how do I like my tragedy? drawn out and painful.

[bedlamsbard]

For the life of me, I can't figure out how to make the shower have hot water. At least I'm finally taking really, really short showers -- I'm usually a half-hour and change kind of person when it comes to showers.

I'm writing HP fic again, finally! ...only it's not for any of my ficathons, which is, uh, kind of a problem. It's an AU where Sirius, Lily, and Harry all died That Night in Godric's Hollow, and James survived (the Man Who Lived, more or less, with a less stupid moniker once I think one up). Fifteen years afterward, James is the Transfiguration professor at Hogwarts (and Head of Gryffindor House), McGonagall is Headmistress, and Dumbledore is Minister of Magic. Also, James spends half his time drunk and Snape spends half his time brewing hangover potions and cursing his name. They have a much more functional relationship, partially fueled through shared misery and partially through sheer bloody mindedness. And then Sirius Black, fifteen years dead, tumbles through the veil into the Ministry of Magic and everything changes.

I like to say I don't OTP, but that would be a horrible, horrible lie. I OTP like a crazy thing. In canon I prefer gen, but that's just because I very seldom trust the canon to do it right. In fandom, I trust you guys, and I usually have a legion of choices. I OTP. SGA (McShep), SPN (Wincest), CSI:NY despite all my protestations to the contrary (Danny/Flack), BtVS (Spuffy), and HP. My HP preferred pairing used to be Draco/Hermione, but I haven't seen a good D/Hr fic in so long that it's gone the way of the dodo. I tend to read Draco/Harry, but I also tend to not read any authors other than mistful and the stories on my recs list, and she writes D/H. However, neither of those are my HP OTP. My HP OTP is James/Sirius, and James/Sirius is inherently a tragedy.

Tragedy, for me, has never simply been about dying. It's about dying and leaving someone behind, someone that suffers worse than dying. My other favorite tragedy OTP (SW, Anakin/Obi-Wan) is the same way. Anakin becomes Vader and Obi-Wan spends twenty years in solitude going slowly mad, on the planet that the most important person in the world to him hated most, knowing Anakin hated him, knowing he's the last of his kind (sidenote: there is a really fantastic vid covering this very subject. It makes me cry). With James/Sirius, James dies and Sirius spends twelve years in Azkaban knowing he was responsible for his best friend, the one person in the world who meant more to him than anything else, knowing he made a mistake and knowing another friend betrayed everything he believed in. How is that not more tragic than just dying? Death is nothing. It's easy to die. It's hard to survive.

Comments

[limmenel.livejournal.com]

... this is the most depressing thing I've read all morning D:!

I don't actually read any MWPP fic. I think I read a Sirius/Snape once, and I've written a couple of almost-gen-but-not-quite James/Snape, but that was years ago.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*curtsies prettily* Well, James/Sirius is depressing because it's inherently doomed, the same way Anakin/Obi-Wan is. There's no way it can end that's happy: we all know James dies and Sirius ends up in Azkaban, the same we know that Anakin becomes Darth Vader and Obi-Wan spends twenty years in exile. It's attractive in its own screwed up kind of way. This is why I write AU, I guess; even if I don't necessarily give them happy endings ("What Is Lost", for example), at least I give them different ones.

I don't read much, because most of it is Remus/Sirius or James/Lily, and obviously...that screws with my OTP. I just read a bunch of really fantastic James/Sirius, though.