Bugger!

My lhr_fqf fic is not going to be done in time. Well, I have an hour, but I'm being realistic. It's my own fucking fault. For weeks I worked on one fic and then two weeks ago I decided it was going too long and so I laid it aside to write a different, shorter answer to the challenge so that I could meet the deadline. Now I just have two unfinished fics. I am going to post it tomorrow or Sunday provided that my Internet doesn't get turned off. I'm (finally!) switching over to DSL and there was a delay in getting the kit to me. My dial up is scheduled to go off this weekend. Maybe I can call and beg a few more days out of them.

I am not allowing myself to read any of the fest fics until I post my own although I had a look at astarvingwriter 's before she posted it. It's filled with her usual brilliance. If you're fond of her humorous style then you're bound to enjoy it. I laughed out loud in many places. http://community.livejournal.com/lhr_fqf/15043.html

My sister is in the process of trying to find a house to buy. In the meanwhile we've become obsessed with watching those reality realty shows on HGTV. What really amazes me is how expensive it is to live in other parts of the country. Or maybe it’s just abnormally cheap to live here. You can find nice houses for under 70k as long as you'll willing to buy older house.  Or if you do want a brand new house, you can buy one of those hideous McMansions for 250k. Even less in some cases.

Anyway, I've noticed that a number of you on my flist are also house hunting. This essay contest by Wells Fargo might be of some interest to you. If you win, they'll give you up to 250k to pay off your mortgage. We're entering it.

***

I read Home Fries Nazi recently. I saw it recced all over my flist a while back ago. I enjoyed it quite a bit although it did bring to light something I have thought about from time to time.

In the story, Snape is described as having a shaved head. I have often encountered fics where the author has chosen to make the characters look different from how they are described in canon. Sometimes, but not always, it feels like the changes were made because of some sort of wish fulfillment.

In the case of Home Fries Nazi, the change did not come across as an author's whim. I understood and appreciated why Snape looked as he did.

All the same, it didn't matter in the end. As I progressed through the story I still pictured Snape as I always do, with longish, greasy hair. I'm just wondering if others have such a strong vision of what the characters look like that it's virtually impossible to imagine them any other way.

Hi…

I almost feel shy about updating because I haven’t done it in so long.  I am very surprised that I wasn't massively defriended. I got a few emails inquiring about my absence. Well, it wasn't so much an absence, more of a silence.  ( My lame excuses... )

In other RL news I am completely in lust with my maintenance man. There is something about him that turns me into a puddle of goo. I'm seriously thinking about breaking shit just so he has to come to my apartment and fix it. He has a mullet though. I don't mean one of those maybe mullets like Patrick Swayze sported in Ghost. This is an all out mullet. Very short on top and very long in the back. And you know, I am so in lust that I almost don’t care. Thankfully, he wears a hat all the time so I can delude myself into thinking it's just long hair pulled into a ponytail.

On the fandom front, updating TMTM is my top priority now that I have a fully functioning computer. I have also written about half of my L/Hr FQF fic. I don't know how people will react to it. It’s not a very sexy fic, in fact, Lucius has never been unsexier. (Blasphemy!)  I think a lot of people will stop reading  once they see how far it deviates from a traditional fan ficcy type romance.

[	Current Mood	|	cold	]
[	Current Music	|	SOAD-Hypnotize	]

Aw, hell. I'm fucking a delusional Harmonian. I wish I were kidding. This month I finally got JoJo to read the HP books. He finished HBP tonight and was completely shocked at the H/G. He turned a deaf ear to me as I pointed out all the anvil-sized hints of R/Hr. He's convinced the books will end with Harry and Hermione together.

Anyway, over all, it was pretty fun talking with a casual reader who hasn't been influenced by all the in depth analysis that occurs in fandom.

He had some interesting and crazy theories. For example, he thinks that love isn't going to be Harry's protection but his weapon. Harry is going to use love somehow to give Voldemort a heart. Kind of how it happens in The Never Ending Story 2. When Voldemort feels love for the first time it will destroy him (thus fulfilling the prophecy*) but it won't kill him. JoJo is adamant about it not killing him because he doesn't think JKR will let Harry be a murderer. What happens instead is that Voldemort reverts back to Tom Riddle. I should mention at this point that JoJo believes the final confrontation will occur in the DoM and that Harry will get his "love weapon" from the locked mysterious room. Once Voldemort becomes Tom again there will be a shocking twist where Tom commits suicide by walking through the veil because he hears Merope calling to him.

*It fulfills the prophecy if you think of Voldemort and Riddle as being separate beings, which I do.

And you know, even though JoJo is a delusional Harmonian, I can really see his ending happening (minus the H/Hr stuff). It'd make a good fic at least.

Anyway, I finally saw GOF this weekend. Yeah, took me forever. I've never been much involved with the movies mostly because the look of everything is so very different from my own vision.  I just can't bring myself to care that much about them. Although, Jason Issacs does make a fucking fine ass Lucius. Goddamn! I almost felt compelled to press my breasts against the screen like they do in those prison movies.

And totally off topic, but as I just read that last bit, I have to wonder… When did "ass" become an emphasizer? How did it come to be used this way? It's so weird.

Just earlier today I called my sister's boyfriend a "broke-ass bitch".  And you know that because that "ass" is there the boyfriend isn't just broke, he is BROKE.

I'm curious, do any of you use "ass" in such a manner? Only jokingly? Or is it part of your natural language and you do it without thinking? I must confess to the latter.

I'm trying to make a concerted effort to post everyday. We'll see how that goes.

Thanks to everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday yesterday! I really didn't do anything of merit. We're not much into celebrating around here.

Last night, I watched this movie called House of 9. I took it as a wannabe Cube with a bit of Saw 2 thrown in. The movie was set in Britain but seriously needed to be Brit picked. I kept wondering why they were talking about dollars instead of pounds and there was a part where a character talks about calling 911. My understanding was that 999 is used in England instead but I could be wrong.

There were all these little bits that together made me think this movie was meant to be set in America but arbitrarily set in England.

But, all in all, I've seen worse movies. It's worth watching just to hear Dennis Hooper's fake Irish accent randomly come and go. Rent it if there's nothing better.

And God…

Generally, I have nothing mean to say about fic archives. Not even ff.net. But I have to wonder why the admins at aff.net thought it was a good idea to use some weird Flash business/corporate layout on an adult fan fic archive. At least it's good for a chuckle.

Well, I turned out to be a big fat liar when I said I would update on the evening of the 27th. Somehow, I don’t think anyone is surprised.

Something really creepy happened to me when I was getting new glasses a few days ago. During my eye exam, the doctor commented on the fact that I have a birthday coming up (it's today actually) and then she said I was “just a baby” and “so young”. I guess 26 about to be 27 is youngish but not remarkably so. And what got me is that she wouldn’t shut up about it. Before I got out of there, she referred to my youth about ten times and always in this odd cooing voice one might use for little children. I half expected to be offered a lollipop at the end.

 I suppose it might have made some kind of sense if the doctor was really old but she was in her early thirties! And actually, this sort of thing has happened to me before although this most recent experience was especially weird. Sometimes I wonder if I give off a “little child” vibe. 

*

Well, damn.

I came on to reply to some comments LJ took forever to send to me and noticed that I haven’t updated in over a month. I’m really sorry about that. I didn’t realize it had been that long. There are reasons for the lack of updates but in a gesture of love and affection for my flist, I am sparing you all my whiny emo angst. Thankfully, that’s all behind me now.

Anyway, I am hoping to catch up on everything this week. We’ll see how it goes.

I feel sort of silly updating with just this but I don’t have much to say at the mo. I’ll update later today with something with more substance.

God, I have such a headache. I foolishly decided to get some cornrows and now I look like Queen Latifah in Set it Off. But the damn stylist made them too tight. These fucking things are coming out today.

Anyway…

I finally updated TMTM with chapter 6 a few days ago. LJ was being a ho and not letting me post then.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2479823/1/
http://adultfan.nexcess.net/aff/story.php?no=544192866
http://archive.skyehawke.com/story.php?no=9172
http://pureblood.sycophanthex.com/viewstory.php?sid=620

Yes, I know. It took me a pathetically long time to update with a chapter I have had written since March. I did a lot of editing. I’m still not pleased with the final version but it will do. I’m sick of looking at it.

One of my friends had a huge problem with how Lucius reacts to something that happens to Hermione. I think she forgets that it’s a L/Hr fic, not, say, a R/Hr. Ah, well.

I’ve gotten a few more reviews from people who dislike Doris. I didn’t write her as a character to be disliked but I can certainly see why some would. And well, actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if even more people dislike or even hate her when other things come to light.

I’m just glad they feel something for Doris. Even if it is dislike. In my mind it would be worse if they were indifferent, as if she is just an easily dismissed OC. I actually spent a lot of time thinking about Doris’ characterization, maybe even more so than with Lucius and Hermione. Although Doris stays mostly in the background she is involved a few important subplots. The biggest one explores how a Muggle parent feels about loosing their only child to world in which they have no place. Her feelings on this lead her to do some shockingly manipulative things. Doris may come across as a dizzy scatterbrain but let me assure you, if the woman had been a witch, she’d definitely be sorted into Slytherin.

*

I spent all night reading some atrocious Lucius/Harry mpreg. Yes, I was bored. What’s always been odd to me is that the L/H ship contains a ton of mpreg. Yes, most slash ships do have a lot of it. Hell, there are probably more Snarry mpreg fics then there are L/H fic in total. But ratio-wise? It seems like every other L/H I find is a mpreg while it’s like every fifth fic (or even less) for Snarry or H/D.

I’m not complaining as I like m-preg. I just think it’s kind of weird.

Today, I went on a friending spree and found someone who had some interesting fandom posts. I didn’t recognize the name but I have heard of some of the people of her f-list. I liked what I saw and so I friended her.

Well, apparently, this did not sit well with her. I made a comment to one of her posts and her reply was basically a request that I remove her as she did not want people who supported disgusting pairings like Lucius/Hermione to be associated with her.

My jaw literally dropped and I had to read the reply several times to make sure I had read it correctly.

Now I know that there are people who will never friend me for many reasons, including my beloved ships. And I know that some of you will eventually defriend me because you don’t want the shit I talk about clogging up your flists. Hell, I bet a lot of you are already at the point where you wish I’d STFU about L/Hr and are thisclose to defriending me.

And I’m cool with that. I never friend people with expectation that they will add me back or if they do, that they will keep me on for all eternity.

But it never even occurred me that my shipping preferences would be such a big deal, that someone might not even want me on their fo-list. This has really shocked me. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does.

I mean, I can understand in some cases why people might not want certain types of people of reading their LJs, like minors, or trolls. But even then, you really can’t stop them unless you f-lock everything. Even banning their LJ doesn’t always work because they can still log out and read your public entries.

In closing, now I know how all the oppressed Harmonians feel.

*emo!tear*

God, I really need to update more…

I thought I’d share a neat little story about a Harry Potter fan fic written by an 11 year old a few years ago.

In my canasta club, I regularly partner with a woman who teaches the fifth grade in California. I use the same screen name there and I think she googled it or something because last night she suddenly brought Harry Potter fan fiction. She told me that an assignment she gives every year is for her students to write a story set in one of their favorite books. A lot of them choose Harry Potter. Well, the year before OOTP was published, one of her students wrote a short story set in Harry’s fifth year. The story followed the plot of those Miss Nelson is Missing books. In the story, Dumbledore goes away on school business and while he is away, the students start misbehaving badly. Once Dumbledore gets word of it, he decides to come back as a mean and vicious female teacher who is short and fat with a toad-like face and black curly hair.  

Sound familiar?

And the kicker – her first name was Umbra! Her full name was an anagram of “Albus Dumbledore” which is how Hermione finally realizes who Umbra really is.

Anyway, I thought that was kind of cool. I recall making a post a while back about how I created a yet to be introduced OMC for Repetitions and then JKR made her website and mentioned a character named Pyrites who was almost exactly like the OMC I had in mind, right down to the wearing of blood-stained gloves. Even the name of Pyrites fit so perfectly.

And now I am wondering if there has been any pre-HBP fics that had plot elements or characters that were eerily similar to things in HBP.

I can recall two offhand. I read a Lupin fic where he is bitten by a child molesting werewolf named Fernis, which is another name for Fenrir.

And there was a Snarry fic where Snape remains as the Potions master and won’t let Harry in his class. Harry learns that to be an Auror all he has to do is pass the Potions NEWTS and he doesn’t need to take the class to take the exam. And so he begins teaching himself via an old Potions textbook he found in the ROR. The book has been written in by its previous owner. The little notes contain short-cuts, tips, and journal-like scribbles. It even had some made up, nasty curses. Harry grows fond of the unknown previous owner and thinks it might be his father when he reads a nice little note about Lily Evans. He has a fit when he finds out it’s Snape but eventually a Snarry romance ensues.

Do any of you know of others? If you don’t know the exact fic, that’s cool. I am more interested in knowing what weird little predictive plots and characters were written about before HBP.

[	Current Mood	|	awake	]
[	Current Music	|	- Blue Oyster Cult - Ballroom Blitz	]

I got a review for Repetitions from someone who said they followed a link posted in the GAFF forums. I looked but didn’t find anything over there.

Now I am insanely curious as to what they are saying about my fic. The review was actually positive in nature but I bet what’s over on GAFF is pretty brutal.

Honestly, I am not terribly surprised. Although I am horrendously slow about updating that fic, I love it to death. But I can see why a lot of people would think it’s god awful by virtue of it being a mugglized AU alone. Plus, there are parts of the fic that make me cringe in hindsight and deserve to be mocked.

Sometimes I wonder myself why I like no magic stories so much. Most of them bear very little resemblance to canon and might as well be original stories. And I would have included Repetitions in that category if not for the sequels. This is something of a spoiler I suppose, but the Repetitions story arc begins as an AU but it doesn’t quite end that way.

Anyway, while I’m talking about no magic AUs…

As I learned from painless_j, the dawn to dusk group is holding another fest. The challenge this time is to write AUs where Snape and Harry meet in different ways than canon. The theme: Not Here, Not Now! No Magic?

That brought to mind a crazy Snarry AU I have been thinking about for the last year or so.

Last year, a friend and I were talking about no magic AUs and she said that to better parallel the books one might put the characters in a closed community that was shut off from the rest of the world, such as an Amish like setting. After she said that I immediately thought of an AU Snarry fic where Harry Potter, as a young Amish man of 16, goes forth into the modern world on his Rumspringa where he meets Severus Snape and begins questioning his sexuality.

I actually did quite a bit of research on the Amish for this but I don’t think I’ll ever write it. With Repetitions, I have done my part in inflicting wonky AUs on the fandom. I wish someone else would write it as I’d like to read something like that. Though, I’m probably the only one.

*

Well, it turns out that I will not be able to participate in fanfic100 because the mod thought my claim was too broad. But I still plan on somehow challenging myself to write a series of small one-shots.

Does anyone know of a comm that produces regular challenges? I saw a few but most of them were either dead or only allowed slash or het. I want something that’s active and allows all pairings and all ratings.  And also something that is not all drabbles.

starrysummer has an interesting post on fandom wishes.

As I was reading the comments to the post, I realized that I am weirdly elitist in a way.

A number of people said that that wanted more recognition from the well known members of the fandom. I am not going to lie. I do get a little squeeful when writers and artists I admire friend me.  

But you know what really strokes my stoat? It’s when people I have never heard of before and who have teeny tiny friends lists add me out of the blue. I can’t help but think to myself” “Wow! Out of everyone in this big ass fandom, you choose me!”

It makes me feel special.

*

I signed up for fanfic100. I asked for “Slytherins and Gryffindors”. Originally, I wanted L/Hr but then I realized that I probably couldn’t write 100 L/Hr fics and that by going broader I could not only write L/Hr but most of my other favorite pairings like SS/SB, H/D, HP/SS and so on.

I figure this will be a good opportunity for me to write shorter fics, which I have some difficulty with. Most of the plot bunnies I conceive tend to require epic length fics.

If anyone is willing to beta/Brit pick as I go along I would be most appreciative. I am aiming for most of the fics to be under 2000 words but some will undoubtedly be longer. If you only want to beta certain pairings that’s cool. I anticipate writing: HP/DM, HP/SS, HP/LM, HG/LM, HG/SS, RW/PP, RW/MB, RW/DM, SB/SS, SB/LM, SB/DM, SB/RB, RL/LM, RL/DM, NL/LM, NL/DM, NL/MB

Not all of the fics will be shippy in nature. And some may contain incest (note the SB/RB) or m-preg.

*

Anyway, a few of you are waiting for your ghetto oil paintings. I haven’t forgotten. They are all completed and laying on a shelf in my living room. I haven’t been able to scan them because my scanner doesn’t seem to be compatible with my newish computer.

I did a test mailing to see how they would fair in the post and it was pretty bad. The test painting got smeared beyond recognition so I am thinking that either these fuckers will never truly dry or I didn’t wait long enough. Or I didn’t package it right. I am going to try again in a few weeks and if it’s the same then I am just going to redo them with traditional paint.

I hope you all wanted one for the joy of simply having a physical copy of a fan art but if it was novelty of the ghetto oil painting you were after, I can still send it but I can make no promises on it’s condition when you receive it.