GES Vol 5 Status Update:
I recently got a question about the Green-Eyed Snake series on one of my other stories, and I wanted to share my response here because A: I figure at the very least I owe you all some kind of an update, and B: I think there’s good advice there for fic-interaction in general. So, to answer the question will I continue with GES?
I don't know. I have stuff written, I have lots of stuff planned, but it's hard to actually write it these days because it's difficult to immerse myself deeply enough in Potter to write a story like that without getting thrown-out of the writing by my overwhelming disgust for the author. Spite helps, and I've managed to slog through a few sentences over the past few months largely on that basis, but it's abysmally slow. So I just don't know. Which is why I haven't really responded most of the time when people ask me about the GES series, because "idk" isn't a helpful answer for anyone I feel. But: I don't know. I want to, but it's hard. The world sucks, and she's making it worse on purpose, and it's hard to focus on working in her sandbox—even with the goal of giving her a thousand middle fingers with the resulting story—because it's hard to focus past the evil she's doing in real life to work on the story. Maybe if every Republican in America suddenly drops dead of shame and stops trying to slaughter genderqueer children, or Rowling yeets herself into an abyss or has an epiphany to maybe stop being irredeemably evil on purpose, or some other such miracle happens to make the world less awful, it'll get easier. But otherwise: I truly do not know.
I'll also say that opening an e-mail from AO3 and expecting to enjoy reading someone's comment about my new LotR fic, and instead getting this, does not engender motivation to write anything. So your tip for the day is to ask writers questions like this through more appropriate avenues in the future (tumblr, dms, one of the stories in the series in question, etc) rather than hijacking some unrelated story. And maybe remind us or something you liked about that story when you do. The few sentences I have been able to eke-out this year have all been inspired by readers commenting on some chapter of GES, because their enjoyment reminds me of why I liked that story, too. Whenever I am trying to work on it, I page back through comments and messages that people have sent, and that helps me swallow the bitter pill of JKR’s existence enough to write a few more words. Every nice (or even insightfully critical!) thing that anyone has ever said about his series helps, a lot. And I know objectively that people wouldn't ask "will you continue?" about a story they didn't like reading, but you spark no inspiration like this; only disappointment. The only reward fanfic writers get is to have readers tell them what they liked about their work, so if you want to encourage your favorite writers to write more stuff for you to read, that's the best way to go about it. Not this.
So: sorry for not saying anything sooner about the status of this story, but it was because I didn’t feel that I had anything useful to say. But that’s where we are: the story is not abandoned, it’s just being drowned right now by the weight of the world.
I do want to take a moment to thank you each and every one of you for the beautiful comments and messages and encouragement you’ve given me, though. I do want to finish this series for you at some point, I truly do. I just don’t know how, or when. But someday I genuinely hope to.
Thank you for reading, and I’m sorry to disappoint you.
