The Guardian digests The Deathly Hollows

I don't have to have read the seventh book to know this is true:

Harry took off his Invisibility Cloak as he entered the Dursleys' house in Privet Drive. He was back where it had all started six books previously. It had seemed much more fun in the beginning. No Muggles queuing up at midnight; no Winnebagos on the film set; just him, Ron and Hermione and a box of magic tricks. Now, he felt a little jaded. Still, he thought, if I can keep it together for another 600 pages, I'll be off the hook. Free to pursue a different acting career.

[Link leads to minor spoilers.]

Story Fatigue.

There are 300 stories in the Sterlings series. I'm only going to tell three four of them. Maybe. Most of Ilonca & Rhiane is out already, the Polly & Zia / Dove & The Twins arc is coming to a conclusion, more or less. The Jacie & Reason arc is in pieces, but not irretrievable, and the Polestar arc is a mess. May never see the light of day.

I tried to start a few other arcs. There's Senator San Kacea (Conservative, Spartan, retired), a woman stuck in a wheelchair, who lost her beloved in a tragic automobile accident a decade ago, and who is the "conservative" advisor to the ambadassdor-- and how she sells out the mission to the Pendorians for the promise of being allowed to walk again. There's Jill San Gosca, an angry-at-the-universe college student who's convinced that the women of the llerkin-Terran-Pendorian Corridor should be either "battle-hardened" or "meek and terrified" by their constant contact with the war of the sexes, and reality turns out to be a little harder to swallow:

"Immortality let men remain mired in their manilessness. It didn't change them that much. I guess they're happy there. Pigs, shit, and so on. But women got to have the best of both worlds, Jill. Conquering the genetic faults of our baseline gave women freedom: we can have babies and relationships whenever we want, and not on nature's calendar. We get to celebrate and have fun and not feel guilty about it."

And there's Eha Sigma, paid blogger/reporter for the distributed news agency (DNA, get it?) The Athenian Liberal, who dives deep into the Realms (virtual worlds) inhabiting the walls of the starship in an attempt to learn and explain to her audience just how many people there are on board, only to discover that even the most realistic Realm hosts tempting promises of history, innocence and pleasure.

But story fatigue is starting to set in. Okay, I've made my point with the Sterlings: their system is functional, it works for them, but it's not going to survive in its current form when up against another, more liberal culture. Saul, my "queer as a pink duck" character, makes the point that the Corridor is going to like Sterling Y's more than the Sterlings themselves do. I suppose I could write "... it's not going to survive without violence..." and turn Jill into another bomb-thrower, but I've done that already.

Maybe once I get the current finished arcs polished and published, I'll feel more like interleaving other stories among them.