I've noticed that a bunch of reviewers are asking a ton of questions, which is great! Unfortunately, by responding to each and every one individually, I can sometimes get multiple questions or comments about roughly the same thing. To alleviate as much repetativeness as I can, I'll be posting my review responses here as well as on FFN, so Don't Panic! I'm not abandoning the FFN format. As with everything on this Blog, it's intended to make my life easier (a bit more work, sure, but easier) and let people who perhaps want a bit more detail than I can provide in a chapter-by-chapter format.
For this particular update (since I've completely redone Chapter 5, which invalidates a TON of reviews regarding the original chapter ... THANK YOU! by the way), I'll be focusing on one particular reviewer who has been commenting with a guest account, so I've been unable to actually contact him through the PM system. Their questions are good though, so I'll go through them one at a time as I can.
To everyone who reviewed the original Chapter 5: THANK YOU SO MUCH. I honestly can't thank you all enough for being willing to post well thought out, critical reviews. I firmly believe they helped save the story.
As for the soul idea, I'm running off of the idea that souls are finite but regenerative. A horcrux would split the soul in two, leaving the soul inside the witch or wizard scarred but able to regenerate back to original 'size'. Voldemort made seven horcruxes (Diary, Locket, Goblet, Diadem, Snake, Ring, Harry). I'm not certain to the source of the "magically significant number seven" motivation for Voldemort, but there doesn't seem to be anything stopping him from making as many as he wanted. Honestly, Riddle's biggest downfall was his own incapability to see his errors and some hairbrained idea that magic was all-powerful. As if seven horcruxes would make them more powerful or something.
Also he's almost literally Hitler (#GodwinsLaw)
As you probably noticed in the just-posted chapters, Hermione still has memory issues. She effectively killed third-year Hermione when she landed in the new timeline.
Talk about existential crises.
Right What Is Wrong asks:
Back to the point, however. Portraying and alluding to rape allows me to show how the ruling party shows their power over their enemies better than I could with any other method. What better way to showcase how far a Golden Family has fallen by having them defile their former friends? There's only one thing worse than showing slain bodies strung from a tree after putting down a failed uprising: showing what the victors did to the survivors.
I can honestly say that I have exactly one plan for including a rape in a (probably far away) upcoming scene, and even that's tenuous. Everything else, even the flashbacks and comments on What-Came-Before, will be dark and terrible, but not rape. As you alluded, it's a device to set a tone, not one "transparently designed to evoke a certain emotion from the audience," as you so eloquently put it.
To everyone else: THANKS AGAIN! I'm always glad to get reviews. I'll continue to do one of these every week as I get ones in I can respond to. This one was a little funky, just because there's not much that I can actually discuss since I went and changed up the chapter most everyone reviewed.
I should mention, though, that I'll be keeping all those reviews up. It keeps me honest, knowing that people actually do care about my writing, enough to call me out when it seems I'm making a terrible mistake.
See you all the next time around.
For this particular update (since I've completely redone Chapter 5, which invalidates a TON of reviews regarding the original chapter ... THANK YOU! by the way), I'll be focusing on one particular reviewer who has been commenting with a guest account, so I've been unable to actually contact him through the PM system. Their questions are good though, so I'll go through them one at a time as I can.
To everyone who reviewed the original Chapter 5: THANK YOU SO MUCH. I honestly can't thank you all enough for being willing to post well thought out, critical reviews. I firmly believe they helped save the story.
Now to the Reviews:
ExceleXKurokami asks:
Jan 29If you're referring to the time-travel ritual they have to perform, it's supposed to be slow. There's a ton of power being channeled there. If you're talking about the one she uses against the Death Eaters on the Landing, that only works against already-captured targets, and only bound using a specific spell. Other uses are ... messy. For myself, I view rituals as a means of giving witches and wizards access to obscene amounts of power, with the trade-off being either serious downsides (which I'm beginning to explore in Chapter 6 and we saw in Chapter 4) or massive time costs, or both.
Okay, first, that spell Hermione used was damn slow. That was a like a solid ten minutes of casting, four minutes at the least. A killing curse is something like half to a full minute, so that was neither quick nor easy. In the time it took her to cast that one spell, Voldemort could have killed her several times. (If I had to compare, it is like Hermione was charging a spirit bomb, slow as hell)
Souls are, supposedly, finite. Proof: Voldemort made only eight Horcruxes in his sixty plus years of life. He made his first when he was a teen, and eventually stopped making them because his soul was thinning too much for the ritual to work anymore.
[snip]
As for the soul idea, I'm running off of the idea that souls are finite but regenerative. A horcrux would split the soul in two, leaving the soul inside the witch or wizard scarred but able to regenerate back to original 'size'. Voldemort made seven horcruxes (Diary, Locket, Goblet, Diadem, Snake, Ring, Harry). I'm not certain to the source of the "magically significant number seven" motivation for Voldemort, but there doesn't seem to be anything stopping him from making as many as he wanted. Honestly, Riddle's biggest downfall was his own incapability to see his errors and some hairbrained idea that magic was all-powerful. As if seven horcruxes would make them more powerful or something.
Also he's almost literally Hitler (#GodwinsLaw)
Feb 8
I realized what that stone was really doing. It was determining who would go back, and who would die to power the ritual. In the end, there would have only been one going back, since it did require the lives of Harry and Luna, a very powerful half-blood and an unusually powerful pure-blood, to send Hermione back.
One more question: does Hermione still have her memory recall problems, or has it been undone by returning to an undamaged body?Sorry, mate. Stone checks for just one thing: Is the wielder's soul damaged in any way, shape, or form? That's it. Harry's is scarred from his use of the Killing Curse. Luna's is scarred from [Obliviated by order of the Department of Mysteries].
As you probably noticed in the just-posted chapters, Hermione still has memory issues. She effectively killed third-year Hermione when she landed in the new timeline.
Talk about existential crises.
Feb 28Oh, I'm certain the Unspeakables would absolutely love to interrogate Hermione if they knew what she had done. Unfortunately for them, they have much, much, MUCH bigger issues to worry about than a time-travelling witch.
Was I right about that stone Santa used, or was it just looking for the one who used a time turner before? I know for a fact that the dead Time Turner is a result of Hermione's time jump, but I still think that the stone was showing who was going back and who would be the sacrifices. Also, is Hermione's mind still damaged, or did the jump into a younger body reverse that.
(and will the Unspeakables want to examine Hermione when they find something out from the time turner?)
[snip]
Right What Is Wrong asks:
Feb 22
...
You're absolutely right that there's an inordinate amount of rape in the beginning of this story, but it's not just there because "ooh, dark and spooky". I've based my interpretation of Death Eaters on the atrocities committed by occupying Nazis during the war (Allied troops weren't exactly angels either, but the losing side's actions are much better documented). On a bright note, little Sally-Anne managed to do alright for herself on the original timeline: she only got pregnant in her 5th year and dropped out, finishing her OWLs outside of Hogwarts and managing to survive the DE takeover by taking the Dark Mark in '99.I'm interested by the story so far, and only have one major criticism, namely: please include varieties of darkness other than various horrid forms of rape. Hermione was horribly raped, Luna was horribly raped, Fay Dunbar was horribly raped and killed... Should the readers just assume that female characters' fates in the dark future were rape, rape, and death with a side of rape?
Skipping over the usual sorts of debates, I'll point out that over-reliance on any one atrocity just desensitizes the readers. Once the abominable becomes predictable, it goes from a horrible act against a sympathetic character to a device transparently designed to evoke a certain emotion from the audience. Variation of abomination would go a ways towards preventing that.
...
Back to the point, however. Portraying and alluding to rape allows me to show how the ruling party shows their power over their enemies better than I could with any other method. What better way to showcase how far a Golden Family has fallen by having them defile their former friends? There's only one thing worse than showing slain bodies strung from a tree after putting down a failed uprising: showing what the victors did to the survivors.
I can honestly say that I have exactly one plan for including a rape in a (probably far away) upcoming scene, and even that's tenuous. Everything else, even the flashbacks and comments on What-Came-Before, will be dark and terrible, but not rape. As you alluded, it's a device to set a tone, not one "transparently designed to evoke a certain emotion from the audience," as you so eloquently put it.
To everyone else: THANKS AGAIN! I'm always glad to get reviews. I'll continue to do one of these every week as I get ones in I can respond to. This one was a little funky, just because there's not much that I can actually discuss since I went and changed up the chapter most everyone reviewed.
I should mention, though, that I'll be keeping all those reviews up. It keeps me honest, knowing that people actually do care about my writing, enough to call me out when it seems I'm making a terrible mistake.
See you all the next time around.
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