December Delights - 9 December 2015

[teddy_radiator]

Today has been a sad day in many ways. irishredlass, I'm so sorry for the loss of your brother. If you need to talk, I'm here.

I also found out that hechicera's awesome greyhound Woody, whom TheHubs™ and I fell in love with over Thanksgiving, is going to have to be put down in the next day or so. Hech is devastated, and we are as well. If ever a dog was a goodwill ambassador, Woody was one. He was a dear, dear fellow, and we were both so sad to know he was so ill. He'd been showing some worrying issues while we were there, but apparently it worsened greatly in the last few days. My thoughts are with you both, my dear friends.

I received a frustrating review today - not exactly a negative one, but just one that peeved me greatly, to the point where I've written a huge defense of my story. I don't know why I should bother - this person is obviously quite neurotic and strange - even going so far as to question what might have happened if Hermione had taken poison instead of the Dreamless Sleep potion.  I had to remind her that I was the writer, and therefore Hermione wasn't going to take anything poisonous because I was the one controlling her.

Oh well. people are work, as someone once said. The ever-awesome stgulik has prevailed as the cool head in this outfit. She took my overly wordy rebuttal and turned it into something that I can send and sound both intelligent and firm. Thank you, Jules, for being so amazing. I love this girl, you know, and not just because she makes me look and sound good. I love her because I can send her my biggest neuroses and she just shrugs and keeps loving me anyway, even though I interrupt her dinner and act like a loon.

In other news, I made a really nice-looking fruitcake today, which TheHubs™ loves. It's cooling now, and I'm really hoping it's a success, because he's looking so forward to it, bless him. Tomorrow night is opening night of A Christmas Carol, and he's very excited about the production. Mom and I are going Friday - I can't wait.

Comments

[dharkapparition.livejournal.com]

People are nuts. Hugs

[dickgloucester.livejournal.com]

It's kind of you to engage with this reviewer at all. *hugs*

[mimimanderly.livejournal.com]

I need a tiny version of Jules in my brain. Preferably one with a tiny computer so she can Google stuff or look up words at lightning speed in the interstice between my having a thought in my brain and verbalizing said thought through my mouth. Yes, I know I sound fairly intelligent right now, using words like "interstice". That is because I am writing online, with access to a dictionary to make sure "interstice" meant what I thought it did, and I have time to ruminate over what I want to say. In "real life", I assure you, I am usually searching for words and coming up short. Or forgetting some bit of minutia that I used to know but that has been deleted from my memory banks.

[akatnamedeaster.livejournal.com]

I had to remind her that I was the writer, and therefore Hermione wasn't going to take anything poisonous because I was the one controlling her.

You know, I wonder if this sort of thing is a reflection of fandom and our way of talking about characters as if they were real people and writers are just chronicling their adventures instead of directing their every move since they're a product of imagination with no agency outside of what the writer gives them. I know many of us have done the same with the HP characters when we discuss motives and "what ifs" of the characters JK wrote. It's probably to your credit as a writer that they got so engrossed in the characters as you wrote them that they felt real enough for the reviewer to think of them as people outside of the story and imagine their own "what ifs" for the scenarios you presented, if that makes any sense.

Congrats on the fruitcake! I confess, I've never been brave enough to try one given all the negative talk about them.