Full length interview with Antosha_c
So, I did an author profile of
antosha_c , a fanfic author whose works I have thoroughly enjoyed for
hpgw_otp. An edited version appears in this week's issue. The complete interview is under the cut for those who are interested.
antosha_c has written more than 60 works of fanfiction ranging from drabbles to (long) novel length stories, gen to threesomes, G to NC-17. He has also written a handful of stories in other fandoms. The bulk of his fiction has involved Harry/Ginny or Harry/Ginny/Luna. His fanfiction archive on LiveJournal is
antoshevu.
Let's start with the basics. How did you come up with your username?
Well, I'm a huge fan of Anton Chekhov's plays and stories. His penname while he was a medical student was Antosha Chekhonte. Around the same time, Anton had an affair with one of the three Golden sisters: Natalia, known as Natasha. Now, the Russians, like Americans, are obsessed with nicknames, and when they started sneaking into each others' homes, the two lovers came up with pet names for each other: Antoshevu (Antosha, Chez Vous) and Natashevu (Natasha, Chez Vous). Isn't that sweet?
When I chose the name, I wasn't thinking of writing fic myself, but as I did, I realized that the handle fit-Chekhov was famous for writing character-driven stories and plays that mixed humor and drama, and in which the main action often happened within the characters themselves. What we would call flangst. Not that I claim to be anywhere near the writer that he was, but I've found that my aesthetic is very similar-even my silliest fics seem to have moments of at least attempted seriousness, while even my angstiest seem to have at least some attempts at humor.
You occasionally drop hints about being involved in publishing. Are you a published author? Will you be?
I'm an editor-I run the publishing program for a small not-for-profit foundation, preparing posthumous editions for publication, that sort of thing. Because of that, yes, you can find my name on some books at Amazon-though I'm usually listed second. ;-)
I also have been working for quite some time on a YA adventure novel that I'm hoping to finish and get published. Soon. Really. (I've been working on it off and on for four years. Too much fic! Well, not really...)
Since neither my employer nor any potential teen-book publishers are likely to be very impressed by a portfolio of adult fics, I've sort of kept my RL identity... quiet.
When and how did you get involved in HP fandom?
When: Winter, 2004
How: I was doing research for work. Really. Honest. I'd been reading the HP books with my kids, and suddenly realized something about JKR's writing that I wanted to look into. I went online and... Wow. The sheer scope of Potterdom on the internet blew me away. Distracted (it was a Friday afternoon, after all), I stumbled around for a while and came across some fic-either at FF.net or Fiction Alley; I don't remember which. It was all incredibly... bad. The characters were unrecognizable, the language was terrible, and I remember being unhappy in particular with the way in which, in three or four straight stories, Ginny was absolutely vilified.
But for some reason I poked around some more until I hit a short character sketch by Mieko Belle called Ginny. It was short and very simple but really lovely and refreshingly well-written, and I suddenly thought, "Oh. I could read that." I went off and devoured some more of her fic (which is largely slash and femmeslash, and largely adult-only, but all wonderfully thoughtful and well-crafted)... and that was that. ^.^
How long after that did you write your first fic? What was it?
:sigh: You had to ask. It was I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing. It was angsty-fluffy middle-aged Harry/Hermione. I wrote it perhaps a week or two after falling down the rabbit hole of online fandom. All in all... Well, it's not my favorite of my fics, but it started me thinking about what the characters would be like twenty or so years post-Hogwarts. I had this image of a Harry who'd been stripped of all of the things that made him, you know, Harry: the scar, his destiny, most of his magical power, his youth. That then got me going on the story that turned into Facing Backwards, which is still one of my favorites.
The funny thing about that cycle of stories was that I started to write it before I'd figured out just how insane the shipping wars were. This was back in 2004, just after Gryffindor Tower's ignominious implosion, during the backwash of the whole Ms. Scribe debacle. It was pre-HBP, and Harry/Ginny fans were generally scoffed at by fandom at large as being a) crazy and b) sentimental. In any case, H/G was H/G and H/Hr was H/Hr and the two did not mix. End of story. So here comes Antosha with a flangsty story about Harry (who is married to Hermione) contemplating an affair with Ginny (who is married to Neville).... People on both sides got ticked at me.
I thought the uproar was funny. Even if I did get nearly get booted from SIYE. ;-)
And it started me working with my friend and beta, aberforth_rug, for which I am eternally grateful.
Favorite fic (or two) that you have written?
Well, I did a list for a meme a while back that mostly still stands.
My favorite at the moment is Burrowing (NC-17-the cycle that included The Weasley Family Picnic, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Tent). Very... Chekhovian. This fic cycle started as an exploration of French-farcical goings on around the Burrow when absolutely EVERYONE was... erm... going on. But it kept getting serious. And then the story came to an absolutely giddy, silly ending-curtain down on the first act, applause, applause, applause... Curtain up on tragedy. I got a one or two death threats for pulling that. XD There are a number of chapters in this sequence that I love, but I'm proudest of the way the whole thing holds together.
Any fics you've written that make you cringe a little when you re-read them?
I'm always unhappy with bits and pieces of most of my fics-but I still love them for the parts that work, or the spark that originally inspired them. You won't be surprised when I say that I can't read I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing. There's a rather weepy Remus Lupin gen comment-fic out there somewhere that I'm actually rather glad that I can't find any more. ;-)
What other fandom authors you like?
So many, for so many reasons! There are many that spring to mind, and the list could go on and on-there really are a lot of incredibly imaginative, creative people out there writing HP fics. We're a very lucky fandom!
Any stories other than your own that you go back to re-read again and again?
I can think of lots of wonderful one-shots off of the top of my head that I've read multiple times, just because they're so well written. Here are three that I can think of right now: St Margarets' lovely, fluffy Wallpaper Moments, BeccaFran's sweet, edgy sexual-awakening story Fish Out of Water, and Alexandra Lynch's devastating post-war fic, Someday (the last two are both R-rated). They're all H/G, but each explores the pair and the pairing in a very unique way, and all three writers tell their stories simply and beautifully.
Oh, and one more-Rhetoretician's wonderfully emotional On the Headmaster's Wall . I actually was one of the betas on this, and I remember when he created the triptych structure that it now has just how powerful the piece became-from the breathless (and ultimately unfulfilled) urgency of the opening, through the middle section, which starts like a kind of academic comedy of manners and becomes incredibly personal, through the conclusion, which is written in a very detached, analytical manner, and is all the more emotionally charged for it.
And if I thought about it for another five minutes I could probably think of another dozen. ;-)
A lot of your fics are H/G - why do you like writing them?
Because I'm a guy with dark, messy hair who's happily married to a take-no-prisoners redhead? No. That's not it. ;-)
I think what I love about Harry and Ginny-more so than just about any pairing-is that their flaws and their strengths balance out so well. They have a deeply shared sense of justice, and an equally deeply shared sense of humor. They both struggle with strong feelings of inadequacy without wallowing in self-pity-terribly often. They're both passionate and yet considerate. They are the rare couple who can manage to still be interesting even when they're happily together.
I love lots of other pairings-from canonical ones like Ron/Hermione, Remus/Tonks, Bill/Fleur and Arthur/Molly to more... outside-the-envelope ones like Sirius/Remus, Ron/Pansy, Ginny/Luna, Harry/Luna... ANYONE/Luna. But none of them feel to me as well suited and yet as ripe with interesting material to write about as Harry and Ginny.
You once wrote: “I'm probably known as much as anything as that weird Harry/Ginny shipper who keeps throwing Luna in to the mix... “ What made you want to explore a Harry/Ginny/Luna relationship?
Ah. Yeah. Well... I didn't go looking for it. It happened like this...
I wrote a pair of gen one-shots- Remembrance and Better Days. The first featured Harry consoling a mourning Luna. The second (the gen piece of which I'm most proud) featured Luna doing the same for Ginny. I hadn't really considered them as part of a series, but I found myself writing another piece about Ginny going to help a reclusive, PTSD-y Harry after the war, and I thought, Hey! Luna's always helpful to have along! She lets you take fics off in the most unexpected directions!
Whoo, boy. What I'd intended was for it to be a Harry/Ginny fic in which Ginny finally loses her patience with Harry for feeling a bit sorry for himself and Luna intervenes and brings them together,but what happened once Luna got them together though is that she didn't want to leave. The result was Camera Obscura, and it spawned a series of fics ( The Locked Room ) in which the three of them suddenly find themselves struggling with just what the heck they're doing, and whether or not it makes any sense.
As I wrote the series, I really began to enjoy the dynamic among the three of them. Ginny is very down to earth, for all of her fieriness, while Luna is always up in the clouds, and Harry veers between them-and pulls them together. The fact of the matter is that-H/G shipper though I am-I enjoy all three of the component relationships, and the threesome allowed both for some wonderful whimsy, as well as for some wonderfully awkward, challenging conflicts. So I kept writing them. ;-)
This is unfair, but I'll ask anyway. Do you prefer to write Harry/Ginny or Harry/Ginny/Luna? Why?
Hey! That's like asking me which of my children I love more! XD
Honestly, it's one I can't really answer. The fics really touch on different subject matter-and no, I'm not just talking about the sex. (Actually, come to think of it, I haven't written that many explicit H/G/L scenes...)
When I write a Harry/Ginny fic, it's almost always about intimacy of one kind or another-being comfortable with emotional connection. Or sometimes I'm just playing with some plotty ideas that JKR's sparked in my head. ( Monster is an example of that-the whole fic was basically one huge string of just-post-HBP plot theories connected by a thread of narrative and bits of character exploration.)
In H/G/L fics, I'm generally exploring trust in a relationship-it's a hard enough bond to manage that in a normal old one-on-one, and so adding a third person increases the challenge exponentially. Whether the fic involves an established couple (usually H/G, but occasionally G/L and in one case H/L) inviting a third partner in, or the three stumbling together at the same time (as in The Locked Room or Count the Way), the characters struggle with feelings of exclusion and inadequacy. And of course abnormality and impropriety. ;-)
So I guess the answer would be it depends on what I'm feeling neurotic about on a particular day.
What would you say to an H/G fan to get them to consider reading one of your H/G/L stories?
That they have all of the things that make H/G great... plus the walking X-factor that is Luna?
Actually, a number of people have talked to me about feeling uncomfortable about the very idea of a threesome-which I totally understand. But I'd say this: if a fantasy writer can add dragons to test the characters' courage and enchanted traps and puzzles to test their ingenuity, why not explore a relationship that tests the characters' ability to love and trust and share in just as fantastic and extreme a fashion?
Do I think that a threesome is a terribly stable form of relationship in real life? No-though I've known a couple of longterm triumvirate households. Do I think that it's the sort of thing that mostly belongs in fantasy? Yes-along with slaying magical creatures and battling Dark Lords.
As I've said, the thing I like about the Harry/Ginny/Luna dynamic is that it seems to allow for both a depth of feeling on the one hand and a kind of whimsy on the other that I find both moving and enjoyable. If that sounds intriguing... then read ahead!
So, you liked DH, yes?
Loved it. Felt it was the tightest of the books since PoA. She touched me; she surprised me. She hit so many wonderful, mythic moments that I kept squeeing. Which is pretty unattractive in a 44-year-old male.
The epilogue has been much disparaged online (everyone I've talked to in real life liked it), but I loved it-in the first book, Harry discovers his greatest desire (family) and Dumbledore tells him the lesson that will be his greatest quest: you are what your actions and choices reveal you to be, not what your name, fame or school house define you as. What do we see in the epilogue? Not the lovely, fanficcy details of marriages and children and careers. We see Harry in the bosom of his loved and loving extended family, and we see him share that hard-won wisdom with the child who is most like Harry himself. And that's all.
Favorite parts?
Loved Ron and Hermione-for better and for worse. The scene where Ron left killed me, and the whole "Silver Doe" sequence, when he came back, just blew me away-it was as if she'd written something straight out of an Arthurian Romance and yet it was totally Ron and Harry. And of course the moment when Ron and Hermione finally kissed was wonderful.
Loved Luna (THE ROOM! Good LORD!). Loved Neville (Rebel King! Snakeslayer!). Wish we'd seen more of Ginny. (I reread the book with my daughter recently and realized that she did take a much more active role in the battle than I'd remembered. Even so...)
"The Pardoner's Tale" was always my favorite bit in The Canterbury Tales, and so I immediately recognized the source of "The Tale of the Three Brothers"-and loved it all the more for that.
The "Back in the Forest" and "King's Cross" chapters were fabulous. I'd been anticipating something like that sequence for years, but she managed to make it exciting, moving, specific, and utterly fresh. Mythic and fresh at the same time-a remarkable combination.
I loved that it was Luna, Ginny and Hermione who were dueling Bellatrix before Molly Weasley went all medieval on her ass. Harry's spirit, his heart (or body, if you prefer) and his mind. And it was very satisfying that, though all of Harry's friends and loved ones where there for him right up to the final battle, it was Harry-not Hermione, not Dumbledore-who figured out the way to beat Voldemort, and that it was his own inherent courage and intelligence that vanquished the Dark Lord.
Oh-and the H/G/L shipper in me snickered quite a bit when Cho volunteered to go up to Ravenclaw Tower with Harry, and Ginny stiff-armed her and suggested Luna instead. Silly of me, but there you go. ;-)
Least favorite?
The bit with them popping around the country trying to figure out what to do next did feel a bit slow-though again, I reread it recently and I don't know what you could cut. "The Prince's Tale" felt a bit... staged. But then it would-it was Snape showing Harry the memories that explained his behavior. I think the fact that I'd been reading Snape/Lily theories online for the past three years may have spoiled me for that a bit. ;-)
Mostly there are some bits that I feel she left out that I'd have liked to see: Harry and Ginny's conversation after the battle, obviously, but also what happened to the Dursleys-that sort of thing.
You had made some predictions (I counted 30) before DH came out. Although fewer than half were right, I was really impressed that you nailed some of the key things, i.e., Sirius and Dumbledore reappearing but still being dead, one of the twins dying, Harry and Ginny being alone together in her room, and most importantly, Harry appearing to die and then coming back.
Were you thinking about those predictions at all as you read?
A little-though mostly I was desperate to find out what happened next.
I think I hoped for an H/G moment of intimacy more than actually reasoning it out-but it made perfect sense. If they really were going to stay split up (and my own and a lot of others' early post-HBP fics notwithstanding, it didn't make sense to break them up and then get them right back together again), and if Harry really was going to go off with Ron and Hermione hunting Horcruxes, then there needed to be a moment of the two of them alone together to reestablish just what it is that Harry was leaving behind... Though I really do wish Ron could have waited just a bit longer. ;-)
About Sirius and Dumbledore... JKR had been quite emphatic about death being a one-way street-Harry being the exception to all rules, of course. But it also seemed clear that Dumbledore had things that he needed to tell Harry still. Likewise, the relationship with Sirius was left hanging. And so I was fairly certain that they'd appear-in portraits, in a mirror, at some half-way place between life and death... But that they really were dead and would stay so seemed a fairly closed question to me.
I'd anticipated Harry's quasi-death for quite a while, since before I was part of online fandom. (That and H/G-those are the two predictions that I've stuck with over the years that I'm proudest of getting right.)
The thing is... Hmmm. See, I've been really curious for some time whether JKR has read a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, the comparative mythologist. It's a wonderful exploration of the structure of hero tales through the ages and across the world that lays out a very straightforward (if circular) structure for most hero stories. Campbell calls this schema the Hero Journey. In it the hero (or heroine) is called from everyday life (4 Privet Dr.) to the Land of Adventure (Hogwarts), goes through a series of trials, and faces some great test before returning to his/her life, transformed by his/her journey. The thing is, the moment of that final test is often marked either by the hero's literal or symbolic death-psychologically speaking, s/he is sloughing off the old, pre-adventure self, and continuing on reborn.
Each of the HP books follows this pattern very closely, as does the series as a whole. And so as we were approaching the last book I knew that Harry would have to die-or appear to. I'd even shared that theory with my kids-which is a good thing, because when I was reading the chapter where Harry's marching to his death to my youngest, I thought she was going to explode. The only thing that kept her from vibrating off of the face of the planet was that she kept muttering to herself, "He's going to come back. He's going to come back."
And he did. :-)
Let's talk about “Back to the Garden”. For those who don't know, it is a 36 chapter (plus prologue and epilogue) Year 7 epic of Harry's defeat of Voldemort. Many ships are sailing, including H/G/L, and there is plenty of action, as well as reflection on the characters by other characters.
It's definitely the most ambitious thing I've ever written. 150,000 words? An alternate version? Huge action sequences? Lots of passion and character death?
Well, okay, the passion and the occasional character death I'd played with before. Still!
What made you decide to write it - knowing it would be AU after Book 7 came out?
When I started thinking about this plotline, nearly a year before DH arrived (before we even had a title), it sprang from two sources: a comment-fic that I wrote for
maegunnbatt in which Ron and Pansy have an uncomfortable post-coital conversation on the train back from Hogwarts after HBP, and a pair of fics inspired by reallycorking 's birthday present pictures for Harry and for Ginny (the pics are no longer easily accessible since they're both gleefully NWS).
As I started writing the fic, though, I discovered a third strand in a character whom I always love to write: Luna. The second chapter of the fic (the first in the R-rated version) took place inside of her head, which is always a fun place to be. Instead of having her mind be a random torrent-of-consciousness as I've done in the past, however, I had her constantly working out odd Aristotelian strings of deductive logic. Her struggle to reason out (in her own inimitable fashion) the question of the nature of love, and of her own relationship to it, became the driving force behind the story. It was great fun. Also, BttG was my very first successful attempt at writing a sweeping epic, and I'm very pleased with how it turned out. Though there are some readers who are still furious with me for my heartlessness towards a couple of the characters. Me and JKR both, I guess. ;-)
The fact of the matter was that there were a couple of themes that I wanted to play with-fidelity in the larger sense and Big-L-Love-that I was pretty sure that JKR wouldn't be bothering with-with the breakup with Ginny at the end of HBP, she'd let us know that the seventh book was NOT going to be a romance. And of course, as a YA author, she doesn' t get to indulge my fascination with the interrelationship between friendship, love and sex in all of its complexity. I was also fairly certain that she wouldn't be spending a lot of time looking on from the points of view of secondary characters. So I hijacked her people and themes and took them on a book-seven ride.
Any general thoughts on finishing it? What are you happiest with about the fic? Least happy with?
Aside from absolute glee at getting it finished a week and a half before DH hit the stands? :-D
I'm happiest with the way that some of the themes and symbols established by JKR-the phoenix, the complex relationship between life and death and good and evil-played out in the story. I loved spending time looking at the action of the Horcrux hunt and the fight against Voldemort through the eyes of some of the characters-Pansy, Luna, the Notts, various Weasleys, and many others-that she didn't need/get to explore. I think my years as a character actor make me fond of exploring the central action of the story from the side, as it were. And of course, I'm quite happy with the fact that the plot, which was the most complex I'd ever worked on, hung together as well as it did.
There are some stylistic games that I played with, some of which worked (shifting points of view) and some of which didn't work as well (shifting points of view in the middles of sentences!).
I think the things I'm most frustrated with are choices that I made towards the end of the story that I wished I'd been able to set up better a year earlier, when I started. There were some central bits that I thought I'd established quite well that, in retrospect, I wish I'd done a better job of anticipating and foreshadowing. Ah, the joys of publishing serially. ;-)
Did it change your reading of DH?
Not really-though there were a couple of moments where I did give very unmanly squeals, as I said before. There was a moment to do with a snake, for instance...
And when I'd gotten it totally wrong-the nature of the Deathly Hallows, for example-I was so wrapped up in the story that it didn't matter. To be honest, it was hard to think of much else while reading it. ;-)
I will say that it gave me a great deal of pleasure, having thought about this story, these characters and this world as much as we all have, and to find that I'd intuited so much on the one hand, and that she still had the ability to surprise me on the other.
You wrote a parallel piece - “The Wisest Course” - which has the same outcome (Harry defeats Voldemort) and many of the chapters are identical, but there are some important differences. The central relationship is H/G instead of H/G/L. It seems like it would be a logistical nightmare to keep up with parallel stories - was it?
The hardest part about The Wisest Course was deciding whether it was really the same story as Back to the Garden-just without some of the more racy bits-or not. I decided, in the end, that they really were different stories, and that the conclusions had to be different. Once I'd realized that, it wasn't terribly difficult, just a bit of a headache-making sure that the Ginny/Luna relationship in TWC didn't remain quite as intimate as it was in BttG, that sort of thing.
The one other major question that I struggled with was whether or not to have Ron and Pansy's relationship remain the same in TWC as in BttG. Once I decided that, yes, they were going to have had an affair, I'd already posted the first fifteen or so chapters of TWC on SIYE and Simply Undeniable and I realized that I needed to include an early chapter ("The Middle Way") that I'd left out originally. That was a bit embarrassing... but I don't think anyone minded much. ;-)
The only chapters that are totally different between the two versions are the last two. They overlap a bit, but they're essentially different stories, and that was a challenge-but a good one. Wanting to post the epilogue to TWC before DH came out was a real motivating factor. I'm really pleased with the way the two conclusions turned out-they're very distinct, but I'm proud of them both.
You have written two stories, a drabble, and something about Neville since DH. Do you have more plot bunnies circulating?
One or two! I have a WIP that I'm going to finish ( Dead Drop -NC-17... and the oddest H/G fic I'll ever write). There's an H/G fic that aberforths_rug and I started a while ago and both want to finish (when there's time) that's in the same series as Uncorked, Trick or Treat and Simplicity.
And Friends, one of the fics that I wrote just a couple of days after DH came out, has spawned a couple of interesting follow-up ideas. Ginny does need to finish giving Harry that birthday present, after all. ;-)
If you haven't read any of the stories at antoshevu, or haven't visited lately, then I recommend that you do. There is something there to delight any fan of H/G.
Like Polyjuice Potion as a plot device? Try Changes (PG-13) or True Moon (R). Note that Luna is in the latter story. Like time travel? You will probably like Ghost (PG-13). Interested in H/G/L but nothing too explicit? Try Sincere (PG) or Flaming Nargles (PG-13). Nothing to do for several hours but get swept up in a complex, captivating story that will take you on a very different but just as adventurous Horcrux hunt and make you believe that Ron/Pansy could actually happen? Here you go.
But you don't have to take my word for it. Without his knowledge, I asked several others to comment on
antosha_c's work, and here is what they said:
tunxeh: I'm always excited to see a new fic from Antosha. I know I can look forward to a well-written blend of action, romance, and most importantly, depth of characterization. His Harry always tries to do what's right, though it's not always easy to tell what the right thing is, his Ginny never wrings her hands from the sidelines; his Hermione will save the world from its prejudices, if she can only save her boys first, his Luna invariably makes me think, and his original characters have a habit of stealing the show. He writes very adult fiction, not in the sense of being sexed-up (though some of it is that too) but in the sense that everyone is responsible for consequences of their behavior. And though the consequences for the characters may be good or bad, the consequences for us as readers are uniformly good.
stmargarets: The first word I can think of to describe Antosha_c is "warm." While his stories may show all kinds of human frailty and foibles, there is an underlying sense that the author knows his characters - knows them and loves them warts and all. Others may say his stories are "hot" (*cheeky grin*), but it's his generous portrayal of his characters that I find most compelling. His stories have heart.
rhetoretician: Antosha is a master stylist. There is practically no genre in which he does not seem to be comfortable, and he moves between them - tragedy, comedy, romance, horror, erotica - almost as if he were walking among the rooms of his own house. He is also lavishly generous to other writers, giving advice, aid, praise, and comfort.
aberforths_rug: Opening my inbox to see anew story from Antosha always makes me happy. I feel so fortunate to get the first taste of his latest creations. I find his sense of character and his ability to tap into the bittersweet utterly captivating and inspiring. He writes with intelligence and emotional depth - two things I value greatly.
magnolia_mama: I have appreciated having someone who is so well-learned writing H/G. His knowledge and experience of theater has proven especially fruitful. I also like that he doesn't resort to extremes of depicting Ginny as either a chaste virgin or a whore. Sexually healthy Ginny FTQ, yo, ;-)
antosha_c , a fanfic author whose works I have thoroughly enjoyed for
hpgw_otp. An edited version appears in this week's issue. The complete interview is under the cut for those who are interested.
antosha_c has written more than 60 works of fanfiction ranging from drabbles to (long) novel length stories, gen to threesomes, G to NC-17. He has also written a handful of stories in other fandoms. The bulk of his fiction has involved Harry/Ginny or Harry/Ginny/Luna. His fanfiction archive on LiveJournal is
antoshevu.
Let's start with the basics. How did you come up with your username?
Well, I'm a huge fan of Anton Chekhov's plays and stories. His penname while he was a medical student was Antosha Chekhonte. Around the same time, Anton had an affair with one of the three Golden sisters: Natalia, known as Natasha. Now, the Russians, like Americans, are obsessed with nicknames, and when they started sneaking into each others' homes, the two lovers came up with pet names for each other: Antoshevu (Antosha, Chez Vous) and Natashevu (Natasha, Chez Vous). Isn't that sweet?
When I chose the name, I wasn't thinking of writing fic myself, but as I did, I realized that the handle fit-Chekhov was famous for writing character-driven stories and plays that mixed humor and drama, and in which the main action often happened within the characters themselves. What we would call flangst. Not that I claim to be anywhere near the writer that he was, but I've found that my aesthetic is very similar-even my silliest fics seem to have moments of at least attempted seriousness, while even my angstiest seem to have at least some attempts at humor.
You occasionally drop hints about being involved in publishing. Are you a published author? Will you be?
I'm an editor-I run the publishing program for a small not-for-profit foundation, preparing posthumous editions for publication, that sort of thing. Because of that, yes, you can find my name on some books at Amazon-though I'm usually listed second. ;-)
I also have been working for quite some time on a YA adventure novel that I'm hoping to finish and get published. Soon. Really. (I've been working on it off and on for four years. Too much fic! Well, not really...)
Since neither my employer nor any potential teen-book publishers are likely to be very impressed by a portfolio of adult fics, I've sort of kept my RL identity... quiet.
When and how did you get involved in HP fandom?
When: Winter, 2004
How: I was doing research for work. Really. Honest. I'd been reading the HP books with my kids, and suddenly realized something about JKR's writing that I wanted to look into. I went online and... Wow. The sheer scope of Potterdom on the internet blew me away. Distracted (it was a Friday afternoon, after all), I stumbled around for a while and came across some fic-either at FF.net or Fiction Alley; I don't remember which. It was all incredibly... bad. The characters were unrecognizable, the language was terrible, and I remember being unhappy in particular with the way in which, in three or four straight stories, Ginny was absolutely vilified.
But for some reason I poked around some more until I hit a short character sketch by Mieko Belle called Ginny. It was short and very simple but really lovely and refreshingly well-written, and I suddenly thought, "Oh. I could read that." I went off and devoured some more of her fic (which is largely slash and femmeslash, and largely adult-only, but all wonderfully thoughtful and well-crafted)... and that was that. ^.^
How long after that did you write your first fic? What was it?
:sigh: You had to ask. It was I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing. It was angsty-fluffy middle-aged Harry/Hermione. I wrote it perhaps a week or two after falling down the rabbit hole of online fandom. All in all... Well, it's not my favorite of my fics, but it started me thinking about what the characters would be like twenty or so years post-Hogwarts. I had this image of a Harry who'd been stripped of all of the things that made him, you know, Harry: the scar, his destiny, most of his magical power, his youth. That then got me going on the story that turned into Facing Backwards, which is still one of my favorites.
The funny thing about that cycle of stories was that I started to write it before I'd figured out just how insane the shipping wars were. This was back in 2004, just after Gryffindor Tower's ignominious implosion, during the backwash of the whole Ms. Scribe debacle. It was pre-HBP, and Harry/Ginny fans were generally scoffed at by fandom at large as being a) crazy and b) sentimental. In any case, H/G was H/G and H/Hr was H/Hr and the two did not mix. End of story. So here comes Antosha with a flangsty story about Harry (who is married to Hermione) contemplating an affair with Ginny (who is married to Neville).... People on both sides got ticked at me.
I thought the uproar was funny. Even if I did get nearly get booted from SIYE. ;-)
And it started me working with my friend and beta, aberforth_rug, for which I am eternally grateful.
Favorite fic (or two) that you have written?
Well, I did a list for a meme a while back that mostly still stands.
My favorite at the moment is Burrowing (NC-17-the cycle that included The Weasley Family Picnic, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Tent). Very... Chekhovian. This fic cycle started as an exploration of French-farcical goings on around the Burrow when absolutely EVERYONE was... erm... going on. But it kept getting serious. And then the story came to an absolutely giddy, silly ending-curtain down on the first act, applause, applause, applause... Curtain up on tragedy. I got a one or two death threats for pulling that. XD There are a number of chapters in this sequence that I love, but I'm proudest of the way the whole thing holds together.
Any fics you've written that make you cringe a little when you re-read them?
I'm always unhappy with bits and pieces of most of my fics-but I still love them for the parts that work, or the spark that originally inspired them. You won't be surprised when I say that I can't read I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing. There's a rather weepy Remus Lupin gen comment-fic out there somewhere that I'm actually rather glad that I can't find any more. ;-)
What other fandom authors you like?
So many, for so many reasons! There are many that spring to mind, and the list could go on and on-there really are a lot of incredibly imaginative, creative people out there writing HP fics. We're a very lucky fandom!
Any stories other than your own that you go back to re-read again and again?
I can think of lots of wonderful one-shots off of the top of my head that I've read multiple times, just because they're so well written. Here are three that I can think of right now: St Margarets' lovely, fluffy Wallpaper Moments, BeccaFran's sweet, edgy sexual-awakening story Fish Out of Water, and Alexandra Lynch's devastating post-war fic, Someday (the last two are both R-rated). They're all H/G, but each explores the pair and the pairing in a very unique way, and all three writers tell their stories simply and beautifully.
Oh, and one more-Rhetoretician's wonderfully emotional On the Headmaster's Wall . I actually was one of the betas on this, and I remember when he created the triptych structure that it now has just how powerful the piece became-from the breathless (and ultimately unfulfilled) urgency of the opening, through the middle section, which starts like a kind of academic comedy of manners and becomes incredibly personal, through the conclusion, which is written in a very detached, analytical manner, and is all the more emotionally charged for it.
And if I thought about it for another five minutes I could probably think of another dozen. ;-)
A lot of your fics are H/G - why do you like writing them?
Because I'm a guy with dark, messy hair who's happily married to a take-no-prisoners redhead? No. That's not it. ;-)
I think what I love about Harry and Ginny-more so than just about any pairing-is that their flaws and their strengths balance out so well. They have a deeply shared sense of justice, and an equally deeply shared sense of humor. They both struggle with strong feelings of inadequacy without wallowing in self-pity-terribly often. They're both passionate and yet considerate. They are the rare couple who can manage to still be interesting even when they're happily together.
I love lots of other pairings-from canonical ones like Ron/Hermione, Remus/Tonks, Bill/Fleur and Arthur/Molly to more... outside-the-envelope ones like Sirius/Remus, Ron/Pansy, Ginny/Luna, Harry/Luna... ANYONE/Luna. But none of them feel to me as well suited and yet as ripe with interesting material to write about as Harry and Ginny.
You once wrote: “I'm probably known as much as anything as that weird Harry/Ginny shipper who keeps throwing Luna in to the mix... “ What made you want to explore a Harry/Ginny/Luna relationship?
Ah. Yeah. Well... I didn't go looking for it. It happened like this...
I wrote a pair of gen one-shots- Remembrance and Better Days. The first featured Harry consoling a mourning Luna. The second (the gen piece of which I'm most proud) featured Luna doing the same for Ginny. I hadn't really considered them as part of a series, but I found myself writing another piece about Ginny going to help a reclusive, PTSD-y Harry after the war, and I thought, Hey! Luna's always helpful to have along! She lets you take fics off in the most unexpected directions!
Whoo, boy. What I'd intended was for it to be a Harry/Ginny fic in which Ginny finally loses her patience with Harry for feeling a bit sorry for himself and Luna intervenes and brings them together,but what happened once Luna got them together though is that she didn't want to leave. The result was Camera Obscura, and it spawned a series of fics ( The Locked Room ) in which the three of them suddenly find themselves struggling with just what the heck they're doing, and whether or not it makes any sense.
As I wrote the series, I really began to enjoy the dynamic among the three of them. Ginny is very down to earth, for all of her fieriness, while Luna is always up in the clouds, and Harry veers between them-and pulls them together. The fact of the matter is that-H/G shipper though I am-I enjoy all three of the component relationships, and the threesome allowed both for some wonderful whimsy, as well as for some wonderfully awkward, challenging conflicts. So I kept writing them. ;-)
This is unfair, but I'll ask anyway. Do you prefer to write Harry/Ginny or Harry/Ginny/Luna? Why?
Hey! That's like asking me which of my children I love more! XD
Honestly, it's one I can't really answer. The fics really touch on different subject matter-and no, I'm not just talking about the sex. (Actually, come to think of it, I haven't written that many explicit H/G/L scenes...)
When I write a Harry/Ginny fic, it's almost always about intimacy of one kind or another-being comfortable with emotional connection. Or sometimes I'm just playing with some plotty ideas that JKR's sparked in my head. ( Monster is an example of that-the whole fic was basically one huge string of just-post-HBP plot theories connected by a thread of narrative and bits of character exploration.)
In H/G/L fics, I'm generally exploring trust in a relationship-it's a hard enough bond to manage that in a normal old one-on-one, and so adding a third person increases the challenge exponentially. Whether the fic involves an established couple (usually H/G, but occasionally G/L and in one case H/L) inviting a third partner in, or the three stumbling together at the same time (as in The Locked Room or Count the Way), the characters struggle with feelings of exclusion and inadequacy. And of course abnormality and impropriety. ;-)
So I guess the answer would be it depends on what I'm feeling neurotic about on a particular day.
What would you say to an H/G fan to get them to consider reading one of your H/G/L stories?
That they have all of the things that make H/G great... plus the walking X-factor that is Luna?
Actually, a number of people have talked to me about feeling uncomfortable about the very idea of a threesome-which I totally understand. But I'd say this: if a fantasy writer can add dragons to test the characters' courage and enchanted traps and puzzles to test their ingenuity, why not explore a relationship that tests the characters' ability to love and trust and share in just as fantastic and extreme a fashion?
Do I think that a threesome is a terribly stable form of relationship in real life? No-though I've known a couple of longterm triumvirate households. Do I think that it's the sort of thing that mostly belongs in fantasy? Yes-along with slaying magical creatures and battling Dark Lords.
As I've said, the thing I like about the Harry/Ginny/Luna dynamic is that it seems to allow for both a depth of feeling on the one hand and a kind of whimsy on the other that I find both moving and enjoyable. If that sounds intriguing... then read ahead!
So, you liked DH, yes?
Loved it. Felt it was the tightest of the books since PoA. She touched me; she surprised me. She hit so many wonderful, mythic moments that I kept squeeing. Which is pretty unattractive in a 44-year-old male.
The epilogue has been much disparaged online (everyone I've talked to in real life liked it), but I loved it-in the first book, Harry discovers his greatest desire (family) and Dumbledore tells him the lesson that will be his greatest quest: you are what your actions and choices reveal you to be, not what your name, fame or school house define you as. What do we see in the epilogue? Not the lovely, fanficcy details of marriages and children and careers. We see Harry in the bosom of his loved and loving extended family, and we see him share that hard-won wisdom with the child who is most like Harry himself. And that's all.
Favorite parts?
Loved Ron and Hermione-for better and for worse. The scene where Ron left killed me, and the whole "Silver Doe" sequence, when he came back, just blew me away-it was as if she'd written something straight out of an Arthurian Romance and yet it was totally Ron and Harry. And of course the moment when Ron and Hermione finally kissed was wonderful.
Loved Luna (THE ROOM! Good LORD!). Loved Neville (Rebel King! Snakeslayer!). Wish we'd seen more of Ginny. (I reread the book with my daughter recently and realized that she did take a much more active role in the battle than I'd remembered. Even so...)
"The Pardoner's Tale" was always my favorite bit in The Canterbury Tales, and so I immediately recognized the source of "The Tale of the Three Brothers"-and loved it all the more for that.
The "Back in the Forest" and "King's Cross" chapters were fabulous. I'd been anticipating something like that sequence for years, but she managed to make it exciting, moving, specific, and utterly fresh. Mythic and fresh at the same time-a remarkable combination.
I loved that it was Luna, Ginny and Hermione who were dueling Bellatrix before Molly Weasley went all medieval on her ass. Harry's spirit, his heart (or body, if you prefer) and his mind. And it was very satisfying that, though all of Harry's friends and loved ones where there for him right up to the final battle, it was Harry-not Hermione, not Dumbledore-who figured out the way to beat Voldemort, and that it was his own inherent courage and intelligence that vanquished the Dark Lord.
Oh-and the H/G/L shipper in me snickered quite a bit when Cho volunteered to go up to Ravenclaw Tower with Harry, and Ginny stiff-armed her and suggested Luna instead. Silly of me, but there you go. ;-)
Least favorite?
The bit with them popping around the country trying to figure out what to do next did feel a bit slow-though again, I reread it recently and I don't know what you could cut. "The Prince's Tale" felt a bit... staged. But then it would-it was Snape showing Harry the memories that explained his behavior. I think the fact that I'd been reading Snape/Lily theories online for the past three years may have spoiled me for that a bit. ;-)
Mostly there are some bits that I feel she left out that I'd have liked to see: Harry and Ginny's conversation after the battle, obviously, but also what happened to the Dursleys-that sort of thing.
You had made some predictions (I counted 30) before DH came out. Although fewer than half were right, I was really impressed that you nailed some of the key things, i.e., Sirius and Dumbledore reappearing but still being dead, one of the twins dying, Harry and Ginny being alone together in her room, and most importantly, Harry appearing to die and then coming back.
Were you thinking about those predictions at all as you read?
A little-though mostly I was desperate to find out what happened next.
I think I hoped for an H/G moment of intimacy more than actually reasoning it out-but it made perfect sense. If they really were going to stay split up (and my own and a lot of others' early post-HBP fics notwithstanding, it didn't make sense to break them up and then get them right back together again), and if Harry really was going to go off with Ron and Hermione hunting Horcruxes, then there needed to be a moment of the two of them alone together to reestablish just what it is that Harry was leaving behind... Though I really do wish Ron could have waited just a bit longer. ;-)
About Sirius and Dumbledore... JKR had been quite emphatic about death being a one-way street-Harry being the exception to all rules, of course. But it also seemed clear that Dumbledore had things that he needed to tell Harry still. Likewise, the relationship with Sirius was left hanging. And so I was fairly certain that they'd appear-in portraits, in a mirror, at some half-way place between life and death... But that they really were dead and would stay so seemed a fairly closed question to me.
I'd anticipated Harry's quasi-death for quite a while, since before I was part of online fandom. (That and H/G-those are the two predictions that I've stuck with over the years that I'm proudest of getting right.)
The thing is... Hmmm. See, I've been really curious for some time whether JKR has read a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, the comparative mythologist. It's a wonderful exploration of the structure of hero tales through the ages and across the world that lays out a very straightforward (if circular) structure for most hero stories. Campbell calls this schema the Hero Journey. In it the hero (or heroine) is called from everyday life (4 Privet Dr.) to the Land of Adventure (Hogwarts), goes through a series of trials, and faces some great test before returning to his/her life, transformed by his/her journey. The thing is, the moment of that final test is often marked either by the hero's literal or symbolic death-psychologically speaking, s/he is sloughing off the old, pre-adventure self, and continuing on reborn.
Each of the HP books follows this pattern very closely, as does the series as a whole. And so as we were approaching the last book I knew that Harry would have to die-or appear to. I'd even shared that theory with my kids-which is a good thing, because when I was reading the chapter where Harry's marching to his death to my youngest, I thought she was going to explode. The only thing that kept her from vibrating off of the face of the planet was that she kept muttering to herself, "He's going to come back. He's going to come back."
And he did. :-)
Let's talk about “Back to the Garden”. For those who don't know, it is a 36 chapter (plus prologue and epilogue) Year 7 epic of Harry's defeat of Voldemort. Many ships are sailing, including H/G/L, and there is plenty of action, as well as reflection on the characters by other characters.
It's definitely the most ambitious thing I've ever written. 150,000 words? An alternate version? Huge action sequences? Lots of passion and character death?
Well, okay, the passion and the occasional character death I'd played with before. Still!
What made you decide to write it - knowing it would be AU after Book 7 came out?
When I started thinking about this plotline, nearly a year before DH arrived (before we even had a title), it sprang from two sources: a comment-fic that I wrote for
maegunnbatt in which Ron and Pansy have an uncomfortable post-coital conversation on the train back from Hogwarts after HBP, and a pair of fics inspired by reallycorking 's birthday present pictures for Harry and for Ginny (the pics are no longer easily accessible since they're both gleefully NWS).
As I started writing the fic, though, I discovered a third strand in a character whom I always love to write: Luna. The second chapter of the fic (the first in the R-rated version) took place inside of her head, which is always a fun place to be. Instead of having her mind be a random torrent-of-consciousness as I've done in the past, however, I had her constantly working out odd Aristotelian strings of deductive logic. Her struggle to reason out (in her own inimitable fashion) the question of the nature of love, and of her own relationship to it, became the driving force behind the story. It was great fun. Also, BttG was my very first successful attempt at writing a sweeping epic, and I'm very pleased with how it turned out. Though there are some readers who are still furious with me for my heartlessness towards a couple of the characters. Me and JKR both, I guess. ;-)
The fact of the matter was that there were a couple of themes that I wanted to play with-fidelity in the larger sense and Big-L-Love-that I was pretty sure that JKR wouldn't be bothering with-with the breakup with Ginny at the end of HBP, she'd let us know that the seventh book was NOT going to be a romance. And of course, as a YA author, she doesn' t get to indulge my fascination with the interrelationship between friendship, love and sex in all of its complexity. I was also fairly certain that she wouldn't be spending a lot of time looking on from the points of view of secondary characters. So I hijacked her people and themes and took them on a book-seven ride.
Any general thoughts on finishing it? What are you happiest with about the fic? Least happy with?
Aside from absolute glee at getting it finished a week and a half before DH hit the stands? :-D
I'm happiest with the way that some of the themes and symbols established by JKR-the phoenix, the complex relationship between life and death and good and evil-played out in the story. I loved spending time looking at the action of the Horcrux hunt and the fight against Voldemort through the eyes of some of the characters-Pansy, Luna, the Notts, various Weasleys, and many others-that she didn't need/get to explore. I think my years as a character actor make me fond of exploring the central action of the story from the side, as it were. And of course, I'm quite happy with the fact that the plot, which was the most complex I'd ever worked on, hung together as well as it did.
There are some stylistic games that I played with, some of which worked (shifting points of view) and some of which didn't work as well (shifting points of view in the middles of sentences!).
I think the things I'm most frustrated with are choices that I made towards the end of the story that I wished I'd been able to set up better a year earlier, when I started. There were some central bits that I thought I'd established quite well that, in retrospect, I wish I'd done a better job of anticipating and foreshadowing. Ah, the joys of publishing serially. ;-)
Did it change your reading of DH?
Not really-though there were a couple of moments where I did give very unmanly squeals, as I said before. There was a moment to do with a snake, for instance...
And when I'd gotten it totally wrong-the nature of the Deathly Hallows, for example-I was so wrapped up in the story that it didn't matter. To be honest, it was hard to think of much else while reading it. ;-)
I will say that it gave me a great deal of pleasure, having thought about this story, these characters and this world as much as we all have, and to find that I'd intuited so much on the one hand, and that she still had the ability to surprise me on the other.
You wrote a parallel piece - “The Wisest Course” - which has the same outcome (Harry defeats Voldemort) and many of the chapters are identical, but there are some important differences. The central relationship is H/G instead of H/G/L. It seems like it would be a logistical nightmare to keep up with parallel stories - was it?
The hardest part about The Wisest Course was deciding whether it was really the same story as Back to the Garden-just without some of the more racy bits-or not. I decided, in the end, that they really were different stories, and that the conclusions had to be different. Once I'd realized that, it wasn't terribly difficult, just a bit of a headache-making sure that the Ginny/Luna relationship in TWC didn't remain quite as intimate as it was in BttG, that sort of thing.
The one other major question that I struggled with was whether or not to have Ron and Pansy's relationship remain the same in TWC as in BttG. Once I decided that, yes, they were going to have had an affair, I'd already posted the first fifteen or so chapters of TWC on SIYE and Simply Undeniable and I realized that I needed to include an early chapter ("The Middle Way") that I'd left out originally. That was a bit embarrassing... but I don't think anyone minded much. ;-)
The only chapters that are totally different between the two versions are the last two. They overlap a bit, but they're essentially different stories, and that was a challenge-but a good one. Wanting to post the epilogue to TWC before DH came out was a real motivating factor. I'm really pleased with the way the two conclusions turned out-they're very distinct, but I'm proud of them both.
You have written two stories, a drabble, and something about Neville since DH. Do you have more plot bunnies circulating?
One or two! I have a WIP that I'm going to finish ( Dead Drop -NC-17... and the oddest H/G fic I'll ever write). There's an H/G fic that aberforths_rug and I started a while ago and both want to finish (when there's time) that's in the same series as Uncorked, Trick or Treat and Simplicity.
And Friends, one of the fics that I wrote just a couple of days after DH came out, has spawned a couple of interesting follow-up ideas. Ginny does need to finish giving Harry that birthday present, after all. ;-)
If you haven't read any of the stories at antoshevu, or haven't visited lately, then I recommend that you do. There is something there to delight any fan of H/G.
Like Polyjuice Potion as a plot device? Try Changes (PG-13) or True Moon (R). Note that Luna is in the latter story. Like time travel? You will probably like Ghost (PG-13). Interested in H/G/L but nothing too explicit? Try Sincere (PG) or Flaming Nargles (PG-13). Nothing to do for several hours but get swept up in a complex, captivating story that will take you on a very different but just as adventurous Horcrux hunt and make you believe that Ron/Pansy could actually happen? Here you go.
But you don't have to take my word for it. Without his knowledge, I asked several others to comment on
antosha_c's work, and here is what they said:
tunxeh: I'm always excited to see a new fic from Antosha. I know I can look forward to a well-written blend of action, romance, and most importantly, depth of characterization. His Harry always tries to do what's right, though it's not always easy to tell what the right thing is, his Ginny never wrings her hands from the sidelines; his Hermione will save the world from its prejudices, if she can only save her boys first, his Luna invariably makes me think, and his original characters have a habit of stealing the show. He writes very adult fiction, not in the sense of being sexed-up (though some of it is that too) but in the sense that everyone is responsible for consequences of their behavior. And though the consequences for the characters may be good or bad, the consequences for us as readers are uniformly good.
stmargarets: The first word I can think of to describe Antosha_c is "warm." While his stories may show all kinds of human frailty and foibles, there is an underlying sense that the author knows his characters - knows them and loves them warts and all. Others may say his stories are "hot" (*cheeky grin*), but it's his generous portrayal of his characters that I find most compelling. His stories have heart.
rhetoretician: Antosha is a master stylist. There is practically no genre in which he does not seem to be comfortable, and he moves between them - tragedy, comedy, romance, horror, erotica - almost as if he were walking among the rooms of his own house. He is also lavishly generous to other writers, giving advice, aid, praise, and comfort.
aberforths_rug: Opening my inbox to see anew story from Antosha always makes me happy. I feel so fortunate to get the first taste of his latest creations. I find his sense of character and his ability to tap into the bittersweet utterly captivating and inspiring. He writes with intelligence and emotional depth - two things I value greatly.
magnolia_mama: I have appreciated having someone who is so well-learned writing H/G. His knowledge and experience of theater has proven especially fruitful. I also like that he doesn't resort to extremes of depicting Ginny as either a chaste virgin or a whore. Sexually healthy Ginny FTQ, yo, ;-)