Oh, Maya! Oh joy!
Oct. 17th, 2005 01:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flyingskullCame back from hospital and was so taken up by things that I hadn't even checked my LJ's friends section. BUT! when I did I found Maya's updated QOM! Oh, joy, joy, joy! Oh, Rapture! Oh, WOW... What a blow to the plexus! Still gasping but I have to rave and babble: how can I not?
Sooo, here it is.
“No, listen,” Bill said rapidly. “Do like him. He’s not so bad. He didn’t - he’s a kid. He had no idea what death meant, he was in completely over his head and when it all started to dawn on him he got more and more scared and tried to push it away and - it was a mess. He’s a mess. His head is stuffed full of all that pureblood crap, he worships his murderous father and he’s scared to death of both sides. But I - I kind of like him. He’s funny in an odd sort of way. He loves his rotten parents so much. He’s really sorry about what happened to me-”
--SNIP--
“I don’t want to leave him here alone,” Bill said softly. “The others hate him like poison. It’s frightening, the way school has changed. When we were in school everyone was still just happy You-Know-Who was gone, but once people stopped being simply glad they were safe they remembered whose parents were on whose side. I think the split got worse after all the dangers at Hogwarts, and after basilisks and escaped murderers I can’t blame anyone for getting scared, but the way Ron and Ginny talk…
“The Gryffindors and the Slytherins are at each others’ throats. It’s not like Quidditch rivalry. It’s like… another war’s coming, and everyone’s already chosen a side. It doesn’t matter that they’re all children and none of them had any chance to choose, they just know that they hate each other and anyone who’s not like them is an enemy. I bet Malfoy was a little horror to them, but he’s all alone and scared. I don’t like bullying. I don’t want anyone made miserable in this house.”
--SNIP--
“I’m worried about Harry, too. He hasn’t got any parents, and all this Chosen One stuff - I like him, but he has never had anything solid to fall back on. He just feels his way to what’s right, and so he thinks that his feelings are always right. He’s angry and grieving and - He won’t mean to be cruel, but he might be."
QOM is SO fecking adult it's absolutely magnificent. Look at this, look at the many layers of this. The outermost layer is an intelligent analysis of an aspect of the books and of two of the characters, insightful and civilised. But look again and you see Bill's words tumbling out of his mouth because he's so desperate to have his brother understand before any kind of emotional reaction makes him blind to compassion and, yes, justice. Then you see him slow down to ponder the danger of polarised thinking and when he comes to Harry he practically stops to think about every word. Harry is tricky ground for him emotionally, because he feels for the boy, but can't help seeing things he doesn't like and doesn't want to see. We know Bill entirely in this brief scene, thanks to the delicate perfection of Maya's control of words and sentences. Nice, in the old meaning. (Good Omens, anyone? *G*) Ah, but we also know an extremely important thing about Charlie. Charlie can learn because Charlie listens and thinks about what he hears, Charlie, like Sherlock Holmes looks and sees and he thinks about what he sees. Charlie, BTW, is an absolute darling who has no problem in learning from dragons as well as from humans, Charlie doesn't have a prejudiced bone in his body. We saw that in the wedding chapter, of course, but here we are shown exactly why he's such an absolute darling. Then there's Harry as seen from another POV - and about time, though, of course the whole point of tight Harry POV is to make us react differently from him to people and situations. It's so refreshing to hear what we've been constantly forced to think in the preceding chapters and hear it from Bill who's certainly not Harry's enemy. Layers upon layers, Maya writes exactly like Botticelli painted, all transparencies and layers spread so thin the strata can't be seen at first glance. And what a lovely voyage of discovery it is to gently peel them off one by one and put them back together.
I so love Maya's Bill. I mean I can't help loving them all, even those I personally abominate because she makes them all human and I happen to love human beings in art. Human beings fascinate me... alright, except when they are obnoxious bastards with no redeeming quality whatsoever and even then I tend to be curious about what makes them tick. But I'll talk about the other characters later. Bill has been tempered in blood and now he's acquired true strength, the one that comes from suppleness of mind, he can change with the changes in his life and evolve into a better person with each change. Bill's a true hero and I can see him grow in stature until very few stories could contain him. He'll also be a wonderful partner for Fleur and a father to his children who won't ever know that stupid mixture of laxness and control that's typical of Molly and Arthur.
I loathe and despise the twins and, to my unrestrained joy, Maya deals curtly with them, disdaining to imply they are different from what they appear. WHOOO-HOOO!
Right, Harry. Who could not love a morose, obsessive, self centred badly grown up boy? It's typical of Maya's razor-sharp quill dipped in acid that we can't help loving the little freak. We love him because he's so hopelessly clueless and fumbles in his own special sort of darkness for light and the truth, even though he won't be able to see neither until he grows emotionally to the point of actually realising that truth doesn't exist as an absolute and light is full of shadows. He projects on people the image he has decided is right for them, he doesn't even look, let alone see. We love him because he's grabby and jealous and full of rage and the desperate will to make things better and because he can't see that what's 'better' for him will probably be hell on wheels for most anyone else. He's so bloody young! He'still a child: he seems stopped at eleven, when the world became magic and he never quite got the hang of it. He doesn't really want things to change, he doesn't want people to change on him and grow up; he needs to make sense of things, and he hasn't yet. Things happened too quickly and extravagant praise combined with a precise dosage of amorality and hurt (he gets sent back to the cupboard again and again - but that's for the fic I'm writing so no more about that) have conspired to thwart his attempt of making sense of it all. So everything must stand still until he has finally understood this brave new world he's been catapulted into. That's why his rages are so comic and pathetic at the same time and that's why he's so dependent on Ron and Hermione who do not change. He feels betrayed by Bill and Charlie because they are not what he wants them to be, but then he feels betrayed by Ginny as well. She's changed... way too much (LOVE the Draco analysis of that) and - notwitstanding the 'creature' in his chest (a tad too high up, innit? I abominate coyness and boy! is La Rowling coy!) he does a P Parker and dumps her. I'm quite sure he's told himself he's being noble, but what he's really being is betrayed and not a little shocked by the sudden 180° change of his adoring and shy intended. Another thing that makes me quiver with pleasure is that Maya has kept her Underwater Light take on the characters, the situation is so much different that this is maybe not 'seeable' all at once, but the core of them is the same. Harry can't stand still, in mind as well as body. he can't afford to think too much on things, he can just barely afford to brood a little, but, as he's not stupid by all means, he can't really analyse and reflect too much lest his painstakingly constructed universe comes crashing donw on his head. Oh, and bad beloved Maya! He surely appreciates Pansy's kisses more than Ginny's. The fact that he can't see/feel the difference speaks volumes.
I just adore Pansy and scary!mother!Narcissa (thank you for never calling her Cissy...blech). They are so fierce and determined, they are so not scared of being themselves, so indifferent to judgement, so powerful. Pansy, the true mother figure in mayaverse, is so whole and really noble in her compassion and courage. Lovely lovely heroine. She actually deserves better than Draco, she actually deserves Charlie who is one of the other expression of compassion (Latin = to hurt with as Greek sympathy). Because it all about the several qualities of mercy (yeh yeh, I know it's a quote from Merchant of Venice, thankyouverymuch. There should be a whole essay discussing why the title is a quote from that particular play, all about how a man in love with a young man loses him to a woman... oh well); pity, compassion, generosity, ruthlessness.
I want to write a book about Draco, but fingers and time won't let me, besides I would wax lyrical and say silly things. He's grown, against his will, granted, but he's grown. He's also scared of the right things, at last. It's made him the voice of justice, in a nice reversal of fortunes, and I can't help thinking he's aware of it. He happens not to like it one whit, but he knows more than he ever wanted to know about life, death, consequences and the need for justice. He's got much more Lymondish than he was in UL, but that's a given, after what he's done and why he's done it. He's trapped in more than one sense, but he still struggles to break free. He now can see Dark and Light both for what they are and he despises them both because of what they are. I can't help thinking he's an idealistic cynic, a thing that opens lots of possibilities for his future as a character: comedy, farce, satyre, tragedy, all are possible. A thing he'll never be is boring. A little self-destructive in choosing social short cuts, but never boring.
Pairings pairings... frankly I don't care much (D/H is my OTP along with my new OTP Draco/Bessie *tongue*) but the Charlie thing must be addressed. I see Charlie giving affection, not lust. Harry and Draco seem starved for affection more than love. Am not going into the abused!Draco thingy because, for one thing, Lucius is such a sociopath that he can't have been a decent father, let alone a good one, and I'm not talking physical abuse, I think the emotional starvation would have been enough and for another, Narcissa, while fiercely protective and loving, doesn't strike me as a very affectionate touchy-feely person. Harry's lack of affection during the all important first years of his life is so evident that I feel like I'm channeling Monsieur De Lapalisse. Charlie, OTOH, is affectionate and is not shy in showing it. I love how he keeps holding on Draco's nape and didn't feel any particular UST in the gesture. Charlie's quality of mercy is compassion (Bill's is generosity) and he's simply responding to a need. That said, if the siren song of fanfiction lulls Maya into writing more of QOM, let her pair people as she wishes. Anyone who can make me accept Ginny is clearly capable of making me accept any pairing her wayward pen draws on the net's virtual paper.
Oh, and there is or was NO-ONE who can write violence so brutally and sparingly. As usual I'm all admiration and just crave for more more more masterpieces from Maya.
EDITED because my brain has declared war on me and lost... or maybe won, who knows?
Forgot to say: I never saw Draco as a sex-god in the traditional florid way. I find pale ashen elegance and thin bodies irresistible and that's why I love my lil pointy dragonet. I'm also firmly convinced that being afraid of killing is a VERY VERY good thing and I wish everyone was as scared as Draco and would stop killing people and feel good and brave and what-not about it. I also forgot to say explicitly - the 'Lymondish' comment was supposed to imply it - that of course Draco's quality of mercy is ruthlessness: he has none for himself and though understanding is all in all more respectful, it's not mercy. He's a lot like Portia without the hypocrisy, isn't he? After all, she pleaded rethorically for mercy but administered chill unflinching justice... to poor Antonio too. Harry does a good Bassanio if we can imagine Bassanio in an almost permanent state of fury: he sure grabs. Ginny as Antonio? Would fit in an oddly endearing perverse way. And as for those mindless goons, Bassanio and Antonio so-called friends, we have the twins. Hey! I'm deranged! *WINK*
Because I'm an idjit, I forgot to give the links to Quality of Mercy's six chapters. Here they are
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Sooo, here it is.
“No, listen,” Bill said rapidly. “Do like him. He’s not so bad. He didn’t - he’s a kid. He had no idea what death meant, he was in completely over his head and when it all started to dawn on him he got more and more scared and tried to push it away and - it was a mess. He’s a mess. His head is stuffed full of all that pureblood crap, he worships his murderous father and he’s scared to death of both sides. But I - I kind of like him. He’s funny in an odd sort of way. He loves his rotten parents so much. He’s really sorry about what happened to me-”
--SNIP--
“I don’t want to leave him here alone,” Bill said softly. “The others hate him like poison. It’s frightening, the way school has changed. When we were in school everyone was still just happy You-Know-Who was gone, but once people stopped being simply glad they were safe they remembered whose parents were on whose side. I think the split got worse after all the dangers at Hogwarts, and after basilisks and escaped murderers I can’t blame anyone for getting scared, but the way Ron and Ginny talk…
“The Gryffindors and the Slytherins are at each others’ throats. It’s not like Quidditch rivalry. It’s like… another war’s coming, and everyone’s already chosen a side. It doesn’t matter that they’re all children and none of them had any chance to choose, they just know that they hate each other and anyone who’s not like them is an enemy. I bet Malfoy was a little horror to them, but he’s all alone and scared. I don’t like bullying. I don’t want anyone made miserable in this house.”
--SNIP--
“I’m worried about Harry, too. He hasn’t got any parents, and all this Chosen One stuff - I like him, but he has never had anything solid to fall back on. He just feels his way to what’s right, and so he thinks that his feelings are always right. He’s angry and grieving and - He won’t mean to be cruel, but he might be."
QOM is SO fecking adult it's absolutely magnificent. Look at this, look at the many layers of this. The outermost layer is an intelligent analysis of an aspect of the books and of two of the characters, insightful and civilised. But look again and you see Bill's words tumbling out of his mouth because he's so desperate to have his brother understand before any kind of emotional reaction makes him blind to compassion and, yes, justice. Then you see him slow down to ponder the danger of polarised thinking and when he comes to Harry he practically stops to think about every word. Harry is tricky ground for him emotionally, because he feels for the boy, but can't help seeing things he doesn't like and doesn't want to see. We know Bill entirely in this brief scene, thanks to the delicate perfection of Maya's control of words and sentences. Nice, in the old meaning. (Good Omens, anyone? *G*) Ah, but we also know an extremely important thing about Charlie. Charlie can learn because Charlie listens and thinks about what he hears, Charlie, like Sherlock Holmes looks and sees and he thinks about what he sees. Charlie, BTW, is an absolute darling who has no problem in learning from dragons as well as from humans, Charlie doesn't have a prejudiced bone in his body. We saw that in the wedding chapter, of course, but here we are shown exactly why he's such an absolute darling. Then there's Harry as seen from another POV - and about time, though, of course the whole point of tight Harry POV is to make us react differently from him to people and situations. It's so refreshing to hear what we've been constantly forced to think in the preceding chapters and hear it from Bill who's certainly not Harry's enemy. Layers upon layers, Maya writes exactly like Botticelli painted, all transparencies and layers spread so thin the strata can't be seen at first glance. And what a lovely voyage of discovery it is to gently peel them off one by one and put them back together.
I so love Maya's Bill. I mean I can't help loving them all, even those I personally abominate because she makes them all human and I happen to love human beings in art. Human beings fascinate me... alright, except when they are obnoxious bastards with no redeeming quality whatsoever and even then I tend to be curious about what makes them tick. But I'll talk about the other characters later. Bill has been tempered in blood and now he's acquired true strength, the one that comes from suppleness of mind, he can change with the changes in his life and evolve into a better person with each change. Bill's a true hero and I can see him grow in stature until very few stories could contain him. He'll also be a wonderful partner for Fleur and a father to his children who won't ever know that stupid mixture of laxness and control that's typical of Molly and Arthur.
I loathe and despise the twins and, to my unrestrained joy, Maya deals curtly with them, disdaining to imply they are different from what they appear. WHOOO-HOOO!
Right, Harry. Who could not love a morose, obsessive, self centred badly grown up boy? It's typical of Maya's razor-sharp quill dipped in acid that we can't help loving the little freak. We love him because he's so hopelessly clueless and fumbles in his own special sort of darkness for light and the truth, even though he won't be able to see neither until he grows emotionally to the point of actually realising that truth doesn't exist as an absolute and light is full of shadows. He projects on people the image he has decided is right for them, he doesn't even look, let alone see. We love him because he's grabby and jealous and full of rage and the desperate will to make things better and because he can't see that what's 'better' for him will probably be hell on wheels for most anyone else. He's so bloody young! He'still a child: he seems stopped at eleven, when the world became magic and he never quite got the hang of it. He doesn't really want things to change, he doesn't want people to change on him and grow up; he needs to make sense of things, and he hasn't yet. Things happened too quickly and extravagant praise combined with a precise dosage of amorality and hurt (he gets sent back to the cupboard again and again - but that's for the fic I'm writing so no more about that) have conspired to thwart his attempt of making sense of it all. So everything must stand still until he has finally understood this brave new world he's been catapulted into. That's why his rages are so comic and pathetic at the same time and that's why he's so dependent on Ron and Hermione who do not change. He feels betrayed by Bill and Charlie because they are not what he wants them to be, but then he feels betrayed by Ginny as well. She's changed... way too much (LOVE the Draco analysis of that) and - notwitstanding the 'creature' in his chest (a tad too high up, innit? I abominate coyness and boy! is La Rowling coy!) he does a P Parker and dumps her. I'm quite sure he's told himself he's being noble, but what he's really being is betrayed and not a little shocked by the sudden 180° change of his adoring and shy intended. Another thing that makes me quiver with pleasure is that Maya has kept her Underwater Light take on the characters, the situation is so much different that this is maybe not 'seeable' all at once, but the core of them is the same. Harry can't stand still, in mind as well as body. he can't afford to think too much on things, he can just barely afford to brood a little, but, as he's not stupid by all means, he can't really analyse and reflect too much lest his painstakingly constructed universe comes crashing donw on his head. Oh, and bad beloved Maya! He surely appreciates Pansy's kisses more than Ginny's. The fact that he can't see/feel the difference speaks volumes.
I just adore Pansy and scary!mother!Narcissa (thank you for never calling her Cissy...blech). They are so fierce and determined, they are so not scared of being themselves, so indifferent to judgement, so powerful. Pansy, the true mother figure in mayaverse, is so whole and really noble in her compassion and courage. Lovely lovely heroine. She actually deserves better than Draco, she actually deserves Charlie who is one of the other expression of compassion (Latin = to hurt with as Greek sympathy). Because it all about the several qualities of mercy (yeh yeh, I know it's a quote from Merchant of Venice, thankyouverymuch. There should be a whole essay discussing why the title is a quote from that particular play, all about how a man in love with a young man loses him to a woman... oh well); pity, compassion, generosity, ruthlessness.
I want to write a book about Draco, but fingers and time won't let me, besides I would wax lyrical and say silly things. He's grown, against his will, granted, but he's grown. He's also scared of the right things, at last. It's made him the voice of justice, in a nice reversal of fortunes, and I can't help thinking he's aware of it. He happens not to like it one whit, but he knows more than he ever wanted to know about life, death, consequences and the need for justice. He's got much more Lymondish than he was in UL, but that's a given, after what he's done and why he's done it. He's trapped in more than one sense, but he still struggles to break free. He now can see Dark and Light both for what they are and he despises them both because of what they are. I can't help thinking he's an idealistic cynic, a thing that opens lots of possibilities for his future as a character: comedy, farce, satyre, tragedy, all are possible. A thing he'll never be is boring. A little self-destructive in choosing social short cuts, but never boring.
Pairings pairings... frankly I don't care much (D/H is my OTP along with my new OTP Draco/Bessie *tongue*) but the Charlie thing must be addressed. I see Charlie giving affection, not lust. Harry and Draco seem starved for affection more than love. Am not going into the abused!Draco thingy because, for one thing, Lucius is such a sociopath that he can't have been a decent father, let alone a good one, and I'm not talking physical abuse, I think the emotional starvation would have been enough and for another, Narcissa, while fiercely protective and loving, doesn't strike me as a very affectionate touchy-feely person. Harry's lack of affection during the all important first years of his life is so evident that I feel like I'm channeling Monsieur De Lapalisse. Charlie, OTOH, is affectionate and is not shy in showing it. I love how he keeps holding on Draco's nape and didn't feel any particular UST in the gesture. Charlie's quality of mercy is compassion (Bill's is generosity) and he's simply responding to a need. That said, if the siren song of fanfiction lulls Maya into writing more of QOM, let her pair people as she wishes. Anyone who can make me accept Ginny is clearly capable of making me accept any pairing her wayward pen draws on the net's virtual paper.
Oh, and there is or was NO-ONE who can write violence so brutally and sparingly. As usual I'm all admiration and just crave for more more more masterpieces from Maya.
EDITED because my brain has declared war on me and lost... or maybe won, who knows?
Forgot to say: I never saw Draco as a sex-god in the traditional florid way. I find pale ashen elegance and thin bodies irresistible and that's why I love my lil pointy dragonet. I'm also firmly convinced that being afraid of killing is a VERY VERY good thing and I wish everyone was as scared as Draco and would stop killing people and feel good and brave and what-not about it. I also forgot to say explicitly - the 'Lymondish' comment was supposed to imply it - that of course Draco's quality of mercy is ruthlessness: he has none for himself and though understanding is all in all more respectful, it's not mercy. He's a lot like Portia without the hypocrisy, isn't he? After all, she pleaded rethorically for mercy but administered chill unflinching justice... to poor Antonio too. Harry does a good Bassanio if we can imagine Bassanio in an almost permanent state of fury: he sure grabs. Ginny as Antonio? Would fit in an oddly endearing perverse way. And as for those mindless goons, Bassanio and Antonio so-called friends, we have the twins. Hey! I'm deranged! *WINK*
Because I'm an idjit, I forgot to give the links to Quality of Mercy's six chapters. Here they are
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-17 04:11 pm (UTC)So I'm confused... are you shipping Harry/Pansy, or Charlie/Pansy? *g*
I'm so happy about all the Bill love. Since he has to be honeymooning, I wanted to give him a good send-off while firmly establishing Charlie as Draco's new ally. And Charlie (though he has his darker side also0 *is* supposed to be a darling. Pegged right on the nose. I'm dismayed at my obviously dreadful twins portrayal, since I wanted to show they had their good points too (offering to loan Charlie money and stuff) but, well, I don't like them and you can't win them all. *goes off to beat herself with a stick of three-dimensional characterisation*
Laughed out loud when you called Harry a little freak (at work! in my still, still office!). It's true; he never has fully grasped the fact that people develop, his opinions are always static. And it's true as well that Harry and Draco both want affection. (Haven't seen any pleas for Harry/Charlie/Draco yet. Huh. Did see some for Harry/Bill/Draco. What am I doing wrong?)
And finally, thank you for talking about the title, because I just quoted some of the 'quality of mercy' speech to Black Dog and didn't want to get my geek on by myself. A pleasure as always, *sternly* as long as you didn't tire your fingers.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-18 05:23 pm (UTC)Confused, ay? Not really shipping, just dipping an oar in the Charlie/Pansy direction, tough methinks 'twill never be. As for threesomes... UGH! Only threesome I can see is the Unholy Trio getting it on in bed too. Not that it wold work, Harry being too jealously grabby for that. Ron and Hermione'd end up servicing The Boy Who Wants Everyone's Undivided Attention All The Time.
I know Charlie is dark too, he's a four-dimension character, after all. If he weren't he wouldn't be adorable, just dead boring. Don't be dismayed at twin's portait, can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and there's really no material in canon for three dimensions for those two. As for offering Charlie money, well nobody said they were meangy stingies. They are still dreadful, so there!
Glad I made you laugh, luv. A small return for all the wonderful sniggers and snorts - not to mention outright tears-in-eye-and-stomach-hurting laughter - you give me.
I was intrigued by title since the first chapter, what with loving Shaks with the fire of a thousand suns and all. Besides I just happen to love the Merchant particularly (bad slasher, down down!) Soooo... who's Shylock here? Yeah, I read that quote and it got me thinking, if justice were to be served according to just deserts what should happen to our righteous little freak? Hmm?
Oooh, Maya's just been stern at me! Whee! *throws hat in air, indulges in generalised celebration* Ta lots, luv and don't worry, have a hovering mum who won't let me lose advantages gained in hospital.