So, I get a message in ff.net PM saying that they love my work, but would I please stop “fronting”.  That, apparently, consists of saying that I have the Daydverse fully developed in my head and don’t use notes.  Because the message sender is going to college for creative writing in an honors class, and that’s not how it works, and not how JKR does it.  You have main characters, supporting characters, and just names, and you keep a big fat ol’ notebook. 

That’s how it’s generally done, yes.  And you generally use measuring cups for bread.  That ain’t how I do it.  For either. However, if you’re going to make an accusation like “stop saying that the minor characters of the DA are OCs, they’re names you’ve filled in; if they were characters they’d be in the story more”…oh, sweetheart, you just done throwed down.  Tell me, are you less of a person because you’ve only figured into MY story in the form of a single extremely condescending PM?  I have many times lamented that I haven’t time to WRITE the stories of the entire DA, not that they don’t exist or that I don’t already know them. 

So here, challenge made, and Daydians, go ahead and post this on the LJ and Facebook comms:

I’m going to make dinner.  When I come back, have left me any one of those “meme” questionnaire thingies for any DA member.  I will answer them all.  I will have a roommate sitting next to me for monitoring.  I will use no references or notes. 

There are a lot of new Daydians lately, many of whom are still on or have just finished DAYD itself, and there has been some confusion regarding the Daydverse itself and some of the basic premises of it, which I thought I’d clear up.

The Daydverse encompasses “Dumbledore’s Army and the Year of Darkness,” “Sluagh,” “A Peccatis,” and the art, videos, meta, and one-shots that I have created which are specifically indicated as such.  Other people also create works which are compatable with this universe, but with a very few exceptions, they are basically fanfic, not “canon.” There is a common misconception, however, that because the events of DAYD parallel those in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” that the Daydverse is written as simply an extension of JKR’s Harry Potter books, or a mere POV shift.  This is not the case. 

1. Daydverse works off of basic, not extended JKRverse canon.
While some details from JKR’s “extended” work have made their way into the Daydverse from various sources, I only consider the seven principle books in my writing.  Movies, interviews, Pottermore, Quidditch Through the Ages, Magical Beasts and Where to Find Them, and Tales of Beedle the Bard are not part of the source material for the Daydverse.  Nor, if JKR goes against what she has repeatedly said and writes and eighth book, will that be utilized.  This means that if it isn’t explicitly said in the seven books, I consider it fair game. 

2. There is a lot of expanded world-building in the Daydverse.
In her seven books, JKR left a lot of things only just touched on or barely explored.  I have expanded not only on the characters - and created several dozen new ones - I have taken the universe she started and expanded it, but my deductions and expansions have not been based on maintaining the tone or world she created.  Instead, I have looked at it from the perspective of “how would this work IRL.”  I go into areas that she never touched - such as religion, the magic of other cultures, and how magic works as science - and also take concepts such as the history of magic, the MoM and Wizengamot and parlay them into full entities.  Because I base this deduction on the real world rather than “what would JKR do,” they are more often than not NOT in the spirit of Harry Potter, and absolutely NOT what JKR would do.  See #4 on this list.  Everything in the Daydverse is coherent to itself, and there is a lot of internal self-reference and callback.  Large parts of it do not make sense without other parts, or if you’ve only read the HP series.  I get a lot of “JKR’s ____ would never ______,” but DAYDVERSE _____ with the backstory, events, and other elements consistent to this ‘verse would, and that’s what I work off of.  WWJKRD is not a bracelet I wear. 

3. The target audience is wildly different. 
Harry Potter was written for an adolescent audience, 11-18, mirroring the age of the books’ protagonist.  DAYD can be equally considered the upper edge of young adult fiction or the lower edge of adult fiction, but that too mirrors the age and life phase of the protagonist.  Sluagh is absolutely adult fiction, as is AP, and that’s not just a matter of swearing, sex, and violence.  The protagonist is an adult, and the themes and issues are completely adult in a way that would have been completely inappropriate in HP.  While yes, some of them go on around Harry, he is not at all as involved - nor should he be - in the nitty-gritty of politics, war, marriage, child-rearing, sex, addiction, society, finances, and career.  Those are adult issues, and the Daydverse is primarily about adults, and even though some of the one-shots deal with those characters as children and teenagers, it is still within the framework of a world written from an adult perspective and for an adult audience. 

4. I am not J.K. Rowling and do not try to be. 
You will find nothing of Roald Dahl, Terry Pratchett, or C.S. Lewis in my work.  Rather, I take my primary literary influences from Stephen King, Clive Cussler, Jules Verne, Michael Crichton, Tom Clancy, and Bernard Cornwell. 

5. The intent of the two series is wildly different. 
JKR created a wholly separate magical world that only occasionally, vaguely touched on the “Muggle” world and was written as a fantasy series.  The Daydverse is more what is termed “fantastical realism”.  Yes, there are wizards and witches and magic wands, but Colin Creevey is a Star Wars fan and speaks Klingon, and the Beatles are the key to breaking Alice Longbottom’s shell.  It is written to be as realistic as possible, despite the magical elements, and that is obviously a huge tonal shift.  Some call it “Darker and Edgier Dialed Up To 11,” but I personally think that’s an unfair comparison because it’s completely different universes that just happen to have some of the same characters.  If you are a deeply devoted fan of the Harry Potter series, odds are actually that you won’t like the Daydverse, and that’s ok.  It’s not the same, and isn’t meant to be.  Like it or hate it, but please, do so on its own merits and flaws, not because you’re trying to make it the eighth through tenth Harry Potter books.  The Daydverse is shitty Harry Potter, but by that measure, Tolkein is shitty Narnia…and no, I’m not comparing myself to Tolkien, I’m using the comparison of the same genre that involved many of the same elements but was written for wildly different audiences.

This is why writers drink.  I’ve BEEN saving my work.  My computer re-booted.  The file is corrupt.  I have to start over again on the last hour and a half.

Is there twelve step for fanfic writers?

For the purposes of pimping

Romance, capital R, is a genre that is about the attainment of A Relationship.  Even if those aren’t stated as the goals of the characters, it’s the goal of the story, the author, the reader.  A Relationship must be attained, with love so much of a side effect on the way there that it can be considered a Romance even if they hate each other, even if they’re horrible for and to one another, even if they’re downright abusive, as long as it ends in a Relationship.  Because a Relationship is the ultimate prize, the attainment that will cause everything else to Be All Right even if it’s terribly wrong.  

Because a Relationship is an only occasionally thinly veiled code for a Marriage, and that’s supposed to be the goal of every woman: to be well-capital-M Married.  Capital M Married meaning owned by a man of status who will take good care of his prized possession as opposed to married, which is a partnership between equals who have chosen a legal validation of that partnership and therefore needs a lot less propaganda to make it desirable unlike being owned, which you must train someone from childhood to find not just appealing, but think they are worthless without.  

I think this is also why Romance is a genre that is deemed a strictly female genre (unlike stories that include love, which there is plenty of in things marketed at men), because it’s designed around teaching women to long to be owned, and thus it’s shocking when men find it appealing or when men are inserted into both sides of the roles, like in seme/uke slash.

Honestly, reading a Romance to me is like reading Trainspotting; it’s all about the (scary, unhealthy, destructive, all-consuming, depersonalizing) fix. I’m not joking.  You could drop it right into Twilight if Stephanie Meyer was ok with swearing.  See below: 

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin Edward?

I suck at writing Romance.  I can’t, because it’s not real anything; it’s dangerous propaganda that makes people desperate to be property.  ”I just want someone to want me.”  ”I just want to belong to someone and have someone belong to me.”  That should put chills up your spine.  It does mine.  That’s not romantic.  It’s Romantic.  

Now, I do write people.  Pretty well, if I do say so myself.  People do a lot of things.  They laugh, cry, lie, tell the truth, tell half truths, tell technical truths that they’ve convinced themselves of, see things all from their own perspective, pursue dreams, live in denial, fess up, hate, fear, hope, run away from and towards…and sometimes, being people, they fall in love with other people.  Sometimes those other people return the feelings.  Sometimes that’s a healthy situation, sometimes it’s not.  But it’s always the story of people trying to achieve things and having relationships and feelings and thoughts along the way.  It can even be pretty romantic.  But in the end, it’s about them as people, not as property, and it’s about the achievements of their lives, not their Relationship.  

Which is why I suck at Romance.