(#) siaru 2011-01-13
@mirabilos: It works, but it's a rather slow background process that goes around updating tallies and such. The site lagged terribly when it was updated promptly.
@Circaea: You sound like the characters surprising you is a frequent occurrence. Can't wait til you bring in Luna.
I try to completely ignore any and all bandfic that shows up in the sidebar (just the summaries often sound squicky), so I appreciate the warning; jet-powered skimming skis at ready.
Oren sounds like a lot of arty types I've known (self included, tho I got better, into engineering; they no kid when they say 'starving artist') -- schooled to be stolid and unassuming by the looming weight of all the peers and critics ready to pounce, and thinking more by associative than logical processing. (this and next chapter:) Let's see if he can actually put off the extraction. A lot of grand art projects get put on the 'complete it tomorrow' stack repeatedly until they fall off in back. This one has consequences.
Author's response
Well, I'm not planning on speeding up the pace in terms of the ratio of calendar-time to words-in-story. I seem to be advancing a conservative couple of days per chapter, while still resorting to occasional flashbacks. And I haven't decided how much I want to actually delve into Harry's inner circle of friends -- part of the concept of this story is to have the luxury of playing around with the periphery. Also Luna is one of my favorite characters and I'm terrified of not doing her justice, so there's a bit of me waiting until I'm a more experienced writer to check in on her. :)
This isn't great literature, but I'm pretty sure my "unsettling" is a more sophisticated "unsettling" than a lot of the bandfic, and anyway "the creepiest thing I've ever written" is relative pretty much just to the rest of the story so far! I have a really dim grasp of what might disturb other people. I have this problem in real life, too.
Oren isn't supposed to come off as wholly illogical, actually, but I'm really glad he comes off like real people. I think he'll seem a little more logically-oriented, if not actually logical, soon enough. His role is supposed to be someone who finds the world, and the wizarding world in particular, to be something one can make sense of at a fundamental level, and to spend a decent amount of time struggling with finding explanations for the weird things wizards do. In that respect Oren, and to a lesser extent, it's turning out, Charlie, are the closest thing this story is going to have to a Mary Sue. Which isn't to say I agree with a single thing Oren says -- I don't necessarily. I just like that he takes a stab at saying or thinking it in the first place.