Comments | fpb: ANASTASIO ATTANASIO ALIAS RICKY IN “TELL ME A STORY!” by F.P.Barbieri

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ANASTASIO ATTANASIO ALIAS RICKY IN “TELL ME A STORY!” by F.P.Barbieri

Sep 09, 2009 17:07

(NOTE to inverarity68 and anyone else who is interested: while the first story was only a sort of ouverture, here the world-building begins in earnest. Concrit welcome.)
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anastasio attanasio, ricky attanasio, ricky, fan fiction, fanfic

Comments 3

inverarity September 10 2009, 00:15:51 UTC

I like what you are doing with the Italian wizarding world. Obviously there are cultural references that non-Italians won't get, but it's clear that you are drawing on authentic knowledge of Italy's diverse history and regions, so that makes it cool, and very different from the British Ministry.

I'm a little skeptical, though, about one rural village being able to smack down an international delegation like that, and then humble their Ministries in their home countries. Unless it's going to be sort of an in-joke in your world that these Pancratian weather wizards are among the most powerful wizards in the world, but no one realizes it because all they do is conjure rain for the local farmers, it seemed a little too trite. Arrogant foreigners show up, blustering and threatening, and get sent home with their tails between their legs -- it's a nice story, but makes the entire international wizarding world seem pretty inept, and the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy a joke. (Once the delegation gets home, would the rest of the ( ... )

This may take a while... fpb September 10 2009, 22:32:40 UTC

First and foremost, thanks for the attentive and thorough review. I said it before and I'll say it again: the attention of an intelligent reader is a great compliment to any writer. The attention of an intelligent reader who also happens to be a great writer, now -!

Right, then. The premise you find dubious - that the little rural community of Capo Pancrazio ranks among the mightiest wizards in the world - is exactly what I intended. The very name (pan-kration, "all-force") ought to be a warning. It is one example of the immense difficulty that the Italian Ministry has faced since 1860, and to which, before Alberico Attanasio, it had more or less yielded. The Italian wizarding communities are not only numerous and scattered; a few of them are themselves gigantically powerful. (This does not represent any allegory or symbol about real-life Italy; it is a piece of "secondary creation" in the Tolkien sense, producing a world with its own internal consistency. If there was an Italy with the features I have thought up, then a few ( ... )

continued fpb September 10 2009, 22:33:03 UTC

You have a point that the ending is both dry and insufficiently concerned with the nominal protagonist. I will try to do better in stories to come, but I am pretty much making it up as I go along. My problem is that I am trying to do something that has no real model. While I have drawn the basic categories from JKR's mythology, I could not, as you did, place a central institution such as a school at the centre, with the certainty that the adult leadership - whether Dumbledore or Diana Grimm, Raspire or Scrimgeour - knew most of the answers. The whole series of stories is a struggle towards a half-seen, half-unknown centre; either that centre does not exist and must be built, or if it does (I cannot say more) it must be found. So the whole element of world-building can neither be delegated to a Hermione character reading one or more versions of Hogwarts: A History nor be forced bit by bit out of a more or less unwilling set of adults. The adults are nearly as blind as Ricky. Even his father, the Minister, is not quite sure ( ... )