Remix Reveal!
Apr. 30th, 2007 01:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lls_mutantHeehee! For once, I was so right when I guessed my mystery author! ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
gunderpants did indeed write The Fallacy of Hirsuteness (The Howard Hughes Jr Remix), which was a remix of The Fallacy of Loneliness. If you haven't read it yet, go read it and tell her how wonderful she is :)
I did two remixes again this year. The first- my original remix- was Not Enough (with the Someone's Future Coda), which was a remix of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
leiascully's Do You See Someone with a Future?. Thanks to the wonderful katilara for the beta job, btw.
I actually found choosing a story a big challenge this year. This year, I said I'd write out of the HP fandom, and I had two options withleiascully: West Wing or HP. (Never watched House, which seems to be her primary fandom.) She was also someone I hadn't heard of, so I'd never read any of her stuff. I did debate West Wing, but it was funny how intimidated I was by it when actually faced with it. (This would explain why I've yet to finish (start) the Toby Zeigler teaches Muggle Studies at Hogwarts and has to deal with/be dealt with by Snape crossover I've had in mind. Plus, Josh/Donna- her OTP- doesn't really do anything for me.) Anyway, like the coward I am, I ran back to the well and my old familiar fandom.
What made selecting a story rather challenging is that we approach our stories in different ways. I'm a story teller. I like lots of plot, character development, and can't be bothered with beautiful or poetic language.leiascully is more of a mood setter- stolen snapshots, beautifully written, but that take place in about five minutes. My original idea was to take all her Dog Days of Summer entries and remix them into one giant story, but I eventually decided that was too ambitious. The other difficulty for me is that she is fond of the bookworm!Remus characterization, and although I feel it's not a mischaractization (when not carried to extremes), I never, ever use it. I mean, my Remus likes to read well enough... if there's nothing better to do. So a lot of her fics had Remus reading or discussing literature, and since the fics take place over a matter of minutes, that was often Remus's role in the fic. Like I said, a challenge.
So, I did find DYSSOWAF, which was Sirius and Remus fighting about Regulus. I almost passed it over, because I've written that very dynamic and argument- it was in Chapter 12 of Accidentally In Love. But I got intrigued with the backstory- especially whenmagnetic_pole made an offhand comment about liking stories that showed up how what's said in a conversation isn't necessarily truth. And yeah. In the original, Remus tells Sirius he took Regulus to Dumbledore. But if Regulus had told Dumbledore about the Horcrux, HBP would have gone down a lot differently. So I decided that Remus lied. Very plausible- we see in canon that Remus is hardly above lying, especially where Sirius is concerned. And from there it was easy.
I do think it was possible to tell this one was mine. You know that "Ten signs you're reading a story by me" meme? I think one of my HP signs is that Peter will be a Divination expert, but another is that Regulus will love his family and be in the position of taking care of them. It was a motivation that I used in AIL, and I got to use it again here. I like that characterization because it explains to me why Regulus didn't go to Dumbledore with his knowledge- he basically got himself killed before Voldemort could at least kill his mother. ::sniff::
The other remix I did- which was blatantly obvious was mine- was How To Save a Life (The High Enough Crescendo), which was a remix ofrian219's High Hopes. This one was betaed by sea0tter12, who did a fantastic job :)
This one was my pinch hit, which I'd feel apologetic for, except I thought it came out well and even better than my first one. I've talked about putting less pressure on myself for the pinch hit before. So onward. Anyway, I'd seenrian219's name on some of the comms, but haven't read her stuff (save one story) because- it's awful but it's true- she started writing after I had my favorite authors. It's kind of bad because I know how frustrating it is to be a new author, but there's also so little time and so much garbage out there... I tend to skip over authors I don't know unless a summary really intrigues me or the story's been recced, and I miss out on some good stuff that way. Anyway, I won't be skipping her stuff anymore.
Anyway. One of the things about pinch hit is you don't have a ton of time, so reading through a whole library of stuff is difficult. I'd kind of half decided on the Tyranny of Petty Things (which was the one I did read, because it was forrs_smallgifts), but wasn't terribly enthusiastic about it. Then the next night I decided to click on High Hopes, and that was that.
I find it funny that this remix HAS gotten so much feedback, because it contains what is often the kiss of death: an original character (who was the lead of the original story, too, and really what pulled me into this story). I don't have an OC issue, for the most part. It annoys me that so often parts of fandom immediately tag OCs as Mary Sues, because they aren't. I mean, this story was focused around someone who worked at the Werewolf Support Services. There simply aren't any canon characters (or canon personalities) to address that- but WSS is a part of canon. Alastair Finch was definitely not even close to a Mary Sue in the original. In fact, I found him very believable- many activists are people whose life has been affected (often negatively, but not always) by the very issue they care so much about. I really liked the story, but I could also see where I could tell it differently immediately.
And so I promptly set it in the Accidentally In Love universe, thus making it glaringly obvious that I wrote it.
Hey, that's how I would have written the story :)
Anyway, I found it a lot of fun, and I really liked the bits I came up with about the name. However, when I hit the school age, I ran into two problems: 1.) Alastair Finch was never mentioned in Mentors (obviously), which kind of conflicts with what I was doing, especially given the kind of person he was, and 2.) I was running out of time. That was when I came up with the idea of Finch visiting Dumbledore, and although it was sort of an "oops, I meant this to go on longer but I can't" out, I liked it. I liked that Finch finally felt that he'd gotten someone's attention. He hadn't directly changed Remus's life, but he had gotten the ear of someone who could, and the fact that Dumbledore did sort of bolstered Finch's faith in humanity. And that was why I used the Crescendo in the title- I only went part way through the story, and it built to where Remus's life could really begin.
Anyway, that was Remix. I really enjoyed it this year (thanks again,musesfool!), and I wouldn't be surprised if I attempt it again next year, although the face of HP fandom will have changed so much by then... we'll see. Anyway, on to correcting AIL 13!
gunderpants did indeed write The Fallacy of Hirsuteness (The Howard Hughes Jr Remix), which was a remix of The Fallacy of Loneliness. If you haven't read it yet, go read it and tell her how wonderful she is :)I did two remixes again this year. The first- my original remix- was Not Enough (with the Someone's Future Coda), which was a remix of
leiascully's Do You See Someone with a Future?. Thanks to the wonderful katilara for the beta job, btw.I actually found choosing a story a big challenge this year. This year, I said I'd write out of the HP fandom, and I had two options with
leiascully: West Wing or HP. (Never watched House, which seems to be her primary fandom.) She was also someone I hadn't heard of, so I'd never read any of her stuff. I did debate West Wing, but it was funny how intimidated I was by it when actually faced with it. (This would explain why I've yet to finish (start) the Toby Zeigler teaches Muggle Studies at Hogwarts and has to deal with/be dealt with by Snape crossover I've had in mind. Plus, Josh/Donna- her OTP- doesn't really do anything for me.) Anyway, like the coward I am, I ran back to the well and my old familiar fandom. What made selecting a story rather challenging is that we approach our stories in different ways. I'm a story teller. I like lots of plot, character development, and can't be bothered with beautiful or poetic language.
leiascully is more of a mood setter- stolen snapshots, beautifully written, but that take place in about five minutes. My original idea was to take all her Dog Days of Summer entries and remix them into one giant story, but I eventually decided that was too ambitious. The other difficulty for me is that she is fond of the bookworm!Remus characterization, and although I feel it's not a mischaractization (when not carried to extremes), I never, ever use it. I mean, my Remus likes to read well enough... if there's nothing better to do. So a lot of her fics had Remus reading or discussing literature, and since the fics take place over a matter of minutes, that was often Remus's role in the fic. Like I said, a challenge.So, I did find DYSSOWAF, which was Sirius and Remus fighting about Regulus. I almost passed it over, because I've written that very dynamic and argument- it was in Chapter 12 of Accidentally In Love. But I got intrigued with the backstory- especially when
magnetic_pole made an offhand comment about liking stories that showed up how what's said in a conversation isn't necessarily truth. And yeah. In the original, Remus tells Sirius he took Regulus to Dumbledore. But if Regulus had told Dumbledore about the Horcrux, HBP would have gone down a lot differently. So I decided that Remus lied. Very plausible- we see in canon that Remus is hardly above lying, especially where Sirius is concerned. And from there it was easy.I do think it was possible to tell this one was mine. You know that "Ten signs you're reading a story by me" meme? I think one of my HP signs is that Peter will be a Divination expert, but another is that Regulus will love his family and be in the position of taking care of them. It was a motivation that I used in AIL, and I got to use it again here. I like that characterization because it explains to me why Regulus didn't go to Dumbledore with his knowledge- he basically got himself killed before Voldemort could at least kill his mother. ::sniff::
The other remix I did- which was blatantly obvious was mine- was How To Save a Life (The High Enough Crescendo), which was a remix of
rian219's High Hopes. This one was betaed by sea0tter12, who did a fantastic job :) This one was my pinch hit, which I'd feel apologetic for, except I thought it came out well and even better than my first one. I've talked about putting less pressure on myself for the pinch hit before. So onward. Anyway, I'd seen
rian219's name on some of the comms, but haven't read her stuff (save one story) because- it's awful but it's true- she started writing after I had my favorite authors. It's kind of bad because I know how frustrating it is to be a new author, but there's also so little time and so much garbage out there... I tend to skip over authors I don't know unless a summary really intrigues me or the story's been recced, and I miss out on some good stuff that way. Anyway, I won't be skipping her stuff anymore.Anyway. One of the things about pinch hit is you don't have a ton of time, so reading through a whole library of stuff is difficult. I'd kind of half decided on the Tyranny of Petty Things (which was the one I did read, because it was for
rs_smallgifts), but wasn't terribly enthusiastic about it. Then the next night I decided to click on High Hopes, and that was that.I find it funny that this remix HAS gotten so much feedback, because it contains what is often the kiss of death: an original character (who was the lead of the original story, too, and really what pulled me into this story). I don't have an OC issue, for the most part. It annoys me that so often parts of fandom immediately tag OCs as Mary Sues, because they aren't. I mean, this story was focused around someone who worked at the Werewolf Support Services. There simply aren't any canon characters (or canon personalities) to address that- but WSS is a part of canon. Alastair Finch was definitely not even close to a Mary Sue in the original. In fact, I found him very believable- many activists are people whose life has been affected (often negatively, but not always) by the very issue they care so much about. I really liked the story, but I could also see where I could tell it differently immediately.
And so I promptly set it in the Accidentally In Love universe, thus making it glaringly obvious that I wrote it.
Hey, that's how I would have written the story :)
Anyway, I found it a lot of fun, and I really liked the bits I came up with about the name. However, when I hit the school age, I ran into two problems: 1.) Alastair Finch was never mentioned in Mentors (obviously), which kind of conflicts with what I was doing, especially given the kind of person he was, and 2.) I was running out of time. That was when I came up with the idea of Finch visiting Dumbledore, and although it was sort of an "oops, I meant this to go on longer but I can't" out, I liked it. I liked that Finch finally felt that he'd gotten someone's attention. He hadn't directly changed Remus's life, but he had gotten the ear of someone who could, and the fact that Dumbledore did sort of bolstered Finch's faith in humanity. And that was why I used the Crescendo in the title- I only went part way through the story, and it built to where Remus's life could really begin.
Anyway, that was Remix. I really enjoyed it this year (thanks again,
musesfool!), and I wouldn't be surprised if I attempt it again next year, although the face of HP fandom will have changed so much by then... we'll see. Anyway, on to correcting AIL 13!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-04-30 06:02 pm (UTC)You actually use beautiful language: but you use words to tell a story, which is what all good authors should do, rather than just writing flowery stuff for its own sake! I defy anyone to come up with something much lovelier than your Though I Speak With the Tongues of Men and Angels.
Well, I certainly guessed your pinch-hit! Partly because of Marilyn and Damien, but it also had all the thoughtfulness and depths of one of your fics, so that made it even easier... I enjoyed the main remix too: unreliable narrators get me every time! But the Werewolf Registry is the one that's lingered.
I hope you're going to repost the fics, so I can comment, but let me know if you don't so I can leave feedback on the remix site.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-30 08:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-01 06:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-30 08:38 pm (UTC)I definitely think the cumulative drive of your stories is a tip-off. There's a real divide between the vignette types and the world-building types (not that either's necessarily a good or bad thing) and you're firmly in the second camp. *smile* Staking out the territory, in fact.
Anyways, can't wait to read the two. M.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-02 09:41 am (UTC)Aww, Maggie, you're too kind! *hugs* I don't deserve it, honestly, cranky old cow that I am.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-30 09:51 pm (UTC)I wouldn't be surprised if I attempt [Remix] again next year, although the face of HP fandom will have changed so much by then...
Yes, that is going to be interesting to watch in the coming months. HP has been the juggernaut of fandoms for so many years. Now that the books are coming to a close, how will HP fandom re-align itself? Traditionally it's been the biggest fandom represented in Remix. So I do wonder, who will stay after the book is released, and who will leave, and will HP be the biggest fandom again in Remix next year.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-01 01:24 am (UTC)You have also developed a very distinctive narrative style.
Have you considered writing original fiction?
no subject
Date: 2007-05-02 09:54 am (UTC)I'll tell you a secret about that - I'm an old lab rat, just like you and
So anyway - all it took was a bit of pondering on motivations like that, and viola! Alastair's uncle was born, so that he could die horribly in their backyard and fuel all of Alastair's future ambitions, haha.
But thanks again for praising the story, and the character. I'm really pleased that you liked it so much.