Commentary: Beg Me For It
Jan. 30th, 2004 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusOkay. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ashfae asked for a commentary on Beg Me For It, and it occurred to me that people might be interested in some other stories so I set up this poll.
Beg Me For It commentary was requested by 22 people so far, so I've done that one first. Next up: Sex, Drugs and Death Eater Rock.
Commentary on Beg Me For It forashfae:
This is all Fred Cole's fault:
'Beg Me For It' is everything I swore I would never write. I was very canon-centric, Ron was at best straight-bendable, I hated angst, avoided darkfic, despised non-con, and was a staunch JKR imitator: third person, simple past only please. With a lot of magic on the side or it isn't Harry Potter.
As everyone who's read the summary knows, 'Beg Me For It' started as a comment from Fred Cole (emeraldjay) who mentioned in his review of Hagrid's Hut, "Just once I'd like to see Draco beg Ron for sexual pleasure." I answered, "Never in a million years. Even if Ron were gay, Draco is too proud."
I was standing in the kitchen complaining towildernessguru about fanon and canon, and that the only way to get Ron and Draco together was to force them to… and the only way that would happen would be if the Death Eaters won and… uh.
Uh-oh.
"Honey," I said. "I have this awful idea. It would be the darkest, bleakest thing I've ever written." I couldn't write this.
"Then don't write it," he said.
But I sketched the story out in my notebook anyway.
I write outlines of stories, the bare bones of conversation and event, then add visual detail when I go back to type it. Sometimes the entire piece will come out verbatum in the first pass. Beg Me For It is in a fast, virtually illegible scrawl; I desperately tried to keep up with the unfolding images, pencil flying. I knew the beginning, and I knew the last line was going to be "Beg me for it."
The original version and TMI:
- I wrote it in third person.
- At first I didn't know that Percy was at the Ministry, and why Ron wouldn't fight back from the very beginning.
- I didn't know that he was in a cush low security prison or his day to day life.
- I did want to make sure I had canon, bastard Draco for this story, and I kept Cybele's 'kick!Draco' story in mind.
- Ron/Draco's conversation and challenges in the arena were clear, and I knew I wanted them to have real consensual sex by the end of the story. I had that scene written out.
- But even in the notes Draco gave me problems. He wouldn't trust Ron in the arena. Hell no. And wouldn't go along with sex later either -- he had an issue with the fact Ron had actually gone ahead with the rape in the original. For some reason, that bugged him.
There were major gaping holes in the plot.
When I sat down to type it anyway… I couldn't.
I hate angst. With a passion. To write something this dark, I realised I needed Ron's sense of humour to survive this story personally. I'm drawing from experience for the Arena scene, you see. People remark that there isn't a leering quality to the scene, that I don't describe more than I have to. I once witnessed a beating of someone where a large group of people watched, and my descriptions to the police and others have always been similarly sparing. To me, the arena scene is not at all sexy, nor is it kinky, it is about violence and abuse of power. I was very surprised when I read it to Wilderness Guru and he told me that scene was 'hot.' For me it's disturbing, but real.
I had another problem in that this story spans about a year. I needed something to condense and skip over time, and I tend to avoid exposition.
So I rewrote as I typed on the fly into first person. Just an instinct, a nudge in the back of my mind.
Ron changed everything:
When I wrote from Ron's perspective, the story completely changed. Instead of being a horror, it showed Ron's spirit under the worst circumstances. And that's a story I like telling, especially when he surprised me with: "Lucius Malfoy was the best Minister of Magic we ever had. There was definitely something wrong with that." -- I laughed for several minutes. It had to be the most outrageous opening line I'd ever read. From that moment on, I was into it.
Ron breezily filled in all the plot holes as I typed. He told me about Percy. Their jobs, the chocolates, all in his flippant way. All the Ron quips and sarcasm came out on the fly, his 'brilliant plan number 2'; he said them, not me. I rolled when he noticed the white sneakers, right around the time I learned that he hadn't been outside since his capture, which he just mentioned in passing in that way people get used to hardship. He just shrugged.
I respected him when he said that the reason he intended to save Malfoy's life was that he didn't want his blood on his hands, he didn't give a damn if he himself was hurt. That's the moment I understand what Ron was all about, and the rest of his story followed from his off-handed comment.
The first typed draft is pretty much what you see published, with only one major change.
The Arena:
Draco also shifted the scenes he was in as I typed, though not as much. The collaborator angle didn't occur to me until Draco spat that out at Ron, and I realised it was true. It wove its way into the story and became a part of the fabric, as much outside my control as the decision to write in first person.
Getting Draco to trust Ron was still tough, and the whole situation seemed so fucked up to me I threw in the line: "I wondered at the twisted minds that came up with all this." I'm referring to myself here, that was the moment when I stepped out of the story and went, Jesus; what am I writing here?
The major change in the story was the key moment when Draco trusted Ron. This I owe to my beloved beta, CLS. Originally Ron called Draco by his name and that got Draco's attention and shifted the relationship between them and… oh well. It was weak. I didn't like it, but hoped no one would notice. Connie (CLS), my beta, did notice, thank goodness. We rehashed that scene over and over (and over) again. Finally it was their tone of voice, the meaning behind the words not the mere use of their first names that won each other's confidence. I owe her a real debt of gratitude. That weak scene could have sunk the story. Everyone should listen to their betas, always.
I still think the best part of the Arena scene is: "The defiance ran right out of him and he started looking really shaky"…"if he doesn't know, then I just saw him crack. Maybe it was harder to stand up to them when there was a little trickle of hope." It appeared in the fabric of the story, surfacing from that same awful experience of mine, and I didn't notice it until Connie pointed it out.
Ron was so good-hearted, Draco's 'problem' with the rape became a non-issue, because Ron refused to do it. I still wasn't sure that Draco would be willing to sleep with Ron so soon after a trauma. I wonder about his motives, and it remains a possible weakness in the narrative. But I went ahead because I wanted that shift in the relationship. No one seems to have noticed it, perhaps because we all want the same thing, perhaps because it does make sense.
The toughest scene to write was Lucius' entrance, believe it or not. I had a whole description of their trip back to the Ministry that I eventually realised I was struggling with because I didn't need it. Some problems can be solved with the Delete key.
The mind-blowing sex:
The sex scene owes a lot to Cybele. This was written shortly after she published 'Just Add Water.' Her story felt so 'male,' and feminized slash is the reason I started writing slash. I have two poles my stories return to: writing men as men, and moral grey areas.
I read it to Wilderness Guru (always my partner in slash) and he was absolutely convinced that Cybele was really a man. He said that women don't go straight for the cock, and they almost never write masturbation scenes - which are 90% of what guys do together. But there was something else in that story, I thought, and that was a lack of romanticizing sex. [Are people getting the idea that I'm heavily influenced by other fanfic writers? Yep. This is a good time to give credit to Cassandra Claire for Ron's "Lucius and the Death Eaters, sounds like a rock band" line. I'd read Draco Dormiens, but it wasn't till later that I realised that was the source of that wisecrack of Ron's. It's an easy enough cheap shot at Lucius that I left it in, even though I had a feeling I'd read it somewhere. A reviewer at InkStain later pointed out the source to me.]
Back to unromantic sex, I'd originally intended a typical anal sex scene, but Draco being physically damaged tore that up.
'Just Add Water' and The Guru convinced me that a blunt, straight-for-the-cock mutual masturbation scene was just what I wanted. It fit their outgoing sexual natures, Ron's directness and Draco's easy sensuality.
I had a brief worry that a straight Ron might have a problem with sleeping with Draco, but once again he breezed right over it. Most of what I know about the attitudes of men in prison come from an ex-con turned Buddhist who was the big wheel in a state penitentiary; he was a former drug kingpin and ran the drug trade inside the prison. Arms the size of most people's thighs. Anyway, Ron's lack of concern comes from my second-hand knowledge of prison attitudes, and I'd forgotten about his lack of sexual outlets. Coming from a sexually charged (if messed up) scene would have his mind running in that direction -- yeah, he'd go for it.
I still don't know why Draco reciprocated, though it feels absolutely right to me. Draco being served instead of being used is the hook that got him to go along with it, but it was Draco who chose to turn it into a mutual relationship. There are a lot of undercurrents in this story that I'm still discovering and piecing together.
It always bothered me that I never knew exactly what Ron's big plan was. But then again, I don't think he knew at that point either.
I was leaping time and grateful how first person easily lets you jump from point in time to the next. At the end, pacing was everything. I had to cut two scenes I had scribbled towards the end (later published in the drabble series) which hurt let me tell you. But you gotta be ruthless. I had what I wanted, which was a tense sexual relationship that tore down both of their boundaries.
Beg Me For It and Nazism:
To answer a common question, Lucius Malfoy's rules for assigning responsibilities really are from the writings of an unknown Nazi SS officer. But though his Ministry of Magic is often compared to Nazism in reviews, it is not based on Nazi Germany. I know too little about Fascism to write that.
The Ministry power structure is actually an amalgamation of my experiences in corporate America - I worked for a multinational corporation for many years - and Buddhist religious politics. Both of which are corrupt. It's also informed by my study of the politics and power structures of cults, as I feel that Voldemort is a typical cult 'charismatic leader.' To move slightly off topic, the description of Percy and his chocolates at the end of 'Hey You' (the third part of the Beg Me For It series), his epiphany that he's not able to change corruption from within the system, is the most powerful and deeply personal scene I've yet written in fanfiction. That's why I often say that Percy is my MarySue.
ashfae asked for a commentary on Beg Me For It, and it occurred to me that people might be interested in some other stories so I set up this poll. Beg Me For It commentary was requested by 22 people so far, so I've done that one first. Next up: Sex, Drugs and Death Eater Rock.
Commentary on Beg Me For It for
ashfae:This is all Fred Cole's fault:
'Beg Me For It' is everything I swore I would never write. I was very canon-centric, Ron was at best straight-bendable, I hated angst, avoided darkfic, despised non-con, and was a staunch JKR imitator: third person, simple past only please. With a lot of magic on the side or it isn't Harry Potter.
As everyone who's read the summary knows, 'Beg Me For It' started as a comment from Fred Cole (
emeraldjay) who mentioned in his review of Hagrid's Hut, "Just once I'd like to see Draco beg Ron for sexual pleasure." I answered, "Never in a million years. Even if Ron were gay, Draco is too proud."I was standing in the kitchen complaining to
wildernessguru about fanon and canon, and that the only way to get Ron and Draco together was to force them to… and the only way that would happen would be if the Death Eaters won and… uh. Uh-oh.
"Honey," I said. "I have this awful idea. It would be the darkest, bleakest thing I've ever written." I couldn't write this.
"Then don't write it," he said.
But I sketched the story out in my notebook anyway.
I write outlines of stories, the bare bones of conversation and event, then add visual detail when I go back to type it. Sometimes the entire piece will come out verbatum in the first pass. Beg Me For It is in a fast, virtually illegible scrawl; I desperately tried to keep up with the unfolding images, pencil flying. I knew the beginning, and I knew the last line was going to be "Beg me for it."
The original version and TMI:
- I wrote it in third person.
- At first I didn't know that Percy was at the Ministry, and why Ron wouldn't fight back from the very beginning.
- I didn't know that he was in a cush low security prison or his day to day life.
- I did want to make sure I had canon, bastard Draco for this story, and I kept Cybele's 'kick!Draco' story in mind.
- Ron/Draco's conversation and challenges in the arena were clear, and I knew I wanted them to have real consensual sex by the end of the story. I had that scene written out.
- But even in the notes Draco gave me problems. He wouldn't trust Ron in the arena. Hell no. And wouldn't go along with sex later either -- he had an issue with the fact Ron had actually gone ahead with the rape in the original. For some reason, that bugged him.
There were major gaping holes in the plot.
When I sat down to type it anyway… I couldn't.
I hate angst. With a passion. To write something this dark, I realised I needed Ron's sense of humour to survive this story personally. I'm drawing from experience for the Arena scene, you see. People remark that there isn't a leering quality to the scene, that I don't describe more than I have to. I once witnessed a beating of someone where a large group of people watched, and my descriptions to the police and others have always been similarly sparing. To me, the arena scene is not at all sexy, nor is it kinky, it is about violence and abuse of power. I was very surprised when I read it to Wilderness Guru and he told me that scene was 'hot.' For me it's disturbing, but real.
I had another problem in that this story spans about a year. I needed something to condense and skip over time, and I tend to avoid exposition.
So I rewrote as I typed on the fly into first person. Just an instinct, a nudge in the back of my mind.
Ron changed everything:
When I wrote from Ron's perspective, the story completely changed. Instead of being a horror, it showed Ron's spirit under the worst circumstances. And that's a story I like telling, especially when he surprised me with: "Lucius Malfoy was the best Minister of Magic we ever had. There was definitely something wrong with that." -- I laughed for several minutes. It had to be the most outrageous opening line I'd ever read. From that moment on, I was into it.
Ron breezily filled in all the plot holes as I typed. He told me about Percy. Their jobs, the chocolates, all in his flippant way. All the Ron quips and sarcasm came out on the fly, his 'brilliant plan number 2'; he said them, not me. I rolled when he noticed the white sneakers, right around the time I learned that he hadn't been outside since his capture, which he just mentioned in passing in that way people get used to hardship. He just shrugged.
I respected him when he said that the reason he intended to save Malfoy's life was that he didn't want his blood on his hands, he didn't give a damn if he himself was hurt. That's the moment I understand what Ron was all about, and the rest of his story followed from his off-handed comment.
The first typed draft is pretty much what you see published, with only one major change.
The Arena:
Draco also shifted the scenes he was in as I typed, though not as much. The collaborator angle didn't occur to me until Draco spat that out at Ron, and I realised it was true. It wove its way into the story and became a part of the fabric, as much outside my control as the decision to write in first person.
Getting Draco to trust Ron was still tough, and the whole situation seemed so fucked up to me I threw in the line: "I wondered at the twisted minds that came up with all this." I'm referring to myself here, that was the moment when I stepped out of the story and went, Jesus; what am I writing here?
The major change in the story was the key moment when Draco trusted Ron. This I owe to my beloved beta, CLS. Originally Ron called Draco by his name and that got Draco's attention and shifted the relationship between them and… oh well. It was weak. I didn't like it, but hoped no one would notice. Connie (CLS), my beta, did notice, thank goodness. We rehashed that scene over and over (and over) again. Finally it was their tone of voice, the meaning behind the words not the mere use of their first names that won each other's confidence. I owe her a real debt of gratitude. That weak scene could have sunk the story. Everyone should listen to their betas, always.
I still think the best part of the Arena scene is: "The defiance ran right out of him and he started looking really shaky"…"if he doesn't know, then I just saw him crack. Maybe it was harder to stand up to them when there was a little trickle of hope." It appeared in the fabric of the story, surfacing from that same awful experience of mine, and I didn't notice it until Connie pointed it out.
Ron was so good-hearted, Draco's 'problem' with the rape became a non-issue, because Ron refused to do it. I still wasn't sure that Draco would be willing to sleep with Ron so soon after a trauma. I wonder about his motives, and it remains a possible weakness in the narrative. But I went ahead because I wanted that shift in the relationship. No one seems to have noticed it, perhaps because we all want the same thing, perhaps because it does make sense.
The toughest scene to write was Lucius' entrance, believe it or not. I had a whole description of their trip back to the Ministry that I eventually realised I was struggling with because I didn't need it. Some problems can be solved with the Delete key.
The mind-blowing sex:
The sex scene owes a lot to Cybele. This was written shortly after she published 'Just Add Water.' Her story felt so 'male,' and feminized slash is the reason I started writing slash. I have two poles my stories return to: writing men as men, and moral grey areas.
I read it to Wilderness Guru (always my partner in slash) and he was absolutely convinced that Cybele was really a man. He said that women don't go straight for the cock, and they almost never write masturbation scenes - which are 90% of what guys do together. But there was something else in that story, I thought, and that was a lack of romanticizing sex. [Are people getting the idea that I'm heavily influenced by other fanfic writers? Yep. This is a good time to give credit to Cassandra Claire for Ron's "Lucius and the Death Eaters, sounds like a rock band" line. I'd read Draco Dormiens, but it wasn't till later that I realised that was the source of that wisecrack of Ron's. It's an easy enough cheap shot at Lucius that I left it in, even though I had a feeling I'd read it somewhere. A reviewer at InkStain later pointed out the source to me.]
Back to unromantic sex, I'd originally intended a typical anal sex scene, but Draco being physically damaged tore that up.
'Just Add Water' and The Guru convinced me that a blunt, straight-for-the-cock mutual masturbation scene was just what I wanted. It fit their outgoing sexual natures, Ron's directness and Draco's easy sensuality.
I had a brief worry that a straight Ron might have a problem with sleeping with Draco, but once again he breezed right over it. Most of what I know about the attitudes of men in prison come from an ex-con turned Buddhist who was the big wheel in a state penitentiary; he was a former drug kingpin and ran the drug trade inside the prison. Arms the size of most people's thighs. Anyway, Ron's lack of concern comes from my second-hand knowledge of prison attitudes, and I'd forgotten about his lack of sexual outlets. Coming from a sexually charged (if messed up) scene would have his mind running in that direction -- yeah, he'd go for it.
I still don't know why Draco reciprocated, though it feels absolutely right to me. Draco being served instead of being used is the hook that got him to go along with it, but it was Draco who chose to turn it into a mutual relationship. There are a lot of undercurrents in this story that I'm still discovering and piecing together.
It always bothered me that I never knew exactly what Ron's big plan was. But then again, I don't think he knew at that point either.
I was leaping time and grateful how first person easily lets you jump from point in time to the next. At the end, pacing was everything. I had to cut two scenes I had scribbled towards the end (later published in the drabble series) which hurt let me tell you. But you gotta be ruthless. I had what I wanted, which was a tense sexual relationship that tore down both of their boundaries.
Beg Me For It and Nazism:
To answer a common question, Lucius Malfoy's rules for assigning responsibilities really are from the writings of an unknown Nazi SS officer. But though his Ministry of Magic is often compared to Nazism in reviews, it is not based on Nazi Germany. I know too little about Fascism to write that.
The Ministry power structure is actually an amalgamation of my experiences in corporate America - I worked for a multinational corporation for many years - and Buddhist religious politics. Both of which are corrupt. It's also informed by my study of the politics and power structures of cults, as I feel that Voldemort is a typical cult 'charismatic leader.' To move slightly off topic, the description of Percy and his chocolates at the end of 'Hey You' (the third part of the Beg Me For It series), his epiphany that he's not able to change corruption from within the system, is the most powerful and deeply personal scene I've yet written in fanfiction. That's why I often say that Percy is my MarySue.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re:
Date: 2004-01-31 02:49 am (UTC)I do know where you're coming from. The closest parallel in my own experience (as far as reversed male-female dynamic) involves domestic violence. Well. Except that my sister was date-raped about a year and a half ago and I'm still dealing with it. (http://www.doomchicken.net/~ursula/writing/poetry/dixitapollo.html)
Right. Is it just me, or do you and I have a particularly roller-coaster-y fandom interaction? I mean, I think it's because I think you're pretty damn cool, and since I got into fandom via parody rather than via actual fannishness I'm not used to controlling fangirly reactions in myself, but I keep imagining the little bunny ears going up-- and back-- and up-- and back.
You can think of them as perky and interested now :)
Re:
Date: 2004-01-31 03:00 am (UTC)Sorry about totally misunderstanding your story idea. I'm in a 'soapbox' mode right now because I'm writing these commentaries. I'm letting it rip on my own writing at the moment, putting it under a magnifying glass, and that carried over to my response to your idea. Normally I wouldn't've gone on for paragraphs.
Icarus
Re:
Date: 2004-01-31 04:44 am (UTC)Strange, though . . . I'd never describe myself as an intense personality. Mellow to a fault, more like. Except, of course, in classroom situations: I'm the kind of person who runs a discussion on the subtleties of translation into the ground but can't say three words to her boyfriend's parents to save her life. You're meeting the academic side of my personality, the bits that I channel when I write Hermione. And, yeah, I guess that could be intense.
Re:
Date: 2004-01-31 10:53 pm (UTC)Icarus
Re:
Date: 2004-02-01 12:01 am (UTC)