[Fic] "Comfort (The Extremely Basic Remix)" -- Harry Potter

Author names have gone up on the Remix Redux website, so I can now tell you which story I wrote! I continued my attempts to write romance... and I think I might actually have nailed it this time. (Maybe. But it's not the whole point of the story, in any case, so you can read it as gen if you want.) I also had fun playing with characters and a time period I don't usually deal with.

Comfort (The Extremely Basic Remix)

James tries to change his life; life doesn't wait for him. Offstage death of non-canon characters, light James/Lily. (Cross-posted here on ff.net, with one itsy-bitsy, teeny-tiny change: I went back and forth for a ridiculously long time over whether to italicize one word in the second paragraph. I had it plain when I sent the file to Remix Redux. Later, I decided I prefered it in italics, and so the FF.net version has it that way.)

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You know the really funny thing? Which I started to suspect after I read Lesson Number Two (The Open My Eyes Remix) and thought I recognized the style?

I remixed a story by nekare... and she remixed mine. Despite the hundreds of participants, we ended up in little mutual back-scratching circle of fic.

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It was weird to rewrite somebody else's story. I put Falls the Shadow as my safe story because the obvious remix of that is Harry's POV instead of Petunia's. I really didn't want to see that, because my view of their relationship is complicated and I didn't want somebody to do it 'wrong.' So I was kind of leery of doing somebody else's story 'wrong,' which is probably why I ended up not changing a lot of nekare's story.

She writes a lot of Remus/Sirius, and I find that while I have no problem reading R/S, it just doesn't interest me as a writer. At all. I'm much more interested in gen friendship stories about their relationship, because they're both such damaged characters, even as kids, and they did a lot of that damage to each other. But remixing a shipfic as a genfic seems impolite, so I left her R/S stories alone.

I did like Last Summer quite a lot. It's about the trio before they go on their quest to find the Horcruxes, doing ordinary teenage things for the week before Harry's birthday. I love the atmosphere, and there were so many things unsaid there. I gave definite thought to remixing it, but then James walked up and handed me the first paragraph of "Comfort" -- the bit where he talks about his father telling stories -- so I kind of shrugged and went with that instead.

"Comfort (The Extremely Basic Remix)" is more an expansion of nekare's story than anything else. I snagged a couple things from the original prompt -- #5 of thistlerose's Twenty Random Facts About James and Lily -- that she hadn't used. I also elaborated on the backstory of the incident in the Charms classroom, trying to figure out just what made James break down then, in front of Lily, and trying to give the story a clearer temporal setting -- trying, in other words, to figure out where James was in his journey between the spoiled jerk of the OotP flashback and the good man that other people remember him as.

...

I like it as a story. It says what I wanted it to say, lasultrix pruned back the symbolism so I wasn't bashing it around like a giant, spiked club (it's only a small club now, hardly any lumps, really!), and I think I actually got the right note for the fumbling beginning of a James/Lily romance. But I don't think it's a particularly good remix. It doesn't say anything new, or twist the original in unexpected ways.

I thought, partway through, that maybe I should switch to Lily's POV, but I spend so much time writing girls and women already. I wanted to write a guy, if only so I don't lose the knack.

Besides, writing Lily would have required me to explain her family situation at that point, what was going on with her parents, and with Petunia and Vernon, and how much they knew about Voldemort and his terrorist campaign, and frankly, I didn't want to do the work. I also would have needed to go into Lily's history with James, and the way she, at least, had noticed him trying to change since the Incident With Snape At The Shrieking Shack (which is a secret, but she can see the effects).

That probably would have made a better remix, but as I say, for one reason and another, I didn't want to write it. I also thought it would be an awkward sort of thing, since I'd have Lily reacting to stuff in my half-written version of "Comfort" instead of nekare's version.

...

I may end up writing it at some point, just as a companion piece (and also as incidental background for my Petunia), but not now. I have too much other stuff taking up mental space right now.

[Fic] "Comfort (The Extremely Basic Remix)" -- Harry Potter

Author names have gone up on the Remix Redux website, so I can now tell you which story I wrote! I continued my attempts to write romance... and I think I might actually have nailed it this time. (Maybe. But it's not the whole point of the story, in any case, so you can read it as gen if you want.) I also had fun playing with characters and a time period I don't usually deal with.

Comfort (The Extremely Basic Remix)

[ETA: The ever-so-slightly revised final version is now up on AO3!]

James tries to change his life; life doesn't wait for him. Offstage death of non-canon characters, light James/Lily. (Cross-posted here on ff.net, with one itsy-bitsy, teeny-tiny change: I went back and forth for a ridiculously long time over whether to italicize one word in the second paragraph. I had it plain when I sent the file to Remix Redux. Later, I decided I preferred it in italics, and so the FF.net version has it that way.)

-----------------------------------

You know the really funny thing? Which I started to suspect after I read Lesson Number Two (The Open My Eyes Remix) and thought I recognized the style?

I remixed a story by nekare... and she remixed mine. Despite the hundreds of participants, we ended up in little mutual back-scratching circle of fic.

-----------------------------------

It was weird to rewrite somebody else's story. I put Falls the Shadow as my safe story because the obvious remix of that is Harry's POV instead of Petunia's. I really didn't want to see that, because my view of their relationship is complicated and I didn't want somebody to do it 'wrong.' So I was kind of leery of doing somebody else's story 'wrong,' which is probably why I ended up not changing a lot of nekare's story.

She writes a lot of Remus/Sirius, and I find that while I have no problem reading R/S, it just doesn't interest me as a writer. At all. I'm much more interested in gen friendship stories about their relationship, because they're both such damaged characters, even as kids, and they did a lot of that damage to each other. But remixing a shipfic as a genfic seems impolite, so I left her R/S stories alone.

I did like Last Summer quite a lot. It's about the trio before they go on their quest to find the Horcruxes, doing ordinary teenage things for the week before Harry's birthday. I love the atmosphere, and there were so many things unsaid there. I gave definite thought to remixing it, but then James walked up and handed me the first paragraph of "Comfort" -- the bit where he talks about his father telling stories -- so I kind of shrugged and went with that instead.

"Comfort (The Extremely Basic Remix)" is more an expansion of nekare's story than anything else. I snagged a couple things from the original prompt -- #5 of thistlerose's Twenty Random Facts About James and Lily -- that she hadn't used. I also elaborated on the backstory of the incident in the Charms classroom, trying to figure out just what made James break down then, in front of Lily, and trying to give the story a clearer temporal setting -- trying, in other words, to figure out where James was in his journey between the spoiled jerk of the OotP flashback and the good man that other people remember him as.

...

I like it as a story. It says what I wanted it to say, lasultrix pruned back the symbolism so I wasn't bashing it around like a giant, spiked club (it's only a small club now, hardly any lumps, really!), and I think I actually got the right note for the fumbling beginning of a James/Lily romance. But I don't think it's a particularly good remix. It doesn't say anything new, or twist the original in unexpected ways.

I thought, partway through, that maybe I should switch to Lily's POV, but I spend so much time writing girls and women already. I wanted to write a guy, if only so I don't lose the knack.

Besides, writing Lily would have required me to explain her family situation at that point, what was going on with her parents, and with Petunia and Vernon, and how much they knew about Voldemort and his terrorist campaign, and frankly, I didn't want to do the work. I also would have needed to go into Lily's history with James, and the way she, at least, had noticed him trying to change since the Incident With Snape At The Shrieking Shack (which is a secret, but she can see the effects).

That probably would have made a better remix, but as I say, for one reason and another, I didn't want to write it. I also thought it would be an awkward sort of thing, since I'd have Lily reacting to stuff in my half-written version of "Comfort" instead of nekare's version.

...

I may end up writing it at some point, just as a companion piece (and also as incidental background for my Petunia), but not now. I have too much other stuff taking up mental space right now.