The Mistake of Benevolence Rant
Hey, poppets. Just warning y'all . . . the rant is kinda long.
Ah, The Mistake of Benevolence--you are as God made you.
Wait, that would imply that God made you and since I highly doubt God would create that piece of shit, let me rephrase: you are as I made you.
TMoB (as it will be called throughout the rest of the rant and is what my friends know it as) is what I like to called “the one-shot that never ends.”
A long, long time ago . . . As in, right after Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out, I wrote this fic called ‘Roses’ which would be the first serious attempt at a fic I ever wrote. Let me be clear--I’ve been writing fic since I was about ten when I got interested in Animorphs. Back then, as a poor, lonely, misanthropic depressing bitch of a preteen (cue: Cartman singing ‘In The Ghetto’) I scribbled it down in notebooks. We didn’t have television or computers back in those days, poppets.
We still don’t have TV, and I bought this laptop and pay my own internet bill. (Well we have a TV but no channels, so we watch a lot of DVDs. Anyway.)
So this meant I read. A LOT. And I started writing to pass the time. A LOT. And without realizing it, I was writing fanfic.
But alas, I had never had the chance to really read other people’s work, as I had no internet connection, and so I never came across clichés, or badly written fanfiction or OoC-ness. Then when I was about twelve or so I started writing fic on a computer (a Windows 95, dubbed The Dinosaur. I just threw it away last December) but still, no internet connection.
It wasn’t until I was about fifteen that I realized fanfic existed through the school’s computers. I read fic, realized I liked some, hated others, and tried to implement what I liked about others into my own writing.
However, like every fanfiction author before me, I had a few Mary Sues (including the dreaded a random fan gets sucked into the fandom fic) but I knew that--I was aware the characters weren’t that great, but I had no intention of ever posting them.
Let me explain what I understood a Mary Sue to be--a perfect popular girl who was good at everything and had no flaws.
Now, perhaps it was because I was raised LDS (Latter-Day Saints--Mormon) but I assumed that a Mary Sue, under that description, would be a kind, sweet, turning-the-other-cheek, goody-goody who never did anything wrong. Of course with insanely high IQ and, like, good at everything she attempted.
So, Half-Blood Prince comes out and I start writing a Marauder-Era Fic about a girl named Emily Kensith. Let me explain what she’s like--she ended up in Gryffindor, but due to some bad experiences she became highly ashamed of her parentage--she was muggleborn. She was the type of girl who was invited into a house and made herself at home--and not in the good way. The kind that raids your fridge, grabs the remote and changes the channel without asking--ie, acted as if she owned the place, and honestly thought you were okay with her behaviour. She thought she was smart, popular, loved--but mostly, people just tolerated her. She wanted to be a marauder, but they couldn’t stand her but she was too stupid to realize that--and she had a massive crush on Snape, who thought she was a moron . . . But because he was not popular, she kept that as her little secret. Also, she is a compulsive liar.
Eventually Snape was going to realize her obvious feelings for him when he was tutoring her (she used Felix to pass her OWLs and get into NEWT potions--come on, do you really think they test for it during exams?) and start to tolerate her company and the start to find her interesting and perhaps even like her--but one day, when the Marauders walk by and see them together, because she’s a bitch and cares far too much what people think of her (obviously--she lies about being muggleborn) she insults Snape, hexes him, all to impress the Marauders. So Snape, later on, used her feelings for him against her and humiliated her in front of the Marauders and made her cry and hate him and see the truth--nobody likes her.
Well, because I’m a horrible procrastinator and usually have something around forty WIPs I have stashed on my computer, I never stay on one fic for too long, and I hadn’t even finished that story by the time Deathly Hallows came out and I bought my laptop. Sadly, I had no way of transferring my fics from the Dinosaur to the laptop, so I thought; “Well, fuck. Now I have to rewrite the goddamn thing.”
And that was when it hit me: why rewrite that story when I could write about her daughter? Her daughter who is hot-headed, haughty, a brat, obnoxious, an attention-seeking girl, and is UTTERLY CLUELESS about all of her flaws . . . and just happens to look like Lily? Snape would dislike her mother, dislike her personality, but see that she looked like Lily.
Granted, I was eighteen by the time I read DH and I still hadn’t had much experience in reading others’ fanfic because the school blocked fanfiction on their cyber-nanny system. However, I knew enough that creating a flawed character was important.
I’ll be honest--I can see how one would think Danielle was a Mary Sue now that I have actually come across Sues in fiction. However, I swear to you, she is not. She is actually probably more of an anti-Sue. Which can be just as bad, but let me explain why I did this: think of what most people are like at fourteen.
Yeah.
My senior year, I was in fourth-year French class and I swear to you there was a girl who was the most obnoxious bitch ever. Our teacher had no control over the classroom. And this girl walked all over her, and I’d always think; “Christ, if Snape taught this class that girl would be pissing herself by now.”
Thus Danielle was born.
The point of the fic was this: create Danielle (based off of that annoying brat in my French class) to be the daughter of someone Snape doesn’t really like (Emily Kensith) and have an incredibly annoying personality, but look like Lily so that it would annoy him doubly so to see someone look like his “wun twu wuv” act that way . . . But also confuse him because we all know Snape has issues.
At this time in my life, I was a bit dark, depressed, and honestly believed that Snape had a few more issues than he probably did. Or maybe not. In any case, I really wanted there to be an excuse for him to just rip into her.
Seeing as I didn’t have an internet connection (remember how I said that earlier?) whenever I did manage to read fic, it was on other computers and I had no idea when I would be able to finish a story so I only read short fics--one-shots. So that was what I was comfortable with. I had intended for the first half to be all about how immature she was (from her POV, and trust me, it is . . . actually not as fun as you might think writing in the frame of mind of a fourteen-year-old) and then, after an encounter with Snape, the second half would be years later, after he had died . . . Whoops, I hope I didn’t spoil anything for a book that’s been out for three years . . . She would visit his grave and ruminate about how he had been somewhat pivotal into helping her grow into, well, someone who wasn’t annoying as fuck.
And then I realized, well, it had better be a two shot.
I hammered it out one night when I was drunk (my bff and I had gotten plastered--my bff, aka My Wilson--seriously--whose pseudonym shall be Jay) and posted it.
Let me explain my error in judgment: the fics I had come across in the HP Snape/OC fandom were NOT GOOD. Maybe it was bad luck, maybe it’s just not possible for Snape/OC fics to be written well as one-shots, or maybe ff.net is called The Pit of Voles for a reason . . . But I promise you, considering what I had read, even that chapter was better than most of what I had read at the point. Once again, I had also thought that a Mary Sue would naturally be a sweet and innocent, kind, never mean, never smug, and never full of herself character.
I did not realize that most Sues came of as self-righteous, hot-headed, attention-seeking obnoxious brats.
That being said, a few people called her a Sue, and I had to ask why they thought someone so horrible would be someone I should “idolize.” I then got my explanation.
A few people assumed she was a self-insert simply because apparently anybody who writes in 1st person is obviously writing themselves into a story as an insert. I told them that I hated Danielle and I made her obnoxious on purpose.
Other than that, though, I got some pretty good reviews, but I realized that what had happened between Danielle and Snape wasn’t really enough to make her change her ways. (For those of you who care, she got a detention and left her wand in his office, so she snuck out after curfew to get it and Snape was crying--laugh, I don’t care--because he’d received word his mother died. Well, she knew that if he saw her walk away it would make her look bad, so to appear like a ‘good, altruistic, caring person’ she asks him what’s wrong, blah blah. Now, I will admit that it seems rushed--but that was because I wanted it to be a two-shot so I wanted to stuff as much as I could into one chapter.) He also saves her from a Dementor. I gave her a tragic past so that she could pass out and he would have an excuse to like rescue her or whatever and for her to see a peek into him seeing her as Lily.
However, I realized it was rushed and that to jump to years later in the second shot would be . . . Strange and then I’d have to explain what had happened between her and Snape in the second chapter as a reminiscent piece of wistful garbage or what have you because one or two events would not change her life.
So I thought; “Okay, so this first chapter is not as good as I had intended so I’ll write one chapter for GoF, OotP, HBP, and DH from Danielle’s POV, then add the last chapter.” Boom, my two shot just turned into a six-chaptered story.
But this was my first serious fanfic I actually took seriously ever. So obviously not my best work. And I had talked to a creative writing teacher who once told me; “Never stop writing. Writer’s block is something people who can’t write at all blame their inability to create on. If you get blocked, just keep writing whatever first comes to mind.”
I am going to tell you something: No. DO NOT free-write novel-length shit. For a one-shot, sure. But for longer piece, you MUST have a frame--some sort of plan or structure. Free-writing creates plot-holes, inconsistencies, and lazy, thrown-together writing, and then you have to make it make sense chapters later when you fuck up.
So instead of structuring what would happen in each year, I just sat down and wrote.
And wrote.
Annnnnnd wrote.
I realized I kinda liked this story. I liked having her slowly mature. I liked having Snape’s confusion between her looking like someone he used to love but acting entirely different. I liked how horribly flawed and obnoxious she was, how screwed up, how clueless . . .
People started liking my story because I realized that I was actually getting better. My writing was maturing. I had never had anybody read over what I’d written before and having all these great reviews sorta went to my head. And not in the “I am the best writer in the world!” way. In the “Oh God I have to keep them reviewing or I will die” way.
Like a piece of shit TV show dragged ten seasons past its preferable ending point, I had to keep people hooked and instead of writing what I thought to be right, I started throwing in little suggestions that the reviewers asked for and okay, so that isn’t bad. There’s nothing wrong with throwing in a little something for the audience now and again, but then they start expecting it. Start making more demands. And I felt like I had to give them what they wanted in order to get my precious reviews. I knew reviews were the most important thing EVAR because other authors held their chapters ransom. “In order to get the next chapter, I must get eight reviews.”
Let me tell you a story: A father and a son decided to visit a friend a few towns over. The father placed his son on the back of a mule as he trudged through the hot weather. In the first town, all the citizens kept gasping; “How dare that young lad force his poor, weak, feeble and old father to drag him all over! For shame!”
The father, not wanting people to think ill of his son, switched places. In the next town, the citizens cried; “Look at that horrible man, making his son walk in this weather! He’s a grown man--he needs to stop being lazy and treating his son like some common slave!”
So the father and the son both decided to ride the mule, figuring that they had finally managed to please everyone. As they rode into the next town, the people shouted; “How dare they treat their family mule in such a manner? The weight of those two people will hurt it! How dare they be so cruel and lazy and mistreat that poor animal!”
So they both hopped off the mule and walked the rest of the way in the hot, sweltering weather. They were hungry, tired, sore, and pissed off because they both had to walk and drag their mule the entire way there. When they finally made it to their friend’s house, he looked at them, sunburnt, tired and aching, with their mule behind them, and said; “What was the point of bringing the mule if you weren’t going to ride him? You’re morons.”
The moral of the story: you can’t please everyone and all trying to will accomplish is an unnecessary ass.
More people made suggestions, usually in PMs but sometimes in reviews. But see, by this time I’d had a really “great idea” of how I wanted this story to go. Since Danielle became aware of the fact Snape had a Patronus and Death Eaters don’t have Patronuses, she would be aware he was a spy. Her mother, being a self-hating muggleborn who became a Death Eater, would take her to Voldemort to become one as well. This would be Bad News as Snape’s loyalties would then become known. So she would go into hiding at Grimmauld Place and her and Snape would sort of . . . Well, bond is too strong a word, over their loneliness. Sort of become . . . Well, not friends, but tolerate each other, seek solace in each other and probably have a screwed up solace-based relationship where all he saw was Lily and she was just looking for someone to hold onto in these troubled times. Then when Dumbledore died she would have to find someplace else to hide--and Snape would giver her Spinner’s End because, as Headmaster, he wouldn’t need it. After the Final Battle (and Snape would have somehow warned her it was happening--I didn’t have everything worked out) she was going to show up and look for him and find out that he was dead. She would realize that she had absolutely nothing left--no money, no education, no friends, her mother was dead, and all of this due to the catalyst that was her being nice to him all those years ago when she saw him crying--the mistake of her benevolence. Hence the title.
Alas, this is not how it went down.
Suggestions from the left. Suggestions from the right. I had to update every day because if I allowed my writer’s block to get the best of me I wasn’t a real writer and I was worthless. I needed reviews and everyone to be happy because if they weren’t happy why would they bother reading my story, right?
And the horrible thing is, these people didn’t understand that Snape would never love her. Sure, eventually in the fic he says he does--but did he really mean it? Maybe he thought he did. Or maybe he was just seeing Lily the whole time, subconsciously or otherwise. Most of my reviewers, no offence, did not understand that their relationship was not healthy. Snape is not Mister Darcy. Snape is a disturbed man who is lusting after a teenager--granted, the age of consent in England is sixteen, but still, he had feelings for her before then--not because he really cared for her, but because she epitomized a time in his life that he had love.
Originally Danielle just happened to look like Lily due to chance--I’ve met people who looked just like my brother before and there was no relation. But then people started saying; “It doesn’t make sense that she would look like Lily for no reason. Coincidence? Bah, I don’t believe it.” So . . . I made her father Lily’s uncle.
Seeing as I was following canon, people knew that Voldemort was coming and that Danielle knew Snape’s secret as well as her mother being a Death Eater. “Oh I can’t wait until you make her a double-agent!”
And then my world stopped. Double-agent? But then she’d have to be able to occlude her mind from fucking Voldemort. We all know Snape can do it, but that’s because Snape is Snape. He’s the only double-agent! But people were leaving private messages when I explained that, saying that the story would be boring without her being constantly near Snape; without them having interaction.
People wanted it. So I delivered.
She became a double-agent.
So I took a little bit of artistic licence . . . I made her an occlumens. That’s okay, though. One little bit of artistic licence to achieve an end. Sure, it was a little over-the-top, but I can handle that, right?
But I was disappointed because all people cared about was “When are they going to kiss? When are they going to get together?” not about how screwed up the entire thing was. Hell, I was practically writing a modernized HP version of Lolita (although not as sexual) and people didn’t notice. They missed subtlety, they missed symbolism . . . And most importantly of all, Snape had been diagnosed with Fanon Fangasm Fangirlosis--meaning people didn’t want to see dick!snape. They wanted to see darcy!snape.
I actually had someone complain, in a review, that “Snape shouldn’t be possessive. Women don’t find possessiveness attractive. Write him differently.” That is not a direct quote. It may have been anonymous and I may have deleted it. It may still be up there. I don’t know or care.
The thing about fanon that annoys me is that it almost becomes canon. Now with things like “Snape smells like sandalwood” or “there are bathrooms in the common rooms” I don’t mind. The former doesn’t screw anything canonical over, and the latter (although never once mentioned in the books) makes sense. However, and I’m sure EVERYONE has experienced this in some fashion, when a hot guy plays an character or the actor becomes suddenly popular, fan girls come and rewrite their IC-ness and change canon in the fandom. If you don’t believe me, read a Sephiroth fic in the FF7 archives. Read the mass amounts of sudden Draco is actually a sweetheart in RL after Tom Felton got randomly hawt in PoA. And Snape, my friends, is screwed up, possessive, jealous, judgemental, capricious, and a dick . . . But when you read fanon-fics, he randomly turns in Colin Firth from Pride and Prejudice.
People didn’t want Snape. They wanted fanon!Snape.
Now, I’m not going to say that TMoB has the perfect characterization of Snape ever, but I did a good job. But I was becoming irritated with how my fic had turned out. I had had a huge plan with how I wanted it to go, and now she was a double-agent, they weren’t understanding the POINT behind the story, and I was getting reviews like; “I’m getting tired of Danielle referring to Draco as pointy and pale and not attractive--Draco is sexy! How does she not see that? When will she get with Draco?”
God forbid I describe Draco in the way he was described in the books. (Danielle had always viewed Draco as a brother, so she said, but she often ignored him because she was ‘better’ than him and didn’t want people thinking she was the type of girl who hung around Malfoy. She was a self-hating Slytherin. Her mother dumped her off at the Malfoys all the time because she didn’t want to deal with her. I needed a tie to canon characters because let’s face it--nobody wants to read a fic without any of the canon characters. Right?)
So, and this is unfair to them I realize, I began to resent my reviewers. Not all of them, but a lot of them. I resented them because they didn’t see how dark and screwed up it was, and for not getting it, and for their suggestions--it is not their fault I obeyed or that I decided to switch my intended direction. They had no idea how I’d wanted to story to go, but because it was their suggestions that made me take a different path, I started to become annoyed with them and the fic in general.
So I made Snape a virgin. (Although it’s not mentioned in the fic, I had intended for it to be ‘to making love’ seeing as I assume he might have raped during revels . . . Perhaps not, but I figured he wouldn’t count that or he would lie as he hates his past or whatever.)
Nobody complained. In fact, most people thought it fit just fine. Apparently there’s an icon that says “Book seven spoilers--Snape’s a virgin!” so I am not the first person to have thought of it.
So the story ploughed on and on . . . and I never gave them a break; every time they start getting to a good, happy point, I tear everything down and put them in a lower place than they were before. It’s like they’re digging a hole deeper and deeper, always thinking they’ve hit rock bottom but them someone throws down a pick-axe. They are both horribly screwed up characters and all people can talk about is how cute they are together, aww!
By the time she had actually become a Death Eater (having to kill her mother to prove her loyalty) I’d thought I was finished taking demands. I wanted them to stay screwed up and all that, and I figured I just needed to grow up and deal with my decision to make her a double-agent. If the reviewers aren’t noticing how screwed up the relationship is (and they hadn’t even kissed yet) then oh well. It’s probably my fault anyway.
So the suggestions stopped for awhile.
But then they started again. In my private messages. In my email. On IM. “Please get Danielle and Draco together!” Um, this is a Snape/OC fic. “Please let Snape and Danielle have a child together!” Bwahahahaha.
I decided that after Snape’s death, Draco and Danielle could get married. (This is before I knew about Astoria Greengrass.) Nothing too bad. (Obviously that changed, though.)
Threw in some foreshadowy UST. People caught on.
“When will Snape and Danielle have a kid? They should have a baby!”
Fuck that. Danielle is sixteen and Snape . . . I doubt he wants to be a dad.
“I had this dream that they got pregnant!”
*sigh*
So I had her save a muggleborn from being killed and Snape fucking adopted him because he had nowhere else to go. Literally.
And I really think that’s what broke the camel’s back. Normally I am a very stubborn person. I will not compromise myself or what I believe for anyone . . . And here I was, introducing a fucking kid into the fic. To be honest, I actually really like Gabriel. He’s a cool character for a seven-ish year old--he’s intuitive, but not very book smart, and funny and all that. It’s not because I don’t like him.
But . . . Snape raising him?
Resentment returns full-force.
I had Danielle move in with Snape to help take care of a kid that wasn’t theirs . . . AND NOT HAVE SEX. They live together, sleep in the same bed, and don’t have sex, and have a kid. I laughed internally. I was practically trolling my own fic, but somehow, someway, I made it make sense I guess because they liked it.
All right, let me take this time to explain--TMoB really isn’t as bad as I’m making it out to be. It’s not great, it’s kinda weird, but it’s . . . okay. I try as much as I possibly can to make EVERYTHING make sense, and maybe that’s where my downfall was in trying to get people to hate it. Oh I’ve gotten reviews that said they didn’t like it, but the “I love it” reviews far outweigh them.
Last I checked, I had something like 665 reviews. Out of all of them, I’d say about eight are “I don’t like this fic” reviews. So it must not be as bad as I think it is. And to be honest, a lot of the reviews aren’t really annoying; they’re insightful. They’re just . . . Insightful about the things I don’t want them to be insightful about--like coming up with a great deeper meaning to a poem, then finding out it was about the colour of a dog’s collar.
My updates started getting longer in between--I went from an update every day, to every month, to six months in between, and then I just stopped. I think it’s been nearly two years since my last update. I hated the story because I had compromised my original plot, and even sometimes what I thought of Snape’s character. And the worst part is, from an objective POV, I can see why people like it. Danielle is flawed, Snape is flawed, and it has drama and humour and action. If I hadn’t written it and I was reading it, I would think it was okay. Not great, but not horrible. Enough to keep reading. I’d offer criticism, of course, and I wouldn’t favourite it or anything, but it’s okay. I wouldn’t freak out if the updates stopped, either.
I hate the story and I hated the reviewers because of one thing: I compromised when I shouldn’t have. It would be like finding a Valentine you wrote to some kid you absolutely loathe now, but had a crush on years ago. You’d hate that Valentine, not because it looked stupid but because of what it represented--TMoB is one big compromise, and I can say, without a doubt, it is the ONLY time I have ever half-assed something I wrote. It is the only time I’ve ever not cared about a story as I wrote it.
I resented the reviewers and that isn’t fair because it is not their fault. I wrote the story, not them. But rather than accept responsibility for my actions, I blamed them. I resent that story because I resented the reviewers over something that isn’t their fault--they never put a gun to my head. A part of me wonders if I stopped writing to spite them--keep them forever waiting for the next chapter.
Honestly it’s so bad I can’t watch Harry Potter or read a fic or one of the books without thinking of that story, and getting filled with hatred and guilt for what I did--not only compromising myself, but for leaving them hanging.
Writing isn’t solely about reviews. It’s not about who has more hits. Write for yourself--for what you think is right, for what you believe to be correct, and for fun.
I’m thinking about continuing the story and yes, it’s partly for the reviewers. I still get messages from people wanting me to update. But also, I want to see how I’ve improved and because it needs an ending. Perhaps I can see what I saw in the fic all those years ago and learn to care about it again. I’ve learned so much from that one story; I’ve learned not to compromise your stories, I’ve learned never to let the reviewers take hold and write the story for you, and most of all I learned that while your reviewers are important you should never put them before what you think is right.
I was too nice and let them walk all over me, and they didn’t even realize what they were doing.
And that, my friends, is the mistake of benevolence.
Ah, The Mistake of Benevolence--you are as God made you.
Wait, that would imply that God made you and since I highly doubt God would create that piece of shit, let me rephrase: you are as I made you.
TMoB (as it will be called throughout the rest of the rant and is what my friends know it as) is what I like to called “the one-shot that never ends.”
A long, long time ago . . . As in, right after Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out, I wrote this fic called ‘Roses’ which would be the first serious attempt at a fic I ever wrote. Let me be clear--I’ve been writing fic since I was about ten when I got interested in Animorphs. Back then, as a poor, lonely, misanthropic depressing bitch of a preteen (cue: Cartman singing ‘In The Ghetto’) I scribbled it down in notebooks. We didn’t have television or computers back in those days, poppets.
We still don’t have TV, and I bought this laptop and pay my own internet bill. (Well we have a TV but no channels, so we watch a lot of DVDs. Anyway.)
So this meant I read. A LOT. And I started writing to pass the time. A LOT. And without realizing it, I was writing fanfic.
But alas, I had never had the chance to really read other people’s work, as I had no internet connection, and so I never came across clichés, or badly written fanfiction or OoC-ness. Then when I was about twelve or so I started writing fic on a computer (a Windows 95, dubbed The Dinosaur. I just threw it away last December) but still, no internet connection.
It wasn’t until I was about fifteen that I realized fanfic existed through the school’s computers. I read fic, realized I liked some, hated others, and tried to implement what I liked about others into my own writing.
However, like every fanfiction author before me, I had a few Mary Sues (including the dreaded a random fan gets sucked into the fandom fic) but I knew that--I was aware the characters weren’t that great, but I had no intention of ever posting them.
Let me explain what I understood a Mary Sue to be--a perfect popular girl who was good at everything and had no flaws.
Now, perhaps it was because I was raised LDS (Latter-Day Saints--Mormon) but I assumed that a Mary Sue, under that description, would be a kind, sweet, turning-the-other-cheek, goody-goody who never did anything wrong. Of course with insanely high IQ and, like, good at everything she attempted.
So, Half-Blood Prince comes out and I start writing a Marauder-Era Fic about a girl named Emily Kensith. Let me explain what she’s like--she ended up in Gryffindor, but due to some bad experiences she became highly ashamed of her parentage--she was muggleborn. She was the type of girl who was invited into a house and made herself at home--and not in the good way. The kind that raids your fridge, grabs the remote and changes the channel without asking--ie, acted as if she owned the place, and honestly thought you were okay with her behaviour. She thought she was smart, popular, loved--but mostly, people just tolerated her. She wanted to be a marauder, but they couldn’t stand her but she was too stupid to realize that--and she had a massive crush on Snape, who thought she was a moron . . . But because he was not popular, she kept that as her little secret. Also, she is a compulsive liar.
Eventually Snape was going to realize her obvious feelings for him when he was tutoring her (she used Felix to pass her OWLs and get into NEWT potions--come on, do you really think they test for it during exams?) and start to tolerate her company and the start to find her interesting and perhaps even like her--but one day, when the Marauders walk by and see them together, because she’s a bitch and cares far too much what people think of her (obviously--she lies about being muggleborn) she insults Snape, hexes him, all to impress the Marauders. So Snape, later on, used her feelings for him against her and humiliated her in front of the Marauders and made her cry and hate him and see the truth--nobody likes her.
Well, because I’m a horrible procrastinator and usually have something around forty WIPs I have stashed on my computer, I never stay on one fic for too long, and I hadn’t even finished that story by the time Deathly Hallows came out and I bought my laptop. Sadly, I had no way of transferring my fics from the Dinosaur to the laptop, so I thought; “Well, fuck. Now I have to rewrite the goddamn thing.”
And that was when it hit me: why rewrite that story when I could write about her daughter? Her daughter who is hot-headed, haughty, a brat, obnoxious, an attention-seeking girl, and is UTTERLY CLUELESS about all of her flaws . . . and just happens to look like Lily? Snape would dislike her mother, dislike her personality, but see that she looked like Lily.
Granted, I was eighteen by the time I read DH and I still hadn’t had much experience in reading others’ fanfic because the school blocked fanfiction on their cyber-nanny system. However, I knew enough that creating a flawed character was important.
I’ll be honest--I can see how one would think Danielle was a Mary Sue now that I have actually come across Sues in fiction. However, I swear to you, she is not. She is actually probably more of an anti-Sue. Which can be just as bad, but let me explain why I did this: think of what most people are like at fourteen.
Yeah.
My senior year, I was in fourth-year French class and I swear to you there was a girl who was the most obnoxious bitch ever. Our teacher had no control over the classroom. And this girl walked all over her, and I’d always think; “Christ, if Snape taught this class that girl would be pissing herself by now.”
Thus Danielle was born.
The point of the fic was this: create Danielle (based off of that annoying brat in my French class) to be the daughter of someone Snape doesn’t really like (Emily Kensith) and have an incredibly annoying personality, but look like Lily so that it would annoy him doubly so to see someone look like his “wun twu wuv” act that way . . . But also confuse him because we all know Snape has issues.
At this time in my life, I was a bit dark, depressed, and honestly believed that Snape had a few more issues than he probably did. Or maybe not. In any case, I really wanted there to be an excuse for him to just rip into her.
Seeing as I didn’t have an internet connection (remember how I said that earlier?) whenever I did manage to read fic, it was on other computers and I had no idea when I would be able to finish a story so I only read short fics--one-shots. So that was what I was comfortable with. I had intended for the first half to be all about how immature she was (from her POV, and trust me, it is . . . actually not as fun as you might think writing in the frame of mind of a fourteen-year-old) and then, after an encounter with Snape, the second half would be years later, after he had died . . . Whoops, I hope I didn’t spoil anything for a book that’s been out for three years . . . She would visit his grave and ruminate about how he had been somewhat pivotal into helping her grow into, well, someone who wasn’t annoying as fuck.
And then I realized, well, it had better be a two shot.
I hammered it out one night when I was drunk (my bff and I had gotten plastered--my bff, aka My Wilson--seriously--whose pseudonym shall be Jay) and posted it.
Let me explain my error in judgment: the fics I had come across in the HP Snape/OC fandom were NOT GOOD. Maybe it was bad luck, maybe it’s just not possible for Snape/OC fics to be written well as one-shots, or maybe ff.net is called The Pit of Voles for a reason . . . But I promise you, considering what I had read, even that chapter was better than most of what I had read at the point. Once again, I had also thought that a Mary Sue would naturally be a sweet and innocent, kind, never mean, never smug, and never full of herself character.
I did not realize that most Sues came of as self-righteous, hot-headed, attention-seeking obnoxious brats.
That being said, a few people called her a Sue, and I had to ask why they thought someone so horrible would be someone I should “idolize.” I then got my explanation.
A few people assumed she was a self-insert simply because apparently anybody who writes in 1st person is obviously writing themselves into a story as an insert. I told them that I hated Danielle and I made her obnoxious on purpose.
Other than that, though, I got some pretty good reviews, but I realized that what had happened between Danielle and Snape wasn’t really enough to make her change her ways. (For those of you who care, she got a detention and left her wand in his office, so she snuck out after curfew to get it and Snape was crying--laugh, I don’t care--because he’d received word his mother died. Well, she knew that if he saw her walk away it would make her look bad, so to appear like a ‘good, altruistic, caring person’ she asks him what’s wrong, blah blah. Now, I will admit that it seems rushed--but that was because I wanted it to be a two-shot so I wanted to stuff as much as I could into one chapter.) He also saves her from a Dementor. I gave her a tragic past so that she could pass out and he would have an excuse to like rescue her or whatever and for her to see a peek into him seeing her as Lily.
However, I realized it was rushed and that to jump to years later in the second shot would be . . . Strange and then I’d have to explain what had happened between her and Snape in the second chapter as a reminiscent piece of wistful garbage or what have you because one or two events would not change her life.
So I thought; “Okay, so this first chapter is not as good as I had intended so I’ll write one chapter for GoF, OotP, HBP, and DH from Danielle’s POV, then add the last chapter.” Boom, my two shot just turned into a six-chaptered story.
But this was my first serious fanfic I actually took seriously ever. So obviously not my best work. And I had talked to a creative writing teacher who once told me; “Never stop writing. Writer’s block is something people who can’t write at all blame their inability to create on. If you get blocked, just keep writing whatever first comes to mind.”
I am going to tell you something: No. DO NOT free-write novel-length shit. For a one-shot, sure. But for longer piece, you MUST have a frame--some sort of plan or structure. Free-writing creates plot-holes, inconsistencies, and lazy, thrown-together writing, and then you have to make it make sense chapters later when you fuck up.
So instead of structuring what would happen in each year, I just sat down and wrote.
And wrote.
Annnnnnd wrote.
I realized I kinda liked this story. I liked having her slowly mature. I liked having Snape’s confusion between her looking like someone he used to love but acting entirely different. I liked how horribly flawed and obnoxious she was, how screwed up, how clueless . . .
People started liking my story because I realized that I was actually getting better. My writing was maturing. I had never had anybody read over what I’d written before and having all these great reviews sorta went to my head. And not in the “I am the best writer in the world!” way. In the “Oh God I have to keep them reviewing or I will die” way.
Like a piece of shit TV show dragged ten seasons past its preferable ending point, I had to keep people hooked and instead of writing what I thought to be right, I started throwing in little suggestions that the reviewers asked for and okay, so that isn’t bad. There’s nothing wrong with throwing in a little something for the audience now and again, but then they start expecting it. Start making more demands. And I felt like I had to give them what they wanted in order to get my precious reviews. I knew reviews were the most important thing EVAR because other authors held their chapters ransom. “In order to get the next chapter, I must get eight reviews.”
Let me tell you a story: A father and a son decided to visit a friend a few towns over. The father placed his son on the back of a mule as he trudged through the hot weather. In the first town, all the citizens kept gasping; “How dare that young lad force his poor, weak, feeble and old father to drag him all over! For shame!”
The father, not wanting people to think ill of his son, switched places. In the next town, the citizens cried; “Look at that horrible man, making his son walk in this weather! He’s a grown man--he needs to stop being lazy and treating his son like some common slave!”
So the father and the son both decided to ride the mule, figuring that they had finally managed to please everyone. As they rode into the next town, the people shouted; “How dare they treat their family mule in such a manner? The weight of those two people will hurt it! How dare they be so cruel and lazy and mistreat that poor animal!”
So they both hopped off the mule and walked the rest of the way in the hot, sweltering weather. They were hungry, tired, sore, and pissed off because they both had to walk and drag their mule the entire way there. When they finally made it to their friend’s house, he looked at them, sunburnt, tired and aching, with their mule behind them, and said; “What was the point of bringing the mule if you weren’t going to ride him? You’re morons.”
The moral of the story: you can’t please everyone and all trying to will accomplish is an unnecessary ass.
More people made suggestions, usually in PMs but sometimes in reviews. But see, by this time I’d had a really “great idea” of how I wanted this story to go. Since Danielle became aware of the fact Snape had a Patronus and Death Eaters don’t have Patronuses, she would be aware he was a spy. Her mother, being a self-hating muggleborn who became a Death Eater, would take her to Voldemort to become one as well. This would be Bad News as Snape’s loyalties would then become known. So she would go into hiding at Grimmauld Place and her and Snape would sort of . . . Well, bond is too strong a word, over their loneliness. Sort of become . . . Well, not friends, but tolerate each other, seek solace in each other and probably have a screwed up solace-based relationship where all he saw was Lily and she was just looking for someone to hold onto in these troubled times. Then when Dumbledore died she would have to find someplace else to hide--and Snape would giver her Spinner’s End because, as Headmaster, he wouldn’t need it. After the Final Battle (and Snape would have somehow warned her it was happening--I didn’t have everything worked out) she was going to show up and look for him and find out that he was dead. She would realize that she had absolutely nothing left--no money, no education, no friends, her mother was dead, and all of this due to the catalyst that was her being nice to him all those years ago when she saw him crying--the mistake of her benevolence. Hence the title.
Alas, this is not how it went down.
Suggestions from the left. Suggestions from the right. I had to update every day because if I allowed my writer’s block to get the best of me I wasn’t a real writer and I was worthless. I needed reviews and everyone to be happy because if they weren’t happy why would they bother reading my story, right?
And the horrible thing is, these people didn’t understand that Snape would never love her. Sure, eventually in the fic he says he does--but did he really mean it? Maybe he thought he did. Or maybe he was just seeing Lily the whole time, subconsciously or otherwise. Most of my reviewers, no offence, did not understand that their relationship was not healthy. Snape is not Mister Darcy. Snape is a disturbed man who is lusting after a teenager--granted, the age of consent in England is sixteen, but still, he had feelings for her before then--not because he really cared for her, but because she epitomized a time in his life that he had love.
Originally Danielle just happened to look like Lily due to chance--I’ve met people who looked just like my brother before and there was no relation. But then people started saying; “It doesn’t make sense that she would look like Lily for no reason. Coincidence? Bah, I don’t believe it.” So . . . I made her father Lily’s uncle.
Seeing as I was following canon, people knew that Voldemort was coming and that Danielle knew Snape’s secret as well as her mother being a Death Eater. “Oh I can’t wait until you make her a double-agent!”
And then my world stopped. Double-agent? But then she’d have to be able to occlude her mind from fucking Voldemort. We all know Snape can do it, but that’s because Snape is Snape. He’s the only double-agent! But people were leaving private messages when I explained that, saying that the story would be boring without her being constantly near Snape; without them having interaction.
People wanted it. So I delivered.
She became a double-agent.
So I took a little bit of artistic licence . . . I made her an occlumens. That’s okay, though. One little bit of artistic licence to achieve an end. Sure, it was a little over-the-top, but I can handle that, right?
But I was disappointed because all people cared about was “When are they going to kiss? When are they going to get together?” not about how screwed up the entire thing was. Hell, I was practically writing a modernized HP version of Lolita (although not as sexual) and people didn’t notice. They missed subtlety, they missed symbolism . . . And most importantly of all, Snape had been diagnosed with Fanon Fangasm Fangirlosis--meaning people didn’t want to see dick!snape. They wanted to see darcy!snape.
I actually had someone complain, in a review, that “Snape shouldn’t be possessive. Women don’t find possessiveness attractive. Write him differently.” That is not a direct quote. It may have been anonymous and I may have deleted it. It may still be up there. I don’t know or care.
The thing about fanon that annoys me is that it almost becomes canon. Now with things like “Snape smells like sandalwood” or “there are bathrooms in the common rooms” I don’t mind. The former doesn’t screw anything canonical over, and the latter (although never once mentioned in the books) makes sense. However, and I’m sure EVERYONE has experienced this in some fashion, when a hot guy plays an character or the actor becomes suddenly popular, fan girls come and rewrite their IC-ness and change canon in the fandom. If you don’t believe me, read a Sephiroth fic in the FF7 archives. Read the mass amounts of sudden Draco is actually a sweetheart in RL after Tom Felton got randomly hawt in PoA. And Snape, my friends, is screwed up, possessive, jealous, judgemental, capricious, and a dick . . . But when you read fanon-fics, he randomly turns in Colin Firth from Pride and Prejudice.
People didn’t want Snape. They wanted fanon!Snape.
Now, I’m not going to say that TMoB has the perfect characterization of Snape ever, but I did a good job. But I was becoming irritated with how my fic had turned out. I had had a huge plan with how I wanted it to go, and now she was a double-agent, they weren’t understanding the POINT behind the story, and I was getting reviews like; “I’m getting tired of Danielle referring to Draco as pointy and pale and not attractive--Draco is sexy! How does she not see that? When will she get with Draco?”
God forbid I describe Draco in the way he was described in the books. (Danielle had always viewed Draco as a brother, so she said, but she often ignored him because she was ‘better’ than him and didn’t want people thinking she was the type of girl who hung around Malfoy. She was a self-hating Slytherin. Her mother dumped her off at the Malfoys all the time because she didn’t want to deal with her. I needed a tie to canon characters because let’s face it--nobody wants to read a fic without any of the canon characters. Right?)
So, and this is unfair to them I realize, I began to resent my reviewers. Not all of them, but a lot of them. I resented them because they didn’t see how dark and screwed up it was, and for not getting it, and for their suggestions--it is not their fault I obeyed or that I decided to switch my intended direction. They had no idea how I’d wanted to story to go, but because it was their suggestions that made me take a different path, I started to become annoyed with them and the fic in general.
So I made Snape a virgin. (Although it’s not mentioned in the fic, I had intended for it to be ‘to making love’ seeing as I assume he might have raped during revels . . . Perhaps not, but I figured he wouldn’t count that or he would lie as he hates his past or whatever.)
Nobody complained. In fact, most people thought it fit just fine. Apparently there’s an icon that says “Book seven spoilers--Snape’s a virgin!” so I am not the first person to have thought of it.
So the story ploughed on and on . . . and I never gave them a break; every time they start getting to a good, happy point, I tear everything down and put them in a lower place than they were before. It’s like they’re digging a hole deeper and deeper, always thinking they’ve hit rock bottom but them someone throws down a pick-axe. They are both horribly screwed up characters and all people can talk about is how cute they are together, aww!
By the time she had actually become a Death Eater (having to kill her mother to prove her loyalty) I’d thought I was finished taking demands. I wanted them to stay screwed up and all that, and I figured I just needed to grow up and deal with my decision to make her a double-agent. If the reviewers aren’t noticing how screwed up the relationship is (and they hadn’t even kissed yet) then oh well. It’s probably my fault anyway.
So the suggestions stopped for awhile.
But then they started again. In my private messages. In my email. On IM. “Please get Danielle and Draco together!” Um, this is a Snape/OC fic. “Please let Snape and Danielle have a child together!” Bwahahahaha.
I decided that after Snape’s death, Draco and Danielle could get married. (This is before I knew about Astoria Greengrass.) Nothing too bad. (Obviously that changed, though.)
Threw in some foreshadowy UST. People caught on.
“When will Snape and Danielle have a kid? They should have a baby!”
Fuck that. Danielle is sixteen and Snape . . . I doubt he wants to be a dad.
“I had this dream that they got pregnant!”
*sigh*
So I had her save a muggleborn from being killed and Snape fucking adopted him because he had nowhere else to go. Literally.
And I really think that’s what broke the camel’s back. Normally I am a very stubborn person. I will not compromise myself or what I believe for anyone . . . And here I was, introducing a fucking kid into the fic. To be honest, I actually really like Gabriel. He’s a cool character for a seven-ish year old--he’s intuitive, but not very book smart, and funny and all that. It’s not because I don’t like him.
But . . . Snape raising him?
Resentment returns full-force.
I had Danielle move in with Snape to help take care of a kid that wasn’t theirs . . . AND NOT HAVE SEX. They live together, sleep in the same bed, and don’t have sex, and have a kid. I laughed internally. I was practically trolling my own fic, but somehow, someway, I made it make sense I guess because they liked it.
All right, let me take this time to explain--TMoB really isn’t as bad as I’m making it out to be. It’s not great, it’s kinda weird, but it’s . . . okay. I try as much as I possibly can to make EVERYTHING make sense, and maybe that’s where my downfall was in trying to get people to hate it. Oh I’ve gotten reviews that said they didn’t like it, but the “I love it” reviews far outweigh them.
Last I checked, I had something like 665 reviews. Out of all of them, I’d say about eight are “I don’t like this fic” reviews. So it must not be as bad as I think it is. And to be honest, a lot of the reviews aren’t really annoying; they’re insightful. They’re just . . . Insightful about the things I don’t want them to be insightful about--like coming up with a great deeper meaning to a poem, then finding out it was about the colour of a dog’s collar.
My updates started getting longer in between--I went from an update every day, to every month, to six months in between, and then I just stopped. I think it’s been nearly two years since my last update. I hated the story because I had compromised my original plot, and even sometimes what I thought of Snape’s character. And the worst part is, from an objective POV, I can see why people like it. Danielle is flawed, Snape is flawed, and it has drama and humour and action. If I hadn’t written it and I was reading it, I would think it was okay. Not great, but not horrible. Enough to keep reading. I’d offer criticism, of course, and I wouldn’t favourite it or anything, but it’s okay. I wouldn’t freak out if the updates stopped, either.
I hate the story and I hated the reviewers because of one thing: I compromised when I shouldn’t have. It would be like finding a Valentine you wrote to some kid you absolutely loathe now, but had a crush on years ago. You’d hate that Valentine, not because it looked stupid but because of what it represented--TMoB is one big compromise, and I can say, without a doubt, it is the ONLY time I have ever half-assed something I wrote. It is the only time I’ve ever not cared about a story as I wrote it.
I resented the reviewers and that isn’t fair because it is not their fault. I wrote the story, not them. But rather than accept responsibility for my actions, I blamed them. I resent that story because I resented the reviewers over something that isn’t their fault--they never put a gun to my head. A part of me wonders if I stopped writing to spite them--keep them forever waiting for the next chapter.
Honestly it’s so bad I can’t watch Harry Potter or read a fic or one of the books without thinking of that story, and getting filled with hatred and guilt for what I did--not only compromising myself, but for leaving them hanging.
Writing isn’t solely about reviews. It’s not about who has more hits. Write for yourself--for what you think is right, for what you believe to be correct, and for fun.
I’m thinking about continuing the story and yes, it’s partly for the reviewers. I still get messages from people wanting me to update. But also, I want to see how I’ve improved and because it needs an ending. Perhaps I can see what I saw in the fic all those years ago and learn to care about it again. I’ve learned so much from that one story; I’ve learned not to compromise your stories, I’ve learned never to let the reviewers take hold and write the story for you, and most of all I learned that while your reviewers are important you should never put them before what you think is right.
I was too nice and let them walk all over me, and they didn’t even realize what they were doing.
And that, my friends, is the mistake of benevolence.