blamebrampton (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
blamebrampton) wrote2007-08-30 04:52 pm
blamebrampton) wrote2007-08-30 04:52 pm
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More recs
Busiest week in months, up to my eyeballs in work, visitors arriving Saturday morning just as the city goes into lockdown (Why oh Why did I not organise to be in Wellington this weekend?), so what am I doing? I'm reccing fics.
(And writing 3000 words for the fic that no-one but GB reads, not that I'm bitter, and writing tips for writing ... what the hell is going on here? Fandom has eaten my brain.)
silentauror 's Graffiti and Insomnia is a witty, fast-paced fic set in the Ministry where both Harry and Draco work as adults. Communication is the key behind the action in this piece and it takes place in an unexpected yet perfectly traditional environment, for a given value of traditional. There is smut, there's humour, there's tastefully graphic boy-on-boy action, it's like HP meets QAF without the PSAs in the background. Best of all is the strong use of interior voice that creates a powerful personal narrative under the lighter action, using flippancy as an elegant cloak for revelation.
It's Our Choices bydumbys_baby was the first H/D fic I ever read, actually, it was probably the first fic I ever read. It's scenes from the life that Harry wold have led if he had shaken Malfoy's hand on the train to Hogwarts that first year. Short, fragmented, and yet oh-so revealing as an utterly different life is constructed. This story always makes me thing of Japanese calligraphy in its spare beauty, without being opaque in its underwriting. This writer is the Brampton I blame, BTW.
I was less certain of Cinnamon's Beautiful World, because I am Old, and therefore less about the Angst, and the opening of this story is All About the Angst, however once Malfoy came leaping into the narrative I was happy to give her another chapter or two to convince me, by which time the hooks were well and truly in. The set-up is bleak: Harry gives up on life, just in time to be told that it has essentially given up on him. Draco Malfoy, so used to defining himself in antithesis to Potter, finds himself trying to reconstruct the Potter that was; or else see what can be built from the remnants. It's hopelessly romantic in parts and full of High Drama, but the writing is so assured and so inventive that it sucks you back into the heady days of teenage madness and makes them seem natural, even beautiful. Long and worth the time it will take to read, it's not going to scare the horses if you're reading in a stable.
Finally,anthimaeria made my day with Unfinished Business, which starts off with the genius that is post-war Romilda Vane teaching Arthur Weasley's Ministry (!) about Muggle management techniques and ends with Draco Malfoy's hair-drying spells. In between there's a beautifully realised tale of wants and needs and working them out. I love her Harry and Draco (and yes, this fic also carries a smut warning), but it's the way she writes minor characters that really made this fic for me. So often writers let the support cast fade into the background but here she has them as distinct voices propelling much of the drama, and certainly hogging most of the best lines. I also enjoyed the fact that she has teenage Harry as a complete prick; it worked so well in the narrative structure of this piece and was a really authentic depiction.
On a completely unrelated note, some funny bugger has signed me up to the Pray For Bush mailing list. Because as an atheist Englishwoman living in the Antipodes, that makes sense, right? I've been keeping a track on the frequency of their mailouts, since Rove and Gonzales have gone, they seem to need less prayer at the White House. Maybe I've been reading this all wrong and that's what they've been praying for. If Cheney carks it and they stop mailing, I'll know I misjudged them all along.
(And writing 3000 words for the fic that no-one but GB reads, not that I'm bitter, and writing tips for writing ... what the hell is going on here? Fandom has eaten my brain.)
silentauror 's Graffiti and Insomnia is a witty, fast-paced fic set in the Ministry where both Harry and Draco work as adults. Communication is the key behind the action in this piece and it takes place in an unexpected yet perfectly traditional environment, for a given value of traditional. There is smut, there's humour, there's tastefully graphic boy-on-boy action, it's like HP meets QAF without the PSAs in the background. Best of all is the strong use of interior voice that creates a powerful personal narrative under the lighter action, using flippancy as an elegant cloak for revelation. It's Our Choices by
dumbys_baby was the first H/D fic I ever read, actually, it was probably the first fic I ever read. It's scenes from the life that Harry wold have led if he had shaken Malfoy's hand on the train to Hogwarts that first year. Short, fragmented, and yet oh-so revealing as an utterly different life is constructed. This story always makes me thing of Japanese calligraphy in its spare beauty, without being opaque in its underwriting. This writer is the Brampton I blame, BTW.I was less certain of Cinnamon's Beautiful World, because I am Old, and therefore less about the Angst, and the opening of this story is All About the Angst, however once Malfoy came leaping into the narrative I was happy to give her another chapter or two to convince me, by which time the hooks were well and truly in. The set-up is bleak: Harry gives up on life, just in time to be told that it has essentially given up on him. Draco Malfoy, so used to defining himself in antithesis to Potter, finds himself trying to reconstruct the Potter that was; or else see what can be built from the remnants. It's hopelessly romantic in parts and full of High Drama, but the writing is so assured and so inventive that it sucks you back into the heady days of teenage madness and makes them seem natural, even beautiful. Long and worth the time it will take to read, it's not going to scare the horses if you're reading in a stable.
Finally,
anthimaeria made my day with Unfinished Business, which starts off with the genius that is post-war Romilda Vane teaching Arthur Weasley's Ministry (!) about Muggle management techniques and ends with Draco Malfoy's hair-drying spells. In between there's a beautifully realised tale of wants and needs and working them out. I love her Harry and Draco (and yes, this fic also carries a smut warning), but it's the way she writes minor characters that really made this fic for me. So often writers let the support cast fade into the background but here she has them as distinct voices propelling much of the drama, and certainly hogging most of the best lines. I also enjoyed the fact that she has teenage Harry as a complete prick; it worked so well in the narrative structure of this piece and was a really authentic depiction. On a completely unrelated note, some funny bugger has signed me up to the Pray For Bush mailing list. Because as an atheist Englishwoman living in the Antipodes, that makes sense, right? I've been keeping a track on the frequency of their mailouts, since Rove and Gonzales have gone, they seem to need less prayer at the White House. Maybe I've been reading this all wrong and that's what they've been praying for. If Cheney carks it and they stop mailing, I'll know I misjudged them all along.
no subject
As to the whole beta thing, you've identified so many of the traps for young players. Between grammar being a dying art and language being shrunk down to a small set of cliches* it's so difficult for young writers these days. Some are still lucky in that their passion for language hasn't been kicked out of them, but others have no language to define what is good, so instead they focus on little rules and half-understood maxims. Your sort of education is what everyone deserves, but it's increasingly rare, more's the pity.
I too, prefer to self-edit, but by crikey am I rubbish at picking up my own typos ... (JKR memorial ellipsis)
Anyway ... Stop hitting the desk with your head, get some sleep, or at least tea.
* It's the anti-Shakespeare effect; I had a horrible moment during the World Trade Center attacks where I wanted to hit the commentators who kept repeating rubbish. Half of my brain was telling me to shut up, this was too serious to complain about journalists who could say nothing more than 'oh my god', but the other half of my brain was saying "But this is what will define how people go on, what's said now will be important. The Blitz was responded to with fortitude and courage because the language of the Blitz called for that; the Hindenberg touches us still because we connect with 'humanity'. They need words!"
A month later I was in San Francisco being introduced to an American friend's friend. "You're British!" he exclaimed. "I want to thank you so much for your Prime Minister, he had the words that our President didn't have that day. What he said was what needed to be said, and he made all of us feel as though we could take some comfort."
I had underestimated Americans, of course. Needing words, they looked for the ones that would give them solace. He couldn't quite understand why I needed a little personal moment at that point, but let me just say: legitimate misting!