Pilgrims gave me flu!

[blamebrampton]

No, seriously! Months after their orange backpacks left the Emerald City, Sydney is still feeling the impact of the WYD pilgrims' sharing natures. THEY LEFT US THIS FLU! Bastards! And look, even the Catholic News says it's true! Well, likely at any rate.  Apparently the three-week-plus flu that turns to bronchitis is knocking people out across the city, and has been since July, so I am not alone in my feebleness.

Honestly, it was bad enough when it was just nuns trying to plough me to the ground.
 
Bryoney opined that I have been talking too much sport and not enough fandom lately, so three links to make her feel loved. The first is to a very interesting question posed by bewarethesmirk  in her post here. She asks what it is about some styles of writing that immediately succeeds in drawing the reader in. I've blathered on at length in a comment, as have several others, and I think that we're edging towards the total picture, but I am sure that more brains, particularly brains as big as you lot have, will get to the actual answer. Alas, it's flocked, but if you're not on her flist, feel free to chat here.

My dear jadzialove  wrote a story recently in which Weasley brothers engaged in activities of an adult nature only suitable for readers over 18. With each other. We both squealed in a frightened fashion, she even while writing. However, that was nothing compared to this story from The Times. To quote their head and standfirst:

I had sex with my brother but I don't feel guilty

A woman slept with her sibling for years and has good memories. Not many people understand their relationship, she says

I can't say I'm surprised to hear that.

For maximum bemusement, you have to read the comments.

Thirdly, Maya has posted the last chapter of Quality of Mercy, and 

there have been many posts along the lines of OMG, it's not H/D! To which I have to say, der! There was never any pairing specified, Harry and Ginny's relationship has been written as genuine and developing the whole way through, Harry has been protective and fraternal in his relationship with Draco and Draco has been someone desperately trying to forge actual relationships in his world, rather than just getting what he wants. Why would a writer ditch all of that worldbuilding for a ship in which she has only written some of her fics? 

I sometimes wonder if people actually read fics as actual creative works or just go through them ticking off their internal preference list. "Yay, there's a cool one-liner, there's an insight into canon, there's a good spot of fanon, excellent UST, and ... and ... THAT'S IT? NO SMEX? YOU SUCK!" On bad days, I suspect the latter.

Oh well. A happy fandom aside: 2500 words of Darkfest written, 1700 of them even consecutive!

And, my final Paralympics moment, Australia lost to the US in the rugby, but Kurt Fearnley won the marathon! YAY!
 

Comments

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Well, at least it's comparatively subtle symbolism; Justin's catapults could have been cannon ...

As I say, I think that the ending of the story came naturally out of what had gone before. And the pacing issues through the battle were a natural consequence of time. There's only so much effort you can put into fic when there is original writing to be done. And it certainly wasn't *bad*. The relationships between the characters were beautifully drawn, and I loved the dragon -- of COURSE! (And I am now wondering why Charlie Weasley didn't just turn up with a bomber wing of giant reptiles in DH. Probably because JKR had visons of the film version looking like Battle of Britain.)

I have very much enjoyed the thoughts that your writing provokes. From Harry's guilt over Nagini to the questions of what makes a family, it's been an original journey. As an editor, I spend a lot of time despairing about the future of narrative writing, but you're one of the people who cheers me up.

[sarahtales.livejournal.com]

Well, I really didn't rush the ending at all - I did it the way I planned to do it. I figured these were my last two stories and I was going to give them as much time as they needed so I could do them as well as I was able. That said, I was very conscious al the way through that people had already read A Battle at Hogwarts, and I did want to leave things perhaps pointedly unresolved as a reaction to how very tied up things were in canon: I can certainly see people not liking the end for any number of reasons (as I've said, I have never written anything perfect) but it certainly wasn't for lack of effort. Lack of talent, sure. :)

Heh, the beauty of fanfiction - never having to imagine the special effects.

As an editor, you are one of the people who make people like me better: I'm sure with an editor QoM would've been massively improved, but I am really pleased you liked it anyway.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

As the Arabic carpet makers say, only Allah is perfect. And even he has serious lapses in judgement when it comes to some followers.

I think that you get the relationships very much right. Especially Draco's reunion with his friends and even Lucius. This is such a central part of good writing that you can ignore the quibbles below and I shan't mind at all, because you get the big and hard things right.

My issues were comparatively minor, I've been describing the main one as pacing for ease of description, but it's more just something I feel is omitted in one small section. Where Harry and Voldemort face off there is a physical intimacy to the set-up as we follow the protaganists through a sea of battling bodies, then a little textual shift in the setting:
The path was clear before Harry suddenly. All he had to do was walk it, across the stones of Hogwarts, under the fire-lit sky, to where his enemy was waiting.

It seemed so simple for a moment.

But here I think you needed a more physical sense of the distances involved. Just a line or a few words, because we've not mentally shifted out of the intense space of chaos.

And then Voldemort is placed between the Malfoys and Snape, and we never see him move forward from them, though there is textual evidence that they move away, Voldemort only steps back from Harry, and Harry from him, so there's no sense of how close they are at the end. While this made Harry's survival believable, it made doing the mental choreography of the battle difficult.

Trying to visualise what was happening was impossible on my first read through and I had to go back to see that there was no danger to anyone but Harry and Riddle.

The only other thing that struck me was the use of contractions in Voldemort's voice, which seemed not quite right, but could well be, I tend to forget canon when I am tired and fluey as now.

The pointed irresolution was, to my mind, the very smartest authorial choice you made, because these are young people and you are allowing them to be young people, not determining their whole lives at 18. So no lack of talent! It is a great achievement, and a rollickingly good story with thought attached, and you are a writer who continues to make me happier about the world.