixon’s chair and was lounging in it. When he caught Dixon’s eye he smiled in a truly horrible way he’d perfected, rolled down his sleeve and showed him the Dark Mark.
Rolled DOWN? rolled DOWN?? MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Sorry, sorry but the image is totally absurdly funny. I can see Malfoy, Draco, Auror and ex Death Eater, ripping his sleeve from his shoulder to make a cloth ring around his wrist to show the Dark Mark (TM) to right bastard Dixon.
All the other characters are either extremely IC with a
mistful slant or delightful OCs, all – and this is extremely important – are real, fully flashed out people, even if they are kind of extras. I feel immensely for poor Chrysanthemum; I could cheerfully strangle Cuthbert (who's a very Pratchettian kind of character); I could, and in fact did, cheer Harry for punching Theophilus (who's a very Austenian character) and so on.The one I love best, though, is Pansy. Maya is the only fanfic author I've read that can write a Pansy I can believe in, a Pansy who won't admit in public she loves unicorns, but can wear in public a PINK frilly dress, a Pansy who's intelligent and earthy and who can move on from things, a Pansy Ron deserves because in Mayaverse he's got the nous to finally move on from hero-worship and star-junkie to become his own man.
Oh, and because I'm a Draco-loving woman – no surprises here – I absolutely love Maya!Draco, the White Dove Unicorn of Sarcasm and Hiding Behind Words. And you know what? Harking back to the one real quote in the series – so far - I can actually see Draco in the Watch drawing Carrot absolutely crazy, flirting with Angua, doing impressions of Nobby and Detritus and things.
So, leaving you with this cheerful image, I conclude by saying: Your Original Works have absolute precedence, Maya dear, but please don't stop writing fics, don't stop writing DDD and, to me MOST important, don't stop writing QOM, your fanfic masterpiece. We need you to give life to that dead thing: canon.
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Having a Weatherwax Moment
Date: 2007-02-25 07:05 pm (UTC)Well. I can't be having with this! I mean, alright, mebbe you're right BUT and, bro is it a big but, I've it up to HERE *points to eyebrows* with the so-called character who's supposed to be the moral compass and s/he is nothing but a HUGE pain in the arse and also as unethical and they come. Every time I see a character decide what's best for others and act on that decision wihtout taking a SECOND to reflect on the consequences and also the rape of privacy, that's my own personal enemy character and I start creating long and painful deaths for it. Get quite inventive, really.
Also, no. Sadly I think that's your 'am not really hearing a thing they say LA-LA-LA' take on things. Cameron is still meant to be the 'moral compass' of the series. fuck take her!
About Stacy, yeah, I agree totally.
Lovely drabble innit? As I told my dear
Re: Having a Weatherwax Moment
Date: 2007-02-26 11:04 am (UTC)...
... you do realise you just described House, right? :P
I do agree with you, mind. House tries to force people to do whatever keeps them alive and in possession of a maximal percentage of their limbs and faculties. Cameron tries to force people to do the "right thing," as she defines it. House tries to maximise an objective quality (health) on the expense of everything else, which makes him a bit narrow in his focus, but Cameron tries to make the world conform to her feelings.
Sadly I think that's your 'am not really hearing a thing they say LA-LA-LA' take on things.
Possibly, but if it lets me me enjoy House without having to go into a fit of impotent fury every time Cameron opens her stupid Republican mouth, I'm sticking with it. Philosophical pragmatism! I will believe whatever improves my life the most! ;)
I wanna see tiny Draco DEMOLISH Cameron, thankyouverymuch. :-D
It might certainly prove amusing... =]
Re: Having a Weatherwax Moment
Date: 2007-03-01 12:02 pm (UTC)*is revolted* NO! I haven't and thank your lucky stars, or lucky brain, that you've realised that on your own, my Friend or you'd have got a piece of my mind.
House does what he must to ensure lives are not lost: what people do with said not-lost lives is their own effing business. He just has a VERY personal hate against death. Possibly because he ain't ever met DEATH or even Endless Death, who knows?
I chortled a LOT in the AIDS person episode when Cameron called his father to effect a nnice Disenyan reunion only to get hit in the face by infected blood. What made me weep with disgust was the script that validated her action in end and didn't even give the bitch a healthy does of HIV positive to make her reflect on her attitude. So there.
Re: Having a Weatherwax Moment
Date: 2007-03-02 03:30 pm (UTC)You did describe House, though. Don't blame me if your description didn't cover the differences between him and Cameron. :P
He just has a VERY personal hate against death. Possibly because he ain't ever met DEATH or even Endless Death, who knows?
I suspect if he met them, he'd hate them even more. They are, after all, the embodiment of there being something else, and that would render life kind of irrelevant. And House hates all things that are irrelevant. =]
Bit of a problem with all fantasy, actually. Few authors can pass up on the temptation of providing life after death, but then, why is murder a bad thing?
I chortled a LOT in the AIDS person episode when Cameron called his father to effect a nnice Disenyan reunion only to get hit in the face by infected blood.
My personal favourite was the sleepless woman with the plans to leave her girlfriend. "Of course I gave her half my liver even though I knew she was going to break up with me. I mean... how's she going to leave me now?" I swear I could hear yet another little piece of Cameron's idiotic sentimentality crumbling to dust at that point. =]
Honestly, people who complain that humans aren't completely selfless and noble annoy me. Why should people be selfless? It means "lacking a self." Is that what people are supposed to be? Empty shells of pure altruism? Rubbish.
Though I admit that a lot of people could do with being a bit more noble. I can't stand pettiness. If you're going to be a bastard, you should at least not be a petty one. =]
Re: Having a Weatherwax Moment
Date: 2007-03-02 11:13 pm (UTC)Agreeing with you about so-called selflessness and this. I think what you're saying is what I've been saying for ages, though I call it generosity. Being generous has nothing to do with being noble, pure or good, it has to do with not being petty or stingy or narrow-minded.
Give me generous people any time, I can tolerate them a lot more than anyone else. And by generous I mean 'not counting the cost' and not 'ignoring the cost'. Anything one does has a cost, but if one knows what the cost is and does the thing anyway, then one is generous, methinks. It's not a guarantee of the inherent goodness of the action, but it's a guarantee of not trying to foist the cost of it on someone else.
Alright, I'm clear as mud, amn't I?
Re: Having a Weatherwax Moment
Date: 2007-03-05 01:31 pm (UTC)I guess it's a matter of control. You don't lash out when you're hurt - you control yourself. You don't squabble over pocket change - you accept a minor loss in the interest of making things run smoothly. If someone asks you a favour, you either do it without resenting it, or you say no. You handle the big things and you don't worry about the little things. You refuse to be... a small person, yes? You refuse to let your life be about small things.
It works to avoid being "narrow-minded," too. You admit that the things people get narrow-minded about don't really matter, so you live and let live when it comes to those things and concentrate on things that do matter.
Though sometimes it disturbs me that my ego seems to be acting in stead of my conscience... =]