The Wanderer
07-18-2010, 06:48 PM
Okay. Given that as your stated intention, I'm feeling considerably less guilty about the rudeness of my initial (mostly not posted) reaction. However, if you're willing to limit yourself to actual contributions, I'm quite willing to drop that subject.
Why are you assuming there would (need to) be a familiar in the first place?
Why are you assuming a story like this (could be, and was in fact envisioned as being) would need to contain pop culture references? The main reason I can think of for doing something like that would be for the sake of humour, and although I'm certainly not opposed to having things be amusing (or even to including particular events only because they would be amusing), I'm really not planning to play this for laughs; it may in fact wind up needing to go in directions sufficiently dark (in the sense of "unpleasant and/or unhappy") that I'm not sure I'd want to read it, if I ran across it already written.
Yes, it had occurred to me that Harry would not have been able to make any sense out of the letter he received, as none of the Lost Boys can read as far as I know; however, none of the wizards originally involved knew about that, and I can certainly see the Boys responding appropriately if the owl landed in front of Harry and held out a leg with something obviously attached to it, which would be good enough for the owl to consider the message as delivered. (The fact that the letter had not been read is one of the things which they would need to discover - and attempt to address - in the "initial meeting" scene, right after where my intro/outline left off.)
In order to write much further, I need to be able to determine what the reactions of people in the wizarding world (both individually and as a collective mass) to Harry are going to be.
In order to be able to do that, I need to know what it is they're reacting to.
In order to know that, I need to know how Harry will react to the things he's going to be encountering.
In order to know that, I need to understand his mindset and his way of thinking.
In order to do that, at least (and, regardless, especially) for the early stages of the story, I need to understand the mindset of the Lost Boys, and the reasons for it - specifically, I need to put together at least a rough impression of what actually happened to Harry while growing to childhood in Neverland, and figure out how he would have developed on that basis.
...and in order to do that, I think I need to go back and reread Peter Pan for the first time in at least a decade.
Why are you assuming there would (need to) be a familiar in the first place?
Why are you assuming a story like this (could be, and was in fact envisioned as being) would need to contain pop culture references? The main reason I can think of for doing something like that would be for the sake of humour, and although I'm certainly not opposed to having things be amusing (or even to including particular events only because they would be amusing), I'm really not planning to play this for laughs; it may in fact wind up needing to go in directions sufficiently dark (in the sense of "unpleasant and/or unhappy") that I'm not sure I'd want to read it, if I ran across it already written.
Yes, it had occurred to me that Harry would not have been able to make any sense out of the letter he received, as none of the Lost Boys can read as far as I know; however, none of the wizards originally involved knew about that, and I can certainly see the Boys responding appropriately if the owl landed in front of Harry and held out a leg with something obviously attached to it, which would be good enough for the owl to consider the message as delivered. (The fact that the letter had not been read is one of the things which they would need to discover - and attempt to address - in the "initial meeting" scene, right after where my intro/outline left off.)
In order to write much further, I need to be able to determine what the reactions of people in the wizarding world (both individually and as a collective mass) to Harry are going to be.
In order to be able to do that, I need to know what it is they're reacting to.
In order to know that, I need to know how Harry will react to the things he's going to be encountering.
In order to know that, I need to understand his mindset and his way of thinking.
In order to do that, at least (and, regardless, especially) for the early stages of the story, I need to understand the mindset of the Lost Boys, and the reasons for it - specifically, I need to put together at least a rough impression of what actually happened to Harry while growing to childhood in Neverland, and figure out how he would have developed on that basis.
...and in order to do that, I think I need to go back and reread Peter Pan for the first time in at least a decade.