Persistence of Memory

Added the story Abused to Harry/Lucius Recs, and Haunted By Dreams Deferred to the Final Fantasy XII section of Misc. Game-Related Recs.

Added a story to Seriously Ambivalent Recs.

So I'm reading Nimby Says, and I run across this:

"But his eyes remained blank, probably from his father and working for Voldomort in his 6th year."

And I commented: Is that anything like Dildomort?

So now I've this picture in my head of Voldemort as a Pointy Haired Boss-type from Dilbert.

Yeah, so, I made a pact with Lucifer and downloaded—and installed!—IE7. I've steadfastly stuck with IE6 all this time because I'd heard such awful things about 7, and besides, I use Firefox. Well, I did it. I usually am a year or so behind changes like that, being a very untrusting soul when it comes to Microsqueeze products.

Sadly, my machine still suffers mysteriously from not loading the explorer shell on startup. I have to manually initiate the task, and it does actually look right in the registry, so I have no idea what's wrong. Well, aside from having installed RCT3 and infected myself with SecuROM. Rrrr. Stupid instructions I have for removal don't cover this incarnation, so I'm not sure how to get rid of it. Yet.

Did a nice thing the other day. I know, shocking, seeing as how I'm an anti-social, sadistic bitch. Have some tea or a drink—you'll recover soon enough.

Started editing Forsaken. Again. But this time I'm replacing the chapter copies at the Pit of Despair.

Glanced at my ideas file, added another bunch of notes for various stories which might see the light of day sometime this century. Had an argument with myself over Breakpoint. Par, basically.

Got through all the exercises in Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, but not all the missions. Dunno why Site B is such a big deal, but whatever. I'll get to it eventually. Was rather peeved when I got fined for a velociraptor eating a tourist and never even got to see it happen! Rrrr. Think it's pretty stupid you have to be cheaty to get a safari tour to go through multiple enclosures. I mean really, couldn't they have added in a gate of some kind? I also think it sucks you can't import a greyscale image for island construction rather than dealing with those lousy terrain editing tools.

So, in a fit of masochistic glory, I decided to watch Order of the Phoenix. I'd have watched GoF first, but then I remembered someone had borrowed that DVD and mysteriously never returned it. I'd bitchslap her if I could, but then I might become contaminated with stupidity.

Anyway... so here's the list of thoughts I had during this fascinating movie experience. Feel free to skip right by if you don't want to hear mostly bitching.

On a side note, I finally managed to track down a very specific screencap I wanted, so that made me feel a lot happier.

( You will lose everything. )

Been thinking, which is always dangerous, and after whining for several seconds over not owning a graphics tablet, I decided I wished someone out there would create some art. Specifically, profile shots of Harry and Voldemort, facing each other.

Both would have serpentine aspects, though. Maybe scales, or the hint thereof. Voldemort would still be missing his nose and be bald, I guess.

Sort of like that one line from, er, whatever book it was... "In essence, divided." I think OotP.

A sort of shout out to the whole Horcrux bullshit, and the similarities between Harry and Voldemort.

I think I might also have been influenced by watching Evolution recently and watching the little alien buggers inducing mitosis.

Skip right on past this entry if you're not a Harry/Voldemort shipper.  I didn't think this really belonged in the S.S. Sssssss thread (current incarnation here), so I'm doing it this way instead.

The list was taken from the Can't Stand Harry/Voldemort! thread at Fiction Alley (as is, which means spelling mistakes are included).

Updated: 21 October 2008, to include three new "reasons", and to make it a bit easier to read.

( 1-43 )

( 44-46 )

I may have asked this before, but am I the only one having issues getting the Time Line pages at HP Lexicon to function? I've tried it with Firefox and IE and I get nothing but headers, footers, and the sidebar. No data, regardless of using their links or that 'timeturner' thingie. I keep wanting to verify stuff for a project I'm considering.

I tried sending an email to those people, but it was refused.

Don't suppose anyone has a static copy from before they went the PHP route they yanked down I could peruse?

So, I installed OpenOffice 2.3.1, and I've been screwing around. I'm torn, really. There are two things right off the bat that I really dislike.

1. This isn't an MDI, so I have a new window for every document. With UltraEdit I can have multiple documents open and just click the tab I need (obviously, it's kind of difficult to have project files if you couldn't do that) to deal with the chapter/file I need to edit. Given that I tend to have the current WIP chapter of several fics open along with a couple of research files, this presents an issue for me. I'm used to seeing Firefox, Thunderbird, Dreamweaver, and UltraEdit on my start bar, not eleventy-billion instances of the same program. (Semagic and WinAmp minimize to the system tray to save space.)

2. Line numbering seems to be document specific rather than a global setting. Every time I open a file I have to turn it back on if I want it. This wouldn't be such a big deal if I was going by # of pages rather than lines as a general guide. I know I can convert that thinking so long as I stick to a monospace font. I just think it sucks that I can't set it and forget it.

On the other hand, I like that I can convert stuff straight to PDF without having to install Adobe Acrobat or find a plug-in of some kind, and that I can specify a separate dictionary to add words to, and of course it shows me immediately when something isn't recognized.

Of course, I've had Microsqueeze's ClearType font smoothing enabled recently, which causes some interesting issues. Generally speaking it makes screen text so much less jagged, but it makes monospaced fonts in UE look absolutely horrific (which is interesting, since Courier New in OpenOffice looks fine). I turned it off for a bit, just to see, and recoiled from the screen (such as when viewing the average web page), and to compare skipped over to the laptop (which is default). Geez, man... is that usually how crappy the display looks for text?

Anyway, I realized very quickly that having ClearType enabled wreaks havoc when trying to make icons which contain text. All the fonts seem to explode in thickness, so I suppose I'd have to keep toggling whenever I went into PSP. I realized this when I had gone in to create a 'Grazhir' icon... the Grazhir part came out okay, but any subtext was bloated... not that I could think of anything appropriate except to label myself as 'sadistic'. Honestly, that was the only word I could think of to describe me, which is really pathetic.

It also, apparently, wreaks havoc with certain games, such as Lineage II. Rick enabled it briefly and quickly found that it futzed up any underlined text in the game and made shop displays all wonky, like text breaking out of the boxes. He turned it back off, of course.

For those who are interested, a number of Grazhir-type fics have been PDF'd. At the moment we have:
1. Control Issues (file includes Snapshots)
2. Crumbling Pedestal (file includes Snapshots)
3. Disovery
4. Forsaken (file includes Snapshots)
5. Induction
6. Infinite Shades of Grey (ISG)
7. Masks
8. The Nightmare Before Bedtime
9. One Winged Angel (file includes Snapshots)

1. Choices
2. Forbidden
3. Kaleidoscope

Each can be found at the respective detail page for the story (or via the pairings lists). Look for the cute little red Adobe Reader icon, and right-click|save to download. All chaptered fics (should) have an index, so you can click straight to a chapter or snapshot rather than having to page like mad.

Biology is on the list, but as it desperately needs editing, that might be a while. Once I have the completed fics done, I'll consider the WIPs... but I dunno. Would people like that, even though they aren't finished? I know bunches of you transfer copies of stories you read onto PDAs and whatnot, so....

Okay, so I've finally watched the fifth Harry Potter movie. Rick and I screamed "Rape!" through most of it. But then, after having watched canon be brutally raped (repeatedly) during the third movie, one develops somewhat of a tolerance level for this sort of travesty.

Overall, my impression is "Meh." Not worthless, but not fantastic, either. I hated the supposed Black Family Tapestry, which is now crappy wallpaper, apparently. And I noticed how Narcissa was once again never shown, making me wonder who exactly will be picked for that role for the next, if at all, or if that plot point will be glossed over in a massive way.

Voldemort looked... dare I say it... geeky? I wonder, does he secretly carry a Mensa membership card in his pocket? And Grawp? Now come on, people. If that's a pureblood giant, and Hagrid is a halfblood, I don't even want to contemplate the union between Hagrid's parents. It's just too squicky. A human father... who wore a life preserver, perhaps, so as not to fall in? Eww.

Anyway, I must squee over Lucius. How can I not? Another squee is that so many people are taller than Daniel Radcliffe. Yeah, baby! But let's talk more about Lucius, shall we? Rawr.

Now I just need for Resident Evil: Extinction to come out on DVD. (I've heard it's not all that, but I don't care. It's a must have for my collection.)

I'm beginning to suspect that people out there actually do possess a sense of humor. Why, you ask?

I'm still getting notices from the Pit of Despair on a regular basis that people are marking Forsaken as one of their favorite stories. And yes, the copy there still has the joke ending.

I think I may be feeling a skosh faint over the whole deal, and strangely giddy.

I mean, let's look at the evidence. I (and others) have recommended a number of stories out there which could benefit from some work. It might be that the author has paced the story to zip alongside something like Speed, or maybe they've never in their life tripped over a dictionary as anything other than a doorstop, or never got their complimentary copies of any book in the Eats, Shoots & Leaves family. But the story itself is a good read, despite the flaws, so we invite others to slip on their fuzz-focus specs and have a gander.

I really like the story The Savior and the Scourge by Random Dispatcher. I like it so much I dumped every single chapter of it into a single HTML file on my hard drive. And then, while reading it one day, I nearly had an aneurysm over the issues and started editing my copy for simple issues, like punctuation, people who act their sentences instead of speaking them, bizarre initial-capping, and so on and so forth.

After an hour of using the handy Find & Replace feature of Dreamweaver, I was maybe half done editing. I gave up at that point from sheer tedium, and maybe someday I'll go back and fix another plethora of mistakes, but it doesn't change the fact that I love the story, and I'll read it again the moment I'm in the mood.

In contrast, that whole set of flaws plus a shitty story ends up featured by Nimby due to his urges to mass murder parts of the population. (Especially since I am now out of not only Imatrex but also Codis.)

Sometimes I think I'm too rigid, inflexible, and unforgiving, but then I consider something like this and realize maybe I'm being way too critical of myself.

So thank you to the people out there who remind me of my own sense of humor.

Dear Author,

We are pleased to announce a new, free workshop aimed directly at people like you, writers of Harry Potter fanfiction. During this workshop you will learn amazing things, such as how to properly spell canon names, what a comma is used for and why they are necessary, and the basics of something called logic. Also offered will be a guided tour of the Harry Potter Lexicon website, plus a special session on how to create a bookmark in the browser of your choice.

This workshop will kick off with a rousing talk on why Harry is a 'parselmouth,' not a 'parseltongue' (which, incidentally, should be initial-capped and happens to be a language, like English, or French, or Italian).

Please go over the enclosed pamphlet and send in your registration today!

Insincerely,
Society for the Care and Bludgeoning of Members of the HPLA Society

Side Note: For some insane reason, Masks also suffered through the Great Editing Spree of 2007 and has been updated at both Grazhir and the Pit of Despair.

So I opened up a tab on Rosswrock's 'Power of Time' or whatever it's called. After bravely wading into chapter one (aka: The Summary of Everything That Happened Since Something Went 'Splodie and the Universe Banged Into Existence), I closed it before I hit halfway through the page. It just depressed me too much to see an opening salvo that's had more airtime than Paris Hilton.

I don't have as much patience these days, I suppose. Then again, maybe it's a reaction to yesterday's virtual sweep by a single author.

I've come to realize why I tend to dislike seeing the POV for the villain in most stories. Aside from that fact that it's often nothing new (meaning eleventy-billion other people have written some form of the same scenes, well done or badly), it also usually creates a lot of what I call false drama and takes away the mystery.

I prefer seeing their villainy through the eyes of others, actually. What Harry interprets from what he sees (directly or indirectly), or how Hermione reacts when she starts piecing together the clues. You know? Then there's usually a question of what's going on. Is it straightforward? Is there something sinister lurking beneath? Is the aim good but the execution evil?

On the other hand, in a good humor fic, it can be hilarious to see things from the villain's POV.

A oneshot by Laume and a story by Priya Ashok have been added to the Gen/Other Recs List.

Also, I might actually be close to completing a chapter for Breakpoint. It moves the story along quite a bit faster than I was anticipating, but that's okay, as I've still got tons of crap in the notes section that I want to deal with before the big bang at the end (if I can ever figure out how the big bang will happen, that is). I think I even have the perfect pull quote from that to slap into the box.... Hmm.