![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingThis past week or so I've been getting a spate (...well, for very low values of 'spate') of reviews for "Definitions of Romance" over on ff.net. That surprised me, because the story is just a few months shy of six years old and is also very short, so it is extremely unlikely for people to stumble across it via basic filtered searches. At this point, you almost have to find it via recs, whether ff.net favorites lists or some off-site link.
I went looking to see if I could backtrack the link... and discovered a review/discussion thread over at Dark Lord Potter forums.
It is deeply, existentially weird to see people analyzing a story I wrote in about twenty minutes as a gift almost six years ago, and using it as a springboard to argue about the validity of Harry/Hermione as a ship in general. There is some truth to the theory that "Definitions of Romance" was a reaction against melodramatic genre romance, but I am beginning to wonder if I should stick an author's note on ff.net to the effect of, "I wrote this as a gift for a friend and I tried to make it a proper genre romance, but I am no good at that style of writing so this is what came out instead." (Which is completely true, by the way. All my romances come out fairly unromantic, though probably not quite as pointedly so as in this particular story.)
Oh well, whatever. There is a lot of dramatic, emotionally-demonstrative romance out there because that's what a lot of people prefer to read, and people who want to argue the validity of ships can whip arguments out of any raw material under the sun. No skin off my back. The story is there for those who like it, and those who don't can shrug and move on to reading something else.
...
It's still massively weird to read a discussion about my work that isn't addressed to me or in a space I frequent. One doesn't expect to have "the author is dead" applied to oneself -- or at least, I don't. That implies that people are actually reading my work and caring enough to talk about it, which is something I have great trouble wrapping my head around.
I went looking to see if I could backtrack the link... and discovered a review/discussion thread over at Dark Lord Potter forums.
It is deeply, existentially weird to see people analyzing a story I wrote in about twenty minutes as a gift almost six years ago, and using it as a springboard to argue about the validity of Harry/Hermione as a ship in general. There is some truth to the theory that "Definitions of Romance" was a reaction against melodramatic genre romance, but I am beginning to wonder if I should stick an author's note on ff.net to the effect of, "I wrote this as a gift for a friend and I tried to make it a proper genre romance, but I am no good at that style of writing so this is what came out instead." (Which is completely true, by the way. All my romances come out fairly unromantic, though probably not quite as pointedly so as in this particular story.)
Oh well, whatever. There is a lot of dramatic, emotionally-demonstrative romance out there because that's what a lot of people prefer to read, and people who want to argue the validity of ships can whip arguments out of any raw material under the sun. No skin off my back. The story is there for those who like it, and those who don't can shrug and move on to reading something else.
...
It's still massively weird to read a discussion about my work that isn't addressed to me or in a space I frequent. One doesn't expect to have "the author is dead" applied to oneself -- or at least, I don't. That implies that people are actually reading my work and caring enough to talk about it, which is something I have great trouble wrapping my head around.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-13 01:57 pm (UTC)Anyway, I liked the story!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-14 03:43 am (UTC)Stories do not exist in a void; they intersect with the worldview and assumptions each reader brings to the table. So I take most of the shipping-related criticism and toss it out, becaue that is clearly something beyond my control. *wry*
The bits of the discussion I actually think are useful to me as a writer are the observation that the story feels like a reaction-fic and that's not enough to carry a fic without context, and about the structure being maybe a little too contrived. (Which is funny, since I did no planning whatsoever for "Definitions of Romance" -- I just sat down and typed it in twenty minutes, cold, and I don't think I ever made more than two single-word revisions -- and the structure therefore was a happy accident.) But it does have a very tidy circularity, and I can see how that effect could be off-putting to some people. *shrug*