I'm sure I can hear your thoughts as the chapter e-mails go out: "Wow, OFaF finally updated! I thought that guy got scared off by the reviewers for sure!"
Well, too bad suckers! (Please don't leave.)
Seriously though, thank you everyone who left a review on Chapter 5. I got a ton of really good feedback, and it helped me keep my story on track to where I wanted it to go.
Let's be honest here: Chapter 5, as originally written, was terrible. I've dubbed it the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Chapter, and rightly so. Ron is out of character, McGonagall is overly bitchy to Hermione, and Harry is completely absent from the story. I started out with a 3-person story, killed off two in the first four chapters, and ended up with a single character to follow. As you can imagine, that was not my original intention.
That isn't to say that Ron being a giant, jealous prat isn't in the cards (he still is), or McGonagall won't being a over-strict instructor and a product of her society (she is), but I'm going to be more subtle about it. Not to mention I've got big plans for Dumbledore. So the bashing is certainly going to be there, but not so blatant as originally written. There are a host of issues with most of the characters, and I'll be exploring many of them, hopefully better than my first foray went.
Now, the reason for the delay: I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Well, I'm a massive perfectionist, actually. I need everything to fit together as best as I can, especially if there's a set schedule for certain events to happen. You can imagine, then, how writing a time-travel fic on a pre-existing universe will go. I certainly did, so I knew I needed a detailed schedule for the Hogwarts School Year, otherwise I'd constantly be checking and double-checking if I was staying internally consistent both inside my own story, and the larger 7-book series.
I've gone over my motivations previously, so I won't rehash them here, but it's enough to note that it took me a ton of time to get finished. Now that it's competed though, I can move forward. And I don't have to worry about it whenever I finish up OFaF and start on my next project! Woo!
On a more somber note, I may have bit off more than I can chew with this one. Jumping into 3 main characters for a first-story is, well, it's insane. It's also another reason why it took me so long to get the chapters down: I needed to re-introduce two of the three main characters, and set up the rest of the story.
(This is getting a bit sporadic, I realize, but it's stream-of-consciousness stuff. Think of it as insight to how my brain works. I'm sorry.)
I want to take a moment to talk about Luna Lovegood. In the beginning of OFaF, I cast Luna as fairly fanfic-standard: sex-kitten, off-kilter thinker, and all-together strange woman. Which I think is accurate, considering how I perceive she was treated both during her time at Hogwarts and afterwards. Certainly, having an absent parent (Xeno isn't exactly a model for Father of the Year here), along with mental trauma from seeing her mother killed AND 6-7 years of near-constant emotional and psychological abuse is going to fracture any mind, no matter how talented.
However, we're seeing Luna in her second year, so we're only a few years from Pandora's death, Xeno hasn't completely ignored his daughter yet, and the bullying at Hogwarts hasn't reached a fever pitch. There's an opportunity here then to develop Luna as a brilliant Ravenclaw, someone to rival Hermione in mental prowess, and let Ms. Granger shine somewhere else than "Hermione just happens to have the perfect spell for this exact situation," which is kinda how I feel most of her appearances in the novels goes.
I'm not bitter. Nope.
Anyway, I hope that the next installment doesn't take two months to write. It shouldn't, but that doesn't mean it won't. Regardless, I'll make sure to take whatever time is necessary to ensure that the characters are acting how I want to develop them, and be consistent with what I've put to paper so far.
Wish me luck (and leave reviews!).
Well, too bad suckers! (Please don't leave.)
Seriously though, thank you everyone who left a review on Chapter 5. I got a ton of really good feedback, and it helped me keep my story on track to where I wanted it to go.
Let's be honest here: Chapter 5, as originally written, was terrible. I've dubbed it the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Chapter, and rightly so. Ron is out of character, McGonagall is overly bitchy to Hermione, and Harry is completely absent from the story. I started out with a 3-person story, killed off two in the first four chapters, and ended up with a single character to follow. As you can imagine, that was not my original intention.
That isn't to say that Ron being a giant, jealous prat isn't in the cards (he still is), or McGonagall won't being a over-strict instructor and a product of her society (she is), but I'm going to be more subtle about it. Not to mention I've got big plans for Dumbledore. So the bashing is certainly going to be there, but not so blatant as originally written. There are a host of issues with most of the characters, and I'll be exploring many of them, hopefully better than my first foray went.
Now, the reason for the delay: I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Well, I'm a massive perfectionist, actually. I need everything to fit together as best as I can, especially if there's a set schedule for certain events to happen. You can imagine, then, how writing a time-travel fic on a pre-existing universe will go. I certainly did, so I knew I needed a detailed schedule for the Hogwarts School Year, otherwise I'd constantly be checking and double-checking if I was staying internally consistent both inside my own story, and the larger 7-book series.
I've gone over my motivations previously, so I won't rehash them here, but it's enough to note that it took me a ton of time to get finished. Now that it's competed though, I can move forward. And I don't have to worry about it whenever I finish up OFaF and start on my next project! Woo!
On a more somber note, I may have bit off more than I can chew with this one. Jumping into 3 main characters for a first-story is, well, it's insane. It's also another reason why it took me so long to get the chapters down: I needed to re-introduce two of the three main characters, and set up the rest of the story.
(This is getting a bit sporadic, I realize, but it's stream-of-consciousness stuff. Think of it as insight to how my brain works. I'm sorry.)
I want to take a moment to talk about Luna Lovegood. In the beginning of OFaF, I cast Luna as fairly fanfic-standard: sex-kitten, off-kilter thinker, and all-together strange woman. Which I think is accurate, considering how I perceive she was treated both during her time at Hogwarts and afterwards. Certainly, having an absent parent (Xeno isn't exactly a model for Father of the Year here), along with mental trauma from seeing her mother killed AND 6-7 years of near-constant emotional and psychological abuse is going to fracture any mind, no matter how talented.
However, we're seeing Luna in her second year, so we're only a few years from Pandora's death, Xeno hasn't completely ignored his daughter yet, and the bullying at Hogwarts hasn't reached a fever pitch. There's an opportunity here then to develop Luna as a brilliant Ravenclaw, someone to rival Hermione in mental prowess, and let Ms. Granger shine somewhere else than "Hermione just happens to have the perfect spell for this exact situation," which is kinda how I feel most of her appearances in the novels goes.
I'm not bitter. Nope.
Anyway, I hope that the next installment doesn't take two months to write. It shouldn't, but that doesn't mean it won't. Regardless, I'll make sure to take whatever time is necessary to ensure that the characters are acting how I want to develop them, and be consistent with what I've put to paper so far.
Wish me luck (and leave reviews!).
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