Jumping Ships

[salixbabylon]

So a few different people have asked me why I've switched from the Harry Potter fandom to LOTR-RPS. And I didn't really have a good answer.

I first found out about slash through an article in the SF Chronicle. Googled it, and found smut. I was intrigued by the idea that people were taking characters I knew and loved, from a world I knew and loved, and aging them up and having them get down and dirty.

I've always almost exclusively read only NC17 fics. I have very little interest in gen fics -- if I want a story that's like what the author would write... I'll wait for the author to write it. But I know she's not going to make anyone gay or having explicit sex, so that's what I wanted to read.

And then after going through the requisite Harry/Draco stage, I went through the Harry/Snape stage, and the Snape/Lupin stage, and then the Snape/everything-under-the-sun stage, and the twincest, and the puppylove, and the MWPP, and all of it. I've always been a total whore and read every pairing. (Well, most of them, anyway.)

But there was a lot of crap out there.

So eventually I started being more selective, following certain authors, following links and recs pages, trying to only read things that were well-written.

And I came to a conclusion: a lot of what's well written in the Harry Potter world is really dark. Rather obvious, I know, since the HP world IS dark, with evil and terror and horrible things happening to children. And in fanfic, especially the NC17 stuff, there's a whole lot of rape. And torture. And mutilation. And BDSM.

Now, I'm all for BDSM. But I like at least a hint of consent. And I really am deeply, viscerally -bothered- by rape and torture and mutilation. I have nightmares. I get depressed. I am upset.

(And I'm not trying to be melodramatic here or at all imply that I'm so-very-sensitive and therefore better than you or anything like that. I can't watch "Law and Order" on tv because there's too much rape, and I can't see a lot of movies. Rape really bothers me. More so, it seems, than most folks. That's cool - one man's meat is another man's poison and all that.)

So, back to fanfic. *g*

I noticed recently that I go through a period of depression every single summer. Some summers are worse than others. Summer before last was really bad, practically suicidal. And that was when I started writing HP fanfiction. The characters are depressed and miserable and afraid, because that's how I was feeling.

The next summer (last summer) I made a determined effort to not get (as) depressed. And coincidentally, this really fun movie about pirates came out, with that kind of cute boy who I think was an elf, and Johnny Depp, who I've *swoon*ed over for ages.

So I started reading that. And I tried some elf-smut and it wasn't really my cuppa tea, but it was ok but not great. Again, lots and lots of crap. And then I had this friend, who I shall not out. (she knows who she is ;) And she somehow got me to read RPS even though I was dead-set against it.

See, in Harry Potterland, the actors -are- kids, and the thought of them being sexy really doesn't even seem possible to me. So RPS there just seems creepy and icky to me. But in LOTR... well, they're not kids, and I frankly just about died the first time I saw Aragorn. *swoon*die*explodewithlust*

So it was quite a bit more appealing. So I read. And I liked.

And I wrote. And I got oodles of positive feedback, unlike in HP (not really sour grapes - I was a newbie writer, and I like to think and hope that I've improved a lot since the first few fics I wrote).

And I read in both fandoms for a while... But I felt like I'd read everything in HP. I read so much those first two years, I think it covered almost every pairing, dynamic, plot possibility, and I guess I just got a little bored, and a little distressed at how much of the good stuff was rape/mutilation/torture.

Not that there's not an abundance of rape/etc in LOTR-RPS. Just that the warnings are generally a lot more clear, so I don't accidentally to read it.

So that's why I switched. Because the HP world was too dark, the majority of fics were too angsty, and LOTR-RPS has a lot of good fluff and nice, consensual kink. I'm still following a few writers in HPdom, and a few WIPs that I just adore. But I'm mostly off of it, and don't really see going back. I'm sorry.

So a short recap:
- crap in both fandoms
- rape/mutilation/torture in both fandoms
- wank in both fandoms

Chose LOTR-RPS because:
- newer
- shinier
- better graphics of sexy boys
- more light-hearted fluff


Comments and thoughts are welcome.