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lasultrix's beta of ch. 12 back today, and have made the relevant changes. snaegl says she'll send her beta sometime tomorrow morning, so... unless she's found a problem that's really tricky to fix, I should be able to post the chapter tomorrow evening! *crosses fingers*
It is a much less awful chapter than I was afraid it might be, though it still rambles a bit (12,000+ words, my god, I do go on and on and on...) and perhaps time-checks a little too obsessively. But! It is a wonderfully amusing (to me) exercise in being completely faithful to canon (incidentally, in twelve chapters I have not yet contradicted a single thing in CoS except moving the Valentine's Day stuff from Valentine's Day to the following Monday, because Valentine's Day fell on Sunday in 1993, and assuming that Tom was paraphrasing the diary entries he recited to Harry down in the Chamber, because they make no sense as actual diary entries whereas they DO make sense as a way to get at Harry and to explain the plot) while subverting as often as possible.
I have given Ginny agency! (Yes, really.) I have taken shameless advantage of having a closed canon and had first year students notice things that Harry never noticed until later books (but which, in retrospect, really should have caught his attention sooner). I have continued to undercut Rowling's 'Slytherins are EVOL!!!' stance. And I've twisted the 'obvious' canon explanations for a few events so they make more internal character sense for Ginny, because I have given her an honest to goodness character arc instead of leaving her as a hapless McGuffin.
Also, I managed a cliffhanger. :-) Granted, it's not nearly as effective as it would be if readers didn't already know what happens in CoS, but still. You don't know how it's all going to affect Ginny. And for "Secrets," that uncertainty is what matters.
Two more chapters to go!
...
(I should probably also mention that while "Secrets" does not contradict CoS, it does slightly contradict later books, in that I started writing with the expectation that Rowling would extend her anti-prejudice themes to show that all four houses needed to work together against Voldemort, and that at least some Slytherins would join the 'Side of Good, TM' and work alongside Harry and/or the Order of the Phoenix. This obviously failed to happen, so some of my setup, such as creating semi-sympathetic Slytherin OCs and doing my best to show how Ginny's anti-Slytherin prejudice leads her to create unnecessary troubles for herself (i.e., her enmity with Daphne and her resulting estrangement from Apple), would become problematic were I to try extending this version of Ginny into later books. But the story works on its own terms, I think, and as I said, it doesn't contradict CoS, which is the really important part.)
lasultrix's beta of ch. 12 back today, and have made the relevant changes. snaegl says she'll send her beta sometime tomorrow morning, so... unless she's found a problem that's really tricky to fix, I should be able to post the chapter tomorrow evening! *crosses fingers*It is a much less awful chapter than I was afraid it might be, though it still rambles a bit (12,000+ words, my god, I do go on and on and on...) and perhaps time-checks a little too obsessively. But! It is a wonderfully amusing (to me) exercise in being completely faithful to canon (incidentally, in twelve chapters I have not yet contradicted a single thing in CoS except moving the Valentine's Day stuff from Valentine's Day to the following Monday, because Valentine's Day fell on Sunday in 1993, and assuming that Tom was paraphrasing the diary entries he recited to Harry down in the Chamber, because they make no sense as actual diary entries whereas they DO make sense as a way to get at Harry and to explain the plot) while subverting as often as possible.
I have given Ginny agency! (Yes, really.) I have taken shameless advantage of having a closed canon and had first year students notice things that Harry never noticed until later books (but which, in retrospect, really should have caught his attention sooner). I have continued to undercut Rowling's 'Slytherins are EVOL!!!' stance. And I've twisted the 'obvious' canon explanations for a few events so they make more internal character sense for Ginny, because I have given her an honest to goodness character arc instead of leaving her as a hapless McGuffin.
Also, I managed a cliffhanger. :-) Granted, it's not nearly as effective as it would be if readers didn't already know what happens in CoS, but still. You don't know how it's all going to affect Ginny. And for "Secrets," that uncertainty is what matters.
Two more chapters to go!
...
(I should probably also mention that while "Secrets" does not contradict CoS, it does slightly contradict later books, in that I started writing with the expectation that Rowling would extend her anti-prejudice themes to show that all four houses needed to work together against Voldemort, and that at least some Slytherins would join the 'Side of Good, TM' and work alongside Harry and/or the Order of the Phoenix. This obviously failed to happen, so some of my setup, such as creating semi-sympathetic Slytherin OCs and doing my best to show how Ginny's anti-Slytherin prejudice leads her to create unnecessary troubles for herself (i.e., her enmity with Daphne and her resulting estrangement from Apple), would become problematic were I to try extending this version of Ginny into later books. But the story works on its own terms, I think, and as I said, it doesn't contradict CoS, which is the really important part.)
