Persistence of Memory

Aiieeeee! Would you freakin' people put the summary at the head of chapter one!?!?!?

La la la—what's this? Why are people so damn insistent on giving Harry "bronze" skin? That would look really friggin' peculiar.

Okay, I know I'm a snob.

( Website Woes )

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. )

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 admit, there might be the odd repeat from previous 'episodes', but I'm collecting these as I browse looking for something to read.  As usual, these things listed usually mean I refuse to even open the story, or I find them in chapter one, quickly followed by closing the tab.

( Read more... )

What is this fascination?

Really.

Why, pray tell, do authors subject us poor, defenseless readers to excruciating detail when it comes to mundanity? Do I really need a blow-by-blow description of how Character X takes a shower/bath? How Studmuffin washes his hair twice, right like it says to on the label? Uses soap (of all things) with a specific scent? When it could have been handled with: A distracted Studmuffin returned to his rooms and took a shower, his thoughts never once ceasing to run around in circles.

No! We get as many as four or five paragraphs... for a bloody shower!

You know... unless there's well done wanking involved, or sex, why should anyone be subjected to this inane drivel?

Oh, wait! I know! It's because the author... is boring?

Okay, I will make an exception here. The obligatory long bath after being released/escaping from Azkaban. Nimby and I can live with that one.

So I'm reading, which is shocking. And I've seen this countless times (countless only because I can't remember the details, of course), but I'm only now getting a bit miffed by the situation.

Ron and Hermione are heroes, you see. And for what? Why, naturally, because they used to be the best friends of the Boy Who Betrayed. And I said to myself today, "Self, why is this seen as having anything resembling logic?" And myself was mystified. Granted, we tend to usually shrug this sort of thing off, but I've seen it too often now.

They're heroes because they stayed 'pure'? They... stood up to the evil that is Harry? The usual sort of slant is that Harry ends up in Azkaban and these two immediately solicit interviews so they can do a tell all on Teh Evul and how horrifyingly scary it all way, and how they tried, oh how they tried, to make him see reason....

You know, to me that sounds like stupidity. Or, as one paraphrased saying goes, "Optimism is repeating the same actions over and over again hoping for a different result." And I am not much of an optimist.

But they were selfless! They had his best interests at heart! They tried to sway his path to the light (or keep it there). Any self respecting Slytherin or Ravenclaw should be scoffing at the stupidity, and any Hufflepuff ought to be shocked at the sheer lack of loyalty. And of course, the Gryffindors eat this right up.

(And for the love of bonsai kittens, people, could you please get a clue and stop using Parseltongue and parselmouth interchangeably?)

Personally, if the wizarding public had any sense (*snorts*) they'd have imprisoned Ron and Hermione, as well. I mean, if they were that close....

But no, they've been concerned, casting those strange looks at Harry, and people notice, and the rumors start....

I dunno. I just think the idea of those two somehow being cast in the role of heroes under these circumstances is essentially saying (as if the general reaction of the public to the usual slander in the Daily Prophet didn't make this clear by now) that wizards are sheep and are all better off dead anyway.

That's the crux, in a way, and I suppose it's not much different from reality. If leaders don't do things that crush a man's pocket, what do they care? There's a saying about this... connected to WWII, I believe.

So, I've been reading lately. No surprise. But up comes the subject of time travel, a category that I both love and loathe. It's all in the execution, of course. Most especially of interest is when Harry spends time in the founders' era.

I can accept a lot. I can accept people neglecting to wonder about or even check if there were toilets back then, despite having read all about jakes and chamberpots and suchlike. I tend to wave that away by thinking in this instance, wizards are more advanced. (After all, in many respects, in that time period, they would be.)

I can accept that it's unheard of to see proper dialogue. I couldn't begin to wrap my head around how those people would have been speaking, and I wouldn't even try, so it's hardly a surprise when others ignore it, too. It's obviously some magician with a handy translation spell hiding in the shadows.

However, I just read something (granted, I've read it a number of times) that made me snort. Something to the tune of how overweight people didn't exist back then. Then again, despite my thinking it'd be, if anyone, wealthy people who'd suffer that affliction, perhaps I've seen one too many movies with exactly that, plus the obligatory executioner type weighing in at as much as my Saturn.

And that made me remember the number of times that I know an author either hasn't ever visited HP Lexicon, or hasn't ever shown an interest in history, or done research. An example of that would be trying to show that the ministry existed back then, which it did not. Or that Gringotts existed back then, and the founders had vaults there. (Sadly, my attempt to verify my memory of visits to the timeline at HPL just now were stymied by a bandwidth issue there, but I know I checked when I was writing CP.)

Another issue is height. Going back a couple of hundred years to check heights in Europe shows that (from a study I found via the ever kindly Mr Google) English males were on average 5'5" tall, and they were shorter than the Irish. Part of this was due to a rebound of bad conditions (they were all, apparently, taller before), and they were creeping back up.

However, one must imagine that evolution, as well as living conditions, nutrition, etc., play a part, so why would anyone assume that Godric or Salazar were swanning about at 6 feet and over? Or that Rowena was at least 5'10"? Another source claims that height in England has remained relatively stable since Hector was a pup, with males averaging 5'7" (170cm) and females 5'3" (160cm). That's just two sources found in less than ten minutes time.

People have such a strange outlook when it comes to height. Personally, being a female at 5'4" (average enough for my mixed American/English breeding), I find much taller people to be a right pain in the ass, what with having to look UP all the time. I don't think they're better somehow, just more annoying. (Apologies again to Josh, if he's reading. But he knows I love him to bits.)

I know, I've ranted about height before.

Anyway, there's a lot I can forgive, despite having spent quite a long time with history (for some reason, I loved taking history classes in high school), and having read any number of books set way the heck back, or those with roots in that time period. I sincerely doubt that any of them could have stood for a Colgate commercial, or Suave, or even Irish Spring. You know? But these are wizards we're talking about, and surely they were a more 'evolved' sub-species.

Of course, given the number of pictures I've seen of historical figures, and me thinking they're all just shy of being horrifically ugly.... But that's an entirely different rant.

More things that make Nimby snarl, and me almost happy that they aren't bad enough to cause a full blown Nimby attack. I almost indulged earlier, actually, when one story at HP Fandom made one of my eyes start to twitch, but then it was over and I moved on. I'm feeling downright petty and nasty these days, though. (Note: I think it sucks that Semagic doesn't have a built-in spell checker like Firefox. Murfle!)

( The Rants )

Bonus

I've run across eleventy billion fics recently that all go on about how Harry was never taught how to properly structure an essay. Too many, really. But that's not the focus of today's bonus item. It made me consider things, and think back. I think I've said before that I don't remember a whole lot from my own schooling, and especially what happened in most English classes. I don't know what most diacritical marks mean (and in fact, only understood what the word meant thanks to contextual cues), and I don't know how to diagram a sentence (or even why I'd want to). I don't know what dangling participles are and other interestingly termed stuff unless I take the time to go hunt down a definition (and even then I know I'll forget within a day what I researched).

And I most definitely haven't got the foggiest idea how to properly structure an essay. I know I wrote eleventy billion essays during my school career, and did damn well, but it's all just a blur, you know? I might have some vague idea about summary, content/arguments, and conclusion, but...? Oh, well, and a bibliography. I mean really... is that it? Have I actually remembered something and just don't realize it?

It's like, I write something (or do so and go back to it a month or months later) and realize that something isn't right about a sentence, that I've made some sort of mistake that makes comprehension awkward and is most likely against some rule. So I fix it. But I don't know what the mistake is called. I did once, but only because I ran across a term I couldn't define and looked it up, then promptly forgot it a few days later. Sometimes I think I've learned more about "English" from reading than I ever did in a classroom setting. Dunno, but it's strange.

And we're off!

I hate to break it to certain people out there, but "erstwhile" does not mean what you think it means. Not in the definition are things like stupid, occasionally dotty, frequently displays the emotional range of a teaspoon, or anything else. It means former. As in, he "used to be" my friend, but he turned out to be a slimy slug, so I kicked him in the money maker and giggled maniacally whilst he cried tears of blood. (Reading Control Issues at the moment... can you tell?)

Oh my gawd, romance doesn't have to mean drowning in fluff! Save me! Save me!

Newly realized magical creature!Harry is instantly (or at least, nearly) a fully mature (emotionally/mentally), supportive mate. I find this way more difficult to accept than semi-confused.

Stockholm syndrome... really, we need less of it.

The incredible changing eye colour syndrome. To some extent, I like it. But not when the author makes it a point to constantly bombard the reader with instances. Yes, it's cool. But if I already know Harry (or whoever) is upset/angry/lusty/happy, then I don't also need to keep seeing that his eyes have likewise changed. It's overkill.

I must sigh. It's obviously a rule somewhere in a book I never bothered to read, but did you all know that all it takes is once, twice, three times? Strokes, that is, pulling, to make an aroused man orgasm? Honestly.

On the Other Hand:

I'm becoming so exceptionally fond of seeing Harry's stereotypical portkey landings (usually involving sprawling) and subsequent bouncing to his feet like it was just a slight hitch (or he's made of rubber, I'm not sure).

Bonus:

And the award today goes to [censored] in chapter one of [censored], where Harry, upon stumbling over a dying (we presume) Severus, uses the spell Mobiliarbus to levitate him off to the infirmary (presumably). Now, unless Sev has a woody....

Tags: rant

This isn't actually all that long, so I've not bothered to place it under a cut. Just the most recent compilation of annoyances.

Why is it that everytime Harry gets extra time (or away from his keepers) he always immediately decides on a vigorous exercise scheme? Every bloody day involves lifting weights and whatnot (which is where the Room of Requirement or 'Time Flux' comes in handy). I can understand a person, even him, wanting to keep fit rather than sliding into softness, but these stories always seem to have him working toward Mr Universe practically, and it's nuts. Oh, sure, they all use the same excuse. Harry needs to be extra fit and chock full of stamina to cast nearly endlessly or be able to play at Lara Croft on whim. But Mr Universe?

I love personal web sites, I do. But what I don't love is when I go somewhere to read a story, only to find that the author has a Shin'a'in or Northern Barbarian love of colour and pattern. It's blinding, really, and instantly obvious that someone... doesn't know to use a solid background on top of the image for ease of reading. Or they do, but decide instead to use bold style and a larger font to compensate. Along the same lines is when every blasted page has a unique scheme. I also hate when the material isn't enclosed in a container of some kind, to prevent it from stretching across the entire page. Silly, I know, but I like having my mouse pointer off to the side, where it can't interfere with the text, but not on the scroll bar. I have a mouse wheel for a reason, after all. Thank heavens for stuff like Web Developer and Greasemonkey.

Harry has his eyesight fixed. Wait... wait for it. Yes! He immediately complains that it didn't work and everything is still blurry... because... he's still wearing his glasses. Could we please not be subjected to this inanity anymore?

Okay, people. The word is not "murders," it's "murderers." (Or, as the case may be, murderer.) One does not say things like, "But you should hate me, I'm a murder!" Really now, unless you're a crow and part of a... Murder of Crows... or maybe a murder victim....

Shockingly, I'm getting tired of seeing people walking around with functional bling. Need something to 'deflect' or 'absorb' lower level hexes and whatnot? No problem, sparky! We've got a large and varied selection of jewelry just for those needs, and best of all, none of it is banned for use while at Hogwarts, where you should be leaning to handle them on your bloody own!!!

Authors who don't explain how the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets works! (I mean, when we see Harry using it.) After all, it's not like Tom Bloody Riddle had freakin' Fawkes to haul his cookies back up the passageway, now did he.

Imply and infer are not interchangeable. Really, they aren't.

If I never see "We're not worthy!!!" again, it won't be too soon. (Hey, sure, I like the movie, but there are too many cooks flogging a dead horse in the kitchen on this one.)

This is so petty, I'm almost ashamed to include it, but I may have to commit violence the next time I see a story which proclaims that Harry's Firebolt, despite being X years old, is still the fastest broom on the market. I had almost convinced myself that the Firebolt was such a modern marvel of spellwork that all the workers from other broom companies immediately threw themselves off a bridge in shame given the number of times I've seen this, but then the cat meowed and sanity flooded back in for a short stay.

England != United Kingdom. That would be rather difficult since the full 'name' (according to my cat) is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Please, it is not a crime in most countries to consult an encyclopedia if one feels any doubt. Think of how Scotland and Wales feel! Waaaaah!

Transfiguration classes which always feature McGonagall testing the students to see if they can become animagi (and nearly always in a way that shows everyone present what creature). This, obviously, must be a change from the past, else the Marauders would have had to do some fast talking and fancy maneuvering to get out of being discovered. Of course, when Harry is involved, something strange frequently happens, especially if he's already taught himself.

Tags: rant

So, this is sort of a rant, but not. The original post is by mctabby, here. It goes almost without saying that none of these people have ever run a spell check in their lives.

( Read more... )

Dear Blog/Journal Suits,

1. Is it really such a bother for you people who code the software or create the styles to include a permanent link 'link' for each entry? Some of us get a bit homicidal when we can't view a journal or community by paging from entry to entry. Yes, I know, I can click on the 'comment' link to get to that view. I just don't like it.

2. Why, pray tell, can you same people not figure out a way for a user to automagically skip over protected entries? You know, the ones that shoot back, "Error: You are not authorized to view this protected entry." Then I have to go back to the listing page, find the next entry, link into it, and start over again with reading entry by entry. I mean really, even with the Dark Ages level of programming competence I still possess, I know you could figure out a procedure for this issue.

If (user=!authorized) then next(next(this_entry)) | where next might be prev depending on which direction we're headed in |

Or something like that. See? It's not rocket science, baby.

3. Why, creator of the blogging software, or maybe the style creator, do you fail to have links for Next and Previous at the bottom of your pages? Or even at the top? Or hell, frequently not even a Top link? Do you gain some sick, perverted thrill from forcing me to keep scrolling to find the archive listing (by month) so I can move along, or forcing me to hit the back button so I can pick the next month from the list?

4. Please explain to me why you insist on having an options button when all that clicking it does (essentially) is change its function to preview? My clicky finger gets tired when I'm in a commenting-spree kind of mood, darling.

5. Why, oh sadist programmer or style creator, does the "X comments" link NOT link to this_post#comments? Why am I required to actually SCROLL DOWN to the comments?

Sincerely irritated,
Nicole

STOP RIGHT THERE!

Nimby and I have done something a bit outside the box today, and what follows has absolutely nothing to do with Harry Potter or fanfiction. (Shocking, I know).

We've been reading over at a site, see, that contains the 'true' confessions of brides. I figured the site would be a motherload of soul-sucking boredom, but no! It's a motherload of gratuitous entitlement, snobbery, and bitchiness, only partially leavened by actual people with something other than oneupmanship on their minds.

Naturally, we couldn't stand it for very long and felt the strong desire to mock. Rational people would have left the site at that point, but we've been spoiling for a fight lately (preferably one that has nothing to do with reality). We started sneering somewhere on page one, but most of them were passed over as just being not quite evil enough.

(We'd have made this a Nimby episode if we didn't think readers would start up a lynch mob.)

( I hereby crown myself Entitlement Queen! )

It's time for Round Two, and frankly, you can never have too many. This episode includes the original topic, some bonus points, and a thing or two I learned this time around, as you can see by the cut tags.

But first, a plot bunny that surfaced as I was waking up from a nap: Harry Potter ties his life force to a philosopher's stone and accidentally creates a horcrux or two, then becomes a world renowned exorcist after bilking Backpack Toys out of all assets, storing the liquidated gains in a Swiss bank account, and annihilating every Teddy Ruxpin on the planet. Then he set his sights on Tyco and Tickle Me Elmo, and Tiger Co. and Furbys.

On a side note, I recently realized that I had neglected to include a summary with chapter one for fics I archived at HP Fandom (probably due to the fact that clicking on a story title opens a summary page of sorts if it's multi-chaptered), and that totally goes against my usual bitch about people neglecting to do that for those of us with lousy memories. So... yeah, I fixed that over there, and I doubt I would have noticed at all if I hadn't checked one of the oneshots over there. *sigh*

( The List )

( Bonus Points )

( Things I Have Learned )

There's a lot of stuff I don't like. Go figure. I've been C2 surfing, by the way, if that's any sort of a clue.

This isn't technically a rant, but it's close enough. And because the list is so long, I'm placing it under a cut. Some of these 'points' do have exceptions, naturally, but that's the nature of the story itself and who's writing it. Or maybe I should say, how they're writing it.

( The List )

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.

You know, I can almost understand this if we're talking about a story where Harry goes back in time to re-do his life (and retains his memories), but even then I'm leery about the whole deal. It's even worse when we're talking about a Harry who ends up in an alternate dimension at the age of sometime-before-my-Hogwarts-letter.

I'm speaking of Hedwig, naturally. Harry always decides he wants to liberate her from the pet shop (understandable from his POV), but in nearly every instance Hedwig turns out to be an extremely picky and quite nearly violent owl, who makes an exception for Harry (we won't talk about how Hagrid was the original purchaser, since that would just be plain silly), as though she's been waiting for him for years. Actually, because she has. It was foreordained, you know?

(ETA: I apologize, because I may have mistaken the movie for canon with regard to who actually picked Hedwig. I've just been reading one of those 'Lily and the Marauders read [PS]' stories, and that has Harry going with Hagrid into the owl shop.)

In the former situation, it might be posited that not only did Harry's adult soul go back, but some shred of his Hedwig. I suppose this would have to apply to Harry hopping dimensions as well, right? And even so, in cases where Harry hits an alternate dimension as an adult (and his Hedwig had been killed in some horrible accident), she's still waiting for him at the Owl Emporium, having been nasty and bad tempered until the moment he sets foot in the shop.

*rolls eyes*

Don't even start babbling about familiar bonds. I love Hedwig, but she's not a familiar unless the author CLEARLY makes her one. JKR did not. Hedwig is a post owl, nothing more. Intelligent... perhaps. Maybe the post owl magic just runs a bit more deeply in her, making her exceptionally good at her job and intuitive to her master's needs. So unless Hedwig suffers a mysterious event/accident and transforms into a damn phoenix, she's just a beloved pet who happens to serve a useful purpose (unlike my cats).

Next in my 'AU From Hell' list is when Harry attends a school other than Hogwarts. This usually comes about because an abused Harry offers up prayers to (the) god(s) and is rescued by a family friend, more-distant-than-first cousin, or something similar. That in itself is fine! What isn't fine is that most of these stories somehow reveal that half the canon people are at that same school. For instance, Molly Weasley is one of the people in charge of the children too young to formally attend 'the school' and Harry immediately gets to meet people like Ron and Ginny. It's nothing to be shocked about if Remus just so happens to be a professor there, or if Minerva (after washing her hands of things when Dumbles overrides her concerns about leaving Harry with Petunia) is the Transfiguration professor. You'll probably even see people like Luna Lovegood. It's old home week in AU land!

One of the few I've seen that I actually liked was Wyckham Academy, and that actually took the time to explain how the school came into being, and why people decided to work there (and does an excellent job of bashing the living fuck out of how Hogwarts is run), and why certain students actually end up there with our dear Harry. (Haven't read it in a while, though, so I can't say how good of a story it is so far overall.)

Authors are a funny lot, I must say. One of the things in particular that bothers me is the number of people who begin a story with a particular kind of disclaimer, that being (paraphrased): No offense, and I have nothing against gays, but I think there's something wrong with those people, so this story won't be slash.

Well....

I kind of got the idea that the story wouldn't be slash when I noticed the Harry P. & [SomeFemaleHere] up in the header. Personally, I find it offensive that so many people find it necessary to state this opinion at the beginning of a story, as though they need to distance themselves from such unnatural behavior, or they need to assure their readers that they themselves aren't condoning this perversion of nature or whatever. (I won't get into the argument on how nature itself is into gay sex when it comes to the larger animal kingdom.)

Quite frankly, it would have been as easy to say: This will be a heterosexual pairing.

But no, they had to insult eleventy-billion people, including the ones who do have enough intelligence to think that perhaps the listed pairing might actually be something other than a platonic relationship.

Mind, this (to me) falls into a slightly different category from the person who states: For god's sake, no, this won't be Harry/Ginny or Harry/Cho! I can't stand those two girls!

That sort of statement says very clearly that they do not like the specific characters, rather than making a blanket statement that all women are useless and deserve to be shot. Personally, I view the idea of a Harry/Ginny or Harry/Cho pairing as being akin to a soul-sucking experience in general, largely based on the canon characterizations and a healthy dose of fanon exploration (usually resulting in either heaps of angst or a tide of sickeningly sweet fluff usually found in something like a Harlequin romance...or HBP).

The disclaimer is the sort of thing that usually has me closing a tab without even bothering to see if the author in question has any skill in crafting a story. Perhaps a slightly counterproductive view on things, but I had enough of being forced to read stories I had no interest in during school, so I can't see why I should bother with people who begin things with such a broad and unfocused insult. In essence, it's turning the insult around.

I have a much better disclaimer for this sort of author. It goes something like: This story will not contain slash, bestiality, blood play, breath play, BDSM, D/s, golden showers, pony play, or anything else I consider to be a perversion of nature. Instead, it will be a heterosexual pairing, which is what God intended, and the rest of you can burn in hell. Bwuahahahahaha!