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Categories > Books > Harry Potter > Let's Try That Again, Shall We?

Reviews

• Let's Try That Again, Shall We?

  (#) georgialuvr2002 2011-03-03

  verry imprest with the story can't waitfor the next chap. keep up the good work....

  Author's response

  Thank you!!!

• Let's Try That Again, Shall We?

  (#) mirabilos 2011-03-03

  The libraryan, lugga^Wtrunk and poster
  made a nice touch. (I actually liked
  Luggage the most out of Discworld cha-
  racters.) Can you hear the outcry of the
  purebloods seeing wizards classified as
  creatures already? I do ;-)
  

  Author's response

  Interestingly, you have the right universe but the wrong container. I was trying to make it more like the Cabinet of Curiosities in terms of confusing and changing outward appearance. (http://wiki.lspace.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Curiosity) It's a very loose connection, as you will eventually see when I keep making it do different things, but that _was_ what I was thinking of originally!
  
  Also, the beings beasts spirits business is distinctly British, and Eeles probably would not know about it.
  
  If you are observant, you might also have noticed a distant resemblance between Erasmus Eeles and Archchancellor Ridcully.

• Let's Try That Again, Shall We?

  (#) mirabilos 2011-03-04

  Damn, not again… I just requested an invitation
  (number 22, nice) and will post my OMAKE
  there as well, then. They look “legally
  sound”, and while I’m still browsing through
  their ToS, looks acceptable. (What, you
  don’t have any backups _prior to_ posting?)
  
  I must admit it’s been some years since I
  last read Discworld, and then only in my
  native German, but good to know I picked
  up at least a bit ;)
  

  Author's response

  I _do_ make backups periodically onto an external hard drive. I made copies today of the stories from the site, yes, because I've edited them in place. I also copied reviews.

• Let's Try That Again, Shall We?

  (#) Fresh 2011-03-04

  very humorous story and i,m curious what the Hogwarts could or would do without that vine :)

• Let's Try That Again, Shall We?

  (#) mirabilos 2011-03-05

  Ah, okay, sounds reasonable, especially
  backing up reviews is interesting.
  
  I’m set up on AO3 now, by the way – even
  got it to display the formatting “right”
  after like a dozen tries. Do be aware that
  a draft isn’t updated, that is, if you
  hit Preview or Cancel when creating a new
  work, the draft is stored for the first
  time but when you come back, you’ll always
  get this first version, not any later one
  you edited online before publication…
  I’ve just stored the things (pre-notes,
  post-notes and body text) as local files
  on disc. (Yay for them not using ECMAscript!)
  

• Let's Try That Again, Shall We?

  (#) mwinter 2011-03-06

  For my first time reading through this I think that the story is over all good. There are a couple of things that I don't under stand as to why you added them to your story cause to me they seem as a filler. Also i was expecting more of Tonks throughout the story. You did have some grammar errors however none of them distracted from the story. I think that "End Of Part I" was very well thought out. Hope to see more on this .

  Author's response

  Thank you! Reading through to the end is a better compliment than most things you can say. :)
  
  If you get this response / don't mind my asking, which bits didn't seem like they were contributing? (As the author, of course, I'm biased, and think I had a reason for everything.)
  
  As to the errors -- yeah, I've found some weird editing problems while copying this over to another site. Sorry about that. They will get fixed over time, slowly, as I reread things!

• Let's Try That Again, Shall We?

  (#) dhinchli 2011-03-11

  I really enjoyed the story so far. I like the little bits of side stories that you have, the fillers. Kind of like real life, some times other things happen that have no real meaning.
  
  Keep up the good work, definitely looking forward to "Part 2".

• Let's Try That Again, Shall We?

  (#) EtherealSiren 2011-03-27

  I did, in fact, read your wonderful story from start to finish in one go. It was very amusing, though at some times I wondered if some amusing bit I was reading was relevant to the plot. That's fine with me if it was not, but I get the feeling that seemingly irrelevant things turn out to be relevant later on in part 2. Your Defense professor was really interesting and good. I find myself wondering if he was someone who "caught a snitch" seeing as someone would undoubtedly mention him in the years after and his poster did not exist in cannon. His reactions seem a bit too genuine for him to have known much about UK Wizards from personal experience. Maybe he caught it on his first trip to the UK or something...
  
  I like that you "normalize" everyone. Slytherins are real kids, not a nest of evil snakes and mini death nibblers. You illustrate how many people cultivate their public image. It's nice to see the side of Snape that we don't see in cannon. In cannon we see a horrible vindictive jerk who realistically would have too many enemies to keep his job. Honestly if I could place myself in the Hogwarts Universe, I would tip of Skeeter to sit in one one of his classes so she could get too much shit in the fan for Dumbledore to clean up.
  
  I think Tonks would have had a bit more emotional upheaval from the "loss" of her son from the original time line, but I suppose it is hard to predict how someone would really deal with a situation like this.
  
  I'm not sure why Remus is reacting the way he is. He seemed eager to make up with Sirius in Cannon, but did have a bit of a "running away" and "avoidance" problem. It's hard to really get a handle on cannon Remus in regards to his motives and how he would react. In some ways it seems as though he may have also caught a snitch, but it also seems like he may not have.
  
  Maybe I just did read it carefully enough, but distribution of the snitches sees vague. Did people have to catch one twice, once in the future and once to where they were sent, to be sent back? I understand that part of it was to use a paradox to accomplish the goal, but I'm not sure how. I'm also curious how that time dust got under the bed and there seemed to be no snitch catching involved in the future, but he was still holding one when he got to the past. I don't see too much evidence of other time travelers. I thought of the possibility of some time travelers showing up to realize that things had already changed from what they remembered ( like Amelia Bones coming back to a point after she had participated in the Sirius Black trial), but I'm not sure that would be possible.
  
  I very much look forward to part 2. maybe I can get some more ideas on who caught a snitch. I think that trunk maker might have, but it's also just as likely he didn't. I also think Harry could have, but I don't think you will write that. We shall see! :D

  Author's response

  Thank you so much for both reading and reviewing! I really, really appreciate it.
  
  A couple explanations: I hate to discourage wild speculation, but the snitches are not supposed to be a mystery to the reader in any way, other than who it will be when the time comes. Right now only Tonks and Oren are time travelers, I only plan to have two more, their character studies are already mostly written (one of the was in fact the first thing I wrote for this story ever, and it will probably end up as chapter 60 or something). I will probably space them out much like I did Tonks and Oren -- in the summer, at least a month apart. One of those will be a canon character, one will not. Feel free to speculate about who it will be in the meantime. :)
  
  Also, yes, this was planned as a multi-year work. I just didn't expect year 1 to be so involved!
  
  The snitches work by having one on each end of the transfer of consciousness. Canon-timeline characters get one, and their post-snitch-creation, now AU younger selves catch another. The consciousness of the first displaces that of the second, so they don't remember their younger selves catching the snitch. For Tonks that was the only thing that had changed, so it wasn't a big deal, but later arrivals will have greater and greater divergences. Anything beyond what I explained in chapter 3 should probably be written off as "this is a MacGuffin" and not overthought, at least up until the next snitch scene.
  
  The snitch under the bed in Oren's chapter had simply anticipated where he would be and flown in an open window. It had many years in which to do this.
  
  As to Tonks, I figure she _did_ have that emotional upheaval, and I just haven't written about it. Not strategically, though -- there are an infinite number of things unwritten. :)
  
  With Remus, a lot of the problem is simply that canon Remus is light on details, and a lot of gap filling has to happen. I am also not being super-paranoid about details that can only be gotten by multiple close re-reading the books. But yeah, Remus is a very difficult character.
  
  I really appreciate the compliments about Eeles. I will be sad to see him go at the end of the year, and will probably contrive to at least make him plot-relevant for longer (I already have some plans).
  
  Thanks for saying I normalize everyone -- I try really hard at that. Characters might be deluded or insane, or might not share the values of other characters, but I hate writing someone whose head I can't get into at all.
  
  As to things that don't seem relevant yet, sometimes it's just that I'm not beating the reader over the head with something. For example, one of the things I think the Weasley twins are "about" in both canon and my story is beating swords into plowshares and vice versa, and the ethical implications of that for those who try to "help" them. That is supposed to be a long, slow, morally grey aspect of the storyline.
  
  Another reason is that I try to make a lot of things be like Kettleburn's squirrel -- seemingly reasonable, ordinary steps, that only seem questionable in hindsight once someone is actually groping Professor McGonagall.
  
  Some things are done purely for characterization, so that I don't have to do that later when I need the character to be able to do things without my having to write all sorts of extraneous stuff.
  
  And a few things are me writing a check to myself concerning what readers will tolerate later in the story. E.g. chapter 2 is there to make it easier for me to write explicit things later. Those _will_ happen -- I have already written some.
  
  I have in fact written about 42k words of Part II already, and about 5k of what I guess will be Part III (those aren't typos -- that's nearly half again what is already posted). Some of it is, I think, really good (and really strange), but I'm not satisfied enough with my editing to post any of it yet.
  
  

• Let's Try That Again, Shall We?

  (#) hunterw 2011-04-12

  Just read up through 'Before the Holidays' and I wanted to let you know how much I'm enjoying it. My favorite part so far is the characterization of the teachers' rivalries: hilarious! Please take this as encouragement to keep with this project; it's really worthwhile.

  Author's response

  Thank you! That is exactly the kind of encouragement that is really helpful as motivation. :)
  
  My attempts to flesh out the teachers are some of my favorite bits, too.

• Let's Try That Again, Shall We?

  (#) tricorvus 2011-09-09

  Damn good. Would you be terribly POed if I C&Ped some of the best little bits, here and there? I do it with the best fanfics, and put them on a file in my Yahoo notebook. Along with my better half's great wizarding ideas. Separated of course... That case as an example, is genius. OK see ya on down the line...

  Author's response

  Nope -- I'd be flattered. Go ahead. As long as I stay safely pseudonymous, I don't really care what happens!
  
  I am really enjoying having someone review so many chapters as they read, btw. You shouldn't feel pressured to do it just because you started, but I appreciate it!

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