New HP story: Down, You Lie Down Too

[resonant]

No, this isn't "Transfigurations." This is a bit of Snapery that leapt upon me and demanded to be written right this minute.

Down, You Lie Down Too
Harry/Snape -- NC-17 -- 12K
No underage
A brief interlude of peace

I was too impatient to post, so I couldn't make myself wait for a Brit beta. If I'm doing the equivalent of making Harry say, "Make my day, dude," e-mail me and I'll fix it.

Oh, and? HP writers? Is there someplace I ought to be archiving this?

Comments

[mz-bstone.livejournal.com]

It's lovely and dark and this thin sliver of bright.

I think ... in an older, darker world ... Snape and Harry are balanced, you know? Draco would still be a child, spoilt or split by circumstances.

Snape is a survivor, and, strong, and *cares*, even if he's a total bastard. He'd be the hard wall at Harry's back.

B

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

He'd be the hard wall at Harry's back.

Mmm. What a marvelous image.

I do believe there's a possible future where Draco grows up (he'd better; "Transfigurations" depends on it), but ... yes. Snape's already there.

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

You could archive it at Ink Stained Fingers (slash archive; I don't have the URL on me right now) and Kiln Fiction (allfic archive; I'm the archivist there, and gah, I need to upgrade the autoarchive software, gah!), which is www.kilnfiction.org.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Cool -- I will. (Carla (http://carlacoupe.diaryland.com/index.html) e'd me the Inkstained Fingers URL.) (http://inkstain.slashcity.net/)

[the-star-fish.livejournal.com]

That was loverly. Simply wonderful. You're continuing to be one of those authors I'll read regardless of fandom or pairing.

This one reminded me (in a good way) of some post-colonization XF stuff I read (and loved) back in the day. It's all going to hell, but Our Heroes still battle on ...

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

[beaming] Thanks!

[(Anonymous)]

This was the first HP fic I've ever read and, well, I just have to ask. I mean I'm not on any HP lists and I suppose this subject is really, really old, but I'll ask anyway: How do the HP writers deal with the visual imagery. At least when I read a story I keep visualising the events and while reading this story I kept getting these really, really offputting flashes of the little boy who plays HP in the movie. And since Harry must be, like, 10 years old in the books, too, the writers must imagine he's older or something? To be honest I was pretty shocked and well, scared, when I found one of the writers I really like and respect drool over the "steamy" picture of Harry and Snape, taken from the movie.

I've always been sort of proud about being a part of the slash community, but lately, with all these new fandoms with really young boys, I've started to feel a bit uncomfortable. I dunno. It's so easy be carried away by the talent of good writers. I used to find the idea of RPS squicky, and look at me now. I'm a slut. I'm afraid one day I'll happily read steamy stories featuring little kids and never think twice about it.

And why do I bother you with this? Nobody ever talks about this, at least not in livejournals and the few lists I'm on, and it would be nice to get and opinion from someone I respect. Or if you know some reassuring discussion somewhere, I'd be really happy to check it out :). Hopefully it's just me and I'm overreacting.

- Mona

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Probably every reader/writer would give you a different answer, but here's mine:

If you read a lot of children's fantasy novel series, you get used to reading stories in which the protagonist starts out as a child and ends up as an adult -- often a hero or a monarch. So you get accustomed to visualizing a character as a child and then "growing him up" in your mind. (Think of Susan and Peter in the Chronicles of Narnia, for instance, or Taran in Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain.)

Harry is eleven in "Philosopher's Stone, approaching fifteen at the end of Goblet of Fire. It's pretty clear that by the time his Hogwarts education ends (when he'll be seventeen or eighteen), he'll be facing Ultimate Evil in a battle to save the world. So he fits right into that tradition.

I have seen the movie, and the Snape in my head owes a great deal to Alan Rickman (though the McGonagall in my head is certainly sexier than Maggie Smith), but my young-adult Harry comes from the books.

I do read stories with very young characters, and I admit that sometimes I have to do it with a sort of double mind. My best friend's kid is the same age as Clark Kent in Smallville, and when I try to imagine Robbie, who's never kissed anyone, doing some of the things that Clark does in stories ... well.

That's when I fall back on the idea that TV Sixteen is like TV Ugly: not the same as it is in the real world.

Also you have to keep in mind: I'm almost forty, but in HP and Smallville and other fandoms with teenage characters, a lot of the readers and writers are themselves in their teens and twenties. I know the idea of sixteen-year-olds having sex was a lot less loaded for me when I was sixteen myself!

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for the reply, to both you and Silvia Kundera. The idea of characters being ageless, concepts, doesn't really work for me, and I came to think that maybe that has something to do with the way different people perceive the world. I am a stongly visual person and need concrete visual images to work with. So the idea of growíng someone up in my head doesn't really work for me. I'm starting to think I'm missing something out because of it :).

>I do read stories with very young characters, and I admit that sometimes I have to do it with a sort of double mind. My best friend's kid is the same age as Clark Kent in Smallville, and when I try to imagine Robbie, who's never kissed anyone, doing some of the things that Clark does in stories ... well.
>That's when I fall back on the idea that TV Sixteen is like TV Ugly: not the same as it is in the real world.

That's very true. And I guess different people have different age preferences, anyway. I've always tended to gravitate towards older guys and simply don't find people in their teens, or even in their early twenties, very sexy. Or rather, sexy in their own, alien way (I'm 30+ myself). Which doesn't mean nobody else would, or should.

Anyway, I'll get a great opportunity to test my resistance to teenagers, soon. Smallville starts here in a couple of months. Wanna bet who's devouring the stories in SV archive, then :).

- Mona

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I am a strongly visual person and need concrete visual images to work with. So the idea of growíng someone up in my head doesn't really work for me.

I'm much more oriented to sound than to sight, and my visual images of fiction are usually kind of fragmentary. (This is even true of things I write myself.)

So in a book, as long as the writer gives me a slightly more mature behavior and/or speech pattern for the character, I'll accept that character as an adult. In a movie or TV show, I guess what happens is that I don't retain any coherent visual memory, just snippets, and I can replace those with snippets of older faces if I concentrante a little bit.

But I'll bet more people are visual like you than are auditory like me. I wonder how the rest of them handle this? Because I'm with you -- it would sort of wreck my enjoyment of a sex scene if I found I was picturing little Daniel Radcliffe in it.

I guess maybe the visual people are looking for images of adults to take his place in their heads, like liviapenn's Johnny Depp and miriam_heddy's Blaine Capatch. Or maybe that's what fanart is really for?

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I'm also auditory to a large extent, which is one reason I can't listen to music when writing.

Now I'm wondering what impact that has on my comfort levels with various things in slash. Huh.

[silviakundera.livejournal.com]

They're children in the movie stuff we've seen so far. and most of canon. But.

With the HP fandom, I function a little like I did with boyband slash. NSYNC's story begins when Justin is, like, 12. With MMC and all of that canon history, and then moving on until the present -- when he's totally an adult. And you can play anywhere along those lines, and many fics touch numerous parts of that history. In quite a few fics I "started at the beginning" and worked my way up to what the situation is at the present.

So with me, Harry Potter is the same way.

We have them as kids to start out, and then you can move them up to adults as long as you build upon canon. They are no age, and yet every age. Kids and adults at the same time, on different planes. Instead of Hermione as that-kid-who-lives-next-door-to-you-and-studies-on-the-front-lawn, for instance, we're really dealing with the idea of Hermione. She's a concept, that can be examined and stretched if you proceed carefully. That's the beauty of fictional characters and expanded universes.