inverarity (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
inverarity) wrote2012-05-15 12:23 am
inverarity) wrote2012-05-15 12:23 am
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Alexandra Quick and the Stars Above: Author's Notes
I promised I would avoid commenting on AQATSA too much while it was still being posted. I didn't want to be seen as trying to steer reactions or influence reviews. For an author, there are always two dangers involved when you engage with reviewers, especially critical ones:
(1) That you'll start arguing ("No, you got it wrong!") and be perceived as getting defensive or thin-skinned.
(2) That you'll fall into the trap of trying to explain things. If you have to explain something you wrote, then your writing failed. Out in the real world, your words have to stand on their own, subject to whatever interpretation or misinterpretation readers give them. ("Well, no, see, the reason she did that is..." "Well then why didn't you say that?" "I thought it was obvious!" <= Any time you as an author are tempted to say this, know that you failed.)
Anyway, now the story is over. Overall, reaction has been positive — certainly there have been some criticisms, and as usual some of them had me scratching my head but most I thought were valid to some degree.
But while I talk about reading reviews, this also brings up the third danger of engaging with reviewers, or maybe it's just a danger of reading reviews, period:
(3) The temptation to start letting your writing be influenced by criticism.
Of course some criticism should influence your writing. The criticism of your beta-readers, obviously. To a lesser degree, when you read comments by someone who strikes you as thoughtful and intelligent, then their criticism might be worth listening to. But, as I upload each new chapter of my stories, even though they have already been betaed and proofread multiple times, I always change a few things at the last moment. Usually it's just a word or sentence here or there, but sometimes it's actually a plot element, a character action, or a piece of information. And when I find myself thinking, "Maybe I should add an explanation for that thing people are complaining about..." I know I am listening to reviews too much.
So let's talk about AQATSA and what was right and wrong about it and the issues that inspired the most... discussion.
Claudia
At least I didn't make her
sleep in a cupboard.
Bitch, please, like that makes you
Mother of the Year?
I had this planned aaaaall along. There were clues, for those who looked carefully enough. Once you knew the names of Abraham Thorn's other daughters, didn't "Claudia Carolina" have a familiar ring to it? And if you noticed that most of my character names have some significance, you could have looked up the meaning of the name Claudia.
There was quite a bit of (very polite) discussion concerning whether or not Claudia is a bad mother. Most people are more sympathetic to her now that they know her circumstances, but for what it's worth, one of my previous beta-readers, Miles 2 Go, really, really disliked Claudia and Archie. He thought they were terrible parents, bordering on criminally negligent. (He didn't know about the Big Reveal in book four; unfortunately, I've lost touch with him. However, I think it wouldn't change his opinion very much.)
My own perspective: I don't think Miles 2 Go is entirely wrong. Claudia has not been a great mother. She hasn't been a terrible mother: she does love Alexandra, and she never abused her sister nor would have allowed her to be abused (as Archie told her). Alexandra grew up with most of her needs taken care of, save perhaps her emotional ones.
Alexandra's attitude is largely a product of her upbringing: she grew up in a relatively safe environment, where her impulses to go exploring and getting into trouble went uninhibited, but she also grew up in an environment where she was encouraged to fend for herself and find her own answers because her mother and stepfather weren't really there for her except to provide a buffer of safety and security.
Claudia's emotional distance is largely a product of her childhood trauma, and lingering, suppressed resentment over her treatment — by the wizarding world, and by her father. Already suffering from abandonment issues, Claudia knew that even her own sister/"daughter" would abandon her eventually and return to the wizarding world, and so she built up a wall between herself and Alexandra.
Of course, the fact that she (mostly unconsciously) took this out on Alexandra is the greatest indictment against her. That and the fact that she almost pathologically avoided facing the issue she knew she was going to have to face eventually. She knew Alexandra would learn everything eventually, she knew that the longer she waited to tell her, and especially if she waited until Alexandra found out on her own, as she was bound to do sooner or later, the worse it would be, yet that's exactly what she did. Stupid and irresponsible on so many levels.
Is this realistic? I have certainly known people (and parents) who've been equally stupid and irresponsible. Is Claudia a bad mother? That's for the reader to decide.
I've said before that I am not trying to copy Harry Potter or parallel it directly, but certainly I model many characters and situations after their HP equivalents. Claudia, then, is the counterpart to Petunia Dursley. Claudia compares favorably to Petunia, I think! If I failed to make Claudia believable or sympathetic enough, it may be because of a problem that has plagued me as well as Rowling, the uneven balance between a slightly absurdist story, in which "parents" who lock a child in a cupboard throughout his childhood are just following a long tradition of Really Awful Parents in children's books, and a more realistic one in which some of the things the Dursleys did probably merited the intervention of Social Services.
I haven't discussed Archie's role much, though some reviewers have pointed out that Archie could have done more to establish a closer relationship with Alexandra. That is certainly true. I see Archie as being like Claudia — not a bad guy, but kind of a half-hearted parent. Ironically, if Alexandra had been needier and more insecure, it would have made Archie more protective and more affectionate, and they would have been closer, but Archie was never quite sure what to do with this hard-headed, mischievous girl who didn't seem to need him, and whose own mother didn't seem to think more was needed. Archie didn't exactly step up to become a father figure, but he did his limited best. He could have used a little mentoring in the "stepfather" department, and a little more encouragement from Claudia.
Where will things between Alexandra and her erstwhile parents go from here? You'll have to wait until book five...
"My mother is a cat!"
I knew this twist would not sit well with everyone. One of my betas really did not like it at all, which left me a bit concerned that it would be a shark-jumping moment for some of my readers. Admittedly, it's one of the most "out there" things I've done yet. (Yet. >:D) But it was planned since book one, and I've been planting the clues all along.
Somewhere about halfway through the writing of Alexandra Quick and the Thorn Circle, I settled on who Alexandra's real mother was, and then started working the clues in. Everyone noticed that Lilith Grimm showed up on Alexandra's birthdays with Galen and figured there must be some significance to this, but most people assumed Galen was a "he" and speculated that Galen referred to the Roman physician. Nobody, apparently, thought of the admittedly obscure mythological Galenthias.
Maybe I was cheating by shortening her name. Had Lilith just called her "Galenthias," I'm sure people would have guessed that the "cat" was a transformed person, though possibly not that she was Lilith's sister or Alexandra's mother.
But the second clue I dropped was at the beginning of book two, when you found out Diana's middle name. Diana Alecto Grimm. You've just found out the Grimm sisters are twins, but there are three Furies, aren't there?
If most of my characters have Harry Potter analogs, then Hecate Grimm may be a sort of amalgam of Lily Evans and Alice Longbottom. And maybe a bit of Bellatrix Lestrange...
Adults Are Useless
Adults are Useless is a trope I've been hitting kind of hard, isn't it? It seems every adult in the story has fallen under criticism — even Ms. King, for refusing Alexandra's request to come live with her and Julia. Other than Claudia, though, it's Dean Grimm who gets the most flack, for doing a poor job of handling Alexandra, for not doing more to protect her (or at least telling her what she's doing), etc.
I didn't intend for the adults to appear incompetent or outright stupid. I tried to avoid some of the more egregious problems with Rowling's story, where crucial information was withheld for plot reasons, by giving the adults motives for not telling Alexandra things. Diana Grimm is angry and carrying a grudge and doesn't think she should take any shit from a teenager, even if the teenager is her niece. Lilith Grimm feels much the same, even if she is (usually) more controlled than Diana.
To be fair to Dean Grimm, she did tell Alexandra that she was sending Ms. Shirtliffe and Miss Gambola out to look for the thing in the woods. Alexandra assumed that the Dean wasn't doing anything else, and she didn't ask. Alexandra tends to make great leaping assumptions like that, and think she's the only smart person in the room.
But could a lot of trouble be avoided if any of the adults sat down and told Alexandra what's what, without condescending to her? Well, yes. But Dean Grimm is an authoritarian who has trouble pulling the stick out of her ass, Diana Grimm more so, Abraham Thorn is used to being evasive and telling only what he thinks other people should know (and that's as little as possible), Henry Tsotsie just wanted to get this troublesome white girl the hell out of his territory, and so on.
I think the problem in my story is not so much that Adults as Useless as Adults are Assholes.
It may be that I overplayed this. It's another factor that's hard to balance when you are writing under the influence of certain conventions (a series originating in children's books where Awful Adults are the norm) as well as the inconvenient fact that teenagers with adults realistically involved in their lives have a much harder time going on adventures.
Like a 14-year-old girl
Some people thought Alexandra showed remarkable maturity and character growth in Book Four. Some thought she remained an arrogant, immature, ungrateful little brat.
I thought she was — at different times — both.
I would kind of laugh at how each chapter, if she did something brave and mature, people would cheer, and if she did something foolish and immature, people would groan and ask why she keeps acting like that, and I wondered How many of you remember being fourteen?
Now, I'm not saying my characterization of Alexandra (or fourteen-year-old girls in general) is perfect. Nor that how I see my character is how everyone else should see my character. It's natural that people will slap their foreheads when the main character does a stupid thing. "Oh, Alex, won't you ever grow up?"
But honestly, what I remember of being fourteen is that I thought I knew every-fucking-thing, and there were times when I did, in fact, have quite remarkable moments of insight. And other times when I was an unbearable little shit who had no idea how close I was coming to being strangled. I don't think that's atypical for fourteen-year-olds. They can be mature and really smart one moment, and then turn around do the most amazingly stupid shit the next. Alexandra is, in many respects, more level-headed than most kids her age, or at least, she takes things more seriously, out of necessity.
But in fairness to her, she got jerked around a lot in this book. I think most fourteen-year-olds would freak out a bit given what she goes through.
I was trying really hard to make Alexandra believable, not completely stupid, not completely grown-up, and acting in a manner consistent with her character as well as being, you know, fourteen.
Hopefully most of you thought she was bearable and believable. If not... well, she has been getting a little more mature with each book. And I saw AQATSA as Alexandra's OotP: she went through the worst of her pissy phase in this book. (And hardly any caps locking!)
That's not to say she won't still do foolish, reckless things in book five. She is still, after all, Troublesome.
Alexandra's Love Life, and That Gay Thing
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
Actually, I got less flack for this than I thought I would. No one actually thought shipping was taking over the story — if anything, I think some readers wanted to see more of it.
Alexandra and her friends, as I have said, are teenagers. They're going to act like teenagers. And Alexandra has already proven that she's, well, not exactly timid about deciding what she wants (or doesn't).
I actually had a few reviewers who accused her of being fickle/unfaithful. Sorry, Alexandra also isn't the sort who's very readily going to buy into the idea that anyone has an exclusive claim on her, unless she explicitly promises such. She all but told Payton as much. If you're going to call her unfaithful on the basis of one confused kiss with Brian before she'd technically "broken up" with Payton, well, let's just say a Harry/Ginny ending is not likely in Alexandra's future.
But hey, only one person on DLP called her a slut. :P
A few people thought that the Stuart subplot was too contrived as a device to prevent the boinking. Meh, maybe. I still feel I might have executed it a little bit better, but like the Max/Martin thing, it just came to me and it made sense, so I added it. It wasn't "necessary" to the story, but it was fitting.
I was rather more worried that people would think I was going for Gay Ally Cookies, which certainly was not my intent, but that raises another concern whenever I use tropes that I know are, well, tropes, and sometimes tired ones at that. If I know a particular plot device has an unfortunate history and/or implications, should I dump it?
Well, I have already committed Dead Gay Boyfriend. Sometimes I do things even knowing that I'm going to get flack for it.
Plot Holes
Do I look like a gorram storeria dekayi to you? I don't even like crickets!
I always think my stories are full of plot holes. The things people point out are usually not the ones I was worried about.
Like, how did Alexandra not notice for two years that Nigel had fangs?
I actually have several No-Prize explanations for that, but mostly I did it because I thought the idea was cool, and dramatically fitting. (And yes, I planned it since Nigel first appeared. People have been asking me since book two if Nigel was ever going to do anything besides sit on his warming rock.)
I was far more worried about Alexandra's plan to get into the tunnels. I went through several different versions of the final chase, including trying to work out a way that she might Apparate/be Apparated down there, but none quite suited. Hence, her brilliant plan. A few people commented on the ease with which she got into tunnels that had supposedly been sealed off. My view on it is that the tunnels under Charmbridge were never meant to be sealed off and are almost impossible to make completely inaccessible, but I admit, that's a bit handwavey. Could Dean Grimm have put much tighter wards and alarms all over the place? Maybe — of course, she could do the same thing with all the exits out of the academy, or just put some sort of local Trace on Alexandra. (Merlin knows she needs one!) Once again this boils down to the fact that if adults actually monitor teenagers as tightly as they could (and possibly should), it becomes very hard to write teenagers being able to get away with anything. I hope I didn't take too many liberties, and I commented several times on the difficulties the teachers would have in actually implementing a "lockdown" on the school, but I concede that I have probably let Alexandra get away with more than she should with surveillance-happy wizards on her case.
Some readers thought her being able to weaken the wards around the school was another instance of teacher ineptitude. I tried to build up Alexandra a little more this year, showing that, while she's no Abraham Thorn (yet), she's talented and powerful, she had been specifically studying wards, and she used an obscure kind of magic that was only supposed to let one particular being through. But if it's not believable that Alexandra could do what she did, well, my bad. This is also part of the whole final climax that I was not 100% satisfied with.
(One of my original alternative scenarios was that she somehow gets Larry Albo to Apparate her down to the sub-basement, bringing the Nemesis Spirit with them. But the holes and the difficulties in making that scenario work were even greater than what I settled on.)
Q&A?
I could go on (and on, and on), but I can't really cover every single thing everyone said while reviewing, nor do I want to respond to individual reviews.
Except you, YUI. I am so sorry you've got a mad hate for Alexandra Quick and that it vexes you so that people like my series. For what it's worth, though, I like G. Norman Lippert's James Potter series too. ;)
So go ahead and hit me with questions and comments. I'll answer any question that isn't a spoiler or giving away too much information. Bearing in mind that as I said in the beginning, what's written in the books should stand on its own, so any explanations I give here are, well, as canon as you think they are. ;)
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As for the adults not telling Alexandra everything - well, from reviewer reactions to my own old fics it seemed to me that American children do expect adults to take them seriously, but I was very surprised by that. I'm more used to adults' attududes being that a child is ONLY a child, maybe even not yet quite a person. It is to be protected (including from such things as scary information) and its immature and fancyful thoughts and opinions are to be indulgently smiled at, but don't need to be seriously considered. It cannot be expected to understand important adult issues such as details plans to defend schools against dark magic, so why bother to explain? - So to me the 'useless' adults, too, seem very realistic.
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I didn't really have any problem with how you characterized Claudia. I always felt like her actions and distance were pretty consistent with someone who had been wronged, or suffered as a result of, or been betrayed, or something like that, as a result of her relationship with Abraham Thorn. I admit that I did NOT see the big reveal coming, but hey, that's perfectly fine. It's one of those things where you look back and smack yourself in the forehead. Everything up to that point that seemed a little vague but still consistent with Abraham becoming involved with a muggle suddenly made more sense, and it significantly upped my opinion of you as a writer.
Archie's characterization was fine; from the start, he seemed like a guy who didn't really know how to deal with Alex, and while he didn't go out of his way to be a father, he definitely didn't treat her like an unwanted stepchild. His and Claudia's emotional distance seemed logical to me, particularly if he was more or less entering into a situation where Alex was already pretty independent and he didn't want to rock the boat when he married her. So, yeah, I understand that he was pretty much doing what he thought was the best.
Are they bad parents? No, but they aren't good parents. I think there's tons of room for improvement, but they're not about to raise a terrible delinquent or a sociopath. Best they would do is raise someone who was emotionally distant and had trouble connecting with people on that level, which is pretty much what we got.
-"My Mother is a Cat!"
That was perhaps one of the funniest lines I'd heard out of your fic. I hadn't focused much on the Grimms or on Galen, but I did like what you did there. That scene, however, really made me think how ridiculously over the top Lilith's actions were. I know that we got the part about Diana being someone who's nearly fanatical in her actions against Dark Magicians, and how she doesn't seem to care about people because of it, and that made her interaction with Alexandra much more believable; however, Lilith's actions in her office were like someone who's never dealt with an emotionally distraught teenager before, and who hadn't been keeping track of Alex and didn't know what kind of person she was--something I find completely illogical. In a scene where I imagined Lilith breaking her emotionless facade a bit, all we got was a sort of cold anger about her sister's fate. I feel like there should have been something more, at least an attempt to not just dictate to Alex what she was going to do (something that anyone with a brain knows Alex doesn't take well to, and something that Lilith CERTAINLY should have understood).
-ADULTS ARE USELESS
I think that I was originally exasperated by how you wrote all those teachers who again and again just treated Alex like a student who wouldn't shut up and listen in class. At first I thought it was amazingly ignorant of them, but then, after thinking about it for a while, I realize that I was looking at them from Alex's perspective. So, I thought it out, and it makes sense that teachers who have hundreds of students to deal with, and hundreds of problems from all of them to work with, could easily treat Alex as just another of those students. I think that Alex's idea that the rules are there mostly to hold her back could easily make teachers treat her as a bad egg, and that if I try to take the perspective of a teacher dealing with her (and all the other little assholes at that school), I could easily see them acting like that. So, while I still think it was a tad overdone, I don't have a problem with it.
(Part 1)
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I've never had a moment where I thought your characterization of Alex as a teenager or as a preteen was inaccurate. I still remember how I was as a teenager (being only 25 years old now), and that semi-maturity-semi-arrogance-all-attitude state of mind was well written. I think that, as a teenager, it's not unrealistic that someone like Alex could go through the ringer, see herself as having acted immature and irresponsibly, attempt to change to become more mature, and completely screw it up most of the time. That's what being a teenager is--a series of events where your lack of maturity completely fucks things up, being sorry about that, and trying to change, only to forget about it all ten minutes later. Good job on that.
ALEXANDRA'S LOVE LIFE AND THAT GAY THING
Having never been a 14 year old girl in a relationship, I don't honestly know how accurate you were with that one. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
I think your having a student be gay was perfectly normal; I read a report that had statistics showing that as many as one in ten students are gay. I don't know how accurate that is, but it's certainly not outside the realm of possibilities that in a school as big as charmbridge, Alex might come across three. Torvald's reactions towards it are pretty consistent with a society stuck in the past, especially when even in today's society you have an even chance of coming across students who feel positively or negatively towards homosexuals.
PLOT HOLES
I can easily see Alex as seeing a snake and EXPECTING it to have fangs, regardless of whether it's poisonous or not, just because it's a snake. If I see a snake in the wild, I'm not sitting around to try and find out if it DOES have fangs; I'm getting the hell out of there.
I won't comment on the rest of it, I think you did fine and it's hard to write out that scene if everyone does what they SHOULD do. It also makes sense that the authorities would want to leave that area somewhat accessible for their own purposes, so I'll let it go.
COMING UP NEXT
I look forward to Alex attending another school. I think it's unreasonable to expect otherwise, since she's only 14/15 and she needs an education. I could see her at a muggle school now, or at another magical school (possibly a non-boarding school; I imagine there would be one in the area, it IS Chicago, a big city, after all). It's not like having been kicked out of Charmbridge that she's barred from all magical education; that idea bothered the hell out of me with Hogwarts and the HP series.
Could also be fun if she's in a dueling club and goes up against students from Charmbridge in a tournament or something. Tons of possibilities.
Also looking forward to Alex in the Ozarks. I imagine hilarity ensuing there.
And that prophecy bothers me; I hope to god that it's one of those where it seems to everyone that it's pretty clear that Alex is supposed to die, but there are ways to look at it that don't say that. For an example, I point to Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series which (SPOILER!!!) had a doom-and-gloom prophecy about the Hero which said, unequivocally, that he was going to die, only in the end for it to turn out that Percy WASN'T the hero it was talking about. What I'm saying is that I want Alex to live somewhat happily ever after at the end of the story.
Also, I imagine that we're going to see some more of the fight between the Dark Convention and the Confederation. You've been VERY light on it to this point, and with only 3 books to go, aside from the trains and a school sinking into the swamp, there hasn't been much movement in this fight to our eyes. I'd like to see some more of that, and if Alex isn't at a boarding school and has more freedom of movement, I could easily see her becoming somewhat involved in it.
Thaaaaat about covers it. Looking forward to the next installment! Toodles.
~DarkSov
(Part 2)
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1. The advantage of writing your entire story before posting is that you are less tempted to bow to the whims of reviewers. This can also be a disadvantage, but I think the intricacy of the AQ books requires that kind of advance planning and structure. No, not everyone is going to love every chapter (I certainly don't) but by the time we reach the end it all makes sense.
2. Claudia. I had always envisioned her as a young mom who was trying her best. Knowing that she's Alexandra's sister just makes me empathize with her more. Yeah, she's made mistakes, but there's an underlying love there (and how much heartbreak must she have knowing this is the closest she'll ever get to being a mom?). She's made plenty of mistakes, but it seems to be out of love and a desire to protect. It's interesting that you made her a nurse - a caretaker, but one who ultimately has to stay detached. And then Archie is the cop, the protector; Claudia is the focus of his protective drive, but he's also not bad to Alexandra, he just can't understand her. I admit I didn't like him at first, but he's grown on me.
3. Galenthias. I thought that twist was awesome and heartbreaking.
4. Adults. To me it comes off not so much that adults are assholes, but that Alexandra just refuses to trust anyone. It creates a nice tension. So many of her problems are caused by trying to do things on her own because she doesn't believe they will, even though they probably are.
5. I remember being fourteen, and I was an idiot. Sometimes Alexandra is an idiot. She's a confused young girl trying to navigate her way through a world of shit. It would be unrealistic to have her always make the right choices.
6. While I would like to see Alexandra find a steady boyfriend, I don't think she's ready. There's so much else going on in her life that boys are just a distraction and an amusement, and that's ok. she's allowed to be fickle or confused or whatever, she's just a kid.
7. Maybe there were plot holes, but they're easily ignored when the ride is fun. and this book was fun!
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2. I'm really bad with names and references, so I didn't see this coming at all--as you know, I assumed it would turn out that Lilith was her real mother at first. I don't know what this says about me, but I actually don't think this twist was that "out there." Sure, if you summarize it as "My mother's a cat" it sounds weird, but it makes sense in the setting and I think it's executed well. But maybe I suspend my disbelief too easily when it comes to fiction. *shrug*
3. I agree "adults are assholes" is a bigger problem; kith_koby and I have been discussing that in emails recently. But as I've tried to say several times in comments here, we always have to remember that we're getting a skewed view of the world since we see it exclusively through Alexandra's eyes. Sure, things would go easier if people were nicer to Alex and/or trusted her more, but given her usual behavior has Alex really given the adults any reason to think that? We shouldn't expect Lilith or anyone else to be a mind-reader.
4. Of course readers would prefer it if the main character didn't do stupid things, but if she stopped doing stupid things Alex would be extremely close to Mary Sue territory (if not over the line). I hope she eventually grows out of the "the world revolves around me" zone (which to be fair she's shown signs of this book), but her recklessness is core to her character. It'll keep getting her into trouble and that's how it should be, IMO. As you say, she is Troublesome after all. :D
5. Personally, I didn't mind the shippy stuff but I would've preferred if it was earlier in the book. But I didn't have any problem with "the gay thing"--yeah, it was a little convenient that you revealed it right before they had sex, but eh.
You should have seen tealterror0's margin notes on yandere-Anna
I had so much fun doing that you have no idea. Though I don't really ship Alex/Anna, or anyone else for that matter.
6. TBH I'm not entirely sold on the climax either. To a certain extent it feels you controlled the situation for the specific purpose of getting Alex expelled, and it feels somewhat unnatural as a result (there was really no good reason to weaken the wards and I don't quite buy Alex doing it even while panicking). I didn't even think about her not noticing Nigel has fangs, lol.
One last thing: you seem quite worried about the whole "Alex punching Torvald" thing--I know you brought it up even before you started posting the book (in vague terms of course). I really had no problem with it. Even if you switched the genders...ok, it would feel a little weird, but even then I don't think I'd have a huge problem. I don't know if that says anything about me or what...
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Mostly, I just want to congratulate you on completing this. I don't think I even know how much work you put into this series, but the small part of your efforts I saw was pretty amazing.
I had a lot of fun working with you and tealterror0 on this, especially the back and forth discussions about plot that gave us insights into your process and how much you care about this book and about writing, not just as a product, but as a craft.
Thanks for your trust and your dedication.
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I second everything else swissmarg says in this post. Writing over 250,000 words during your free time for no money, in like a year and a half, is frankly an insane feat. Fantastic job. :D
It's been a few days...
Inveraratity, thank you for Alexandra Quick. Thank you for your four masterpieces. Thank you for the joy you brought, giving these books as wonderfull pasttime, providing escape from work, reorganizations, housekeeping and my own fighting toddlers.
Reply
1. I personally like reading author comments, as long as they are not "sorry this is late, i ate a poisoned apple during finals and my mother has tuberculosis".
2. Claudia: It was a really great reveal. Looking back I could see the clues, but I wouldn't have guessed it on my own.
As the other participant in the polite discussion, I think we ended up more or less agreeing, just coming at it from different angles.
We still don't know everything about her. Where did she grow up? When did she find out she was a Squib? Who was her mother? Why did GG Hucksteen take a personal interest in her?
3. I really enjoyed reading your analysis of Alexandra's attitude. Glad my hypothesis about her sense of distance from Alex because Alex was magical was more or less on target.
4. Claudia is far better than Petunia, she is actually within the normal range of motherhood.
Archie is a pretty good stepfather in my opinion. It's always awkward when it's not the real father, and he did his best. I think societally, we don't expect as much from fathers, and I certainly didn't have the gut reaction I had to Claudia.
5. Hecate - I really didn't like this, and I still don't like it. Nothing can be perfect I suppose. :) I never saw Alice Longbottom as having much of a personality so I'm not sure what that means.
6. Adults are Useless - You're far better than most, by justifying their motives. Tealterror kept pointing out to me that we see it through Alex's view, but we are adults and can have a broader perspective than Alex can. It's like when a sibling tells me how unfair a teacher is for kicking them out of class - it might be a one-sided story, but I can usually tell if they really deserved it.
It's the same with Alex - Ms. King obviously did the right thing, and the Grimms are fairly justified as well, she's benefited for a long time from their nepotism and is a danger to the school. (She also suffered from their lack of understanding what she needs. But they didn't raise her, so they don't know her.)
7. Great portrayal of 14 y.o. girls. I remember being 14, and unbearable. She's actually pretty good for a 14 year old.
8. Relationships were fine imho.
9. I've been wondering why he never bit her, how smart was he?
10. One thing I was wondering:
Her mother was an Animorphmagus - will we see any of that?
Thank you very much for posting this story. I am sure it is a labor of love and it really brightened my weeks.
Re: Reply
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I actually thought the previous book was Alexandra at her worst and this year she's started to grow out of it.
Nigel having fangs and biting John seemed a bit deus ex machina to me.
I hope we see Larry again in the future.
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(Anonymous) 2012-05-18 07:52 am (UTC)(link)Nigel being poisonous was a big surprise, but come to think of it, one particular quality of the AQ series compared to other fanfic and even the original HP series is that he gives us more background in magical theory. Re: Nigel: we knew all along that in the Quickverse, familiars have a very special bond with their masters. Alex saved him, so it makes sense that Nigel was nice with her. We also first learned about snakes being engorged in the Dinétah chapters, so this didn't come out of the blue.
I agree with those who feel that Claudia is not a bad mother, and that we should remember we only get Alex' POV.
Finally, rereading the second book, I have to recognize that Max being homosexual is not totally pasted on. First of all, there are a number of clues early in the book, secondly, with the Torvald affair, it is what allows Alex not to have sex with him after all. Regardless, I have previously stated my personal preferences, which reflect my own values and the atmosphere at the schools I attended (no sex, period. School children are too young for this), and that I really liked that vector of the HP series, along with many of its moral messages (though not all), so I won't harp on this now.
Thanks for writing, Inverarity. You have taken us on quite a journey. FWIW, I put in my vote that you just go ahead and write the next book, first. Please please please.
Cheers,
--Geneva
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The Claudia/Petunia thing was brilliant. Petunia's expression in particular was made of win.
Inverarity said: "Doesn't ANYONE remember what it's like to be a fourteen year old?"
The ironic part: 98% of the people who wrote those complaints were fourteen year old girls themselves.
As for the 'plothole' with the wards. I noticed it, but I don’t think it's a plothole. It has been consistently shown, in both Rowling's writing and your own, that a wizards greatest flaw is their arrogance. I believe that the idea of Alexandra being able to outsmart her was laughable to Lillith and therefore she felt no need to tighten security.
***
Ms. Shirtliffe: Um Lillith? Don’t you think we should be strengthening the wards?
Dean Grimm: Oh come now Mary. It's highly unlikely that a fourteen year old girl could possibly manage to bypass our defenses.
*BOOM!!*
Dean Grimm (stony-faced): A fourteen year old girl just bypassed our defenses, didn't they?
Ms. Shirtliffe: Yep.
Dean Grimm: *Head Desk!* *Head Desk!* *Head Desk!* *Head Desk!*
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NIGEL: some snakes have their fangs on hinges, usually, their fangs rest on the roof of their mouths, and they only put them on show when they are going to bite. Usually, small snakes are venomous because that's all they got, whereas BIG snakes who can swallow a cow whole don't need to faff with poison.
Arthur was bleeding from Nagini's bite and Snape bled to death. Nagini was a regular big snake rather than a small venomous snake with an engorgio charm.
Some animals are vicious, most animals will only bite you when they are frightened or hungry. Nigel's behaviour was reasonable, he had no motivation to attack Alex.
Alex was surprised when Grimm announced that Nigel was THAT species. If I acquired a pet snake, I would check his species in the Big book of Snakeology (Herpetology); likewise, given Alex's lackidaisical attitude, it fits for her to have thumbed through BbS until she found the first picture that vaguely looked like Nigel and assume that he belonged to that Species.
CLAUDIA: I score her Motherhood skills at 45%, below average, but NO WAY is she anything like Petunia.
BRAT: I am in the majority of one. Most fans think Troublesome was more mature in this book and your plan was OotP CAPSLOCK. IMPO, she was too bratty in this book, If I had been Grimm, I would have expelled her earlier. It is a balancing act: not enough brattishness is bland, too much is Mary Sue.
Likewise, I am majority of one about OotP itself: many fans hate Harry capslocking, IMPO it made sense in context.
Are Adults Useless/Assholes?
(Anonymous) 2012-05-20 08:14 pm (UTC)(link)However, rather than going to one of the Grimm sisters with it and letting the Confederation take their common enemy and, likely, stop his confederates as well, she went off on her hare-brained adventure, and once she got that Idiot Ball rolling, it was as unstoppable as the Nemesis creature.
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Grimm Sisters