Res ipsa loquitur

reginagiraffe - "Hermione/Harry/Ron from Bed and Board in 2020"

I had to look back at the stories and do some date calculations. Bed & Board takes place in spring 1998; at the time of Paternity, Forsizia is 5 months old and Ernie & Eloise's oldest child (who was in utero at the time of Bed & Board) looks about 6, placing that story in the vicinity of 2004, when everybody's about 23. The threesome are still living in Rome at that point, where Ron's probably still doing something with Quidditch, Harry's probably still doing someting with racing broom manufacturing, and Hermione has probably earned one or more advanced degrees and gone into either academia or magical research.

Here's the thing: wizard lives are really long. If you want a big family (and I imagine that Ron and Harry do, though Hermione might not be as passionate about it), why would you do it the hard way and sentence yourself to ten years of continual diaper duty when you could have one or two at a time and then one or two more when the first batch go off to school?

By which I mean that in 2020 Forsizia is sixteen and in sixth year and spending all her spare time on, I don't know, sculpture or roller derby or whatever magical kids get up to when they don't have to save the world.

And these people are wizards, which means that Ron gave birth to the second one and Harry's pregnant with the third.

In fact, without financial pressure, I like to think of Harry not putting a whole lot of energy into the workforce at all, though he'd be ready to be called in for special projects. He's breeding wyverns, installing a vineyard and making his own wine, being the parent most likely to get up in the middle of the night with a vomiting kid or show up at the junior school on Parents' Day. Hermione's ambitious and Ron's competitive; Harry just wants to be surrounded by people who love him.

They're not in their fifth or sixth decade yet, but when they get there, I wouldn't be surprised if they go through with Ron's proposal to add another woman to their marriage, just to even things out.










laurenthemself -- "What grammatical (or punctuation, spelling) hill would you die on?"

ride_4ever if you are a maker of New Year's resolutions, post at least one -- if you are not, then comment about the concept of New Year's resolutions OR write a snippet-sized list of New Year's resolutions from the POV of one dSC6D character.

cesperanza, "I'll ask an HP question, actually, because I wasn't really ever in it and I'm interested in the reactions of people who were. It seems to me from the outside so spectacularly meh now; like, it was the fictional equiv of Lost (which I also didn't watch) where it was fascinating as a piece of serialized fiction but where the execution simply couldn't live up to the collective imagination. Am I wrong?"

Well, you're not wrong ... but "fascinating as a piece of serialized fiction but where the execution simply couldn't live up to the collective imagination" is just another way of saying "Fanbait."

I mean, Shatner-era Star Trek -- the classic fandom inspiration -- would you say it could live up to the collective imagination? Would you be eager to watch it today if the Trek universe in your mind didn't include the fanworks as well as the canon?

Maybe you'd have a lot of writers and directors saying, "I remembered it fondly from childhood, and then I went back and watched it again ... and it inspired me to create things that were actually as good as what I remembered."

So. Harry Potter. If I re-read Philosopher's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, and Prisoner of Azkaban, I expect that it would be a genuine pleasure. Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix would be a mixed pleasure. I barely got through Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows the first time.

On the other hand, the universe shows some cracks where the ethics weren't fully thought through, but every page is jam-packed with invention. The characters were sometimes shoehorned into going ways that they didn't want to go, but there are so many of them, and they're still alive.

I could open any book to a random page and start reading, and I'll bet I'd have a story idea within three pages. I might describe it as "here's something else JKR screwed up," but it would be a story idea!


schneefink, I moved your question earlier to make room for ride_4ever's birthday.

( Click for question list. 5 days left to fill. )

It's a day every mother dreams of: the kidlet makes their fannish debut with a story I'm not even a little bit biased about ...

make my wish come true (12296 words) by terminally_underwhelmed
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Characters: Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley
Additional Tags: Epilogue What Epilogue, Post-War, magical amnesia, Mariah Carey, Fluff & Angst, Slightly Dubious Motivations
Summary:

Ten minutes later Harry’s drying his hair while staring in his own eyes in the mirror and not moping. Never mind that he's twenty-four and already feels due for a midlife crisis. Never mind that he’s desperate enough for human company that he's considering getting a haircut just for the awkward scalp massage (and even more awkward questions about his scar) while being shampooed and then inviting Dudley out for drinks. He is a fully grown adult making the adult decision of working the entire week leading up to Christmas Day, since there’s a conspicuous lack of other places to be, and he isn't going to start moping about it now.

“I'm not,” he tells his reflection decisively. His voice is hoarse from lack of use.

The reflection has no response.

james asks: Which (if any) Harry Potter book is the best totally on its own, with no meta or context or fanfic to bolster it up?

First I eliminated Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows. They're too tied up in the 7-book arc to be accessible to someone who hasn't read the rest of the books, and frankly they needed some editing that they didn't get. If you weren't already in love with the universe and the characters, I'm not sure you'd read them and say, "These are good books."

Then I eliminated Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone, because if you take it on its own instead of with its series, it's a children's book. It's the door into everything we all loved, but taken on its own, there's not enough to it.

At that point, left with Books 2 through 5, I was at a loss. So I punted the question to the kidlet, who just re-read the whole series last month.

After some thought (but not really very much thought), the kidlet said, "Prisoner of Azkaban. Because Voldemort doesn't dominate the whole plot. He's part of the worldbuilding."

Also: the Marauders in person, and their relationship with Snape; Dementors and Patronuses or possibly Patroni; Buckbeak; Time-Turners ...

I can't disagree.


Go here to add your own question.

( The questions thus far are under here. )

Saw Fantastic Beasts almost a week ago, and I can't believe it just now occurred to me to wonder whether there was a weird branch of Ray Kowalski's family that ran a bakery in New York.

wychwood asks: What is your favourite of your own stories? Which fic-writing achievements are you proudest of?

I'm rather proud of my Losers story, Impersonation, because I was playing a game with POV, and several readers told me they got it. (I suppose it's a romance-specific variation on the unreliable narrator. I wanted to write a story where, if you reeled it back in your mind and walked through it from the other character's point of view, the emotional landscape of the story was very different. In this case, the story Jensen is experiencing is, "Wow, I have the hots for my pal; didn't expect that ... Why's he acting so weird? ... Oh, OK, he's got the hots for me, too. We're golden." But the story Cougar is experiencing is more like, "Nobody could be this clueless; he must be mocking me ... This is cruel. I thought we were friends ... It's kind of humiliating to be desperate enough to accept a pass this wrapped up in mockery ... Wait a minute. Looks like he could be this clueless. Wow, OK, this is what a happy ending feels like.")

Tolleranza, the Commandos-era story where there's a lot of very explicit sex being had by people who are not Steve Rogers, is one that I feel really good about, because it only works if you care at least a little about those original characters, and by the time I was done, I did.

It's harder to pick a favorite, but if you were going to wipe out my whole catalog and leave me only one story to say, "I am the author of _____ and nothing else," I would have to say Transfigurations. I can point to ways I've grown as a writer since then, but in some ways I've still never equalled it.

Enough real life. Let's play a game.

You give me a fannish character I'm reasonably familiar with, and for that person I will give you a hangup. You know: a sexual dysfunction, an unexpected inhibition or aversion, some perfectly ordinary thing he/she simply cannot handle.

If I'm *not* familiar with your character, maybe some other reader will join in.

-----

We have requests that I'm unable to fill:
Joe Dawson
John Winchester
Reese or Finch
Christopher Chant

Anybody want to take these on?