AQATSA update: OH HAI THERE PLOT HOLE!

[inverarity]

(Judgmental Bookseller Ostrich is much funnier than LOLcats.)


Yeah, I suddenly realized I was staring at one big plot hole and a couple of minor ones. So even though I was trying to just keep writing and deal with problems later, I had to go back and rewrite a bunch of stuff in several chapters. So the last couple of days my word count did not increase much because most of what I wrote was rewriting. And I still haven't worked all the plot holes out yet...

Curse you, Greyhound!

So, at one point, Alexandra is trying to run away leave Chicago using Muggle transportation. Like a good author, I do my research. It turns out Greyhound has all kinds of rules for unaccompanied minors. They apply to children fourteen and under.

Hmm. Okay. Alexandra is almost fifteen, so she can probably fake it...

Exception
In accordance with Illinois state law, NO tickets will be sold to unaccompanied minor children under the age of 17 for interstate or intrastate travel from locations within the state of Illinois.

Argh! Curse you, Greyhound, and curse you, state of Illinois!

Yes, yes, I know -- hardly anyone reading my story is actually going to go look up Greyhound's Unaccompanied Children rules like I did. But it matters, dammit!

(Okay, go ahead and laugh at me because I'm trying to write a believable way for a fourteen-year-old to sneak across state lines in a story where fourteen-year-olds carry magic wands...)

That was just a teeny little plot hole, btw. The big one is, like, rip-up-three-chapters big.

My Poser Skills Are Teh Suck

And I started trying to make a rough draft of the AQATSA cover, and can't get anything that doesn't look... well, bad. I look back at all the illustrations I did for AQATLB and AQATDR and cringe. I mean, some are kind of cool, in a cheesy way, but more and more I do not like the "look" of my characters as Poser figures. I am always telling myself I'm going to put in some more time polishing my graphic arts skillz (I even bought a couple of books on using Photoshop!) but on the list of things for me to spend my time on (in which, unfortunately, neither "reading" nor "writing" takes the #1 spot), becoming a better Poser/Photoshop geek is not rating significant hours out of my day.

I'm almost considering paying some starving college student on deviantART to do some illos for me. (Hey, it's not that strange. Back when I gamed a lot, I actually paid for a few character illustrations.) Problem is, most of the stuff on DA is either heavily manga/anime-style or pneumatic airbrushed babes whose boobs would affect the tides.

So, I am at 157K words, and Chapter 25. No wordle. Maybe I'll give you a Poser illustration next time.

Comments

Re: The Trace and Max and Authorial Rambling

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As a matter of fact, I don't "insist" on it, but if she did not, then she explained it in a thoroughly incredible way. She wanted us to believe, if you remember, that she had no idea that a gay major character would be welcomed by the fandom; this, if you please, after a decade of slash. More important is that, whether or not she had meant it from the start, she did a lousy job of it, showing her usual clumsiness with male characters in love.

Re: The Trace and Max and Authorial Rambling

[(Anonymous)]

I sort of agree that going back, you can find examples of more than platonic feelings coming from Martin, IF (big if) you read it a little liberally into the story. But it's difficult because people jump on any sort of subtlety right away when they're reading, so it can be very hard to surprise an audience with that information without just "making it up at the end" (for lack of a better phrase). It doesn't really bother me at all, so I don't put much into it.

~DarkSov

Re: The Trace and Max and Authorial Rambling

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I have no issue at all with inverarity's presentation of the Martin+Max affair, except that I don't like the "dead gay boy" trope in general, and I think it's a way to dodge the demands of writing stories for an adult gay person. Same as once upon a time (and still today, largely) heroes did not marry or have children - and if they did, like Spider-Man, they had some creepy later writer retcon the whole thing - or as, in earlier days, heroes did not have children but nephews or wards.

On the other hand, I insist that JKR's treatment of Dumbledore's sexuality, whatever it is, is downright bad.