Oh, visiting the actual places must make such a difference! I loved the scenery descriptions, but it has no specific personal resonance for me. (On the other hand, discovering that Watership Down was based on real places and finding pictures of them online was so shocking and exciting; it was like seeing photographs of Narnia or Middle Earth. But that was a book I reread endlessly as a child.)
I liked the way the Magicians books actively called out and dealt with the cruel capriciousness of this sort of thing, even though it doesn't quite bother me on that level personally. (Actually I loved those books a lot - far more than I was expecting to. The last book in the series made me cry more than once, and I still think of some of the scenes in it from time to time.)
Maybe that kind of thing - the Narnia thing, the mindwipe here - are so prevalent in kids' books because kids' lives are full of (to them) arbitrary and implacable rules established by grownups, so it's not so much of a change. I don't remember having any strong feelings on it when I was a kid, or even really noticing it all that much. My memories of these books are extremely vague, but I read the Narnia books over and over, and it didn't bother me at all; I just took it for a given that it was a rule of the place and nothing could be done.
I remember loving gramarye1971's Dark is Rising/Harry Potter crossover fanfic when I was in my teens. It featured an older Will without his friends. I certainly thought it captured the angst of being an Old One combined with Will's general disinclination to angst. (Not going to revisit it in case in doesn't match my memories!)
There's always been something really tragic yet pragmatic about Will. While I'm not going to go looking for the fic either, I think seeing how he develops through time would be very interesting.
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I liked the way the Magicians books actively called out and dealt with the cruel capriciousness of this sort of thing, even though it doesn't quite bother me on that level personally. (Actually I loved those books a lot - far more than I was expecting to. The last book in the series made me cry more than once, and I still think of some of the scenes in it from time to time.)
Maybe that kind of thing - the Narnia thing, the mindwipe here - are so prevalent in kids' books because kids' lives are full of (to them) arbitrary and implacable rules established by grownups, so it's not so much of a change. I don't remember having any strong feelings on it when I was a kid, or even really noticing it all that much. My memories of these books are extremely vague, but I read the Narnia books over and over, and it didn't bother me at all; I just took it for a given that it was a rule of the place and nothing could be done.
I remember loving gramarye1971's Dark is Rising/Harry Potter crossover fanfic when I was in my teens. It featured an older Will without his friends. I certainly thought it captured the angst of being an Old One combined with Will's general disinclination to angst. (Not going to revisit it in case in doesn't match my memories!)
There's always been something really tragic yet pragmatic about Will. While I'm not going to go looking for the fic either, I think seeing how he develops through time would be very interesting.