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spacefragments July 9 2008, 01:53:24 UTC
oh my god, the newspaper is all kinds of GENIUS. reincarnated as the daughter of her musical idols, i bet she'd be happy to know!

anyway, this was entirely lovely and such (even if i really really don't care for r/t, it was good closure). i don't think i ever commented on charon's train, but i loved that one too.

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bob_tales July 9 2008, 03:19:45 UTC
The newspaper was tremendous fun to write! Space Cadet is going to have an interesting life, to say the least.

Thanks for reading!

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rev02a July 9 2008, 02:34:32 UTC
OH I LOVE THE NEWSPAPER!!!!!!!!! And I love that... is that Remus's death being highlighted in the second article? I'm so proud; you've done a beautiful job.

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bob_tales July 9 2008, 03:26:37 UTC
Thank you for making it happen! That's two months of writer's block you rescued me from :)

The second article in the newspaper wasn't intended to be about Remus - it was auto-generated by the website I used to make the clipping. But hey, maybe the internet ships R/S, and made the text relevent!

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rev02a July 9 2008, 04:16:58 UTC
HEY! I had my freshmen students make multigenre projects on a book they read (instead of a book report) and... DUDE, we are so using this next semester.

YOU ROCK.

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iamshadow July 9 2008, 02:57:31 UTC
It's brilliant to see the 'other half' of this. I adored Charon's Train, and I love this, too.

Remus just being so exhausted, just wanting oblivion, rang very true to me. He had such a relentlessly miserable life, all things considered, and after that, who wouldn't want peace? He doesn't really trust the promised afterlife option, and who could blame him, when his earthly life was one bout of trials and suffering closely following another, like carriages on a train?

Sometimes a changing point of view can be a mistake, can leave things too disjointed, but I think in this case it's really good. It's important to know where each of them stands, and where each of them is emotionally, and getting inside their heads is the easiest and clearest way to show that.

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bob_tales July 9 2008, 03:46:25 UTC
Thanks for your detailed comments! I'm glad the alternating POV works for you. I was worried that it might be too disjointed.

It's funny, originally the entire story was supposed to be Sirius' POV. I got stuck when I realized I wanted to show Remus' emotional journey, and that wasn't easy to do entirely in Sirius' words. Padfoot was acting emotionally clueless, while Moony didn't want to talk at all. Silly pups, both of you.

So I crossed my fingers and wrote in dual POV. Maybe one day, when I'm as talented as Gene Wolfe (yeah, bob, keep dreaming), I'll retell this story strictly through digressing dialogue, ambiguous body language, an unreliable narrator, and vague allusions to an out of print novel from 19th century Peru. But that day is not this day, and for that everyone is grateful.

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iamshadow July 9 2008, 03:51:20 UTC
I'm hearing you on the unreliable narrator thing. I just read Lolita for the first time, and I'm still confused about exactly what happened, but all I can think is, "Bloody hell, that was well written. I could never get away with writing anything in that sort of style."

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myworldmytrue July 9 2008, 07:47:46 UTC
I do not know how I had missed Charon's Train before, but miss it I did. Thanks to this brilliant sequel, I got to read it now.

I love your take on Afterlife, and your broken Remus. For a minute there I was afraid he would actually choose Eternal Sleep and leave Sirius all alone. *GASP* Luckily, it was not so.

Being an ardent hater of all things Tonks, I was pleasantly surprised when I ended up genuinely liking your version of her. (Btw, the newspaper article: PURE GENIUS!) It's a shame that JKR decided to turn a promising, strong and independent character into a clingy, weak WOMAN. I just hate the idea that women need marriage and children to justify their existence.

Anyhow, a swell story, this. :)

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bobthemole July 9 2008, 18:26:43 UTC
I'm glad you liked both stories.

Tonks is certainly a tricky character. I found her amusing in HP5, but there was never an opportunity for her to really shine, and then she became a pale imitation of herself in books 6 and 7. Not only did that destroy her potential as a character, it brought up the question of why Remus married her. Because if she's awesome enough for our Remus, he must have seen something in her that we're not seeing.

To some extent this was an attempt to answer that. And also an attempt to get her out of the way so the puppies can spend the rest of eternity snogging each other without guilt ;)

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forest_rose July 9 2008, 10:41:08 UTC
You already know how much I love this - but I thought I'd tell you again! And the newspaper is a touch of inspired genius :-) xx

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bobthemole July 9 2008, 18:30:51 UTC
Thanks so much, dear. I wouldn't be getting as much written without your pep-talks :)

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