[Fic] "An Ounce of Prevention" chapter 5 -- Naruto/Harry Potter; David Brin's Uplift Saga

[edenfalling]

This is part 5 of An Ounce of Prevention, which is a Naruto/Harry Potter crossover that I started as a giftfic for askerian.

Technically, it's an insertion of one element of HP into the Naruto world, but that does count as a crossover of sorts, and the HP element will be playing a larger role as time goes on. This story will not affect canon in either

Comments

[proanon]

...hee. Anko is a fun character - despite her overall absence in the manga. I guess she made a splash when she did show up, however, because she's certainly memorable!

Again, I find this whole story-line brilliant. Setting aside the novelty of placing the crossover in the Naruto setting, for once, and the unusual character being crossed... this story is a wonderful reminder that these are ninja, with all the paranoia and deviousness that implies, and not simple schoolchildren - or even adults, used to a fairly laid-back modern lifestyle.

[edenfalling]

Anko is fun to write. :-) Anko also brings along plot-relevant baggage, so I'm glad she won the poll to be Sakura's main guard/mission partner.

There's nothing wrong with the "various Naruto characters go to Hogwarts as guards" plotline -- there is a reason it seems to be the default crossover story -- but I'm kind of burning out on HP fandom, so it's more interesting for me to drop HP elements into the Naruto world rather than the other way around. Besides, this method lets me play around with some vague theories about summoning and Apparition and interdimensional space, which is always fun. *evil grin*

[proanon]

*laughs* I agree - the whole "characters of X series go to Hogwarts for Y reason" plotline can certainly be done well. (And horrifically, of course, but that's the case for any genre.) But it is rather a default. Having the Harry Potter characters be the ones crossing over to a new setting is much more uncommon.

And playing with vague theories of How Things Work is fun. *grins back at you, equally evilly*

[hoshi_ryo]

The chapter's good but...feels short.

re: plot holes in Uplift -- yea, sounds like a good reason not to pick them up. The Dark Side of the Sun by Terry Pratchett is a better pick -- and I find myself wondering if you've read H. Beam Piper's Fuzzies Trilogy... (Stick to his; one of the other-written novels, which in contra-canon to the once-lost third, is bad. Donno about the others, never found any. Have looked.)

[edenfalling]

Unfortunately, all chapters of "An Ounce of Prevention" will be short. This is because I have a weird obsession about keeping intra-story chapters lengths roughly the same, give or take 10-15 percent of the average chapter length. This means that chapters of "An Ounce of Prevention" will stay between 500 and 900 words.

Other stories have longer chapters. "Lemonade," for instance, averages about 2,100 words per chapter; "Guardian" averages 3,900-4,200 words; and "Secrets" averages 9,000-10,000 words. It all depends on the length I start out with.

I know short chapters can be irritating -- believe me, I know! -- but my annoyance at short chapters is vastly outweighed by my potential twitchiness if I threw my averages out the window and lengthened the scenes.

(I'm not really obsessive-compulsive. I just look like I am. *grin*)

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Re: Uplift -- Oh, the holes are quite minor, all things considered, and the books drew me in pretty completely despite my quibbles. The quibbles only keep me from recommending the books

[hoshi_ryo]

Ahhh. Though, really, it's more of the 'feel' than anything else. (Don't ask me how to explain it, 'cause I'm not sure how.)

---

Oh, yes, particularly since the holes sound like they might be closed later on -- the sort of thing which one might leave for an anthology or the like. (Since it focuses on the human race, there just might not have been the right place to go into detail about how the first sentient race started out.)

::laughs:: I'm hoping to make it to a particular SF/F con this year to get his autograph. (Not giving details, as it would sorta peg where I live.) But H. Beam Piper's well worth reading -- he's one of those forgotten authors who wrote lots of high-quality SF which, aside from scientific progress, holds up well. (Unlike Doc Smith, who's a product of his era.)

...if you want more recs, poke me at my LJ and remind me that I really ought to post that sort of thing every so often in the name of doing something useful with my addiction to the written word.

re: Uplift saga

[purple_alicorn]

Admitadly it is a while sionce I have read his books - but I think that Brin recognised this and wrote a second trilogy/a further three books in the Uplift saga (depeding on how you look at it) called Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore and Heaven's Reach which DO address the whole "humanity has no sponosor" area.

Re: Uplift saga

[edenfalling]

I should probably read those, then...

[valles_uf]

Nobody in the books EVER makes that damn point. EVER. It is enough to drive me INSANE. (Okay, there's a vague implication at one point that there are religious cults based around the semi-mythical Progenitors -- that first race -- so it would perhaps be very impolitic to compare humans to them, but that difficulty should either be explicitly addressed, or somebody should, you know, point out to the aliens that they don't seem all that intelligent if they can't make a simple logical comparison.)

Yeah, I can see how that'd bother you... but it does get addressed, though I forget whether in Sundiver (a prequel book, set a few decades before Streaker's launch) or in the Jijo trilogy (Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore, and Heaven's Reach, IIRC, in that order, which ultimately bring the last survivors of the crew home), if only obliquely

[edenfalling]

I think what irritates me about the psychic stuff is less its simple inclusion (I get the "why not throw in the kitchen sink!" attitude -- it definitely adds to the sense of fun and potential in the books) than the effective equation of such debunked pseudo-science to more solid matters such as genetic engineering, geology, and neural interface technology. Because both are treated with the same reality and lack of overall explanation, they come off seeming equal. And that bugs the hell out of me.

[not_croaker]

debunked pseudo-science

Mm. I dunno. We never, as I recall, actually see it displayed in humans, after all. Only in a few alien species of completely different biology than us.

It's been several years since I read the books, though, so I may be wrong. Still... I don't understand why it disturbs you so much.

[edenfalling]

We never, as I recall, actually see it displayed in humans, after all.

Gillian Baskin and Tom Orley have a psychic link, which is made much of in Startide Rising. Robert Oneagle learns a form of empathic communication from Athaclena in The Uplift War.

It's not that I have a problem with telepathy and whatnot per se. I write telepathy on occasion, in more mystical/magical/astral voodoo type settings. My problem arises when psychic stuff is treated as though it's scientific. Even if we're dealing with aliens, we never really see a mechanism -- Tymbrimi coronals strands aside -- and even the Tymbrimi biology is more a Mcguffin than a proper explanation. Besides which, thoughts are processes, not artefacts, and I rather doubt that transfering a pattern of electrochemical reactions from my brain to yours would produce anything but gibberish, because we don't have the same memories laid out in the same structure and relational strength.

I also tend to have more of a problem with any predictive psychic powers -- like precognition or

[iponly]

Locked Room Problems epilogue? I do remember some mention of... eheheh.

And I remember saying I'd do a Sir Vladislav giftart for Secrets, what, over a year ago? Sorry it took so long! [click the link] You want me to put it somewhere in particular?

[edenfalling]

EEEEEE!!!! Sir Vladislav! *loves on*

I must go post a link ASAP!