October post
This month's prompt comes from in_the_blue:
Since you brought up Viktor & Durmstrang, why don't you do a post on why they grab your imagination the way they do?
OK! :D
I first started writing Viktor Krum during those "characters visit the forums" days on the Sugar Quill. At first, it was really just because it was hilarious writing his Bulgarian accent - for some reason, I imagined him as sounding like Rainier Wolfcastle from The Simpsons :-p However, when I spent more time in Viktor's head I started imagining him as a serious student-athlete, maybe with not a whole lot of friends - not at all Mr. Congeniality or a stereotypical meathead jock. (My college basketball fandom might have had a hand in forming this mental image!) He certainly didn't seem very sociable in canon, and the fact that he was selected for the Tri-Wizard Tournament had to imply that there was more to him than his Quidditch skills.
I always meant to do a Viktor fic and even started one with him and Ron in a Rush Hour-type story, but all my writing plans for him took a back seat when I read his part in DH. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned somewhere online that I'm a real sucker for feelgood movies, and his story about banding together with other students whose families had known loss at the hands of Grindelwald had "feelgood" written all over it - despite the ominous knuckle-cracking in canon!
So that's what got me thinking about Durmstrang. I don't think I have everything down pat yet, but it's fun to imagine a wizarding school with a setup different from Hogwarts. For instance, I'm not sure if Durmstrang would have Houses, but since the student population is likely to be pretty big there would probably be a section system in place to keep track of all the kids. And the diversity! Durmstrang is supposed to be in Scandinavia... but it has a Germanic name... and Viktor and the school's founder are both from Bulgaria... and that guy Poliakoff might be from yet another country (I made him Polish). It's also been fun picking names - for teachers as well as students - that would strike the balances 1) between girls and boys, and 2) among the areas of continental Europe supposedly served by the school.
Besides that, what's a feelgood movie without some kind of competition/sport or Big Game at the center of it? And who can write about Viktor Krum without featuring Quidditch? Again, college basketball is coming in handy here - besides being able to visualize certain aspects of Quidditch, I also understand a bit about team building/recruitment; and of course I don't run out of inspiration for players.
However, I think I'm more interested in the Grindelwald era than in Durmstrang. Besides the fact that I'm a bit of a history buff, my imaginings of the period hit rather close to home: although JKR was quite explicit about the parallel between Grindelwald (and Voldemort) and Hitler, Grindelwald also reminds me somewhat of Ferdinand Marcos. Marcos went to great lengths to suppress any opposition to his regime, including imprisonment, torture, and execution. Many of the people he arrested were never seen again, and to this day, their families never knew what happened to them. It's possible that something similar happened to Viktor's grandfather, although in his case his family might have known for sure that he had died while in Nurmengard.
(On that note, some related reading: I wrote a short fic about a family of brothers and their experiences during Grindelwald's time. I'm still thinking about whether or not to post it on AO3 and/or ff.net, so it's just on my writing LJ for now.)
Grindelwald also got me thinking more about Viktor and his family. I've got a timeline mapped out (in a spreadsheet, as usual - for one thing, it's great for matching ages and calendar years), and some names. The Krum family names its sons after Bulgarian kings, or uses Russian-sounding first names. The family of Viktor's ladylove-to-be names their descendants in a certain way, too :)
I will eventually write about Viktor finding true love, but thanks to this I'll be building that story on a much firmer foundation.
Thanks for asking! :D
Since you brought up Viktor & Durmstrang, why don't you do a post on why they grab your imagination the way they do?
OK! :D
I first started writing Viktor Krum during those "characters visit the forums" days on the Sugar Quill. At first, it was really just because it was hilarious writing his Bulgarian accent - for some reason, I imagined him as sounding like Rainier Wolfcastle from The Simpsons :-p However, when I spent more time in Viktor's head I started imagining him as a serious student-athlete, maybe with not a whole lot of friends - not at all Mr. Congeniality or a stereotypical meathead jock. (My college basketball fandom might have had a hand in forming this mental image!) He certainly didn't seem very sociable in canon, and the fact that he was selected for the Tri-Wizard Tournament had to imply that there was more to him than his Quidditch skills.
I always meant to do a Viktor fic and even started one with him and Ron in a Rush Hour-type story, but all my writing plans for him took a back seat when I read his part in DH. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned somewhere online that I'm a real sucker for feelgood movies, and his story about banding together with other students whose families had known loss at the hands of Grindelwald had "feelgood" written all over it - despite the ominous knuckle-cracking in canon!
So that's what got me thinking about Durmstrang. I don't think I have everything down pat yet, but it's fun to imagine a wizarding school with a setup different from Hogwarts. For instance, I'm not sure if Durmstrang would have Houses, but since the student population is likely to be pretty big there would probably be a section system in place to keep track of all the kids. And the diversity! Durmstrang is supposed to be in Scandinavia... but it has a Germanic name... and Viktor and the school's founder are both from Bulgaria... and that guy Poliakoff might be from yet another country (I made him Polish). It's also been fun picking names - for teachers as well as students - that would strike the balances 1) between girls and boys, and 2) among the areas of continental Europe supposedly served by the school.
Besides that, what's a feelgood movie without some kind of competition/sport or Big Game at the center of it? And who can write about Viktor Krum without featuring Quidditch? Again, college basketball is coming in handy here - besides being able to visualize certain aspects of Quidditch, I also understand a bit about team building/recruitment; and of course I don't run out of inspiration for players.
However, I think I'm more interested in the Grindelwald era than in Durmstrang. Besides the fact that I'm a bit of a history buff, my imaginings of the period hit rather close to home: although JKR was quite explicit about the parallel between Grindelwald (and Voldemort) and Hitler, Grindelwald also reminds me somewhat of Ferdinand Marcos. Marcos went to great lengths to suppress any opposition to his regime, including imprisonment, torture, and execution. Many of the people he arrested were never seen again, and to this day, their families never knew what happened to them. It's possible that something similar happened to Viktor's grandfather, although in his case his family might have known for sure that he had died while in Nurmengard.
(On that note, some related reading: I wrote a short fic about a family of brothers and their experiences during Grindelwald's time. I'm still thinking about whether or not to post it on AO3 and/or ff.net, so it's just on my writing LJ for now.)
Grindelwald also got me thinking more about Viktor and his family. I've got a timeline mapped out (in a spreadsheet, as usual - for one thing, it's great for matching ages and calendar years), and some names. The Krum family names its sons after Bulgarian kings, or uses Russian-sounding first names. The family of Viktor's ladylove-to-be names their descendants in a certain way, too :)
I will eventually write about Viktor finding true love, but thanks to this I'll be building that story on a much firmer foundation.
Thanks for asking! :D