An interview, yes, that meme...

[laliandra]

The lovely  vegablack62provided me with some (cool but difficult!) interview questions.


1. What's the best part about where you live?
The best part about Leeds is that it's a really diverse and vibrant city, with great music, but you can drive for 15 minutes and be in the coutryside and be in the Yorkshire Dales in about 25...


2. I'm asking everyone who does the 101 list this question. Which item from your list would you absolutely want to guarantee achieving?
I guess the one to achieve a 2.1 is the most important. Because that would enable me to get a lot of the other stuff done, get a good job and raise money etc.

3. (I'm asking all the Potter fans this question.) What would be the one thing you would change in the Harry Potter books?
Oh God! Only one?! Is saying The Epilogue cheating? If I'm allowed just a little thing, I'd say Hermione jinxing Marietta. But if I'm allowed a big thing I'd say the Slytherins. Mainly the Malfoys, cos I'm biased, but the whole lot, the villains of the piece could be so more than one dimensional.


4. If you could sit down and talk with one person alive or dead and tell them something you've never said before, to whom would you talk and what would you say?
I think maybe Terry Pratchett. I wouls tell him that I find him a genuinely inspiring person and writer. His books are a serires of true brilliance that only get better each time you read them, and his work for people with neural illnesses is incredible. And probably squeal like a total fangirl, because I am.

5. You write Draco very well. Why does he interest you?

He interests me because there’s just so much potential in him, wasted potential, in so many senses. In terms of his actual self, he’s clearly bright and resourceful; he does well at school and fixes the Cabinet amongst other things. But he was forced into following someone else, and he was just broken by it. The rest of his life will be blighted by those terrible experiences, haunted by all those terrible acts he had to do and judged for the decisions he made. He will forever be defined by the choices he made when he was 16, and who didn’t make some really bad decisions when they were 16… He also seems a waste in terms of a literary character. There is SO MUCH that JK Rowling could have done with him, and she just… didn’t. There were these occasional glimpses of something more than a one-dimensional villain, like when he doesn’t identify Harry at the Manor, but in the end he’s just a coward who gets punched in the face.
There are so many sides to him, he is clearly capeable of deep love and loyalty, which he displays to both his family and house. He is an only child (which I get), spoilt but always under judgement. He is sarcastic and mean, but also able to be hurt easily.

There are just some characters I get into, once I write them or portray them in a play I just can’t help taking their side (don’t get me started on why Stella is justified in her decision at the end of A Streetcar Named Desire or why Helena is the real heroine of A Midummer Night’s Dream). I feel for Draco, and I think that the people who aren’t so clear cut, who struggle to make the right choice and who actually are affected by consequences are just so much more interesting than the straightforward hero types.

 
If anyone else has questions I'd be more than happy to answer them, or would like questions from me. This was fun!

Comments

[vegablack62.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed reading these comments, especially your remarks about Draco. I like the idea of his lost potential and his complexity. Exploring it is what fanfic is for. I'd love to read your Draco fiction.

I agree with you about the hexing of Marieta, that is only beaten for me by Harry using the Cruciatus curse.

Leeds sounds lovely. I haven't read Terry Pratchett, but reading you makes me want to. (I'm up to being interviewed. But I already have been, so you don't have to ask me questions if I have already answered the questions you would want.)

[laliandra.livejournal.com]

I'm on the fanfic, I'm in edits!

I recommend Pratchett wholeheartedly. I must have read most of his books 5 or 6 times and they still make me laugh.

1. Well if you feel you haven't already said this I'd love to know what you would change about Harry Potter?
2. What was the first piece of fanfiction you wrote?
3. Do you do any other sorts of writing.
4. And, because I thought this was a lovely question that really got me thinking, 4. If you could sit down and talk with one person alive or dead and tell them something you've never said before, to whom would you talk and what would you say?
I know it's only 4, but it's late. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!
xx

[vegablack62.livejournal.com]

1.I'm going to cheat and give three things. First I hate Harry's use of the Cruciatus curse against Carrow. I thought the provocation was minimal and the act was contrary to the growth in Harry's character. How does Harry enjoying torturing Carrow jive with Harry having enough compassion to offer Voldemort, a far more culpable person, a chance to repent and save himself? Did he gain moral strength during his trip to the afterlife?

It implies that the other DA were stronger people than Harry. Neville's words imply that he didn't use the Cruciatus curse, nor I think did many in the DA, yet they endured far more at Carrow's hands than a spit in the face. If they had behaved like Harry they'd have been Cruciating Crabbe and Goyle in the halls, and riots and lynchings would have broken out in the Hogwarts corridors. Did she want to imply that the only reason a person couldn't torture another was because they weren't powerful enough? If so that's appalling.

I hated the way the house-elves were written. I thought JKR recapitulated every racist defense of slavery from the first part of this century.

My last change is one that I thought of recently. I think she made a mistake having Neville almost disappear from book six. I think that is why some readers have a hard time accepting the person we see in the end of book seven. (I could see the development in the character, but I like him and was looking for it.) Even one additional sentence or paragraph would have sufficed. How did the other students react to knowing that while they slept Luna and Neville fought Death Eaters for the second time in a battle in which two people died and one was severely wounded? If she had showed us this, we would have been better prepared for the revelations about both Luna and Neville in book seven.

I had a different reaction to the curse on Marrietta than you. I thought it was in character for Hermione, who has a ruthless streak not often recognized in fandom. She was willing to erase her parent's memory without their permission or knowledge and give them a new life. She had no idea what friends or responsibilities she'd had them abandon. Ironically she could have been a Slytherin as well as a Ravenclaw. (That characters have the traits of houses other than their own is a strength of the book. People are complex.) Also she was a teenager and lacked the judgment of an adult. We see the results of a fifteen year old having so much power, which I think worked in the story.

I'd like to see fanfiction that deals with the aftermath of these actions. Was Harry's attack on Carrow hushed up? What was the impact on society of a Hero's use of the banned curse? Does Hermione ever regret her actions? Even assuming they forgive her, do her parents ever trust her again?

2.Thursdays with Granddad was my first fan-fiction. I revised it many, many times before publishing. The original form was very different and had multiple povs, including Augusta's and showed Neville's granddad's death. The first story I ever posted was a drabble on Sugar Quill called Field Research, about Neville being recognized while working as a herbologist.

3. I only write fanfiction, but I would like that to change.

4. I would speak to my grandmother who lived with us when I was a child. I had been very close to her. When I was fifteen she had a fight with my mother and tried to make me chose between them. I realized that this had been her pattern all through my childhood and how this had hurt my mother. I was angry and bitter. Before we could reconcile, she became senile and died. I would like to both ask her forgiveness and ask her to apologize to my mother, who still feels pain from her behavior. I don't know if confronting her about her wrongs fits with asking her forgiveness, but I'd like to do both.