Monday 20 May 2002

Pic of the day: There's not much detail when you see first through the curtain and then the frosted glass of the shower cabinet. But to a lovesick young Harry Potter, any glimpse of his beloved Ginny is better than nothing. As proof, I bring you this pearl from the wonderful fanfic I mentioned yesterday (and this is one of the better I have read):
Hermione joined in laughing with her, and Ginny allowed herself to glance at Harry...at which point she felt her stomach clench and her face heat up beyond anything she'd ever felt. He had obviously heard her exchange with Hermione, and was now staring right at her…which normally wouldn't have fazed her quite as much, except what his green eyes were fixed upon was definitely NOT her face.

Magic fiction, please

The last two days my arm has been much better, even though I eat no painkillers in the weekend. (I use to take them at work.) Still, I dare not write all the stories that are stacked in my head.

I've read a few Harry Potter fanfic again. What intrigues me is that there are Harry/Ginny fanfic, Ron/Hermione fanfic, and so on. (And no doubt also a substantial amount of Harry/Ron fanfic, but not in the places where I have been looking.) What is glaringly absent is the fanfic in which Harry realizes that his special calling in life does not allow time for friendship, much less romance; that he must dedicate all his intellect and talent to become a more powerful wizard in order to defeat You-know-who.

So as I took a walk, I wrote in my head the final scene in the final book, the way I wanted it to be. It's somewhat on the longish side to write here, and beside I suspect it would not find an eager audience. Because in my fanfic, the evil wizard kills Hermione at the end of year 6, and Harry realizes that he is too dangerous to have friends, and that nothing in his life is more important than defeating He who must not be named. At the end of story, Harry and V. kill each other in a drawn-out, sad sequence. The End.

Somehow I doubt it will turn out that way, more's the pity.

***

Also conspicuously absent are the fanfics in which we learn more about herbology, divination, magic history, dragon lore and the heroic efforts of the Ministry of Magic to hide various paranormal occurrences. Even Quidditch matches are sorely under-represented compared to romance. This is unlike the books, in which the airy ball game is described in painstaking detail. Then again, the books are read by boys too, while I suspect the fanfics have at least 90% female readers. Certainly the writers pretend, at the very least, to be female.

Me, I am known to have bought fantasy books and read them solely to learn the magic system in them, without even liking the plot. (Anything by Melanie Rawn, mass murderer of noble houses, comes to mind. And the boring Death Gate Cycle by someone who I can't remember, but with great appendices. The books, that is, not the author.) Whenever I write a coming-of-age wizard story (and I did this before anybody had heard of Harry Potter) I make sure to have a lot of exposition in the text. That's what teachers are for, after all, boring exposition. They do that in real life too.

Even for my ongoing Shadow of Cneko story I considered making an appendix with details on the worlds and the magic and stuff like that. But then my hand intervened. The actual story is also at hold, though I have 3 chapters sketched in my head: "Things get hairy", "The Lion and Porcupine", and "The tentacle monster". I really hope I get my hand back. Stopping here might possibly help ...