broken-nosed gods

I am always torn between 'stay far far away from writing HP fic because it is difficult and you will never get anything done and it will EAT YOUR SOUL' and 'happy shiny BFF plotbunnies, yaaay!' Like, right now I want to write ace Hermione/Dean where they go out on friend-dates and talk about the news and sing off-key about how their milkshakes bring all the boys to the yard (and then they have to throw them off for trespassing) and he gives her sketches and she gives him little tiny incredibly cool devices made of amazingly complex magic and bits of scrap metal.

Only it wants a plot, now that I've actually started thinking about the damn thing seriously. BOTHER. And the Modern World Club thing with the Hufflepuffs and the Slytherins has decided it wants to have OCs for main characters, because it's more probable that something like that would get started by older students who are already close rather than fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds already busy with Dumbledore's Army and Harry Potter Drama. (Oh, Zacharias. *fond*) Two siblings in different houses + their closest friend(s), maybe. Easier to stagger the ages, too, because I wouldn't have to hunt around as much for named characters in different years for them to drag in as they decided they wanted more new people to hang out with. Plus the mere fact of having a younger/older sibling would mean they'd be more likely to have friends in their year.

Which means coming up with NAMES and BACKGROUNDS and IDENTITIES. And lots of them, too, since we're staggering the ages of the characters. Oog.

Does anyone care if I totally ignore timelines? Because I just do not know enough about what existed and didn't exist sixteen years ago, and if I spend any time at all researching it I will not go back to this story for like a year and a half. (I know what I am like, okay. I still can't go back to Knife & Ink before I find some good resources on Korean and Chinese folklore and finish that one big book about ayakashi and read more of Nurarihyon no Mago. ARGH.)

I mean, I knew D.Gray-Man was going to be fairly good, but I was expecting something like KHR/Bleach/Naruto-style 'good', where when it is actually well-done it makes you go YAAAAY but most of the time it is terrible and hilarious. But DGM is surprisingly quality! Like, it is dark but not ridiculously dark, the fights don't take forever and a day, and the fanservice is not too bad. I mean, it's there, but it mostly consists of girls wearing short skirts and being awesome, not girls getting beat up in 'attractive' ways. (Speaking of fanservice, I love that Hoshino created Tyki because she wanted to draw a handsome guy. :D ) The art is also really consistently good. (Btw, Lavi's giant size-changing hammer totally reminds me of Sun Wukong's Compliant Rod. <3)

Also: LADIES. The gender representation is pretty disproportionate—think KHR levels—but the female characters are absolutely wonderful. Road is fabulous; I wasn't sure I'd like her at first, since I usually go for the more 'girly'-looking characters, but she is creepy and kind of sadistic and I loooove her. She steals the Earl's stuff to hang out with it! She makes her uncle I think Tyki is her uncle, I'm not sure do her homework! Miranda is also super-cool! I like the way she looks with her hair down, and her issues are absolutely understandable. But Lenalee, oh Lenalee, you own my HEART. When someone runs into trouble and is about to die, you're always there to rescue them! Instant death headed for someone's face? No problem, you're already kicking it out of the way. Big giant army with a super-elite boss the likes of which no-one's ever seen before? You tell your friends they can take care of the mooks while you take this dude out. AWESOME = YOU.

I think this is the first shounen series I've read with a male main character where a girl not only gets to kick ass, she gets to outright save her dude friends. Thank you, Hoshino Katsura! *love*


I've started listening to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in Japanese. I don't understand too much of it, but I love the way the narrator says things—not just English things, though those are the funniest. DAAZUREI. MAKUGONAGURU-SENSEI. POTTAA. MYSTERY DESU NEE. Did you know McGonnagol uses 'watakushi'? You do now! IDK why Vernon Dursley = Dursley-shi, though. Some suffix I don't know?


I have to finish my paper tomorrow, bah. It's not so much that I'm tired of it (though I am) as that I have to put in a bunch of explanations that I usually wouldn't, not just because it mentions fanfiction but because it's about Sun Wukong. Or rather, English-language (fan)works about Sun Wukong. And I didn't go into it thinking "oh, I need to explain everything!" because I just kind of assume that people know what the hell Journey to the West is, at the level of recognizing the words 'Great Sage Equal to Heaven' if nothing else. Even if they've never heard of fanfiction in their lives, I just kind of think people know about that? I read Laurence Yep's dragon quartet when I was about eight and transitioned into anime/manga/manhwa/manhua fandom a few years later, so it's a story I've known for more than half my life and I guess I just assume that even other white people know it too. But according to my mother, that's not accurate. *sigh*

(She also said that with my writing style if I don't start connecting things better, he might start wondering where I plagiarized it from. Now that would be a lol for the ages.)

3W4DW meme to be continued tomorrow, when I have brain and am not sleep. (For those of you following along on LJ: congratulations! I have posted like four things on DW you haven't seen, perhaps one of which you might care about! Also we are having mad fun over here, come hang out and help make our comms active have lots of fun with us.)

There will never be enough Theodore Nott fic in the world. Never ever ever.


Also, an unrelated PSA: prompt claiming for queer_fest is open!

(and also to distract myself from the fact that I picked way too broad a topic for my paper and probably need to find a new one)


He's quite clever, when it comes to something he's interested in. Unfortunately, he's also thoughtless and lazy when it comes to things he doesn't care about, or things he cares about but doesn't know how to go about framing in his head. If you can talk him into thinking about things, though, he can do it quite well. He just doesn't always like to, which is why he avoids doing so.

This is why he's only average in most of his classes; they're not what he cares about, and he only needs to maintain a minimal level in order to do the things he does care about (quidditch, chess, strategy, playing around with friends).

He mostly reads chess books and things for schoolwork, but he quite enjoys a certain kind of history book. You know, the ones about generals and wars and rulers and politics, that are far enough removed from daily life that they can be thought of as abstractions and not applied to the real world at all if you don't need them to. (I also like this kind of book, so that's how I know.)

He thinks most people are pretty decent, given the right circumstances and plenty of time. Maybe he fights with Malfoy, and maybe they don't particularly like each other, but they could probably get along if they had something to talk about and the issues of family politics were removed. Maybe he doesn't like Professor Snape, but he's probably an okay bloke if you like Potions.

He is easily cruel to those who've hurt the people he counts as his. (This doesn't mean he hates them.)

He is easily envious and jealous. He wants to be special, he wants to stand out from his brothers but still fit in with his family. He wants to have money for the little things people like Malfoy or Harry don't think about, new clothes and toys and schoolbooks. (He understands Hermione's fascination with marked-up books, but he'd rather have something new and shiny.) Not even big things, like brooms -- just the little things of everyday life. If he lived in the Muggle world, he'd probably love buildings made of steel and glass.

One of the things he's always loved about Hogwarts is that there's always somewhere you can go off to and be alone when you need it.

I'm suffering from a terrible, terrible temptation. It's truly awful; I can't believe I'm even thinking of considering to entertain such an idea. But I can't help it. *sadface*

You see, this Harry Potter fic I'm kind-of-sort-of working on is the equivalent of the (last part of the) Utena movie, in its basic plot (a bunch of people want to get away to the outside world, some of them turn into vehicles so they all can, everybody escapes and is happy). So I was thinking hmmm, wouldn't it be fun to come up with a title that referenced the movie?

And then, later today, something made me think of Evangelion, and that one spin-off manga I really liked (but never finished). You know the one: Neon Genesis Evangelion: Gakuen Datenroku, aka NGE Academy: Record of Heaven's Descent, that second half also sometimes translated as Apocalypse. Since the Utena movie's title is Adolescence Apocalypse . . . hmm.

So now I desperately want to call this here Harry Potter fic Record of Hogwarts Dissent -- since, you know, it's about a bunch of students at Hogwarts and their disbelief in and resistance against the dominant social paradigm.* Even though I know the literal definition of 'apocalypse' is something like 'unveiling' or 'revelation', and the thing I'd be referencing is not actually the thing I want to allude to. That is to say, I would technically be referencing it, but by way of alluding to something else that is mostly unrelated and therefore pointless.


Naturally, I would be VERY GRATEFUL if anyone would help me come up with a better title. *nudge nudge*


*I can totally use big words like all you smart people! See?

Here is how to write a Marriage Law that would not immediately be repealed:

First, make it binding only to the so-called 'pureblood' families; those who, in recent years, have styled themselves such.

Second, make it a familial contract: the joining of two houses, perhaps with a change of name. Any children born into those families -- side branches too, if they count themselves as such -- would have citizenship and education in both magical and non-magical Britain.

Third, enforce nothing outside the basic contract. No mandatory sex, no mandatory children. Co-habitation is unnecessary; the couple should see each other reasonably often, but what that is should stay undefined. The custody of children with a different parent may be arranged by the couple in question, though they should carry the name and privileges of one of the new families.

Nice and quick and no dubcon-y sex magic. See? Easy.

I kind of hate re-reading really good fic, because most of the fics I love enough to re-read multiple times draw me in so much I will hardly do anything else for as long as it takes to finish them again. Which would be fine, except a lot of the stories I re-read often are the ones that are hundreds of thousands of words long.

Mostly I regret the muscle pain, though, because the long stories I re-read and get drawn into this way are valuable enough to be entirely worth the time. Especially when I get something new out of them, or something old I'd forgotten.

Re-reading Blood Magic (too lazy to fetch a link right now; it's by gatewaygirl and linked to at the top of her journal) is especially worth it, because it's about distrust and keeping secrets from your friends and having huge horrible fights and popular expectations and making bad decisions and betrayal -- and for all that, it's ultimately a happy story. I think it's important for me to remember that you can disagree with and mistrust and have huge screaming fights with people and still like them. And so far, nothing in the world makes me think about that more or in a better way than this.


And now, to assure you that re-reading isn't all I've been doing for the past four days, a little bitty quote from the Azula fic (most scenes previous to this yet to be determined):

“Found you,” she says, then “Foooouuuund yoooouuu!” she sings out, enjoying the long words of her childhood tongue and the memories they bring. Found you, Zuzu, can’t hide from me. . . .

Lu Ten can’t hear her, of course, but it’s the thought that counts.

Sigh.

To explain: I want to write a post-GoF fic. Not an AU of OotP; a post-GoF fic. I never thought ignoring canon could be so hard, but to tell the truth I find it very difficult to single out everything I know from the fifth book and not using (most of) it. No Dolores Umbridge, no Occlumency/Legilimency, no Black Family Tree (or not most of it), and probably no Room of Requirement.

And that's leaving aside actually plotting out and then writing the damn thing.

Oh well. It will happen someday.


On a more positive note, here's the first draft of 30_gens prompt #9, for Kisame and Itachi. (Constructive critiscism very, very welcome. I'm afraid I might have made Kisame sound like a cross between Itachi and Hidan.)

( 9. old friends )