tinyporcelainehorses

[tinyporcelainehorses]

Hi! I've never written a writers journal before, but I figured it might be a useful way to keep track of my projects.  I've skimmed through four or five here, and seen four or five ways to do them, so I'm going to just jot things down as I please!  I'll be moving my fics onto the archive here soon, but for now I'm just gonna stick up AO3 links.

Completed Works:

• This Calls For A Toast, So Pour The Champagne (ao3)

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    Dudley Dursley reluctantly and somewhat awkwardly accepts an invitation to his cousin's wedding. While there, he meets Harry's friends, discovers some fascinating wizarding adult beverages - and meets Cho Chang, who has her own reasons to find herself out of place and drinking heavily at the wedding of Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley.
    
    In the months to come, this unlikely encounter will make him rethink his attitudes towards the magical world, drastically change the course of both of their lives, and change Dudley's relationship with his family forever.

    A Dudley/Cho Dudley redemption fic about family.  I feel like there's a lot of clumsy stuff about this, but I'm really proud of it.

  • 38k words.  Started October 2016, and then after a nearly three year break where I completely forgot it existed, completed November 2019.  I've attempted to record a podfic version of this a few times, but it turns out that nearly 40,000 word fics are a bad candidate for your first podfic and get kind of intimidating!  But I think the first chapter exists fully edited somewhere on my harddrive.
  • Yes, that title is from a panic! at the disco song.

Works In Progress:

• Owl Post Again. And Again, And Again... (ao3)

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    Anyone who's had anything to do with an educational institution will have received (if not read) plenty of highly official, overly workshopped correspondence about (insert school here), their place in the world, and why Your Donations Are More Important At This Time Than Ever Before. And why should Hogwarts be any different?

    Eight letters, from throughout Harry's career at Hogwarts and the year after, from senior figures within Hogwarts attempt to portray events there with the best spin possible. Trigger warning for academic bureaucracy.

    An epistolary fic stemming from the fact i work in academia/academic bureaucracy, and I'd read/sent so many mealy-mouthed overly official letters that I just couldn't take it anymore and needed an outlet.

  • 3k words, four out of eight chapters written.  Started November 2019, finished ????????  I only update this intermittently and it's been rather on the backburner for a while.  This would make a far stronger candidate to podfic, to be honest, but one of the (as of yet unwritten) chapters is from McGonagall as head, and I cannot even begin to do the accent.

• The Might Of The Architect (ao3)

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    Hogwarts, Britain's largest community of magical learning, is only decades old and already bitterly divided. England has fallen to a foreign king. And as the stone walls of Hogwarts grow ever higher, whispers say that Salazar Slytherin is plotting something... Two students from either side of a war are driven together by events that will change Britain, magical and non-magical, forever.

    This fic is my baby and my main focus right now.  A scene (which has since been cut out of my outline anyway) came to me in a weird dream, and I spent the next morning sitting down and plotting it out.  It's a long founders-era fic focusing on original characters (though the founders themselves are there, just not the focus), with a lot of interplay with the Norman conquest and 11th Century english history.

  • 58k words, 11 out of ??? chapters, written, 9 of them published.  Started November 2019, and then after a few weeks I put it down and left it until March this year, when something happened to the world that gave me a lot more free time and a need for a new project.  I've been keeping up an incredibly regular fortnightly posting schedule, stunning no one more than myself.  It'll probably end up well over 150k words - I cannot imagine podficcing it except for very large amounts of money.

Things I want To Write In Future:

Harry Potter:

• I want to write a short sequel to my Dudley/Cho fic!  I have a rough outline planned out, for a couple of years after the epilogue of that fic.  It'd probably be a one-shot, maybe a two-shot at most.
• I have the germ of an idea about Florean Fortescue, magical history buff and Radical Political Activist.  He was never actually kidnapped by death-eaters - instead, he's invented a prototype time-turner and travelled back in time to assassinate Salazar Slytherin and stop anti-muggleborn bigotry at the root.  This is obviously a very silly idea and I'm not sure it will ever see the light of day.
• @Hawksquill and I have had a fic we've wanted to cowrite for a few years about Gilderoy Lockhart suddenly regaining his memory in a post-epilogue future when something is desparately wrong with the wizarding world - but he's the only person who can remember what's different.  Cue a buddy cop adventure with auror Harry Potter.  We have a fairly detailed outline - we'll get to it soon I hope!  (I did technically write the first sentence of it, but I'm really not sure if that counts.  Plus it's three words long.)

Non Harry Potter:

• I have an urge to write a Peep Show/Pride and Prejudice crossover fanfiction called... Pride, Prejudice and Peep Show.  If done, it would be the second dumb piece of fiction I've written built entirely around a pun on Pride and Prejudice.
• I'd completely forgotten this, but I have like half a 'season' of doctor who fanfic bullet point ideas written on my phone.  (For the twelfth doctor, Bill and Nardole, if anyone's interested!)  I'd love to get to those some day.
• I have a terrible urge to attempt to rewrite the star wars prequels into something with a vaguely intelligible plot, which I'm pretty sure I will never, ever do.

[batsam]

There is a lot of really interesting stuff here that I'm not able to really give time to fully respond to right now but OMG I want that Lockhart fic

[tinyporcelainehorses]

1 minute ago, sinnersandsapphics said:

There is a lot of really interesting stuff here that I'm not able to really give time to fully respond to right now but OMG I want that Lockhart fic

@HawksquillTHE PEOPLE DEMAND IT

[tinyporcelainehorses]

Small update:

I wrote a one shot about Mad Eye Moody, self-mythologizing, and Odin for the spice up the archives challenge - find it here!

I also remembered another medium length story I'd like to write some day. I'd love to write a "Dudley has magic and goes to Hogwarts" story that puts him in Slytherin, where he strikes up a fast friendship (and eventually something more) with Draco Malfoy. Initially bonding over their love of tormenting Harry, bullying their inferiors, and sentences that start "my father...", It doesn't take long for each boy to realise that the other challenges so many of the prejudices they hold. Then, by the time second year comes, and there are attacks on muggleborns and the dursleys are more anti-wizard than ever, both boys realise that something is going to have to change.

[inmyownlittlecorner]

I love all your ideas and I can't wait to start reading your fics! 

In what ways are Dudley and Cho good for each other? In what ways are they terrible?

I love that you're putting your real life into your fics. Besides the story that is obviously based on your real life work, where else do you see your real life coming out in your writing?

What are some of your favorite books/articles that you've read to prepare for your founders fic? Can you tell us a little about the main characters?

What's your other Pride and Prejudice punny fic?

Please, please write the buddy cop fic with Lockhard and Harry! It sounds like a scream.

 

[tinyporcelainehorses]

Wow, thank you for so many insightful questions!  I'm going to try and address all of them, which means this post is going to be long.

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In what ways are Dudley and Cho good for each other? In what ways are they terrible?

They are, essentially, both jocks (with completely different ideas about what being a jock is!) Who are struggling to adapt to Being Grownups and all that that entails.  Sometimes they struggle in slightly different ways, which can help each other - sometimstruggles can clash a bit.  When I started writing the story, I went 'well, they're not at all well suited, so they'll break up pretty quickly' and then I... proved myself wrong!  Incidentally, the first two chapters of this fic have now transferred over to HPFT!

30 minutes ago, la_topolina said:

I love that you're putting your real life into your fics. Besides the story that is obviously based on your real life work, where else do you see your real life coming out in your writing?

This is a really tough question.  Some of it is a pretty clear through line, even if I don't necessarily sit down to write about it.  Deliberately or not, I share several traumas with some of my characters: I end up exploring them and presumably giving myself a bit of literary therapy along the way, even if that's not what I initially intended to write a story about.  Sometimes it's less my real life and things that have happened to me informing fics very literally, and more a general influence of my life and how i'm feeling on where I take ideas, even ideas I'd previously worked out what I was doing with.  For example, my current WIP, The Might of the Architect, I planned in its entirety late last year.  I've obviously made various edits to my outline as I've gone, but as I've been writing in 2020, I've realised that there are some real themes there of  feeling abandoned by and fully victimised by those with power, even when they are allegedly on your side, as well as explorations of class and cultural dynamics that I'm simply getting more out of exploring as I write them in 2020 (or will - I haven't got to much of this yet, and I hope I can do it justice!) than was there when I planned it in 2019.  I hope that makes sense!

38 minutes ago, la_topolina said:

What are some of your favorite books/articles that you've read to prepare for your founders fic?

My answers for 'what have you read to prepare for your founders fic' is always going to be 'never enough'.  I actually grew up quite near the site of the Battle of Hastings, which is now known as 'Battle' (what a creative placename!), so I've visited quite a bit and when it came to many of the nuts and bolts historical events, I haven't had to look a lot up.  The devil is, as always, in the details.   One of my favourite university professors had a real focus on early medieval (and particularly Anglo-Saxon) history - I've been through a lot of my notes from learning with him, as well as borrowing various articles and lecture notes from a friend who was lucky enough to work with him more closely.  I have a few queer characters in the fic, and I've been particularly anxious to try and get some vague historical nuance into the way that same-gender relationships are explored.  I actually have an entire book by him about this, which I have shamefully only skimmed and need to read more of, and I've read a few more articles, book chapters, notes etc. on the subject.  I do also feel like if I get any probably inevitable Homophobia Disguised as Bad History takes in my reviews (FFN, I'm looking at you...) it will be really satisfying to be able to slap them with various published and peer reviewed sources.

Not that I haven't already cited sources at the end of a chapter. When people are sorted at early Hogwarts (although as far as I remember, I don't have them using the term sorted yet - the hat is used for the first time within the fic!), I have them swear an oath of fealty to their new... well, I also don't use the word house.  Master, or mistress.  I actually pulled the text from this directly from Anglo Saxon Legal codices.  I pulled  enough text from them that I didn't feel comfortable not providing a link at the end of the chapter - although at over 1,000 years old, it was for sure out of copyright.  These laws have, incidentally, also been a great place to learn what the Saxons thought of witches - there's not a tonne of other documentary evidence (beyond some interesting historical accounts involving William the Conqueror, which I am using too...), but they sure had some thoughts on how witches should be punished.

46 minutes ago, la_topolina said:

Can you tell us a little about the main characters?

I'd love to!  I have two viewpoint characters, both OCs.  They're both about 15-17 in the bulk of the story.

Edmund is a Saxon peasant, who comes to Hogwarts under fairly traumatic circumstances when he's young.  He's grown up on stories of Godric Gryffindor, mighty Lord, wise magic user, etc. etc. etc., so idolises him beyond all practicality.  He has really passionate attachment to his identity as English and as Saxon, which I think grows even stronger where he's at Hogwarts, a place where that's supposed to matter less.  He also really knows how to hold a grudge, which is very relevant to the plot, and to hold it (Harry and Draco style) to the point of obsession.  A lot of his arc is about accepting the more human nature of his idols, and also realising that the dreams he's had since he was younger aren't necessarily what are right for him now. 

Matilde is my other main character, though she spends much of the story going by Robert.  She arrives at Hogwarts (also under traumatic circumstances lol because why make things easy for anyone) as a teenager already, which makes for a really interesting difference in dynamic, and she also arrives in disguise as a boy - something she's been forced into for reasons of safety while travelling, but which she finds herself suddenly and very inconveniently unable to break from.  She's of Norman heritage, and was dragged over to England shortly after 1066 with the rest of the noble household she's a part of.  (She herself is dirt poor.)  For her, a lot of her story revolves around belonging, finding people she can be a part of, and some exploration of different magics and the way that culture, heritage and magic intersect.  She also suffers some major trauma at the start of her story, and beginning to address that and living with its ramifications are a really big part of her character.

I do also have plenty of canon characters, obviously - I've been writing quite a bit recently of the Bloody Baron (who I have made a fictional member of a real noble family), and Helena Ravenclaw.  Their plotline runs through this - I always think it's so interesting that that is the one real accurate account of the founders era that makes its way to the books.  On a lighter note, I'll get to write Peeves soon.  I can't wait.

1 hour ago, la_topolina said:

What's your other Pride and Prejudice punny fic?

 

Back when I was at university, I cowrote a sketch called Pride and Predators.  It was a pretty straight up pastiche of Pride and Prejudice, except that Mr. Darcy was a tiger.  I believe he ended his first visit to the Bennets by eating someone.

It was very dumb and I'm immensely proud of it.  I wonder if I still have a copy somewhere.

 

Thank you so much for asking so many questions, and your kind words! They were all good springing off points for rambling - I'm sorry if I've gone on way too long.

[tinyporcelainehorses]

54 minutes ago, victoria_anne said:

Hi! Your journal has been so wonderful to read! You're full of such amazing ideas and I can't wait to read them! 

Where did the idea for Dudley/Cho come from? I've never thought about them as a pairing before!

This is something that has always fascinated me and would love to read! And your idea for it sounds amazing! How's it going? 

Hi!  Thank you so much!  I hope I can one day start coming up with ideas at a rate that's compatible with how fast I write - in the meantime, I'll have to prioritise...

I can trace the ideas leading to Dudley/Cho pretty easily, luckily!  It goes:

• I think JK Rowling is wrong.  About a lot of things, but in this specific instance, about Dudley not showing up in the epilogue with a magical child.
• It would be more interesting for Dudley to have a magical child because he dated/married a witch than it would for him to have a magical child out of the blue.
• If he's going to have a child with a witch, it should be a canon character, because it'll put him in closer proximity to Harry and make for some interesting, awkward growth.
• Who do we know married a muggle?
• Cho did! And Cho, like Dudley, is also pretty underserved by the narrative.
• Oh wait they're also both really into sports, and have complicated feelings about Harry.  I bet I could get them talking about that.

And so it began...

[Raspberry_cordelia]

Hi there, I hope you're doing well!  I'm glad that you started your Writer's Journal, because all of your works look amazing, but the one that particularly caught my eye was Owl Post, Again and Again and Again, because I love epistolary fics and academic bureaucracy, although annoying to deal with, is very much fun to read about, because I think it's somewhat a universal experience.  I'll have to go read it.

On 8/25/2020 at 9:22 PM, tinyporcelainehorses said:

I have the germ of an idea about Florean Fortescue, magical history buff and Radical Political Activist.  He was never actually kidnapped by death-eaters - instead, he's invented a prototype time-turner and travelled back in time to assassinate Salazar Slytherin and stop anti-muggleborn bigotry at the root.  This is obviously a very silly idea and I'm not sure it will ever see the light of day.

Aaaaa this isn't a silly idea, this is a BRILLIANT IDEA.  What about Fortescue draws you to writing him?

[tinyporcelainehorses]

Thank you so much!  I'll have to migrate Owl Post here, too - I'm wary of moving too much, because I don't want to gum up the queue with a tonne of different works, so I'm trying to space things out.

58 minutes ago, Raspberry_cordelia said:

Hi there, I hope you're doing well!  I'm glad that you started your Writer's Journal, because all of your works look amazing, but the one that particularly caught my eye was Owl Post, Again and Again and Again, because I love epistolary fics and academic bureaucracy, although annoying to deal with, is very much fun to read about, because I think it's somewhat a universal experience.  I'll have to go read it.

Aaaaa this isn't a silly idea, this is a BRILLIANT IDEA.  What about Fortescue draws you to writing him?

I think I'm mostly interested in writing Florean because JKR was going to do something interesting with him, and didn't - I really like taking missed opportunities/straight up bad calls from the books and doing something with them.  I'm still not sure what I'd quite do with that story idea - how sucessful he'd be, what he'd have to contend with etc.  So it'll stay on the back burner for a while until it's a bit more fleshed out.

[ineffable_season]

Your Dudley/Cho fic sounds interesting! I think logically it makes sense for both of them to be uncomfortable at Harrys wedding. I’m definitely going to check that one out. And I love your idea for an epistolary fic. I recently had an idea of writing one like that but featuring Bill and Charlie and their lives upon moving out of The Burrow. 

[Alwynse]

Are you going to upload more chapters from This Calls for a Toast, so pour the champagne? I'm eagerly waiting for the next chapters. I suppose I could read it on ao3, but I don't have an account and I'd rather leave reviews here than there.

[tinyporcelainehorses]

On 9/7/2020 at 4:00 PM, Alwynse said:

Are you going to upload more chapters from This Calls for a Toast, so pour the champagne? I'm eagerly waiting for the next chapters. I suppose I could read it on ao3, but I don't have an account and I'd rather leave reviews here than there.

Thanks so much!    I've added the third chapter now and am waiting for it to be validated - I'm trying not to just dump everything on here at once and utterly flood the mods with new stories, so it might take a little while for everything I've written to migrate across.  I also just submitted the first chapter of The Might of the Architect here, so stuff's making its way over!

But I do have some new stories onsite:

• Alastor Moody and the Norwegian Incident (ao3) (hpft)

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    An extract from Sturgis Podmore’s "The Order of the Phoenix, Twenty Years On: Remembering Fallen Friends", concerning THAT rumour about Alastor Moody, his missing eye, and that fateful trip to Norway - and whether or not it is true.

  • Written for crowsb4bros' Spice Up The Archives challenge.  I decided to write a quick oneshot about the Norse Gods, self-mythologising, and just why Moody only has one eye.  I had a blast writing this (in one sitting, minus a couple of small edits) and would love to write more extracts from this fictitious book in future.
  • Written August 2020, ~1k words.
• Dungeons, Dragons & Dumbledore's Army (ao3) (hpft)

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    Once a week in their sixth year, a few of the members of Dumbledore's Army get together to play Dungeons & Dragons. Unfortunately, some of their romantic attachments are starting to have an effect on the game.

  • Same challenge! This time, I went from thinking 'it would be fun to write a fic about a D&D campaign during Harry's Hogwarts days' to 'well, where would it fit on the timeline?' to writing something that's sort of a little bit more about how everyone's emotional state is in sixth year than it is about D&D itself.
  • Written September 2020, ~1k words.

And some more ideas I'll probably never get around to writing:

• Albus Dumbledore, in his infinite wisdom, chooses the school year of 1996 - 1997 to revive a long forgotten tradition: the Hogwarts secret pantomime.  As the show starts to go increasingly, chaotically wrong, everyone's just holding out for that official cast party, where, it is rumoured, everyone walks away having made out with everyone else.  Meanwhile, Dumbledore is weirdly insistent on including Draco Malfoy in proceedings, despite his clear lack of interest in all things theatrical.  And who is that mysterious masked figure, lurking in the shadows and sending Dumbledore and the faculty threatening notes about the performance?
  • I... sort of just wrote a mini blurb for that one, but I've taken the 'what if Hogwarts did a pantomime' idea and then done exactly the same thing to it that I did for the D&D fic.  I doubt I'll ever get round to writing this but it would be a tonne of fun.

[grumpy cat]

okay you already know this but i freaking love this calls for a toast, so pour the champagne and argh you’ve got me hooked on that story! i know from your story note that you were kinda inspired by jkr’s (awful) comment about vernon’s dna (i just really don’t like her obsession with blood, among numerous other problematic things with jkr <.<) and i loved that you took that and turned it on its head and just i love redemption arcs!

but omg owl post again. and again. and again… sounds kinda hilarious, i’m already loving it!

and the might of the architect has me on the edge of my seat because i’m not-so-secretly hoping it will involve the actual architect of hogwarts??? will it?? because i’m dying for magical architecture (i mean i’m an architect irl so i am biased but still!) but if there isn’t an actual architect involved, i’m really curious about the title and how/why you chose it?

and i have to say it again but i absolutely *need* that florean fortescue fic written asap, it sounds so amazingly good!

[tinyporcelainehorses]

6 hours ago, pirate grumpy cat said:

okay you already know this but i freaking love this calls for a toast, so pour the champagne and argh you’ve got me hooked on that story! i know from your story note that you were kinda inspired by jkr’s (awful) comment about vernon’s dna (i just really don’t like her obsession with blood, among numerous other problematic things with jkr <.<) and i loved that you took that and turned it on its head and just i love redemption arcs!

 

Thank you! I've put chapter four up in the queue so it should be there soon  Even if you take JKR's weird blood obsession as read, we're apparently supposed to believe Vernon's blood is stronger than the blood of Petunia, who wanted to go to Hogwarts so very badly she wrote to Dumbledore?

Owl Post I haven't moved over, partly because it has some particular formatting so I've been a little worried how it will turn out.  I really should (and I really should, you know, finish writing it... )

6 hours ago, pirate grumpy cat said:

and the might of the architect has me on the edge of my seat because i’m not-so-secretly hoping it will involve the actual architect of hogwarts??? will it?? because i’m dying for magical architecture (i mean i’m an architect irl so i am biased but still!) but if there isn’t an actual architect involved, i’m really curious about the title and how/why you chose it?

So first of all I can't talk about this title without crediting @Hawksquill for helping me find it when I was in a multi day escalating crisis about what the fuck I was going to call this fic I'd written 10k words or so of.

It's a quote from Cædmon's Hymn, the oldest surviving English language poetry.  The poem opens:

Quote

Now [we] must honour the guardian of heaven,

the might of the architect, and his purpose,

the work of the father of glory

In the context of the poem, the Architect is God - but I was writing a story about architecture and the ever changing building of Hogwarts, and about power and the way that people who hold it shape our lives.  So the phrase really worked!  And to think, it was between this and a My Chemical Romance lyric...

[ineffable_season]

Oh I love the story you created with Moody as Odin. I'm not very familiar with mythology, but trying to change this and read more and become more worldly/cultured. Do you feel like this is a fic that can still be enjoyed if one has limited knowledge of mythology? Or do you find it necessary to know the story front to back in order to appreciate it? I mean, I'll check it out either way, I was just curious if it's a kind of story where you dive a bit into this mythology and hint at things where the reader is aware, or if expert knowledge is required. I'm highly intimidated by your works honestly haha. Which I fully intend as a compliment. 

[tinyporcelainehorses]

5 hours ago, prideofprewett said:

Do you feel like this is a fic that can still be enjoyed if one has limited knowledge of mythology? Or do you find it necessary to know the story front to back in order to appreciate it?

I had to really look the story up while I'm writing it - I don't know a tonne of norse myth myself! I think it would work just fine coming in totally blind although obviously let me know what you think if you decide to read it!