Question me

[louiselux]

I'm in a navel gazing sort of mood and would like to talk about writing. Does anyone have any questions about any of my stories, or would be interested in a fic commentary? Or maybe a question about my writing techniques, such as they are?

Please feel free to ask anything - I'll try and answer as best I can.

Comments

[chomiji]

I think I've quite used up my question ... but in case not: Did Hans Christian Anderson's "Snow Queen" play any part in the background of "Cupidity"? Because I kept finding bits of it in your story ... .

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting question. At first thought, the answer would be no. But thinking about it, perhaps there is. The Snow Queen was a very important part of my childhood mental landscape, partly because I had a book with beautiful illustrations and partly because the idea of Kay and Gerda's life in the city, the troll mirror, the strange life of the snow queen and the eventual escape appealed to my sense of drama and adventure and romance.

Tell me the bits you've found, please! If you can still remember, that it. :D

I haven't asked Eleanor about this though - maybe it was all me.

[chomiji]

Hrrrm, I think I'll have to re-read Cupidity to give you a real answer (OMG, teh hardship!), but it was mainly just mapping the main characters and the tug-of-war for Robin between Angel and the Queen: Robin = Kay, Angel = Gerda, the Queen = the Snow Queen. I was definitely hoping that Angel would run into Sanzo and Goku as the cruel little Robber Girl and her long-suffering Reindeer ... . Robin's eventual shedding - under Angel's passionate determination - of the cruel indifference that the Queen had forced on him did definitely remind me of Gerda's melting of the shard of the troll mirror in Kay's heart with her tears.

(Have you read Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock, which is on a similar theme, the tug of war between a mortal girl and the Faerie Queen for the heart and soul of a mortal musician? Very rich and full of mythologic correspondences - much stronger as a piece of literature and more adult than just about anything else DWJ has done.)