Rec

[blamebrampton]

There are many reasons why you should go and read Drink Up Thy Zider at hd_career_fair . Here are several of them.

* It contains a Harry so palpably aged into comfort with his own strength that you could distill every Bond actor including David Niven, then Viggo Mortensen, Cary Grant, George Clooney, Daniel Autueil, Gerard Depardieu, and Olivier Martinez into one, and the resulting thespian would still be considered too wussy to play him in the film adaptation.
* Narcissa Malfoy and Pansy who was Parkinson appear and steal a multitude of scenes.
* The summary, notes and warnings alone are worth the price of admission.
* It contains this passage: 
Harry snorted. Blaise would always be Blaise. He noticed that his guest was trying not to stare about him with his usual fascinated horror: the Etruscan Room always put Zabini off his stroke, which was precisely what Harry intended.

'What a very odd person Robert Adam was,' said Blaise, as he always did.

Which continues to have me in fits of laughter, and shiv5468 and raitala , that should really be all the two of you need.
* It is, without once referring to the BBC drama and indeed, with the very probable complete ignorance of the writer regarding the show, the single best HP-Merlin AU that it is possible to imagine.
* It contains such love for rural England that I could reach up and touch the laburnum, smell the muck on my boots and taste the milk that I left to cool in the stream before heading out on a ride.
* For those whose minds are made up by such things, there are sex scenes of vivid and entertaining detail. And Albus and Scorpius.
* And there is a world of such complexity and detail that I could draw maps and describe the relationships of characters to each other for several generations after a single reading, all of which felt like a wonderful chat with an erudite uncle to learn.

I know that some of you will have it opened in tabs in the background, waiting for time to devote to 40,000 words, and I fully grant you that the style is anything but generic. However, this was in fact one of the easiest reads I have found in fandom. It was like nothing so much as picking up and falling into Swallows and Amazons, as I did at the start of the year. Once you allowed the voice to take you on its journey, there were no bumps or halts, only a fast sail and a steady tiller.

So do make a cuppa, put out a plate of biscuits and turn off the telly for an hour. At the end of it, you will feel the joy of a thoroughly satisfying read. And an appalling desire for a tablespoon of clotted cream dropped into mulled cider.

Comments

[oldenuf2nb.livejournal.com]

You know, based on this, I'm going to try again. But I have a confession to make; I started this fic, and it defeated me. I could tell that it was special, that I should be reading it because there was so much there, and yet I've also never read anything that made me feel quite so much as if there was a punch line that everyone else knew, while I'd been unable to decipher the joke in the first place. Nor had I ever felt the gap in my education quite so keenly as when I was reading it. Someone once commented that my writing was flawed with 'crass Americanisms'; this fic made me feel that while we may, in theory, have a common language, we actually don't speak the same language at all. But I will persevere, Brammers, because I cannot imagine you reccing something so whole-heartedly that did not deserve to be read thoroughly.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

You've just described me reading Foucault's Pendulum, which I picked up intending to read every word in and translating the ones that were in languages I did not understand. But, of course, I was studying, and performing, and living, and I put it down convinced I was a complete thickie.

And then I remembered an essay I had read that Umberto Eco had written, in which he talked about the fact that every text, every story, is always personal because we all bring different things to it. So even though I was missing a significant amount of his symbology, I was bringing my own and reading it in ways he couldn't.

I think the same thing applies to this story. The author and I have big crossovers and big differences in our personal experiences and outlooks, but a very shared language. And you're absolutely right that some of that is as non-accessible to non-English people (and, indeed, to English people who never leave the city) as asides about middle-German golems were to me.

But I think the same trick works. There is enough humour and story there -- that does not require shared reference points -- to carry the reader through if you are prepared to take the leap of faith into not needing everything to be clear. By the end of the story, you may well still be baffled on a few points, but they won't matter. (I never did really understand the whole significance of the golems, you know. I should probably re-read that now, I have more reference points 20 years later;-)

And as to the person who criticised you in that way, they are a banana. There are Americanisms in your work, but they are never crass and they are not off-putting. They are simply the result of the author writing like the (very talented) author.

I have just realised that my writing has become increasingly Australian every year I spend here. Sentences keep shortening, sarcasm increasing and contraction abuse is rampant. If you see me saying crikey, please stage an intervention.

[rubyemerald-1.livejournal.com]

Struth, mate, if them kids over in the U.S. can't understand Julia Gillard, then I reckon Ozlang is done for anyways.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

They can't understand me, and I still have my South-east English accent!