Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

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.

It's kind of funny, just this morning I told someone I'm not really much of a music person. Few hours later, I'm posting some! But this is so pretty and so cool!



Make sure to watch through the credits, they're quite funny!

My A Song of Ice and Fire 2012 Calendar arrived today. Kudos to Amazon for packing it in a box instead of wrapping it in paper or something. My postal delivery person will bend and fold anything and everything that can be, to fit it in my little mailbox. Box > mailman!

The calendar itself is okay. Unfortunately I won't be able to use it at work (way too many half-dressed women, too much blood, too much "not office norm") and I never use wall calendars at home. The art is... sort of okay, too. I've seen so much fanart that's a whole lot better. I'm really kind of surprised, as popular as the book series is, I would think they could get some top artist to do the art. (Or maybe a top artist did do it, and I'm failing to understand their artistic style or something... but even non-artist me can see when a bare human foot isn't drawn well or a wolf's face is scrunched in an unrealistic way).

*looks closer at pictures*

I mean seriously, the art is just really off. The first month's picture is Bran. The kid's hand is way, way bigger than his head. His foot is nearly as long as his leg from ankle to knee. His head seems really oddly made, like there's too much head and not enough face, yet his face is really big. Oh, but his other hand is normal sized.

Second month is Jon and Ghost. The wolf is just embarrassing, looks kind of like a plush wolf that's been bent out of shape. Jon isn't much better (again, there's some kind of head/face issue. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but it's like his face is too big for his head).

Maybe it's just men he can't draw. March is Daenerys and she looks fine (though rather underdressed, which wouldn't be an issue for many). There's something seriously, majorly wrong with the horse she's sitting on though. I think the poor beast broke its neck and then half melted.

April's Rob Stark is actually pretty good. Just a close up of his face. Poor Arya lost her hand in May, it seems to have experienced the same melting that Daenerys's horse went through. Her poor hand looks like it's made of two or three hotdogs, semi-melted like wax.

So anyway, yeah. If you've not bought it, I would not recommend it at all.

Edit: Have some pictures! I don't have a scanner, but I took pictures of a couple.

Jamie's o-face.

Everyone's favorite dwarf.

Here there be dragons. I can see what the artist was going for with the horse, I think he meant it to be running at the "camera" and turning at the last moment, but it just doesn't work.

Edit2: How about some good (non-fandom) artwork to balance things out? I love this person's style. So simple, but I love the style.

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

One day while driving home I was surfing through my radio stations. I rarely listen to music, but NPR was in a pledge drive (I've donated! Leave me alone!) and the news radio station was in a big block of commercials. The very beginning of the below song started. My finger hovered on the button, about to move on to the next station, but the initial instrumentals caught me (starting at about seven seconds in, after the heartbeats). Even listening to it now, I can't identify what catches my ear so strongly.

Then the singers joined in, and I was hooked. It's such a simple seeming song, but it's so attractive (what an odd word to describe music!). The music is just so simple and repeating, and the singers are soothing and interesting and sound really good together.

Once I got home and saw the video that went with it, my love was sealed. What lovely, wonderful, simple animation!

Hey, local people who use Groupon (I know there are at least two or three of you!). If you're wondering if today's SJ Groupon ($15 for $30 of pizza/pasta at GuGu's Pizza & Pasta) is worth it, it is! This is the place I always order my pizza delivered from!

Edit: And to make this post more useful for non-locals... If you like Disney and/or you like food, disfood is a fun feed (...teehee, 'feed') to follow. It's all about the food offered at Disney World, Disneyland, the Disney cruise ships, etc.

disfood, so delicious.

This may in fact be my third time mentioning it! no_standart_ero NWS! Lots of naked people, though often not in a sexual way.

Just look at the photographs on the first page! (Or however many pages it takes you to see the first ten posts.) Reminder: All links are NWS!

This one is lovely in an art-ish sort of way.

Smurfs! HA!

Role reversal?

These golden ones are simply lovely.

I'm not sure why I like this one so much, it looks sloppy and messy, but the colors are so pretty! It almost looks like it's not really as randomly done as it seems.

Again, all links are NWS! Naked people abound!

I wish I could join the comm, but I can't have NWS outside of cuts on my flist, so I just keep it bookmarked instead.