Overhead doors

[asakiyume]

A truck was pulled up in a driveway in my neighborhood. It said "Devine Overhead Doors." (Here's a photo from the company's website, if you'd like to know precisely what it looked like.) Now, it seems that "overhead door" means a garage door that rolls up, but my thoughts went like this:

Devine Divine Overhead Doors



It reminds me of one of the stories in The Ladies of Grace Adieu, where angels poke their heads out of windows in the sky.

In very slightly tangential news, I gave up on Every Heart a Doorway, not for any flaw on its part, but because I realized--belatedly--that I don't like sucking all portal experiences into one framework.

Comments

[osprey_archer]

The funny thing is that Alice was based on a real girl, so you'd think she'd have more heft and solidity, but as a character - she's really just a viewpoint, isn't she? A transparent eyeball for the reader (to borrow a phrase from Emerson.)

I suppose when Carroll was telling the stories to Alice Liddell and her sisters he didn't need to add characterization with Alice sitting right there.

Lucy Pevensie IIRC is also named after a real child (the first Narnia book is dedicated to her), but not really based on her. That probably allows more scope for character development.

[asakiyume]

I think you're so right about not needing characterization for people who are right there.

Ughh, I just can't stand the difference in tone, though.

[osprey_archer]

This happens with crossover fics a lot, I've noticed. There are a lot of crossovers that sound interesting in theory, but once you try to actually write them then the differences between the two stories/worlds make it impossible. The characters in one world are more developed and it makes the characters from the other look thin or even incoherent. One of the stories functions on that slightly absurdist sitcom logic that doesn't fit with a more down-to-earth canon. Or the world-building is just incompatible.

I think this last one works against Harry Potter crossovers a lot. The worldbuilding has a distinctive weirdness to it that makes it hard to mesh with anything else.

[marycatelli]

Well, all those hearing the story probably read the Alice they knew into it.