hd_discussion, posts by tag: ootp - LiveJournal

Don't you find it just ironic that the moment someone actually makes a community for the discussion of h/d, h/d discussion starts popping up everywhere but here?

This isn't off-topic, I don't think--Jen can thwap me if it is--but I thought I'd provide ( Collapse )

What I, rather obviously, perhaps, would like to see come out of all this is a discussion about how in-school post-OOTP fics can build off of all of the different aspects of their current dynamic.  Is it really possible to write an in-school post-OOTP fic that's not all about Draco's journey?  Has Harry's attitude towards Draco really changed all that much?  Is it possible to have Draco think about his father and his position in the war, without taking him too far towards an intellectual or possibly OOC side?  Can in-school post-OOTP H/D work without redeeming Draco?

And a gazillion more questions. For your consideration.

This is just a great idea.

And because I am a shameless meta ho, I am just going to barge in here, uninvited, with the first comment.

My question is: 15 months post OOTP, how well do you think the H/D ship has assimilated some of the new material in OOTP canon?

My own sense is that people have shied away from it or channeled it into only a few narrow directions. But my sense may be totally wrong because I've had trouble keeping up with new H/D, so it would be good to have recs about stories that play in really interesting ways with OOTP canon.

It feels to me that OOTP has only had a few consistent fandom spinoffs. There's Angry!Harry, which I think doesn't really do justice to the complexity of his emotional development in OOTP -- there's all kinds of evidence throughout the book that he has some insight and perspective on his feelings and and the book ends with an epiphany of Luna that's all about empathy and kindness. Has anyone done some good fic that's about Harry maturing and developing because of fifth year, rather than being embittered or darkened by it?

There's some interesting post-fifth year Draco that explores the shock of losing his father, but is there any fic out there that explores the parallel between Draco's loss of Lucius and Harry's loss of Sirius? Or even the general parallel between Harry and Draco as two people dealing, perhaps eventually successfully, with rage issues? There are obvious followups to Draco's "I'll have you" comment, but that seems to be mostly conventional anger-into-lust territory that isn't uniquely OOTP.

I think there's abundant material for slashers that suggests Harry's ambiguous sexuality, from the way he reacts to Dudley's Cedric remark to the missing narrative of the kiss with Cho to his apparent fascination with Zach. And I've posted before about OOTP having a strikingly vivid physical Draco, which both suggests Harry's attention to him and should invite new fandom descriptions of Draco that make him more of an interesting sexual being.

Well, I'm deliberately keeping this post very general, first because I would welcome refinement of these points by people who have kept up better with new H/D than I have. But I also think it's a decent starting point, because there seems to be a widespread sense that OOTP killed, or at least crippled, H/D, and I think it would be fun to battle against that, and to explore more rigorously some ways that OOTP can re-invigorate H/D. What are the best H/D fics you've read that are firmly grounded in OOTP canon? What are some of the raw materials in OOTP that you don't think have been exploited enough by H/D?