Sharing Is Caring, Part Onze! Stream of Consciousness Is the New Black (2)!

[strina]

Again: chronological and mostly unedited, dating from last February to yesterday, if there's a fic I mention that interests, I'll do my best to link you upon request, blah, blah. On to the babble!

Oooh. Second paragraph of the fic and already you've misidentified Sirius as Narcissa's brother and used "towing" in place of "toeing". Not a good sign.

You know, everytime I see one of those "Harry must marry Voldemort to bring peace" stories, I just want to laugh. Because no. I'm pretty sure that actually would be the thing that makes him tell the entire Wizarding World to fuck itself and just leave the country.

God. I was just working on some shortlists - I want to try rec50 again, but figured I'd better get back into the swing of actual reccing first - and. I am constantly amazed by fandom. Just the breadth and depth and variety and. I can't imagine a more creatively, gorgeously, joyously brilliant bunch of lunatics if I tried. I'm so fucking glad I found this.

I'm too contrary for this story. I am for serious rooting for Harry to refuse to forgive Snape even if the bastard went on his knees and crawled for it. 'Cause 1) Snape doesn't deserve to be forgiven, especially not since he was just calling Harry a whore and 2) Harry know what it's like to live under a prophecy; no way he's just going to accept that for his child.

Okay, you know what, it is simply not that likely that, outside of prison, both of your (male) main characters will have been raped, especially gangraped, especially by boys of their own approximate age, especially when each character is raped by an entirely different group of boys.

Even though I have absolutely nowhere to put it and less use for it, I yearn desperately for an industrial holepunch thingummy like they had at WFEC. It was huge and cool and made everything smell of toasted marshmallows because the way it punched holes in the giant stacks of paper? Was by burning. Presumably this was why my supervisor told me not to do too many at once. I, of course, scoffed at this and did as many at once as I pleased, and in my defence, nothing ever caught fire; some of the paper was just a bit browned, was all. Anyway, clearly I was destined to love the thing, as it burns, saves time, and plays perfectly into my apparently instinctive love of office supplies (Staples is my beloved! it is the home of unexpected gifts!).

I am ridiculous. Reading this SPN fic and I'm all proud that I remembered gatineau = cake.

Freaking...! Apparently I should take notes or something, because here lately? I can never find the fic I want when I want it! Right now, it's an A/J, C/S fic where Joxer becomes a farmer, but before that it was an H/D fic and before that, a Clex fic. I'll remember the plot but not the title or even when I read it, which makes it really hard to find.

God, Xena's awesome. Not the show, I have only hazy memories of the show, but the character. There's this fic, where people keep coming to Zeus and whining about clothes for one reason or another, and he goes "Fuck it! Everybody can just be NAKED! All the time! Until you learn." Most people are kind of freaking out and hiding behind handy objects, but not Xena!

Of course from a tactical standpoint she now had a new advantage. Men were not, in general, good at dodging, weaving and running naked. The swinging metal was also not conductive to an aggressive frame of mind. She peered down and prodded a few bits of herself.

She on the other hand had no dangling extremities, and was still taut enough to add the complication of more than one body part trying to think at once. Yes, she held tactical advantages, besides it was warm enough and there weren't any prickly roots nearby. She wasn't likely to be arrested, since any soldiers were liable to be naked as well. Curiously enough without the dirty armour and the idiotic helmets she may have to hit everyone and figure out if they were bad guys when they regained consciousness.

Dammit. I still haven't found the H/Hr story for me. You know, that story I can go to whenever I get a yen for the pairing? I mean, I've found good stories and even some kind of awesome stories. HP and the Years of Rebellion, Magic Never Dies, An Assault on the Senses, Habit, Loved I Not Honor...I like 'em, I re-read 'em, but they don't make me stand up and say THIS is my ship. Years of Rebellion has the potential to, but it hasn't yet. And I want that story, because if I'm going to stick with a ship, not just read it occasionally? I need that story that makes me come back again and again.

OMG, I forgot how very much Dumbledore enrages me in this story. I have never, ever had this much sympathy for CAPSLOCK!Harry - who does show up here and while normally I wouldn't truck in it, this shit is making me go capslock. Just...
Bitch, you don't get to tell Harry that he needs to survive Voldemort so he can spend the rest of his life fighting the remaining Death Eaters and leading the "side of the light". You know, the people that placed him in an abusive household, forced him to endure Legilimency from a man who hates him in the name of "learning", put a binding curse on his closest friend to "protect" him, and oh yeah, just let him get expelled from Hogwarts for being too dangerous to be around. Yeah, no, totally, asking him to also sacrifice the rest of his life to the cause is completely acting in his best interests. You're absolutely right in responding to his resistance to the idea with the big sigh of grandfatherly disappointment and talk about how he's "lost himself".
GOD. I WOULD VERY MUCH LIKE TO PUNCH YOU IN THE THROAT, DUMBLEDORE, FOR REALS.

I've decided that growing up with Richard, a boy who's motto appears to be "I do what I want", has done me no favors. It makes me react very unreasonably when people try to tell me what to do.

HP makes me viva la revolucion like no other because while most societies burdened with corrupt or incompetent governors had a hand in creating the situation, wizarding society faces a constant influx of new blood in the form of Muggleborns.

Fandom I love most for the fandom? SGA. Fandom I love most for the fanfiction? HP. And the fandom with my most beloved of beloved characters? BtVS (Xander, natch).

Two authors that give really good dream in fic? Liz Marcs and Full Pensieve. If they write a dream, it feels organic, it furthers the story, and it has good-but-not-obscure-for-the-sake-of-it symbolism.

I hate nature. Sat outside watching the fireworks at Grandma's (one of the several benefits to boondock living - private fireworks shows and bonfires) and I, being a moron, didn't think to spray my feet with insect repellant. How I regret that oversight now. I have 32 bites on my feet and ankles. 24 of them on my left foot. I wish to kill things. Also, I currently plan to spend the rest of the summer swaddled in mosquito netting.

being a ship whore = seeing a million different v.s of Harry, Xander, etc.

granger defense - boo on inconsistent dumbledore, overuse of christian concepts, strange treat. of snape, pontification on wiz. hist., supposition of multiple gryff dorms, too-wise harry, etc. yay on goblins, spell mongering, gradual h/hr, believable res. of r/hr, vampires, business, battles, granger parents, house elves, idea of 333 families/pureblood as misnomer, etc.

O what wondrous times are these, in which every ass-covering denial can be answered by a thousand YouTube clips proving no, really, you did say that. Like, directly into a camera.

Goddammit. I'm tired of finding interesting stories only to be horrified by the secondary pairings. Because there are pairings I don't read! Like, Draco/Hermione. Seeing that = automatic exit. But there are two stories I want to read that have it, and the main pairing of both is kind of rare - Harry/Lucius/Snape. And it looks like it'll be done well instead of that siren bullshit. So, I am torn.

Aw. I love HP fic. It is so rarely mediocre. Often good, often wretched, but rarely mediocre.

Some more things I love in Potter fic?
Weird wizarding rituals. I don't even care about what, so much, I just like seeing things that are believable as traditions, like...Oh! It was this tiny, almost throwaway thing, but Death Eater Takes a Holiday mentioned that most wizarding children get a huge party on their tenth birthday because most of them will celebrate their eleventh at Hogwarts. Stuff like that is awesome.
Politics. Come on, people! Canon gives us a corrupt/ineffectual government and a national hero whose closest friends include a brilliant witch of revolutionary bent and the daughter of the editor of one of the wizarding world's few newspapers. Why are there not more stories where Harry does something to fix the Ministry? That aren't, y'know, Dark Lord Harry conquering Britain or whatever.
INTERNATIONAL CONCERN RE: CRAZY DARK LORD BEING BACK FROM THE DEAD. Seriously, jesus christ, why doesn't that show up more? There've got to be people in France or wherever just looking at Britain and thinking, OMG, MORONS, way to drop the ball. He's totally making y'all his bitches and then coming for US. Because Voldemort? Totally not going to be content with one tiny island. Ambassadors' reports around the world during OotP were probably always coming back to the consulates in England with notes about how yes, everyone laughed very much at your last missive, but could you please be telling us what they're really doing?

How is it that I've seen Dumbledore mocked as Bumbledore and Dumblebore a thousand times and yet this is the first time I've ever seen someone break it down to Dumb Old Whore?

I am so, SO not a Harry/Ginny girl. This fic...Almost every girl in here (except Hermione, Tonks, the staff, and the OFC) is just creepy and inappropriate - seriously, anywhere but Hogwarts there'd be sexual harassment complaints - but none are so creepy or inappropriate as Ginny. This is seriously going to be the fic I point people to when they ask why I have such a problem with H/G. I like a lot of it! Just, y'know, I'm made hideously uncomfortable by virtually every scene featuring Ginny "Queen of Stalkers" Weasley (someone asks what she plans to do after graduation and her first, censored response? Marry Harry. Not "become a healer", which ambition is the excuse the author uses to keep her languishing at his bedside so much, but marry Harry. Tell me that's not obsessive!). ETA: So, I made it through most of chapter 14, got fed up, picked four subsequent chapters to skim in the hopes that it would get better, and made good my escape when Merlin - actual Merlin - showed up in phoenix form. In which he had apparently been chilling this whole time. A moment of pure OMGWTF and then I was out.

Plot point that never stops being awesome? Litigation against the press in the Potterverse. What with the slander (libel?) and the paparazzi tactics used against a minor who's also a private citizen, there should be all kinds of legal action being taken. But this is the wizarding world! Where nothing about the government/legal system can make sense, ever! Like Azkaban. If Dementors make you crazy, what about the people who commit the equivalent to misdemeanors? It's like sending everyone from mass murderers to embezzlers to maximum security prison with the extra special free parting gift of dementia and/or a psychotic break! Megalomania available to every 500th customer only.

Ha! And the horrible H/G fic has been balanced out by an awesome time travel/vampire!Harry fic that will be HP/SS, HP/LM. Both of them are stories I would not have read if it wasn't for the whole "expanding horizons" project. So, you know, it's not all scarrifying crimes against taste and decency, there've been some remarkably enjoyable stories, too. I'm just more likely to bitch about the bad and quietly add the good to a list.

Wow. I cannot call Snape by his first name. I really, really should, because I hate listing a pairing by first name/last name (Harry/Snape, Hermione/Snape, Remus/Snape, etc.), but I just can't. It feels wrong.

Man, I'm kind of sad. There's this story, and it's ridiculously satisfying, and it's not, for me, reccable. Yeah, I've practically got little cartoon hearts floating around me when I read it, but objectively speaking? It's kind of horrible. It features secretly-a-genius, hermaphrodite Harry, with wings, who's been abused to the point of dehumanisation. Oh! And bonus molestation. It is firmly in my "mindless self-indulgence" category. But dude. It's awesome like a B-movie is awesome.

Something I just read and really liked? This bit where Giles is thinking about Buffy and there's this whole feeling of the forbidden thing where she's his Slayer, but it also really, really turns him on that she's THE Slayer. Which is kind of awesome. Because that's probably one of the universal kinks of hereditary Watchers, who grow up hearing about and studying these beautiful, powerful, genuinely heroic young women they are never supposed to touch sexually.

I want more Harry/Tom so bad. But most of it's wretched! I know, like, half-a-dozen readable stories for them. And two of those I found in the last couple weeks, Abandon and One Soul We Be. I love them. Even though Abandon, especially, requires massive suspension of disbelief, but really, what can you expect, pairing two people who 1) are separated in age by what, 50, 60-odd years? and 2) are bitter mortal enemies with a long history of violence between them. Still. Yes is fantastic, and The Love of a Good Wizard is pretty good, in a romance novel-ish way. And there's my whole thing for pairing enemies, because it's so absolutely intimate to hate someone so much. You idealize someone you love, someone you're infatuated with, but someone you hate you see every part of, because their weaknesses are opportunities and their strengths something to guard against. Plus, hot orphan boys with rage issues and the ability to speak snake.

So, the Fidelius Charm. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing you could use without the consent of the property owner, does it? But I've seen it used that way in a couple of fics, and I am torn. On the one hand, it's stupid. Why would you even use a house you owned if you didn't have to? Yeah, no one can find it without breaking the charm, but still, the fewer things linking you to your hideout, the better. On the other hand, it would be totally freaking awesome if someone used it to, like, steal an entire house. Really, best crime ever. Walk into Malfoy Manor, cast the charm, walk out to the edge of the property and watch the Malfoys have aneurysms as they realize they can't even see the place.

Oh, Oklahoma. Only here would I react to waking up to a storm in the middle of the night thinking, not "I hope the power doesn't go out", but "Fuck, I don't know where the tornado shelter is here."

Ahahahahahaha, GREATNESS. Harry's crazy accidental magic + being told to concentrate real hard on his birthday wish when blowing out the candles = Voldemort dropping dead wearing female undergarments, pigtails, forever more deceased with no chance of being reincarnated. The rest of the story is...less than great, but that part's awesome.

I LOVE the soundtrack for Songcatcher, and the library actually had it! Singing along with "Conversation with Death"? Never stops being awesome. I mean, yeah, Pretty Saro, Wayfarin' Stranger, Barbara Allen, all great songs, but Conversation with Death? Sung a capella by a bunch of random hillbillies that sound like real people and not professional singers? Pretty much pure win.

Harry/Snape is giving me problems. Not as many as Harry/Ginny, but a) it's slash, which I'm biased in favor of, and b) I like Snape a lot more than Ginny, most of the time. But I still have trouble seeing...not the appeal, I get that part, even if I don't entirely agree. It's just...I can name maybe 15 H/S stories I think are really good and I really, genuinely like about a third that many. Also? Being physically attracted to 16-17 year old isn't really socially acceptable, but is extremely common. Being physically attracted to an eleven year old? Makes you a pedophile.

OMG, stop making your male characters cry all the time. Especially Snape. Seriously, WTF with that? I literally cannot picture Snape crying except maybe as an involuntary reaction to pain.

I love re-reading fic. You can skip straight to the best parts and just wallow. Great fic to wallow in? Nexus. I just skip directly to chapter 15, in which there is massive angsty comfort to make up for the preceding massive hurt. So fucking satisfying. Or Void! Oh, No Strength to Squander. It is so cheesetastic and AU and...also has some great h/c. The Martini! No h/c, just fantasticness. Backfire! Because the last few chapters are awesome. Crimes Against Humanity, because sometimes you just want to read about remorseless psycho killers. Subtleties, for the bit after the spell, god, especially the thing in Japan. Angst Monkey is, obviously, full of angst, and also greatness. Compelled to Play Again, because I loved Illyria, and then I read this, and then I LOVED ILLYRIA times, like, a million. Illyria and Wesley and the Potentials and the mini-Watchers and the WHOLE WORLD.

It's always such a shock when I read a bad amnesia or time travel story, because usually those are my favorites. It's like, I dunno, you see a kitten and you love kittens and then when you go to cuddle it, you discover it's actually a zombie kitten. With rabies. And it just killed your mom. A kitten of Ultimate Evil, if you will.

So there's this story, The Sleeping Dragon Wakes, and I just finished chapter four, but I'm already in love with it, for a couple of reasons. One, I'm on a manipulative!Dumbledore kick just now. Two, the manipulation so far is awesome, in that there's the standard emotional manipulation route plus spells on Harry and his friends. And three? It has the "Ministry Six" all working together as friends and allies! I want to see more of that! ETA: Dude, I want more of this story right freaking now. It makes me love it even as it throws out plot points I hate (for example, Voldemort-secretly-someone's-relative). It has the best take on the prophecy ever; it makes sense and yet I have never seen anyone take it this way. Originality = awesome. Also awesome? The incredibly appropriate parallels drawn between Bellatrix-to-Voldemort and Ginny-to-Harry relationships.

Man, I'm starting to regret the pairing format on my recs. For most things, it's fine, but it sucks for simultaneous pairings and fics that have more than two significant pairings. Or, like, group fics where there's a threesome/foursome/whatever, but it's just sex, whereas there's a pairing within the group that has significantly greater emotional involvement. That's marked just the same as if the whole group's in love. But the only way to remedy any of that is to attach rambling and spoilery labels and I don't want to do that, either. Dammit.

I hate untitled stories. They're a bitch when reccing in list format. I mean, I could list them as "Untitled, by so-and-so", but I don't like listing author names when I don't have to, because some people can't decide on one name. On my computer, they're all saved as "Untitled (short quote from fic)", which I'd like to do, but it seems kind of...presumptuous? rude? Not the thing to do, anyway.

Okay, what the hell is so difficult about the word furor? In the last few days I've seen it misspelled consistently twice, and once seen fervor substituted for it.

Just read a story, and it wasn't bad, especially for Snarry, and then it did something that slowly but surely drove me mad. It was one of those post-HBP Horcrux hunt things and midway through, they found a spell. This spell was pretty much the anti-Horcrux, since it drew together all the fragments of a fractured soul, even if they were separated by great distance, even if the reunion was against the will of the affected wizard. Do they take this to the logical conclusion and think hey, do we really need to find all these trapped and hidden artifacts or can we just do the spell and suck the soul right out of them from a distance? No! No one even mentions it as a possibility so the author could shoot it down with whatever her reasoning was! We're supposed to just go with the idea that they're all blind to the obvious! Stop making characters dumber than they are! You totally could have said something about the Horcruxes being protected against the spell, but no, you would apparently rather have us think your heroes are MORONS. GOD.

Yeah, hi, STOP ACTING LIKE HARRY AND DUMBLEDORE ARE THE ONLY EXCEPTIONAL WIZARDS IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF HOGWARTS. Only one other student has ever been made assistant professor, Harry! Dumbledore! Only two other people have ever survived the Refiner's Fire, Harry! Merlin and Dumbledore! Jesus christ, people, you think there were the Founders, a thousand-odd years of mediocrity, and then Harry, Dumbledore, and Voldemort one after another? That makes no sense! ARGH, PEOPLE. ARGH.

The last HP book's come out and I'm kind of sad. There's the thing where fandoms with closed canon tend to see a drop in productivity after a while, but mostly? It's the fact that I can't think of a single other book that rates a midnight release party. And I find the whole concept awesome, people getting that excited about a book.

I feel like a moron for not thinking of this sooner, but who put in the current entrance to the Chamber of Secrets? I say current because when Hogwarts was founded, there was no such thing as indoor plumbing. All of which would be a pretty awesome supporting fact for a sentient/semi-aware Hogwarts theory. God. I can't believe I never thought of that until I read - for the second time - a fic where someone asks why the entrance to the Chamber is in a girls' toilet and Harry's all "don't ask me to explain the mind of Salazar Slytherin".

Every time I watch Last Comic Standing I want to re-watch Fastlane, just because Bill Bellamy is awesome. Oh, Fastlane. I would totally buy that on DVD.

I love Vin Diesel. He is so awesome to slash. I want more fic for The Fast and the Furious. I especially want more from stormy1x2, because she seems to set up awesome fics and then leave them after a single chapter. And they were Brian-does-time fics, which I have an incredible weakness for, because as an h/c set-up, that's pretty much fantastic. Something I also want more fic for? Knockaround Guys. Matty and Taylor = totally gay for each other. Taylor gets to do a whole protective/avenging/comforting thing and the movie ends with them running off together. You can get the DVD in the cheapie-bin at Walmart! Totally worth five bucks! Check it out! Write fic!

"Seventy five percent of the population never drive more than ten miles over the speed limit." So, every time I read that, I think again how that cannot be right. I know all of one person that's true of; most people seem to go ten over as a matter of course and only top that if they're in a hurry. Or the roads are particularly empty. Or if they just spotted the cops heading the other way, on the other side of the divider. I mean, yes, Oklahoma, we're all highways and back roads so it's kind of ridiculously easy, but we can't be that anomalous. Ohhh, I miss my car, doing 95 down the turnpike with the moonroof open, shouting along to Girl Anachronism.

I love and adore Mia Michaels. I would be wishing desperately for her to take Mary's spot as permanent judge if it wouldn't mean we'd be deprived of her choreography, which would blow, 'cause she pretty much rocks in all things.

I just realized how many HP names end in 'us'. Albus, Sirius, Remus, Severus, Lucius, Filius, Bilius... It's all that Latin they use for spellcasting, isn't it?

I love some of my new prompts. I have approximately 56547 stories for "Manipulation". And, y'know, "Outed", "Not Only Human", "Sex Magic", and "Use Your Words". I really should post the last two tables. I just, um, have never gotten around to typing them up in table format. I'm a bad mod.

Again, there is very little as annoying as the whole word-that-sounds-close-enough-to-the-word-you-want thing. Like gambit/gamut. Not even remotely the same thing, but enough to fool a first glance. One of the few things that match or surpass that irritation? Authors that fail at continuity, oh my GOD. I mean, small things like the first name of a really minor character, okay, but when you can't seem to track your main character's state of virginity? You need a beta. And if you have a beta, you need a new one, and your beta possibly needs to be beaten about the head with a keyboard.

Man, I want to read more Wes/Illyria. That's one of the many things I hated about Angel getting cancelled, because I heard the show was actually going to go there. Anyway. Love Wesley, often love Illyria, but really only have the one good Wes/Illyria fic. That should be remedied.

OMG, awesome. I mean, it started out as this Buffy/SG1 crossover and I was kind of leery, and the first chunk did not exactly reassure me, but then it went kind of cool, and then Buffy met up with Willow and it was cooler, and then Buffy rescued Faith and it was great, at this point I think there may actually be Buffy/Faith later on, and then Willow met Tara and it was too awesome for words. So basically, slow start, but when it gets good, it gets really good, really fast. ETA: Buffy/Faith achieved! And bonus Xander/Dawn! I am so in love with this series. Awesome relationships, and there was a reason for the asshattedness that made me waver in my Hammond-love, and oh, oh! The explanation of the Slayer physiology! The mystical consequences that fall on a sociopathic Slayer! So cool. Seriously, this has one of the five best Slayer mythos I've ever read. Hmm, maybe not mythos, 'cause it's fact, but some of it's apocryphal?

Oh my god, I don't know if I have the nerve to read this: Harry Potter just had his 16th birthday. Voldemort had been told that he is a veela and looking for his mate. Let's just say Voldie is NOT happy with his mate. Slash Harry/Voldemort. Veela!Voldemort? And it's a WiP? And yet. I want some HP/LV right now, and my only other options, hmmm, the frighteningly long series with the wretched first chapter, the post-HBP fic that I would totally read if it wasn't a WiP by an author I'm leery of, and the 61 chapter "Harry marries Voldemort for peace" epic. Decisions, decisions. Man, I totally need to have a better stockpile of rarepair fics. This is the same thing I went through when I had that Harry/Lucius kick. And the brief Harry/older Weasley fixation - older as in Bill, Charlie, Percy, or one or both of the twins, NOT Molly or Arthur. Yeurgh.

OMFG, two betas and none of you can spell fricking Stupefy? Also, his "lips looked utterly undeniable", what does that even mean? Voldemort could have, at most, been born half-Veela, because he's the Heir of Slytherin, he wasn't born with red eyes, so why are you giving them to his father the Veela King, and Voldemort is rather more than forty years old, Harry's parents were 22 in 1981 and they were much younger!

God, god, my standards are so low for this pairing. Abused!molested!superpowered!empath!Harry marries Voldemort for peace, and there's all this OOCness, and the looming specter of mpreg, and yet? My mind is all awesome! best ever! moremoremore! because y'all, it is depressingly possible that this really is as good as I'm going to get if I want something multi-chaptered.

Aww yeah. You know it's awesomely bad h/c when you get to choose between the chapters Fixing Harry and Fixing Harry (Dramatic Version). This last chunk has utterly swayed me. I love this fic. Sometimes it's kind of horrible, and it could use a grammar check in places, but it totally just tipped over into honest-to-god Harry-whumping with Harry now having been raped by 1) random guy in an alley, 2) Vernon, and 3) Ginny and Hermione, with Hermione at one point Polyjuicing into Sirius. Also there's the whole tangled thing with his husband, wherein there's a lot of nonmalicious coercion and dubious/apparent consent and stuff. Also there was this scene with Dumbledore and I'm hoping it was just poor word choice and not foreshadowing some kind of horrible revelation. But! The tipping point! There comes a point where a story is so far from canon that you just have to enjoy it for what it is. In this case, that's Harry getting whumped a lot in between befriending a very...eclectic selection of people and making Voldemort fall in love with him. It isn't remotely close to a reasonable extrapolation from canon, but I kind of enjoy it madly all the same.

Oh, wow. That is... So I've been complaining how few good Harry/Tom fics there are and then I realized that I have 18 Harry/Voldemort stories saved to my 10 Harry/Ginny fics. So it's possibly not as bad as all that.

Rowling is quite the fan of aggressive pursuit, isn't she? Even when the object of affection displays indifference or active rejection. Tonks/Remus, James/Lily, Ginny/Harry... What kind of lesson is that? Hey kids, stalk or badger your obsession into giving in and then you, too will share an epic love!

I hate first-person HP fic. I mean, argyle_s has a good first-person Ron, but other than that, I can't think of a story that does it well.

So, um, there's this author. And I'm not entirely sure why I keep reading her stories. I mean, they're not badly written, they're just. They're almost Harry-whumping, but it's like she doesn't commit enough? Like, okay, this last was 260K and included abusive Dursleys, child molester Vernon, Harry getting sold as a sex slave, Harry getting cancer, and Snape being an Incubus. Probably there's other stuff, but I skimmed most of it. But that totally should have sent it past the tipping point into "so ridiculous it's awesome" and yet, it didn't. I don't even know how to put it into words, but those awesomely bad stories all feel like the author loved them, that this was exactly what s/he wanted to share. This girl's just don't. So I guess I'm waiting for a story she's passionate about.

I kind of love how some authors seem to have a personal canon they use throughout. Like, there are at least two I can think of that have their weird little brand of mpreg, one that always seems to use the same, slightly creepy brand of magical marriage, that kind of thing. Where the stories have totally different plots or even different pairings, but there's some little detail that's constant.

the spy who loved the boy who lived, total lack of operational security, moronic lack of discretion re: secret relationship, blithe dismissal of strange/inconsistent behavior despite absolute knowledge of imperiused sleeper agent, complete incompetence at locating kidnap victims, idiotic delay between kidnap and notification, you can't block the killing curse, wtf, that is so fucking basic i am boggled, fucking protego is what you're going with there, no grasp of the urgency of the fucking situation, matchmaking and apologies can wait, you mental deficients, taking experimental potions without the input of the creator, god, half of you should die, just, darwinian principle calls for it, question the urge to inexplicably confide in people you barely know, god, slytherin cunning is a lie, all of you are the most incompetent spies ever, ever in the history of the world

I am so very not a fan of eating disorder fic. One reason? If a soap opera portrays something more realistically than your fic, you should maybe look to that.

I've never done running commentary on so many fics before.

So I was re-reading Wolf and trying to figure out why I cared that Harry's kind of a whore. I mean, I'm not exactly rabidly pro-monogamy. I've decided that it's not so much the sleeping around as the attitude. There's no significance attached to the act of sex. Or, sex is completely divorced from emotion, so much so that even when in a committed relationship, physical intmacy has no connection to emotional intimacy. Basically? I don't care about sport-fucking, but I care when it doesn't matter who's fucking you as long as someone is.

Polyjuice and pregnancy - can you Polyjuice into currently pregnant woman? What if it's hair from before the pregnancy? Can a pregnant woman use Polyjuice and, if so, where does the baby go? Can a woman-disguised-as-a-man cause a pregnancy? Or a man-disguised-as-a-woman get pregnant? Polyjuice into deaf person, do you lose your hearing? What if the disability is curse-based, not physical? Can a deaf person Polyjuice into hearing? So many questions.

Yay slash for not requiring that the receiving partner have two orgasms for every one the "dominant" partner achieves, not requiring that receiver always climax from penetrative sex, treating oral sex as more than an appetiser, frottage and mutual masturbation not just for teens/new couples. God, I can't read romance novels anymore without skipping the sex scenes.

OMG, the Normalverse. So awesome. New chapters and dude, Bra'tac is fucking hardcore. He gets taken prisoner in his youth and when he's making his escape, after killing two of the five guards, the third tries to stop him from shutting a door by sticking his foot in the way. Bra'tac severs the guy's leg with the door, uses the leg as club to kill the other two guards, and then holes up for seventy-three days on a world where all the fauna and flora are poisonous. It cannot be, you say? You can't live that long without food, even if you are a Jaffa, you cry? He didn't go without food. He ate the fucking leg. Best fucking anecdote ever.

I'm so tired of reading high school stories where everyone's rigidly clique-ish. My school certainly wasn't like that.

Every Flavor Beans is insane. Insanely awesome, but also, Lucius Malfoy is fucking psychotic. He is such a fucking Slytherin; when his greatest ambition becomes Harry Potter, everybody else'd best watch out. That is one goal-oriented man.

So I was skeptical about Oh, The Places He Goes!, but it quickly grew on me. Especially the running joke about Xander's eye. And, y'know, Xander/Dawn. Plus, Buffy/Fraser, which inexplicably pleases me.

For no apparent reason, references to gray-eyed Athena kill me. My brain? Mysterious ways.

corner of the world - yay lex's little cabal, yay chloe and even lana, mostly, wtf brain connection/repressed memories everywhere, nice with the schizo lionel, yay for the kryptonian, the resentment toward his parents, the trouble accepting he isn't human, the slow build to sex, etc., boo lionel/jon just 'cause it squicks me, wtf on the randomly au parts - lex's different mutation, dominic and victoria as siblings, lionel not having anything to do w/ adoption - but may just be that she was writing pre-canonically

So I'm in the midst of huge upswell of Smallville-love. Not the show, everyone knows the show is awful, but the characters and the fiction and the sense of epic that follows Clark and Lex like a shadow. There are so many stories I'm reading, for the first time or the fifth, that just make my breath stop: The Telling of All This, Marble, Self-Defense, Cleave, This Mortal Coil, Golden Rule, Waiting for Yes... Smallville is a diamond of a fandom, with great light and sharp edges. Also, something amazing from coal.

I don't get reading a story with warnings and then flaming the author because you...don't like the things you were warned about. what the hell kind of sense of entitlement fuels that kind of thinking? what, everyone on the goddamn internet should only write things that you think are appropriate? there is stuff that squicks me the hell out, but I don't bitch people out over. I may bitch some here, but I don't send nasty emails, I don't make personal attacks. it's ridiculous. pushing boundaries is a huge chunk of what makes fanfic special. exploring limits and not having to worry about pleasing an audience.

OMFG, isagel's Sylar/Mohinder fic kills me dead. I want more so bad.

cotw - yay for clark and lana bonding over lack of bio parents, yay for reoccurence of minor chars - social worker, cristina martin, yay for lex's encouraging clark to explore attraction to other people, yay for sydney not getting treated like spoiler ocs usually - imm brushed off for canon ex, yay for whitney's continued presence as a char even though he's off-screen, boo for lex's waffling on his dad, it feels reasonable but also, wrong, after what happened to clark, esp. re: adopt a child discussion-

I miss The Black Donnellys. Not the show, so much.  But the brothers were awesome. And Jenny and Mrs. Donnelly. But mostly, Tommy Donnelly was fifteen kinds of hardcore. He was the "good" brother and he was the guy who, when the body wouldn't fit in the oil drum, stripped down to boxers and sledgehammered the bitch till it did. He planned for blood splatter and then didn't fucking flinch. Plus there was the whole assassination of the heads of two gangs to protect his dumbfuck brother.

It was two seasons ago, but Three Stories remains my favorite House ep ever.

Oh, Dean. You are my favoritest. Which anyone could have predicted; pretty-boy badass demon hunter with ten kinds of issues, a martyr complex, and a sense of humor? Sign me up.

I'm horrible; I'll glance at the end of a story (if it's one of those inconveniently without warnings) and just be like "I don't care who dies! Just keep my pairing safe!". I mean, obviously I care, my favorites don't exist in a vacuum, they have family and friends they, and I, care about, but 80-90% of HP fic is going to involve, y'know, an epic and violent struggle between light and dark, or the aftermath thereof. People aren't going to survive, and even the survivors won't necessarily be whole. I've got my little things: I want both of the twins to survive or neither of them (goddamn JKR anyway), I want Remus to live (see previous), I don't want major characters sharing ward-space with the elder Longbottoms, and I don't read Harry dying unless it's apocafic or its near-cousin. But people? Don't spend chapters and chapters making me fall in love with a relationship and then smack me in the face and then he died and his lover was left to a) wander the earth, bitter and pining and alone forever, b) move on with a new love and forget all about what's-his-face, died or something?, or c) move on with a new love while keeping a frankly creepy shrine to the old love and occasionally screaming his name in bed.

I'm a bad person to be kind of pleased about this, but my (for all practical purposes, our parents have been dating since I was in freaking fifth grade) stepsister isn't doing all that much better than me: nearly flunking out of college, keeps getting arrested for underage drinking, dating the walking dead. Not actually a zombie, just the guy everyone thought was the first in our class to die; he overdosed on oxycotin and ended up in a coma and then they pulled his plug and everyone kind of thought that was the end of it. Then he showed up at a softball game a couple weeks later and freaked everyone the fuck out. Plus, I'm pretty sure he has a criminal record. Celibate and sober layabout not looking so bad now, huh, Dad?

I love it when people have good favorites lists. I get to read stories I might never have found otherwise and sometimes, they're even good. I am currently wildly enthused. I found two good stories! Out of a list of 138, but still! Two! They're complete! They're H/D and guys, one begins with Draco Malfoy kidnapping workaholic Auror Harry Potter for his own good! The molestation is completely selfless! People can die of touch-deprivation! Truly, he lives to give. Anyway, it's awesome. The other is twice as awesome, but that's because it is a Veela fic where there are actual obstacles. Like, Harry and Draco are both married. And straight. And the author actually treats Harry/Ginny with respect! They fight for their marriage! Nobody throws up their hands and says oh, well, I'm/you're a Veela's mate and we should just throw in the towel; he cares about his vows. It's awesometastic. The only downside is both of them have Ron and Hermione dying pretty horribly years pre-fic. Also, I find them desperately romantic because things are hard and a struggle and they don't always agree and they acknowledge that they might lose this and they commit to trying anyway.

Life is freaking fanstastic. I found post-trilogy Forbidden Game fic! It's Jenny/Julian! I almost don't even care if it's bad; it's mere existence pleases me greatly. Oh my god, LJ Smith. I love her. There is a woman not afraid to feature some fucked-up characters in YA novels. Like Raquel, who's basically a serial killer on a revenge trip even if she is killing vampires and yet, she is the heroine. And her soulmate's a vampire so crazy he scares other vampires. And then there's the teeny brainwashed child vampire, Timmy. Or my favorites, Mary-Lynnette, who translates the whole soulmate recognition thing into an intense desire to hit Ash really hard.

Fifteen million yays to nonjon for giving me a Ginny that is creeptastic and hilarious.

At last Lucius says, "Do you understand what I want to do to you? I want no half-measures from anyone. And certainly not from you. No casual tryst, Harry. No lazy interlude of mutual exploration. I want to consume you. I want to burn myself deep into your skin like a brand. For you to carry the smell of me on you for the rest of your life. For you to weigh every other lover you have in your life against me, and find them all so wanting it makes you weep. This is how I am, Harry. You have no idea what you are asking for. And I would never hold back, once I had begun."
- A World Not So Black Nor White, by Amanuensis

So there are several reasons I shouldn't be the h/c girl I am, but perhaps the biggest? The human body freaks me out. I spent whole chunks of Biology doing breathing excercises to reduce nausea. Hearing about the processes makes me feel sick. Although I don't think anyone really wants to read about the consequences of a perforated bowel, no matter how they profess their longing for accuracy.

Innards? Not a sexy word.

Damn Amanuensis anyway. I'd resisted reading most of her catalogue 'cause of that thing I had about crossgen pairings and then I remembered she had some Harry/Lucius and godDAMMIT. For one, I feel like I've been stabbed, because that is a woman who does not flinch from the unhappy ending (freaking Unforgotten, what the hell, so very not my cup of tea at all, but I'm stuck with it in my head anyway). For two, A World Not So Black and White cemented Harry/Lucius as one of my pairings now, what the fuck. I don't want to ship them! Most of the stories are horrible, writing-and/or-ending-wise. But that fic and Every Flavor Beans tipped from reading to shipping.

A Black Comedy wins for best animagus form ever. Seriously, best form ever, for anyone, in any story. It is both tears-of-laughter funny and so utterly appropriate. ETA: Every time I read this, I love it more. The animagus form, the nundu hunt, Remus and...no, that one is much funnier as a surprise. Anyway, it's awesometastic and has more than once reduced me to actually crying with laughter.