3 things: "Secrets" and two reviews
Apr. 5th, 2006 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfalling1. I finished the rough draft of "Secrets" chapter 10 last night!
It totally sucks. No really, you have no idea. Melodrama up to here, and with Tom gone (well, for a certain value of 'gone'...) Ginny doesn't have a best friend to talk to, and so there is way too much internalized angsting and not enough dialogue, damnit, despite all the conversations I kept shoving at her.
I swear, next chapter I'm going to make her talk to Xanthe for an entire scene. Just because.
Also! I was nearing the end of the chapter, and I wanted Ginny and Apple to have a thing where Apple kind of apologized, but then Ginny yelled at her and Apple told her off. They both flatly refused to have that conversation. So I looked at them, and it occured to me to ask Apple what the flipping heck she was doing in the infirmary anyway (Percy dragged Ginny there again -- Percy also refused to have the argument I wanted him to have, but in his case I like the resulting conversation much better), and she said to me, "Oh, don't you know I get migraines?" and then! Then she threw me this giant plot point curveball, and now I can't figure out how to write anything else instead.
*fumes*
Tonight I print out the draft. Tomorrow I attack it with the Editing Pen of Death (TM). And trust me, there will be quite a lot of red ink on this sucker.
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2. Gravitation
M. lent me volume 1, and I swear, this is the cutest and dorkiest thing I've read in ages. Shuichi is such a loveable idiot (though he seems to have fairly good stage presence despite that), and there's something weirdly compelling about Eiri, even though he's a massive jerk.
Eiri is totally not kidding when he says that Mika looks just like him, only with makeup. (And boobs and long hair, but that sort of goes without saying.) They even have the same body language.
Toma looks younger than Shuichi. That is just creepy.
Also, Shuichi is an idiot, and he doesn't think before he acts, but I really don't think he's as much of an idiot as he's often made out to be in fanfiction. *sigh* Why do fandoms so often exaggerate certain character traits until they deform the original character past recognition?
...
I want volume 2, yesterday.
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3. Runaways
Volume 2, Teenage Wasteland, is kind of disappointing. It feels like treading water. Yes, that makes sense given revelations in volume 3, but there's still no excuse for bad pacing. And volume 3, The Good Die Young... well, the twist, while an interesting idea, was not properly foreshadowed, nor was it well-explained. Also, the revelation about the Pride's motives? Was just silly. And tacky.
*sigh*
I found myself with a terrible urge to rewrite the damn thing, just so I could make it make sense -- especially the character motivations -- and flow better. It's not a bad idea, and I like the characters, but the way the story was handled is So Damn Clunky.
Typical for Marvel, really. I should've known better.
(Also, Cat? My favorite character turned out to be secretly evil and got messily killed. Please close down that part of the psychic link, thanks!)
It totally sucks. No really, you have no idea. Melodrama up to here, and with Tom gone (well, for a certain value of 'gone'...) Ginny doesn't have a best friend to talk to, and so there is way too much internalized angsting and not enough dialogue, damnit, despite all the conversations I kept shoving at her.
I swear, next chapter I'm going to make her talk to Xanthe for an entire scene. Just because.
Also! I was nearing the end of the chapter, and I wanted Ginny and Apple to have a thing where Apple kind of apologized, but then Ginny yelled at her and Apple told her off. They both flatly refused to have that conversation. So I looked at them, and it occured to me to ask Apple what the flipping heck she was doing in the infirmary anyway (Percy dragged Ginny there again -- Percy also refused to have the argument I wanted him to have, but in his case I like the resulting conversation much better), and she said to me, "Oh, don't you know I get migraines?" and then! Then she threw me this giant plot point curveball, and now I can't figure out how to write anything else instead.
*fumes*
Tonight I print out the draft. Tomorrow I attack it with the Editing Pen of Death (TM). And trust me, there will be quite a lot of red ink on this sucker.
----------------------------------
2. Gravitation
M. lent me volume 1, and I swear, this is the cutest and dorkiest thing I've read in ages. Shuichi is such a loveable idiot (though he seems to have fairly good stage presence despite that), and there's something weirdly compelling about Eiri, even though he's a massive jerk.
Eiri is totally not kidding when he says that Mika looks just like him, only with makeup. (And boobs and long hair, but that sort of goes without saying.) They even have the same body language.
Toma looks younger than Shuichi. That is just creepy.
Also, Shuichi is an idiot, and he doesn't think before he acts, but I really don't think he's as much of an idiot as he's often made out to be in fanfiction. *sigh* Why do fandoms so often exaggerate certain character traits until they deform the original character past recognition?
...
I want volume 2, yesterday.
----------------------------------
3. Runaways
Volume 2, Teenage Wasteland, is kind of disappointing. It feels like treading water. Yes, that makes sense given revelations in volume 3, but there's still no excuse for bad pacing. And volume 3, The Good Die Young... well, the twist, while an interesting idea, was not properly foreshadowed, nor was it well-explained. Also, the revelation about the Pride's motives? Was just silly. And tacky.
*sigh*
I found myself with a terrible urge to rewrite the damn thing, just so I could make it make sense -- especially the character motivations -- and flow better. It's not a bad idea, and I like the characters, but the way the story was handled is So Damn Clunky.
Typical for Marvel, really. I should've known better.
(Also, Cat? My favorite character turned out to be secretly evil and got messily killed. Please close down that part of the psychic link, thanks!)
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 07:39 pm (UTC)(i ahvea friend who has that and as aresult stopped the detailed planning becasue it alwasy went askew).
opey oufeel good though (since in some auld fic thread ou once said when yo ufel blah you tend towrite more angst)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 11:21 pm (UTC)"Secrets" is kind of angsty by definition, since Ginny's first year was anything but happy and fluffy. But I try to toss in more lighthearted intervals -- I just couldn't squeeze many into chapter 10 because of plot requirements imposed on my by the timing of events in CoS.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-06 08:41 am (UTC)when ihear ginny I almsto smell angst (well i cone saw afic going as far as havign her so posesed by tom she sneaked into (ithink) th room ofa hufflepufffrom her year and set her bed i ncold flaemsand raped her. I am NOT makign ths up. i'm amost tempted to loook the thing up to make sure i iddn't dream it. ack.
wel li know you're workig nwit hcanon!Ginny as far as you can pick up stofffrom cos about her character at all.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-06 05:14 pm (UTC)Okay, that? That sort of thing will never happen in "Secrets," because "Secrets" is an attempt to do a 'backstage' version of CANON. In other words, if an action or character trait isn't plausible for CoS, it will not appear in "Secrets." Period.
I admit that I tweaked the Valentine's Day scene just a wee bit, mostly because Valentine's Day would have been a Sunday during 1993 and I don't believe Hogwarts offers classes on Sundays -- and also because I'd unfortunately arranged Ginny's class schedule in such a way that she didn't have a lesson to duck into when Draco humiliated her -- but beyond that, I think I haven't contradicted a damn thing. I even went to the bother of changing my portrayal of Tom's possession when OotP made my original theory non-canon, and let me tell you, changing that was no picnic.
That sort of thing will also not happen in "Secrets" simply because I think it's a damn stupid idea in general. There's no motivation for it. Ginny's defining negative traits are anger, vindictiveness, and possessiveness -- she doesn't go after people unless they hurt people she cares about. Attacking a random Hufflepuff makes no sense. Furthermore, Tom's influence doesn't work that way. Tom is sociopathic, not psychotic. He wouldn't do anything likely to draw attention to Ginny or himself, at least not until he'd managed to get out of the diary.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-06 09:11 pm (UTC)the are manystrange trends, like trippling the angst inastory and makign it unecessarily big. Adn finding one sinister trait about someone and maing that the main focus. I coudl go onaboutthis for horus but last time itried that somehwo i clicked a wrong buten and the whole ratn was gone .GOod for yo uperhaps. SO this is taek 2and I hope it still makes sense. IN gnereal I'vej ust met so much mischaracterisation and overdone portrayals inthe past that isometimes put these automatic keywords to thigns lie kthe ones I first gave. I'm al lfor takig as muc hfro mcano nas yo ucan find ther and if your'e workign with minor characters or just names liek tonks's parents for isntancey ou'll haveto put a bit of thought in them to make the r ealistic. adn again i coudl go on for hours .odds are i'll never write a two-threepart essay abouthis like I perhaps should.