#03, Domesticated
Title: Domesticated
Author: Becca / das_kabinett
Disclaimer: Not mine!
Prompt:
Let me stop here. Let me, too, look at nature awhile ( Read more... )
Author: Becca / das_kabinett
Disclaimer: Not mine!
Prompt:
Let me stop here. Let me, too, look at nature awhile ( Read more... )
That being said, let me explain what I meant by the piece a little bit. It is a difficult duality, in my mind, because the narrative voice is so tight on Remus. In other words, all of the description and narrative is from Remus' point of view and Remus' thoughts on things, despite any manipulation that might mean. I love unreliable narrators.
So, the point of the piece from Remus position, is that it is a struggle against the werewolves for his humanity. He has to fight to keep this conception of identity that he holds so dear; a conception that he has created through years of living despite being a werewolf and now has to defend because he is on a mission since he is a werewolf.
That, in my opinion, explains a lot of the questions you were seeing. That's why he conceives of them having no culture, because that culture isn't his. That's why he views them as the enemy and would probably agree with you that there are figurative cages, though they run free during the moon. That's even why he's leaving the pack; he's absolutely crap at negotiation, considering that he's always cool and aggressive. They don't trust him at all (also the reason he buries his wand.)
In my opinion, the Remus of this story is too young. It's set during the pre-Azkaban era and he's very uncomfortable in himself. He's also almost hidebound; he can't see the culture and warmth of the others because he is too focused on condemning it as a bad thing.
Not with him, lads, he's civilized.
He's alien and he doesn't want to try to understand. Instead, he superimposes his world on this world, without even trying to really understand it's beauty.
Or at least that is my thoughts about it; you can have different ones and they can be just as (if not more) correct. I meant to sort of leave this open-ended.
And yes, Sirius is still alive.
Thanks again so very, very much for this review.
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I’m afraid I allowed a preconception to limit my ability to read this story. I simply expected a story about Remus among werewolves to be set post-OotP or at the earliest during OotP. Of course, I should have remembered that there’s been speculation that Remus’s duties in the original Order, during the first war, too, were related to werewolves. I have actually mainly avoided new post-OotP Remus fics, because I disliked what JKR did in HBP to her Lupin characterization and to readers’ ideas of what werewolves are like in the HP world.
I definitely understand your sticking to Remus’s mind. That’s how I write almost all of my fanfiction (with the exception of a few short stories in which I use Sirius’s, Albus’s or an original character’s perspective), and the reader is at some points supposed to share Remus's inability to be open-minded enough. Perhaps HBP (as well as real life) has just made me paranoid and I suspect that the writer really shares at least a lovable viewpoint character’s prejudices against werewolves or other minorities! It’s harder for me when the viewpoint character doesn’t start to even question his prejudices by the end of the story.
My Remus didn’t spend time with other werewolves before the end of the first war - perhaps because my Dumbledore understood that he was too immature. I don’t think my young Remus would have questioned any mission given to him by Dumbledore either. But I’m really happy that your Remus in this story is still young. Perhaps post-OotP he’ll have developed a better understanding and actually manage to acknowledge the culture of the werewolves - even with something that he could share without losing any of his humanity? But that might have to contradict HBP, and I can’t expect that from any Remus stories which were not, like mine, started before the HBP release.
In any case I now like to read this piece as a story about a young Remus whom I can love almost like mine, despite his weaknesses. Perhaps it was taken for granted in tellmeakiss that the stories would be pre-Azkaban? In any case my mistake of thinking about a later period led me to some interesting thoughts and pleasant interaction with a great writer. Thank you again.
By the way, is there a tiny typo here: which dependent on artistic skill?
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I'm not sure if that made any sense, but, well.
I've always had a bit of an issue with JKR's understanding of moral complexity, but I figure it is simply because she is writing a morality play, essentially. It's so archetype heavy; something which has traditionally bothered me, but I oddly didn't mind in her series. I think it is mostly because I was so utterly enchanted by the world, the details didn't matter.
What I mean to say is that her treatment of werewolves (and squibs, for that matter) is to be expected. She's presented Remus as the good character, but he's also the character that assimilates the most into wizarding culture; essentially, he's the minority who pretends he isn't. He's the gay in the closet, he's the African woman who straightens her hair. It is a poignant statement not only on the books, but on our society, that this culture of assimilation is considered a virtue.
But I'm digressing a bit.
And yes, the first week of tellmeakiss is set in the pre-Azkaban era. (And as an utter and complete sidepoint; isn't it interesting we --and JKR, for that matter-- defines Remus' life in terms of the events in Sirius?)
I'm really glad to discuss this with you, I enjoy evaluating both stories and characters like this. And you flatter with me with your evaluation as a great writer; I still have a lot of improvement to go.
I fixed it! Thanks for catching that.
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Sometimes I’m afraid I expect too much from fanfic readers, but now you make me wonder whether I’m somehow old-fashioned when I want to imply more clearly than you do that there is something questionable in the virtue of assimilation, for instance.
Do you mean that JKR is making the poignant statement? Perhaps it doesn’t matter what her intended conscious message is. I used to think she had a message, but after I couldn’t help being disappointed with HBP, I’ve also read in an interview that she doesn’t want to be a moral educator and doesn’t care what kind of messages her readers get. So far we’ve been told that our enemies are by nature totally different from us, rather like animals, and I doubt we’ll have a chance to share with Harry a drastic development in this understanding in a book which will keep him busy destroying the fragments of the soulless villain’s soul.
This piece of yours truly works for me, particularly after I’ve been told that it is set during the first war. Still, I wonder how many readers manage to experience - subconsciously either - that it deals with minority issues and assimilation. In any case it must be clever of you to disguise your exceptional stories as first-kiss fics.
I found you due to the fact that I still have remusxsirius in my f-list, whereas I hadn’t even considered following tellmeakiss. It’s hard for me to understand how anyone can write twenty-eight different stories about the same characters’ first kiss, as all my fanfiction is one story of my Remus’s life. I’d like to retain the illusion that I always meet the same persons, if I continue to read about your Remus and Sirius. But even in case each illusion of reality must be limited to one fic, I want to see more of yor writing. I wonder if you’d mind friending. It’s tempting to say more about anyting to you, but I’ll try my best not to go on babbling about my Remus’s story to people who haven’t read anything by me. As for IM, I have yahoo.
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I'm not really sure what you mean by this; could you further elaborate? If what you mean to say is that my "message" (for what it is worth) tends to be excessively subtle, you are probably right. I'm very preoccupied with not making things obvious, which is perhaps the fault of Italo Calvino, who I highly reccomend and flatter myself to consider my writing influnced by.
And here I diverge from you: my stories rarely take place in the same universe. I love the variability, the infinite possibility of splintering and exploring multiple ways of viewing the characters. I have a conception of the basic qualities of "my" Sirius and "my" Remus, but the fiction I writes explores individual traits to different degrees. I also have a very short attention span as a writer, so I tend to enjoy the shorter and more compact fics.
I don't mind the first kiss theme, as long as I can continue to use it like I have for this prompt and the one after. I don't even mind going into some fluff or slapstic; I enjoy reading it, I enjoy writing it. It's fun, if not perhaps as weighty, and I don't have any notions of some types of fiction being better than others.
And, feel free to friend me. Would you mind if I friend you? And as another question, which fic do you reccomend beginning your universe with? I'd really like to read some, but I don't know where to start.
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That’s what I mean. Did I say it too subtly?
I’m afraid I haven’t even thought of reading Italo Calvino since I was a teenager (perhaps because I learnt to prefer reading prose and poetry in the original language, and I can’t read Italian). I remember reading somewhere that he can “hide the story in plain sight”.
In any case I doubt I make some things as obvious as most R/S writers do, either. As for the value of fics about kisses, I didn’t mean to say they couldn’t be good. It’s just a personal problem of mine that, unlike most fanfic writers and readers, I rather escape romance and sex to fiction, instead of enjoying (obvious) kisses, not to mention any explicit sexual action beyond that.
Besides, I decided to refrain from following another community with daily challenges partly because when trying to develop interaction with some scarvesnhats writers I noticed that someone who churns out fics daily doesn’t really have time for further discussion on one fic. In any case these writers were not, after all, interested in checking out some older fics in return. Perhaps few people on lj care to comment on any older or longer fics.
That’s why I didn’t expect you to read my fics, either. I just couldn’t help commenting after reading your exceptional pieces of fiction. Thank you for friending me. However, I will seldom appear on your f-list, as I make only fic entries. And I haven’t written any short stories since August, because I’ve spent my fiction time on my post-OotP Remus-pov novel, which I started in September 2003.
If you really have the time and interest, you can actually start anywhere you want to. Each of my short stories - as well as the WIP novel - can stand on its own, too, even though they all belong to the story of my Remus’s life. I haven’t written them in the chronological order, but you could, in fact, start like that, too. The stories set in 1980 (These Acts of Love) and in 1983 (I Don’t Dream) are my shortest pieces of prose ever (with the exception of my only drabble, which really isn’t much to be proud of). You won’t lose much by giving a try to one of them. The following stories in the chronological order are three longer short stories about my drifting Remus. In case you prefer some interaction between Remus and Sirius, I’d recommend one of the stories about Sirius being welcomed back to (Remus’s) life after Azkaban. Perhaps not I “Decided to Surprise Remus”, because I wrote that one as early as in January 2004. “I Am Still the Stray” has been Niffled on Fiction Alley, and it’s shorter than “Let’s Go Home, Pads.” “His Face Shines…” is the most explicit slash I’ve written. “Will You Stop…” is set post-OotP and uses Albus’s pov. The novel is only forum-posted and a WIP with approximately 200,000 words, so I really don’t expect you to be interested, even in case you probably have a longer attention span as a reader than you have as a writer.
I think I can explore individual traits to different degrees even though I write within the illusion that my characters are always the same persons - growing and changing according to their experiences. I’m a slow writer and reader, and my attention span doesn’t fit so well with the typical pace in fic communities on lj. Sometimes I wish I could just leave my work on a novel update and write something quick. When I had more time for writing I enjoyed indulging in composing a short story every now and then. But I’ve hardly ever finished a story in less time than a week, and I must have worked at least for a month on each of the longer short stories.
One more comment on kisses. I just realized that - in my view - you could as well have left the kisses out in Domesticated, in Snafu and in Dim Sum, and the stories would have still worked quite as well. Now I must finally go and post some praise for Snafu, although I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time on this babbling mainly about my writing. You can tell I’m happy I found you, can’t you?
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As far as the daily communities idea, I love them. It is really helpful to me because I have so many ideas and images floating through my head that the prompt helps me to distill them into individual stories that are at least, somewhat complete. These stories don't take all that long for me to write because they tend to be less than 1000 words and they have the prompt for me to bounce off of. My stories that aren't "prompt based" take ages and ages for me to write.
So long, in fact, that I'm not finished one and haven't posted any in this journal or any others. Right now, in fact, I'm working on what promises to be an exceedingly long genfic about Albus Dumbledore. I'm really excited about it, but I'm letting it simmer and marinate before I attempt to write it out proper.
I look forward to exploring your fiction and intend to do so at my first oppurtunity. You can expect commentary soon, I imagine. I'm really excited, I like the way you think and evaluate fiction. I just might find that novel of yours and check it out; I have a very long attention span as a reader, as little patience as I have with my own writing.
And I sort of agree with you. I think the kisses could have been left out of Snafu and Dim Sum, but I think the kiss really completes this fic.
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I actually wrote These Acts of Love in one day (exceptionally by hand, when spending eight hours at an amusement park) and I Don’t Dream late one night when I was too tired to work on a novel update. But I couldn’t have published these fics in a day. I seem to have too much patience with my writing: I enjoy editing - checking the expressions carefully so as to convey the experience I’ve shared with my viewpoint character. As for the novel, I edit constantly, at least after each paragraph. Somehow I write spontaneously and consciously at the same time. I also let the ideas simmer, but I don’t do planning separately - in my head, on paper or on the computer. I have to be actually typing the text which will - through editing - become the final text. And publishing a WIP suits me well. After I’ve completed and polished an installment it’s become a part of the story, and I’ve never done more than stylistic changes. Somehow miraculously the earlier parts serve their purposes in the evolving story.
I’m afraid I should make more of those stylistic changes in the early chapters of the novel. I allowed myself to get carried away in order to reach this topic, because I want to warn you. If you decide to find and check out the novel, I hope the first chapters won’t scare you off. My writing must have improved since September 2003, so the novel reveals my development as a writer as well as Remus’s development.
I was so glad about the further information on your attention span. However, I’ll be grateful for any comment on my shortest fics, too. Your first review has already made my week or more.
It’s good to know you are interested in genfic. And I’d love to read about your Dumbledore. It’s already been a pleasure to see other characters in addition to the pups in your R/S pieces - which could actually be classified as genfics, too.
It’s not essential whether kisses are absolutely missing or not. In any case the focus can be seen on something else or at least also on something else besides the romantic or sexual relationship. I suppose I must agree that the kiss is needed in Domesticated. It would not be so fitting to make Remus hug the illusion of Sirius like a brother. The touch has to be more delicate. Still, it’s not necessary to see romance or anything sexual in that kiss.
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