Comments | lydiabennet: Fic: World Enough and Time (H/D, PG-13, 2700 words)

lydiabennet

Fic: World Enough and Time (H/D, PG-13, 2700 words)

Nov 13, 2005 07:52

Title: World enough and time
Author: lydiabennet
Pairing/rating: H/D with others mentioned; PG-13
Summary: Harry has a job to do, but wants more. Angsty.
Notes: Inspired by jamie2109 and nocturnali's AWDT challenge ( Read more... )

hp fics

Comments 39

lapin_agile November 13 2005, 14:43:22 UTC

I like this very much. It is formal and restrained -- not least in its refusal to provide the romantic fulfillment it baits us with, nor even to offer a shred of hope at the end, though it hints at hope before yanking it away.

I was as hopeless caught as Harry in that summer scene, and the beauty of it is your restraint. You are quite as deliberately baiting your hook for your reader as Malfoy is presenting himself as bait to catch Harry, but you never overplay your hand. You never quite admit what you are up to:

Malfoy sprawled there, oblivious, reading one page of the letter and fanning himself with the other, his robes wide open at the neck and one leg dangling carelessly to rest on the floor. Light poured into the room, the summer light of hot dawns and endless days. It streaked Malfoy in shadow and burning gold . . . It crept along his body to nestle at the base of his throat and heat the exposed skin, making him sweat, making him flush warm and red and wet ( ... )

lydiabennet November 13 2005, 17:52:55 UTC

[Sorry if you've recieved this more than once; LJ is giving me grief.]

Wow! Thank you for this wonderful and detailed feedback.

Sorry about the no hope business, but one of the reasons, I suppose, why wartime romances are so urgent is that they are haunted by the very real possibility of loss, loss that can happen at any time. I wanted to take that possibility seriously here.

You pull it off because you stay inside Harry's pov and Harry thinks the light is playing on Malfoy, heating him and showing him off to Harry, when, of course, it is Malfoy who is using the light to best advantage.Ooooh, I'm so glad this came through for you! Yes, I think Draco is very aware of what he looks like; he may or may not be vain (Harry doesn't know him well enough here to be privy to that), but surely any Slytherin worth his salt would be ready to use the tools that came to hand, so to speak. And I'm very glad this came through without being said; over-explanation is my cardinal sin as a fiction writer and I'm desperately trying to squiggle ( ... )

romath November 14 2005, 02:22:15 UTC

Most impressive, most impressive indeed. I liked the rhythm and flow of this, particularly.

lydiabennet November 14 2005, 03:30:28 UTC

Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed it. :)

geoviki November 14 2005, 05:36:02 UTC

That was gorgeously written. Full of atmosphere, plus I adored the plot, simple as it was. Glad you dropped by and friended me so I could come here and find this gem.

lydiabennet November 14 2005, 07:10:48 UTC

Thank you so much! I'm so glad you enjoyed the fic, and that you liked the plot: my personal writing project for the year is to show plots rather than explain them, something I find very difficult to do.

And ack, that icon *stares* It doesn't say Draco but he sure looks like the Draco in my head.

geoviki November 16 2005, 05:32:21 UTC

Yes, I use this American model, Boyd Holbrook, all the time for my Draco. You can see my oodles of icons with him, right this way!

geoviki November 16 2005, 05:33:56 UTC

That last post was supposed to be tucked under your comment to my comment. It escaped.

lydiabennet November 18 2005, 13:40:18 UTC

Thanks for reminding me about that young god man; Tom Felton is improving dramatically with each passing year, but Boyd Holbrook has that look of slightly damaged decadence that makes him a good star for inner slash movies. *stares at him*

crankyspank November 17 2005, 19:46:49 UTC

Oh dear God. This story was beautiful. You made me speechless, which is nearly impossible to do.

What I love so much about this story is that the details you use provide the story with a kind of internal warmth that just adds so much to each character's pull: Something teased at Harry's hair, and he shook his head to free it. Neville laughed. "Leaves," Neville said. "Just leaves. You look like you have flowers in your hair."Your kind of writing--understated, yet clear--is exactly what I look for in fandom. You do something that I think must be very hard to do: you take characters we already know, and you provide an otherness for them. Not an otherness of plot, though there are obviously elements of that, but an otherness of their characters, an otherness of their awareness of themselves. Tough J.K. Rowling's intended audience has aged, her characters are still for children. You've taken the characters and... reinterpreted them for adults. Just beautiful ( ... )

lydiabennet November 18 2005, 14:04:01 UTC

Thank you so much for this lovely feedback. (You seem far from speechless to me!)

I'm glad you liked the details; for me that's the biggest struggle in writing fiction. I write a lot more non-fiction than fiction, and to a depressing extent the first is NOT good preparation for the second; it's too abstract where fiction has to be concrete. I always find myself having to sit on my hands to stop myself from explaining what happened and analysing its causes, as opposed to showing what was going on and then, one hopes, just shutting up about it.

As for the characters, I'm delighted that you liked my interpretations of them, which are inspired both by Rowling (of course) and by the extraordinarily high quality of fanfic available about them. J.K. Rowling is undertaking the enormously difficult task of writing about children growing up in wartime without making the later books in the series unsuitable for her core child audience (and their anxious parents). That's a fantastically difficult proposition; in the later books ( ... )