Aaargh

[rosie_rues]

I was flicking through the quotation dictionary, trying to track down a half remembered quote about purity, when this caught my eye:

Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew.

Robert Browning, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

Please excuse me while I scrub my brain. Then I will write the Hogwarts Influenza Epidemic of 1976. Promise.

Comments

[dolabellae.livejournal.com]

Oh dear...
But thanks for reminding me about that fact I love Childe Roland.

And re. Hogwarts Influenza Epidemic of 1976, have you read nineveh_uk's Truth or Dare (http://www.thedarkarts.org/authors/nineveh/FATOD.html)? This isn't at all a plagiary accusation! - I'm just really interested by the way fic universes can co-exist as well as contradict each other (and sometimes direcly influence each other, since I've borrowed - with permission! - a few bits from a_t_rain's world) and even though it's evident that your flu epidemic isn't going to match up neatly with Nineveh's, my brain will enjoy imagining ways in which they might come together...

[rosemaryandrue.livejournal.com]

I haven't but I'm already intrigued. I think part of it is genre. I was an Elinor Brent-Dyer fan as a child and I always enjoyed her illness episodes and been a little disappointed that nothing similar occurred at Hogwarts.

I also think that there are some ideas that will quite naturally occur to more than one person. We're working within the very narrow confines of known canon and sometimes a particular interpretation will just work. It's a very medieval concept of composition.

[dolabellae.livejournal.com]

Oh, absolutely - in fact the main reason I mentioned Nineveh's fic was that I thought you might enjoy comparing treatments.

I suppose the Basilisk attacks have been the nearest we've come to 'illness sweeping Hogwarts', though they didn't really offer much in the way of slow convalescence and games under Matron's eyes... There's a good 'flu epidemic in Jane Gardam's Bilgewater - which I'd heartily recommend full stop if you haven't read it.