Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

That Harry Potter fanfic series that I've been reading for a while, the one that's longer than all the books? I have to give up on it.

The first book was great, I tore through it and loved nearly every word of it. The second book was pretty darned good too. Both had a tiny issue: The characters used 'fuck', and it seemed very out of character to me. (The story is an AU, and Harry was raised by pure wizards, knew no muggles.) Harry and Draco using 'fuck' just didn't seem to fit, but at least it didn't happen very often. (Though once near the end of the second story Harry said 'fuck you very much' and I was like... really?)

The third book really fell apart for me. 'Fuck's rained from the sky. More than that, this writer developed the same problem another writer had. A year or so back I read another fanfic series, that series was also longer than a half-dozen RL books put together. That series, and this HP one, used 'whispers' endlessly. Characters having a normal conversation? One suddenly whispers for no reason. Two people arguing? One suddenly murmurs. Two people standing across the room from each other? One 'breathes' out the words, yet the other hears it fine. Endless whispers, every other line of dialogue! No reason at all for it!

Why? Are whispers assumed to be more dramatic or something? I'm really surprised that two authors of extremely long fanfic series would have the same problem.

It's really too bad, there's so much left of the series to read, but I'm to the point where my eyes just scan the page and jump from 'whispers' to 'whispers' to 'whispers'.

Been five days since my last post. While I've been reading my friends list, I haven't felt like posting. Lots of points in semi-random order:

* Less than five days until I go into the hospital. I've gained some weight back, but not too much. More than I'd like, but still within the range the surgeon wanted me to lose. I keep thinking "this will be the last time I can ever have..." and how can you resist eating whatever that is? I'm really depressed and down. I wish I were excited about this, but it's a "have to" not a "want to" situation. I don't want to fall over dead in the next few years, so... no choice.

* Part of my depressed issue is likely period-related. Where the hell is it?! It's now nine days late. (No chance of pregnancy.) If I get it when I go into the hospital, I'm going to be pissed. I don't want to have to deal with it then! Sigh. Damned body.

* I'm starting to have stress bad dreams. I expect them to only get worse the closer Monday gets.

* Work sucks. I'm taking three weeks off for this, but in our group there's no reduction of amount of work or deadlines because of vacation -- so I have the same work and the same deadlines, with three weeks less to do it in. Way to let us enjoy our vacations. Most people in my group work though theirs.

* I read a Harry Potter fanfic for the first time in years. In Loco Parentis by Dolores_Crane. I loved the first chapter of it, though the second and third less so. It's everything I usually wouldn't have liked, but it was so well written that it worked. Hermione POV. Hermione/Harry (though it's minor). Snape/Harry (mostly in the background). It was a more realistic look at muggles at Hogwarts. At the end it became a bit preachy for me, but all in all, I liked it a lot.

Boy do I miss Snape/Harry. I don't think I've had an OTP since then. I think Snarry was what sparked my enjoyment of age and power differences in fic relationships. There was so much good HP fanfic back when I was in the fandom. I should poke about and see if there's more good Snarry out there (or heck, reread the older good stuff, it's not going to be like I remember it).

* This is an odd time. Usually I'd be wishing for Friday to get here, especially when that Friday was the start of a three week vacation, but this time I'm wishing the week never ends. At least I got good RP tonight, probably the last of it until my mother flies home in two and a half weeks.

* I'm reading the best book, but it's so long, it's taking me forever to finish (yay!). 24 hours in and I'm only just over 50% done (it's 1,000+ pages long; for comparison, the first Game of Thrones book was 800). Usually a book takes me 10-12 hours to read. Stormlight Archive (Way of the King) by Brandon Sanderson. From his website: "I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words worth of worldbuilding for it". You can so tell he has all that worldbuilding done. It's amazing. And man, I'd kill to see all his notes about the world.

Okay, writers of the world, I missed a memo somewhere, didn't I? For some reason "murmur" is now the in thing to do? Doesn't matter if it's appropriate or not, we should just shove it in everywhere we can?

One of those not-zombie trilogy books I read a couple weeks back, the girl addressed her army in a murmur. They heard her to the back ranks.

Book after book, fanfic after fanfic, characters are murmuring endlessly, and murmuring or whispering where it does not fit at all. Is it supposed to lend a dramatic air to things?

Fanfic I'm reading now, two grown men are in a fistfight. During it, one murmured to the other "Fuck you!". This fanfic is written with someone who has a strong grasp of physics (or at least can fake it well), she has to know what murmur means!

Be loud, be proud! Don't murmur unless it fits the scene!

The good: I love this Japanese commercial. I only wish it were longer! ...and that we had gum that made me feel this way.



The bad: Star Wars: a NUDE Hope: An Erotic Parody on Amazon. Cover image might be considered NWS if you work in a church or kindergarten class? It made me snicker.

The ugly: Give the one you love a dead horse head pillow. Only $45!

The net was atwitter with word that Netflix now had Avengers, and I wanted to see it again, plus I knew that Netflix is always giving away 30 day free as a trial, so I signed up. I intended to cancel within the 30 days, but know what? If I watch even one movie, the $9 ($8?) a month is worth it.

It was an odd sensation watching Avengers last night. I saw the movie only once before, under horrible conditions (on the cruise ship, I was sick as a dog and in a horrible mental state). However, I have been reading Avengers fanfic for a while now, so it was like I knew the movie without having seen it.

I LOVED L-O-V-E-D it so much. The one small lacking thing was that there was no angst/suspicion about Hawkeye having been under Loki's control, he just went right back to helping the team. I know an action movie had no room for that sort of thing, but it was jarring how everyone effortlessly moved on from that point (Hawkeye and company needing to deal with that issue is one of my favorite fic elements).

Tonight I watched Ultimate Avengers - The Movie. It was very different than I was expecting, but all in all I liked it. There was a lot I disliked: I HATED Dr. Banner/Hulk, I disliked that ant/giant guy and his Wasp wife. I didn't much like Tony. And where the heck was Clint?! But the movie actually made me cry (though I know I'm very emotional right now, so I don't give it overly much credit). When Cap went to Bucky's house and his girlfriend (now old, now married to Bucky) was at the top of the stairs, unable to come down and meet him... *sniffle*

(As a side note, I'm surprised how much I like Captain America. Very good-guy characters are usually no interest to me at all, but in this series somehow it works -- I blame/credit fanfic.)

Anyway! Before this quickie post becomes even less quick: Does anyone have any Avengers recs? I'm open to any pairings or characters. No PWP, and if possible not too NWS (some sex is okay, details are probably not good -- though if there's something really good and very NWS, I'll happily read it at home! Just let me know!). Or if anyone has a rec page they like?

Thanks! <3

Go ahead, boggle with me! I've not read HP fanfic in years. I haven't seen the last movies. I'm not into the fandom at all anymore. I have zero interest in reading fanfic from it.

Then I came across a post on my friendsfriends page. I've never done this before, but credit for everything between the two lines goes to themountaingoat. Below is her post, copied from her LJ, full credit to her. Her post is what sold me on trying the fic, and I know I can't write it better than her, so here goes. themountaingoat's post:

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I spent most of Saturday reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. HOLY SHIT! It may be fan fiction but it is still a work of genius. Well written, intelligent (apart from a few goofy moments), thought provoking (even if it is guilty of a couple of straw men here and there) with a far more complex plot with more complicated characters than J K Rowlings' books. Of course it totally riffs off the original and pokes fun at all the stuff that did not make any sense (like Quidditch) but it is so radically different that it could be argued that it should be considered a work of art on it's own merits.

The basic premise is that in this version Petunia did not marry Vernon Dursley and instead dumped him for an Oxford University professor and so Harry Potter grows up in a highly educational environment and becomes a child prodigy who has studied maths, science, philosophy, psychology, politics and much more to a university degree level and is also a huge fan of Lord of the Rings and all the SF classics. So this Harry is a completely different character by the time he reaches 11 years of age, however everyone else remains the same at the start of the story but because of the way things unfold they react and change over time in a completely believable way because of more or less interaction with Harry. For instance Harry considers Ron to be too stupid to be his friend so he never spends time with him. Hermonie becomes Harry's intellectual rival. And with his grounding in SF Harry immediately recognises the pattern of this story he is in and realises Voldemort must still be alive and Draco is a pawn of his father so he resolves to redeem Draco and use him for his own ends.

This Harry is perhaps less likeable, even as he uses logic and rational thought to deconstruct the magical world and get the better of all the teachers. It would have been really easy for the author to write this Harry as a total gary-stu but he does not get everything go his own way, not at all. In fact his methods of rationality often gets him into very deep trouble. Although he did not grow up living underneath the stairs and his parents provided every opportunity for him to learn they were still emotionally distant from Harry and so he does not make friends easily and has very different psychological problems to overcome.

There are many scenes which are genuinely laugh out loud moments. We get chapters written from the point of view of character's other than Harry such as Hermonie, Draco and Professor McGonagal which make for a refreshing change of pace. Something which elevates this above 99.9% of all other fan fiction is that it pokes fun at the whole fan fiction sub-culture. For example one girl has a crush on Snape and her heart flutters when he tells her to stay after class and see him. Usually in fan fiction this would prompt something really icky but here Snape crushes her dreams saying he does not return her affections and tells her to stop it immediately. With all seven books of the original series complete the author has the entire source material to go at and he uses it in very different ways, for example the Deathly Hallows get mentioned and other plot elements and characters from later books are introduced early for comic effect.

I am about half way through the 78 chapters that have been written so far and the author (enigmatically known as Less Wrong) is still on the first year at Hogwarts. He releases new chapters as and when he can, usually every couple of weeks or so. Not sure if he will write up all seven years of the story or if this Harry will defeat the Dark Lord in half the time it took the original Harry. But then when the rules are this different anything could happen, maybe Voldemort will win, or maybe Harry really will become the next Dark Lord and have to be defeated by the other characters. It genuinely could go anywhere and that makes this interesting and worth reading.

The first 63 chapters are available in a neatly typeset PDF.

New chapters are released on this website (they don't look anywhere near as nice but they do come with author notes).
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I'm only six chapters in, and boy does it make me happy that there are so many more to read! This is AMAZING. Really, really amazing. This Harry is so much more interesting! The whole "book" is! It has laugh out loud moments, and the writing is really, really good. See how many 'really's I'm using!

Even if, like me, you're not really interested in HP anymore, it's very much worth a read. I've been reading all afternoon and loving every moment of it.

I'm reading it here instead of on fanfic.net.

First off, sorry for two posts in one night. I knew if I posted the other one so early that I'd end up finding something else interesting I wanted to share.

Second, how long has it been since I recced a fic? It's been ages since I even read one! (My poor attention span, movies and fics are just too much for you these days.) I'm not even in this fandom, I never even saw the movie (movies?). That must be the sign of a good fic -- it's a great read even if you don't know the source material.

Gone Is My Past by cyerus (Sherlock Holmes fandom). The prompt the story was based on is "John is an Army bomb detection dog who has been turned into a human."

It's so sad and heartbreaking and believable (odd thing to say about a story where a dog turns into a person). The love in it was just so... wonderful. (Love-love, not slashy love. It does have a PG-13 rating, though I'm not sure why.)

I'm sitting here grinning while thinking about it. I love the ending, I endlessly love the characters. I now want to see the movie, just to see more of them. And, once I post this, I shall be poking through the author's LJ looking for more to read. :D

Edit: Wow. Other fics by this person?  Just as good! 

It's funny, less than a month ago I was having so little fun on WoW, it had been so long since I had enjoyed the game, I was about to quit. Now? Now everything's completely different. Things couldn't be better, I couldn't be happier.

Funny the difference a guild makes. :D

It's so darned hard to find a good one! I've been in so many. It's kind of scary how easily I could never have found out about this one (I approached a member for random RP). If I had chickened out, if I had fled back to Hordeside, I'd probably be gone from the game by now!

So, OOC Dandelion news first. I hit my goal of honored with the guild, so I was able to buy all sorts of goodies! Heirloom cloaks, guild page, some banner thingie. Plus I have enough rep to help out on guild achievements, too! And best of all: No more questing! I've done more questing on Dandelion than I have on all of my five Horde alts together. Now I'll archaeology and gather and fishing/cooking daily my way to 85.

And RP is eeeee so great and fun! I RP most every day, wonderful RP! It's wonderfully nice to be able to get as much RP as I want. :D

Haken's been on my mind more, too. Writing IC letters more often keeps him alive in my head. The IC mail by email project was a good idea!

And, last but far far far from least, how long has it been since I've made a fanfic rec? I read so little of it nowadays, but when I saw a link to Varian/Garrosh stuff, my interest was caught. I read Addiction first, followed by Anamnesis. Oh god, so hot! Angry sex, MMMMM. These stories push so many of my buttons! Plus Varian makes me all melty every time, mmmm. :D I can't wait to read the rest of what she's written! (Links are NWS, of course. Slash!)

Edit: Maybe it was Submission I started with instead of one of those two! Well, those top two go together, so read Addiction/Anamnesis first or Submission, but read them all! :D

With West Wing in its slowest season (5), it's failing to hold my attention the way it used to. When someone on my flist (sorry I don't recall who!) mentioned epic_recs, I figured I might dip my toes back into the fanfic world. I so very rarely read fanfic now, and I have no idea why.

I picked out a bunch of stories to read, and by chance I started with a DS9 one. DS9! Man, my favorite of the Star Trek series by so far it's in a different universe.

Holy cow, the two fics totally hooked me. It's been years since I've last seen a DS9 ep, but I heard the characters' voices perfectly! (Credit to the writers!) Now I've got a bunch more bookmarked to read.

A random person reccing fics, bironic, put her finger on one of the many things I love about the series. "...the Cardassians have always exuded sexuality with an edge of dominance and violence that I love in villains...". The Cardassians are my favorite ST race, and Garak is my favorite character. And, happily, there are tons of fics about him and them!

So, I think once I'm finished with West Wing, Star Trek: Deep Space 9 will be my next series. I've seen it before (many times!), but it's been so long I bet a lot of it will be like new. (Too bad the timing's a little off. tersa is currently rewatching the original ST series, it'd be amusing if we were rewatching different series at the same time!)

On WoW, YAY! pomr poked me about AQ40 and the four mounts you can get there. They can only be used in that zone, but they do count towards Mountain of Mounts! I got all four tonight, woo! And, since I'm getting closer, I went out and dropped the 8K on a mammoth I hadn't had yet (I have so many fricking mammoths...). 93/100!

(Edit: AQ is an AMAZING zone, I took tons of screenshots. I'm in love with the mobs and the whole place! Best non-RPing time I've had in WoW in a long time. PS: Four-manning the first boss? Bzzt! But we had fun trying!)

CE hippo and the H CoS ones will bring me to an easy-ish (still a ways to go on CE rep) 95. I'm missing five jousting mounts (UGH, so many dailies). I'm missing the WRA rep red drake (neutral rep now). There's another mammoth for 200 heroism emblems (Keen doesn't instance at all, has zero). Could combine the instancing and WRA rep... or joust... neither of which I really want to do. Five mounts should be easy in Cata: 4-5 goblin rep mounts, 1 goblin PvP mount, 3 bone raptor mounts (no idea how hard those will be to get), and likely other new mounts. So... I might just wait.

I'm failing at going to bed early, but sometimes if I don't write these things out they just rattle around in my head and keep me up.