Have to believe...
I had started re-reading Deathly Hallows almost immediately after I'd finished it. (having first read the "carpet book") Then about halfway through, I started skimming, and I decided that I wanted to re-read the entire series. I want to watch it all evolve again, and keep an eye out for clues and details.
So I'm reading Sorcerer's Stone, and I came across this:
"There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really door at all, but solid walls just pretending." [HP&tSS, US paperback, pp 131-2]
A hundred and forty-two staircases! Magical staircases! Strange magical doors! I stopped reading the other night after that, just sitting and contemplating Hogwarts and the magical world in general. Thinking about all of the fic I've contemplated but never written, most of it MWPP era involving, well, MWPP - as if that would come as a shock to anyone reading my journal. *g* Thinking about Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs exploring a hundred and forty-two different staircases. And I've also been thinking about fanfic I've read (and written myself), and how, despite how much I love so many of them, so few fics actually take advantage of the magical qualities of the HP universe.
I've been trying to write the past two days,(hell, the last two weeks!) but I've been so distracted that I can't get any of the ideas in my head to transfer to the page/screen. This non-writerly state of mine will pass - it always does - but in the meantime, I can't stop myself from going back to thinking about a hundred and forty-two staircases, about Hogwarts, "perched atop a high mountain on the other side" of the lake, about how I brushed off Ollivander stating outright how "the wand chooses the wizard" in the same way Harry did at age eleven, about the wild ride in the Gringott's cart deep into the bowels of the earth below London (with stalagmites and stalactites!) and all of the other tiny details I'd forgotten.
I think we tend to get caught up in the characters and their relationships, which of course is natural - it's the characters that usually draw us into the world in the first place. But I think we forget these details, the magic and the wonder, and how the setting itself affects and influences those characters and their relationships. Porn is good, porn is great, but where is the magic? (and I don't mean the dreaded "lubricus" and cleaning spells for after! :-P)
Or maybe it's just me. But damn, a hundred and forty-two staircases! I wonder if any of them lead to Narnia.
ETA: Dammit! Now I'm totally bunnied and plotting/half-writing a Narnia/HP MWPP crossover fic! *headdesk* Where's Rita's Quick Quotes Quill when I need it???
So I'm reading Sorcerer's Stone, and I came across this:
"There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really door at all, but solid walls just pretending." [HP&tSS, US paperback, pp 131-2]
A hundred and forty-two staircases! Magical staircases! Strange magical doors! I stopped reading the other night after that, just sitting and contemplating Hogwarts and the magical world in general. Thinking about all of the fic I've contemplated but never written, most of it MWPP era involving, well, MWPP - as if that would come as a shock to anyone reading my journal. *g* Thinking about Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs exploring a hundred and forty-two different staircases. And I've also been thinking about fanfic I've read (and written myself), and how, despite how much I love so many of them, so few fics actually take advantage of the magical qualities of the HP universe.
I've been trying to write the past two days,(hell, the last two weeks!) but I've been so distracted that I can't get any of the ideas in my head to transfer to the page/screen. This non-writerly state of mine will pass - it always does - but in the meantime, I can't stop myself from going back to thinking about a hundred and forty-two staircases, about Hogwarts, "perched atop a high mountain on the other side" of the lake, about how I brushed off Ollivander stating outright how "the wand chooses the wizard" in the same way Harry did at age eleven, about the wild ride in the Gringott's cart deep into the bowels of the earth below London (with stalagmites and stalactites!) and all of the other tiny details I'd forgotten.
I think we tend to get caught up in the characters and their relationships, which of course is natural - it's the characters that usually draw us into the world in the first place. But I think we forget these details, the magic and the wonder, and how the setting itself affects and influences those characters and their relationships. Porn is good, porn is great, but where is the magic? (and I don't mean the dreaded "lubricus" and cleaning spells for after! :-P)
Or maybe it's just me. But damn, a hundred and forty-two staircases! I wonder if any of them lead to Narnia.
ETA: Dammit! Now I'm totally bunnied and plotting/half-writing a Narnia/HP MWPP crossover fic! *headdesk* Where's Rita's Quick Quotes Quill when I need it???