unsichtbar

My dears: those of you who saw my call for new deeply_horrible mods, please don't be concerned about the future of the comm. Everything is in hand and there'll be an announcement made soon that I think you'll all find quite exciting.

<3

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth. There are DW comments. You can reply there using Open ID.

This fic. My friends, this fic is a revelation.

Really I want to say FOR LOVE OF GOD, GO READ THIS NOW, but that wouldn't do it justice. And I want to do it justice, because it is the story that jarred me out of fic apathy, that made me sit up straight and realise, in a kind of shock moment, the revolutionary potential that can be set free by rewritings and explorations of ›canon‹. That sounds very abstract. Really that's just me, not the fic; or rather, it's what the fic does without ever having to say.

Some of you may remember o_mayari from her spectacular alternative universe take on the Golden Trio, The Eleventh Birthdays (my rec is here). Or Romance of the Age (the original deeply_horrible post with comments is here), with its breezy, savage, gloriously unfettered deconstruction of the brightness and glam and simultaneous monstrousness of the first war generation.

The Comfortable Wound is related to Romance of the Age, although they don't belong to the exact same universe. (You absolutely do not have to know RotA in order to read TCW.) Many of the same families and institutions -- the Blacks, the Malfoys, the Potters, the Weasleys, the Ministry -- play a starring role.

( Collapse )

UPDATE: THE STORY HAS NOW BEEN COMPLETELY UPLOADED AND IS ALSO AVAILABLE ON DW HERE!

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth. There are DW comments. You can reply there using Open ID.

Oh my dears.

This is the first time I've logged into DW/LJ since my last post in January, and I'm sad to say that it isn't very likely that I'll be logging on much more often this year. It's the year of Big Academic Hurdles (qualifying exams, language exams, dissertation proposal, teaching etc.), and my mind isn't alert enough, or rather able to separate itself enough from uni, to be active in conversation here.

This is not to say that I'm leaving fandom. On the contrary! I will always be a reader (mostly around four am, admittedly, but it is nonetheless an incurable habit, so do send links!), and I am also very happy to beta or act as a sounding board. And I am around on tumblr under this name (caecelia). Admittedly I tend to overuse the platform for circulating images and quotes relevant to my academic work (it's been a surprisingly effective method for exam prep). Let me know if you're over there so I can add you!

And also I'll probably be dropping in to leave the occasional rec (in fact, I am just about to leave one).

If any of you is interested in the stewardship of deeply_horrible, please, please let me know.

I miss you! If you'd be interested in corresponding outside of this framework, I am admittedly a very haphazard correspondent and sometimes disappear for long intervals when under stress, but if you don't mind that, I would very much love to correspond.

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth. There are DW comments. You can reply there using Open ID.

My lovelies, I must ask you a favour on the behalf of a very dear friend. o_mayari, the author of the indescribably brilliant Romance of the Age, has written an equally, if not even more extraordinary story that she is preparing to post soon. She is looking for a beta reader. If you enjoyed the company of MP and Snidget and Regulus, of Blacks and Potters in general, if you enjoyed her biting wit and visionary take on the Potterverse, then you will love this new story. I had the privilege of reading an early draft some time ago, and it left me a changed person. I will never see the Potterverse in the same light again. Yes, this story is that incredible.

If you're interested, please drop one of us a line.

On another note, I've received a few e-mails from people wondering why I haven't yet filled in the names of creators and their betas over at deeply_horrible, and so thought I'd best post my answer publically. No, I haven't forgotten, but with exams this week and next I've simply not had the time to take care of these details. I promise to do so, and take care of remaining deeply_horrible business, by the end of the month. Thanks for your patience!

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth. There are DW comments. You can reply there using Open ID.

The complete masterlist for deeply_horrible's fest to Bring Back the Bastard can be found here: @ LJ|DW.

If you like Severus but are wary of approaching the fest because of its theme, know that the majority of the entries do not fall in the dark or horror category (although we do have some lovely exemplars of that as well). So if you're curious about any one of the entries and would like to know more before diving in, please don't hesitate to ask.

Thank you to everyone for the immense patience and support you've shown during this admittedly rather shaky first mod run! *blows kisses to you all*

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth. There are DW comments. You can reply there using Open ID.

Apparently I am Albus Dumbledore; this probably should serve as some kind of warning, but I am mostly very amused.

I haven't heard back from eleven people about deeply_horrible since they signed up for the fest or asked for an extension in October, which I am told is perfectly normal, but makes me wonder whether my e-mails are landing in spam folders or not arriving at all. I can understand the impulse that makes one avoid a mod e-mail, in any case. And the last thing I want is to cause stress. But a part of me nonetheless wishes to know more about the status of these entries (sixteen in total are currently in limbo), because I am slowly running out of entries and this not-knowing makes it difficult to plan. If none of those entries come in, then the fest will end on December 27th.

Feedback has died down quite a bit, which is not surprising, given the time of year, the stage of the fest, and the number of excellent fests also currently running at the same time. So far, we have at least avoided cases where I am the only commenter (not that I am commenting as regularly and thoughtfully as I wish: exhaustion makes me stupid and forgetful). But it is something to think about.

The very kind and generous smallbrownfrog has suggested that I think of giving people who rec a fest piece a badge or icon. Another idea might be to create a feedback challenge, with banners or drabbles as prizes. These are lovely ideas, and I am fully for them, but the problem is that I lack the talent to create icons/banners and the time to do much more than upload entries to the comm. Any suggestions, thoughts, my loves?

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth. There are DW comments. You can reply there using Open ID.

There are many reasons to be interested in Loki, reasons that deserve a true essay. I cannot seem to find rest precisely when I seek it. There will be no essay today.

One of the reasons I am interested in Loki has less to do with his character than the circumstances that constitute his character. In Thor, Loki wonders why Odin rescued him, but a runt-baby-of-the-enemy-king-left-to-die, what purpose he could have served, he being considered a monster both on his own world (as a runt) and on Odin's (as a Frost Giant) alike. When Loki hears the answer, he then fears that he will end up no better than as ›another stolen relic‹. In the film, he then sets plots in motion that could be perhaps interpreted as an attempt to escape that fate at all costs.

The idea of Loki as a stolen relic, as a living prize-prince-monster-sorcerer kept in a collection of dead weapon-objects stolen and stored for the ostensible purposes of enlightenment and law, probably fascinates me more than it should. (I should probably explain that one of my favourite novellas is Tynianov's Voskovoj persony (Wax Effigy), unfortunately not yet translated into English, but available in German as Die Wachsperson and in French as Une majesté en cire, in which a six-fingered ›monster‹ sold to Peter the Great's natural history museum by his own brother manages to escape from the Kunstkammer and St. Petersburg, moving from the periphery to center of the story.) For a few weeks now I have searched for fic about Loki sharing a similar obsession with this concept, with the logic of preservation and sovereignty and memory and scientific order, and although Thor fandom is quite literary, until recently I searched in vain.

Not so anymore. circa1220bce's magic, lost and found (Thor/Loki, WiP!) not only plays with my simple idea, it goes well beyond it. I do not wish to spoil too much, but this is a story that plays beautifully with the concept of the natural wonder/›monster‹, the singularity, the creature whose solitude, based on appearance, on difference from the ›norm‹, is not so unlike that of a king. It plays with our prejudices and scientific order and then goes beyond, showing how such imprisonment can create of the innocent the very monsters it claims to display.

This is a deeply Oedipal story, not only in its focus on the monster (Oedipus was club-footed) and the king, and on their fall through too much knowledge (Odin sacrificed his eye for it; what Loki would do for knowledge is probably too terrifying a thought) and through the implicit incest (Thor and Loki may not be brothers, but we readers know of a world in which they were raised so), but also in how it shows that attempting to escape a murderous destiny can ultimately end up sealing it. The story is not complete but I don't particularly care, for the arc I am particularly interested in is complete. I don't see this ending happily, rather in the excess of a final, desperate act of true free will, but no matter. Whatever this becomes, even if it were to remain as it is, it is currently so wonderful -- so full of trickery and transgression and thought -- that I am overwhelmed just by writing glancingly about it.

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth. There are DW comments. You can reply there using Open ID.

Headed to a conference in England (Oxford) where I have been warned that internet access is quite limited. Please bear with me until Thursday if you have any questions about deeply_horrible/deeply_horrible. Thank you in advance for your understanding!

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth. There are DW comments. You can reply there using Open ID.

My friends, something absolutely magical has just happened.

I have long been begging o_mayari to post some of her work. Finally, finally she has.

o_mayari possesses an astonishing narrative voice. One can hear the influence of Dickens -- a conscious, deliberate choice -- but above all one is left ravished by her wit and daring and the sheer intelligence of her storytelling. This is an author with a gift for creating complete fictional worlds, worlds like complex webs which however do not break under the weight of their intricacy. Far from it: these are whole worlds, worlds carefully ordered and thought out down to the smallest, finest detail. They are worlds blazingly, startlingly real. This is extraordinary because the world she portrays in the story here is a world out of joint, a dystopia if you will. It is also extraordinary because her narrative voice is a critical, distancing voice, a voice very conscious of its own fictionality. But it is precisely this difference between the narrative and the horrors of which it speaks that makes this thought-provoking fiction of the highest order, fiction which not only narrows in on the problematic kernel of the Potterworld as such, but also of the reality we ourselves inhabit.

The Eleventh Birthdays (gen, mentions Lily/James) is part of a much longer, as-yet unfinished work, but it stands well on its own. The ostensible focus is the trio: Hermione, Ron, Harry. And Dudley.

( Collapse )

I have been writing this in stages between visiting no-fees and writing to realtors. Hopefully it makes sense. You shouldn't be wasting your time reading this anyway. Go read the The Eleventh Birthdays.

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth. There are DW comments. You can reply there using Open ID.

This should have gone up days ago, but although I kept hacking at it I was too sluggish to finish. Now it is finished, but I cannot promise that it makes any sense.

1. I have been rereading some of the darker Snarry classics, where hatred and addiction and obsession and madness run together in a manner so dangerously volatile that either Snape or Harry ruins or even kills the other in the end: nothingbutfic's by the light of lesser stars, loupgarou's Dangling Conversation, debchan's What He Wants, atrata's Nine Adulteries. I love each of these stories to death, even though they are supremely painful and even though they are entirely AU now that canon has closed. As I suspect many of you know them as well, I shall refrain from boring you with detailled reviews of each. But if you don't know them, and you are interested in portrayals of Snape as a deeply horrible man (with a conscience or in self-denial), and of Harry as war and trauma and Horcruxes might have twisted him, then you may enjoy giving them a try. (Please heed all warnings.)

1.1. Not convinced? As Nine Adulteries is particularly fresh in my mind (the order above is my reading order), let me offer you a little teaser. Believe me when I say that every word here, from the title which should be taken very literally to the shocking closing passage, is significant. As a result, you will probably be like me and need to read this more than once.

Snape's characterisation could not be more brilliant to my mind. This is Snape as I want to write him, as a (Faustian) scientist, as a (mad) experimenter fighting for self-control and objectivity and at once wildly succeeding and failing in that quest, whose very work with dark potions and of course the magic of the mind is the consequential product of both complete objectification and uncontrolled, wild passion. His laboratory is a fantastical biology lab gone out of control, filled with hybrid products, products at once natural and artificial that were once alive and now are bottled in preserving solutions to make them easily accessible for study. It is a most gruesome and extraordinary setting that he has created as his own stage. The glimpses we are granted into his mind are equally frightening, equally fascinating. The story is told from his very skewed perspective (and oh, the self-denial, the self-interest, the self-hatred). At the same time, the structure adheres to the logic of his own classification system for certain potions. In this way, the hybridity of his lab, the split in his mind, the dichotomy between cool precision and overwhelming feeling is preserved in the very form of the tale itself ... and I shan't say any more for fear of giving the game completely away.

2. delphi's entire kink_bingo card (links to tag). I can do that, right?

2.1. Here are a few titles to get you started: Girls Just Want to Have Fun (Filch/Millicent) features deliciously awful Filch, tantilising glimpses into the Slytherin girls dormitory, and a wonderfully sensible-in-a-Slytherin-way Millicent. Then there's Poison (Snape/Dumbledore), a chilling foreshadowing of the Astronomy Tower -- powerplay in bed. In a very few perceptive words, delphi reveals both characters' strengths and weaknesses. I cried for them. Finally, Wicked Game (Horace + Argus + Severus), where Filch is horribly, wonderfully depraved, Severus is forced into making a wretched self-discovery, and Horace hides boredom and a nasty, manipulative streak beneath mild manners and a common sense approach.

3. Speaking of the wonderful delphi, she recently recced kellychambliss's extraordinary Right nor Wrong (unrequited Filch/Snape and Umbridge/Snape; Snape/McGonagall) on crack_broom here. I thought I had read this story before, but it turns out I had misremembered, and oh what a pleasure it was to discover it for a first time! This story deserves a very long review (one I still owe the author) because it is a masterpiece on several levels. There's the matter of Filch's pitch-perfect inner voice, for one, and one of the most convicing Filch backstories I've encountered, for another. Furthermore, there's the brilliant deconstruction of Filch's name to provide the structure for the story's main kink, voyeurism. For reasons of space, I've chosen to focus on only the latter element here.

Argus Panoptes Filch. I have no idea if this is the middle name JKR gave him, but if it isn't then it should be. For of course Filch doesn't merely harken back to the mythological creature with a hundred eyes, to mythological conceptions of policing. His penal institute is also fairly modern. In other words, the striking feature of modern caretaking, of modern policing, is the panoptical gaze. And Filch has it -- can see anywhere and everywhere. Why? How? The key, it seems, is desire. Aesthetics. The love of looking, not just the machine act. With this his desire we gaze at the quintessential object of desire (our own desire): Snape of course, Snape in places we should not be able to see him, Snape the Legilmens, the spy, the master of seeing who does not realise he is being seen. No wonder Filch desires to see him. Is it a wonder we, who can only look, who as readers are destined to be voyeurs, desire to see him? And so it is not only Filch we come to understand in this story but also (ourselves) Snape:

Severus were a man what made people feel things - - strong things, dark things, needy things. The Headmistress weren't the first person to want him. To want to understand him or save him or join in his righteous darkness. To want to share the power of him. To have him want them.

Oh yes. I think I have gone on too long, but hopefully you see what I mean. This is absolute genius.

4. dueltastic wrote Though I do not wish to wish these things (McGonagall/Snape, McGonagall/Scrimgeour) speaks directly to questions I have been surrounding myself with of late: questions of choice and conscience and what Snape meant when he said in DH that the only people he'd seen die of late were those he could not save. Well, this is one of those instances where he cannot save a prisoner, where he decides he cannot save him. For the prisoner is none other than Scrimgeour, Minister of Magic. He is tied to Snape through McGonagall: both men loved her, and still love her, ultimately even willing her their posessions after death, finding anchor in her once they have vanished from this earth. And so throughout the interrogation, the torture, Snape appears controlled and yet is anything but, plagued by thoughts and perhaps even fantasies of McGonagall and Scrimgeour together. There is torture and death, and as he tears apart Scrimgeour's face so do the ribbons of their connection through McGonagall seem to intertwine in broken strands. And of course one can argue with Snape that he must keep cover, that putting Scrimgeour in Bellatrix' hands would be worse, that the best he can do for this man in suffering is to end his life quickly. To give him a mercy death. But that is horrible. One wants to scream at Snape to find another solution, even as one is made aware that he has an audience, that he himself is in danger. One wonders whether it was his own decision to run the interrogation or whether he has been directly ordered to do it, and what that means for his position, his conscience. There are no easy answers to the questions this fic raises, and that is part of its brilliance.

5. Finally, a recent article from the New York Times: The Art of the Sequel, which does not speak to fanworks directly but nonetheless gets at something essential about them.

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth. There are DW comments. You can reply there using Open ID.