Ok firstly a huge good luck for your exam, really hope prep goes well, wishing you lots of strength and solidarity! Absolutely don't apologise - comments are a lovely and delightful but am absolutely not owed them, but very very touched you found the time to read and reached out to comment all the same under the circumstances, that's so kind of you.
Secondly - just thank you so much for this commentary and insight into the fic. I'm buzzing you're into this story so far, means the world. I'm also so thrilled you picked up on the differences in structure between Orchards and Beasts, because you're completely seeing what I'd hoped the reader would see in this. While I wanted Orchards to play with time, what I wanted for that whole piece was for it to work as one big flashback, with flash forwards to the time after 'the truth', when Harry knows he loves her - so, ideally, for the reader, what propels the narrative forward is the certainty that we know where that story is going, we know they're going to fall in love, and the question, or the tension to resolve, is 'how does Harry fall in love without knowing it'. And the resolution is that, although we know that summer is going to end, that war's coming, and these two will not have an easy time of it after the summer of 1996, we know H and G are going to find their way back to each other. For me as a writer, that was freeing in that the story in Orchards could then unfurl in a more-or-less linear fashion, a chronological process of Harry falling into a love that will come back to him at the end of everything. In Beasts, though, the story is much more of a character, Ginny, processing her past, trying to rebuild and move forward, but being stuck and haunted by memories about how she got to this point, that threaten a straightforward linear path to healing. There is a bit of that in Orchards - Harry in the tent scenes etc - but I wanted the story to move in a very different way in Beasts, as a lens onto how Ginny as a character thinks back on her own childhood and coming of age. So 'broken record' is just completely the right way of putting the dynamic in Beasts (actually finding that very helpful as a framing as I think about the next few chapters, so thank you so much for seeing this fic so clearly and putting that dynamic so eloquently, really clarifying for me haha!)
Honestly thank you so much for supporting my writing and this new project - I'm so grateful for it. Will be rooting for you in your exam!!
Comment on Beasts
whinlatter on Chapter 1 Fri 14 Apr 2023 10:45AM UTC
Last Edited Fri 14 Apr 2023 10:45AM UTC
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