Snaco Exchange reveals are up!
Yay!
First of all I have to thank my darling ships_harry for my awesome gift, Tontine. I feel such a wally for not realising it was you! But I knew that Deskbound was yours, and it somehow never occurred to me that you might have done more than one. Let alone three, you machine! *glomps all over you*
The fic I wrote was El Tango de las Serpientes for chantefable. Before I say anything else I want to thank kittiword, taldragon, lmeden, and all the hd2o Word War gang for getting me through that sucker. My early estimate was that it would be about 7000 words, it ended up at 18000. I am relatively new to this writing lark and this story pushed a lot of boundaries for me, so thank you so much to all the people who helped and encouraged me along the way!
And now I am going to talk about it a lot, but I'm going to cut, because I care.
Part of what made this a bit intimidating was that I had cheated a bit on my only previous fest fic, and used someone else's basic plot. I changed it around quite a lot, but it was still recognisably Children of Earth, and I just had to follow the existing pacing and so on. This time I was on my own, with an idea of the way the relationship between Draco and Severus would develop, and Severus' post-DH backstory, and that was it. Oh, the panic and flailing!
Things that I wanted to put in, but which didn't make it, due to constraints of time or story:
Because I stalker-pinned the post, I got an email notification of a comment from someone who had some questions. They then deleted the comment, which actually made me kind of sad, because they were good questions. I won't say who it was, but I'm going to address the questions anyway.
I don't know if Catalan separatists were the best choice of a villain. Although there is separatism, Catalunya's economic/financial position means there are much lower tendencies for armed/violent separatist movements. It would have been more realistic with Basque separatists (speaking Euskera, obv.), who have more of a history of using armed/terroristic tactics (like the ETA).
This is kind of two-fold. The key point here about the ETA is absolutely correct, in terms of real life politics. Although I didn't want to belabour the point, a lot of this story was about how some things were not the same as other things. Um, that's not very coherent. What I mean is, this is not the Muggle world, it's the Wizarding World. And in the same way as the Wizarding politics in the Harry Potter books do not reflect the political reality of Britain at the time, neither does this story reflect the political reality of Spain today. Although, this story is set about 10 years from now, so who knows what the political reality will be then? In the same way, the house elves on their lunch date reflect that Spain is not the same as England, and the entire story is about how, for Draco and Severus, Now is not the same as Then.
The second point is that although I wanted something a little realistic, I didn't want to just have Wizard ETA, or Wizard Al-Qaeda, or what have you. And I actually can't explain to you exactly why but it really didn't sit right, so I went for something plausible but original. And, just to throw some political thought of my own in there, Catalunya does indeed have a fortunate economic situation - it's one of the most financially stable areas of Spain, and as such a lot of its wealth is actually redistributed into a lot of the poorer territories, such as Andalusia. To me that would make independence from Spain a far more feasible prospect than, say, for Scotland to be independent of England. I know most Scots want it but the area is, as I understand it, largely supported by British tax money.
Plus, any self-respecting Catalan nationalist, or even just any Catalan among Catalans, would likely speak Catalan, not Spanish (so Senyora?).
It's a fair cop! I'm annoyed with myself, because I already knew full well that Catalunya has its own language, which is used up into the south-west of France because some of that area was also once part of Catalunya. I just somehow failed to take the next step along the logic path and have the Catalunyans use it. *facepalm*
Also, why Catalans in Cordoba?
Primarily because Eduardo was their best bet for getting this potion created. (As far as they knew - Snape was keeping his head down.) That wasn't really made clear enough in the story, and with hindsight I would have made it a lot clearer and also used a much more personal form of leverage than, 'Do what we want or we hurt your family'. Eduardo actually started out as a nameless extra, but ended up being a key character. The problem with this was that I hadn't really given him enough forethought to make sure his backstory was solid. And by then I was past the deadline, and up against the drop-dead-line, so it wasn't something that I picked up until this was asked.
Thank you for your patience while I endlessly dissected my fic! Here is the link to the story itself.
Title: El Tango de las Serpientes
Recipient Chantefable
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Draco/Severus, past Draco/Asteria
Warnings: * One potentially disturbing death, a moderate amount of swearing, and a bit of violence *
Story Notes: * Epilogue compliant*
Word Count: 18,000
Summary: Twenty years after the events of the Voldemort’s Second Uprising, Draco Malfoy has spent his entire adult life trying to make up for the mistakes of his past and mourning what he lost. He could never have expected what he finds when he is sent to Spain to investigate a wild tale of conspiracy against Wizarding Britain.
Author Notes: A million thanks to kittiword, taldragon, and lmeden for the beta and hand holding over this fic. Thanks also to our saintly mod, nishizono
chantefable, I hope this is sufficiently intriguing and suspenseful for you!
El Tango de las Serpientes
First of all I have to thank my darling ships_harry for my awesome gift, Tontine. I feel such a wally for not realising it was you! But I knew that Deskbound was yours, and it somehow never occurred to me that you might have done more than one. Let alone three, you machine! *glomps all over you*
The fic I wrote was El Tango de las Serpientes for chantefable. Before I say anything else I want to thank kittiword, taldragon, lmeden, and all the hd2o Word War gang for getting me through that sucker. My early estimate was that it would be about 7000 words, it ended up at 18000. I am relatively new to this writing lark and this story pushed a lot of boundaries for me, so thank you so much to all the people who helped and encouraged me along the way!
And now I am going to talk about it a lot, but I'm going to cut, because I care.
Part of what made this a bit intimidating was that I had cheated a bit on my only previous fest fic, and used someone else's basic plot. I changed it around quite a lot, but it was still recognisably Children of Earth, and I just had to follow the existing pacing and so on. This time I was on my own, with an idea of the way the relationship between Draco and Severus would develop, and Severus' post-DH backstory, and that was it. Oh, the panic and flailing!
Things that I wanted to put in, but which didn't make it, due to constraints of time or story:
- Flamenco - When I started, I wanted this to play a much bigger part in the story, and I'm actually really sad that it ended up being such a throwaway thing.
- Chase through the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos (Castle of Christian Monarchs) - You know how sometimes the things you love the most are the things that need to be cut? One of the earliest scenes I had in my head was a chase scene through this palace, with its beautiful gardens and dark past. In the end I couldn't make it fit. I could see no good reason for them to go there, and there was no way it could be the site of the Sanctuary. So it had to go, but image of a magical fire fight through the carefully sculpted gardens and the peaceful water feature was glorious, I tell you.
- The second sex scene - I am so gutted that I ran out of time for this. I may yet write it, just because. The first sex scene was a step in their relationship, a step that was in some ways back towards their previous dynamic, and in others a step forward from it, like a semi-circle looping back to the line of its diameter - on the same line but at a different point. And the scene was going to reveal- well. Actually, I'm not going to tell you because I may yet write that scene and there's no fun if I've already spilled the surprise. Suffice it to say that something would become clear to Draco that would cause another shift in their relationship and, theoretically at least, further balance the dynamic between them. Through the medium of smut.
- Flying!Snape. No, don't look at me like that, it's totally canon! Voldemort taught Snape how to fly because JKR was apparently on the good drugs. I got caught in a muddle over getting Snape down through the ceiling, given that they couldn't fly in, andI didn't want to expose him in case there was someone on guard. (There wasn't, but they didn't know that. Look, it made sense in my head, OK!) Anyway, maelipstick reminded me that Snape could fly, and I thought it was all sorted until I followed the story thread back and realised that if he could fly down, he could have flown up. Except that I had already established the presence of anti-flying wards around the building. Sodding causality. Thankfully, and not for the first time, ships_harry saved my sanity by the simple expedient of being herself, and I realised I was overthinking the whole thing massively and should really just get the hell on with it. So Snape got lowered somewhat inelegantly down on a rope. But for a while there he was going to fly like a bat.
Because I stalker-pinned the post, I got an email notification of a comment from someone who had some questions. They then deleted the comment, which actually made me kind of sad, because they were good questions. I won't say who it was, but I'm going to address the questions anyway.
I don't know if Catalan separatists were the best choice of a villain. Although there is separatism, Catalunya's economic/financial position means there are much lower tendencies for armed/violent separatist movements. It would have been more realistic with Basque separatists (speaking Euskera, obv.), who have more of a history of using armed/terroristic tactics (like the ETA).
This is kind of two-fold. The key point here about the ETA is absolutely correct, in terms of real life politics. Although I didn't want to belabour the point, a lot of this story was about how some things were not the same as other things. Um, that's not very coherent. What I mean is, this is not the Muggle world, it's the Wizarding World. And in the same way as the Wizarding politics in the Harry Potter books do not reflect the political reality of Britain at the time, neither does this story reflect the political reality of Spain today. Although, this story is set about 10 years from now, so who knows what the political reality will be then? In the same way, the house elves on their lunch date reflect that Spain is not the same as England, and the entire story is about how, for Draco and Severus, Now is not the same as Then.
The second point is that although I wanted something a little realistic, I didn't want to just have Wizard ETA, or Wizard Al-Qaeda, or what have you. And I actually can't explain to you exactly why but it really didn't sit right, so I went for something plausible but original. And, just to throw some political thought of my own in there, Catalunya does indeed have a fortunate economic situation - it's one of the most financially stable areas of Spain, and as such a lot of its wealth is actually redistributed into a lot of the poorer territories, such as Andalusia. To me that would make independence from Spain a far more feasible prospect than, say, for Scotland to be independent of England. I know most Scots want it but the area is, as I understand it, largely supported by British tax money.
Plus, any self-respecting Catalan nationalist, or even just any Catalan among Catalans, would likely speak Catalan, not Spanish (so Senyora?).
It's a fair cop! I'm annoyed with myself, because I already knew full well that Catalunya has its own language, which is used up into the south-west of France because some of that area was also once part of Catalunya. I just somehow failed to take the next step along the logic path and have the Catalunyans use it. *facepalm*
Also, why Catalans in Cordoba?
Primarily because Eduardo was their best bet for getting this potion created. (As far as they knew - Snape was keeping his head down.) That wasn't really made clear enough in the story, and with hindsight I would have made it a lot clearer and also used a much more personal form of leverage than, 'Do what we want or we hurt your family'. Eduardo actually started out as a nameless extra, but ended up being a key character. The problem with this was that I hadn't really given him enough forethought to make sure his backstory was solid. And by then I was past the deadline, and up against the drop-dead-line, so it wasn't something that I picked up until this was asked.
Thank you for your patience while I endlessly dissected my fic! Here is the link to the story itself.
Title: El Tango de las Serpientes
Recipient Chantefable
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Draco/Severus, past Draco/Asteria
Warnings: * One potentially disturbing death, a moderate amount of swearing, and a bit of violence *
Story Notes: * Epilogue compliant*
Word Count: 18,000
Summary: Twenty years after the events of the Voldemort’s Second Uprising, Draco Malfoy has spent his entire adult life trying to make up for the mistakes of his past and mourning what he lost. He could never have expected what he finds when he is sent to Spain to investigate a wild tale of conspiracy against Wizarding Britain.
Author Notes: A million thanks to kittiword, taldragon, and lmeden for the beta and hand holding over this fic. Thanks also to our saintly mod, nishizono
chantefable, I hope this is sufficiently intriguing and suspenseful for you!
El Tango de las Serpientes