Hello, and welcome to my journal.

I use this primarily for posting my fics, as well as asking questions or making random observations. Sometimes I say stuff about my life, but not very often and not very personal.

This journal does contain material unsuitable for children. Such things will almost always be behind a cut and I'll mark them with adult content on the new post page (so you'll have to acknowledge that you're over 18 or have your LJ settings set for it), but I'm not promising anything. It's possible something not entirely okay for kids might slip through.

If you want to friend me, feel free. I may or may not friend you back (largely depending on whether or not I'm interested in the kind of things you post on your journal), but I don't f-lock much (or at all), so it probably won't make a big difference.

Please to feel free to comment on anything I post. I'm pretty friendly and I love a good discussion, should one arise.

As you were.

Hi all!  Well, I've had a busy weekend.

First off, I'd like to point you to my fic for the nextgendarkfest , which is found here.  It's very dark, disturbed, and contains incest among other things, so don't click that if that disturbs you.

Next off -- I saw Wicked this weekend!  It was so good!  I'm a big fan of the original Oz stories, and I read and enjoyed the book Wicked, so I wasn't sure how I'd feel about something that messed around with the story so much (I'd read the details of the play a couple years ago, so I knew what would happen).  Turns out I love the changes.

( cut for spoilers )

Of course, the humor was wonderful, too.  The cast was so good, and the actress playing Glinda was especially funny.  She reminded me a lot of Amy Poehler from SNL and some of her characters.  

I hope they make a movie of this musical one day, so I can pop it in and watch it whenever I want.

I was watching a couple episodes of Highlander (the series) recently, and since my head is in Harry-Potter-space, I couldn't help but notice something.

Duncan MacLeod is the quintessential Gryffindor.  They call him "boy scout" on regular occasions.  Actually, I would imagine he's quite a lot like some unholy combination of James Potter and Sirius Black.

And then you've got Methos, one of his best friends, who could not be more Slytherin if he tried.  In fact, given his dark past and large nose snarky attitude, he's not so entirely different from Snape, really.

Then, for that matter, you've also got Amanda, who's pretty darn Slytherin herself, and for whom Duncan has an obvious fondness and on-again-off-again not-exactly-romance.

This all just goes to show (in not so many words) that Gryffindors and Slytherins are far from natural enemies, but in fact would make, I think, rather natural friends.  I think the primary reason that Gryffs and Slyths in HP are such rivals has more to do with the history of the houses rather than the personalities of their members.  Of course, I would think that kind of thing, I suppose, given that I consider myself fairly equally split between the two myself.

While I'm at it, I'll also finish the thought and suggest that Joe is a Ravenclaw (as, I would suspect, are most Watchers), and Ritchie is also Gryffindor.  Hufflepuffs, I would assume, would not do well in The Game, as I think Darius demonstrates.  "There can be only one" is a pretty anti-Hufflepuffian concept.

ETA: Oh, crap.  I just got attacked by another plotbunny.  

Another random thought...

( Most Haunted )

This?  Is awesome.

I dare you not to laugh out loud at least once.  The comments on romance novels alone are worth it.

It's 677 words of perfection.

Um... did someone hack LiveJournal?  Whenever I click "home" and try to go to livejournal.com, all that comes up is a single 100x100 pick of some schlub and I get the urge to punch his face.

While I may not be allowing myself to write fanfic other than Bride (for now, at least), I've been seeing all these Big Bangs go up and very much want to start one (or two). 

But I've got a question.  There is an artist whose art I would like to use for banners/icons.  Ordinarily, I would simply send her a message and ask.  Here's the problem: her LJ hasn't been updated in two years and a message I sent to her probably a year ago was never responded to.  Beyond that, at that time I exchanged messages with someone who had gotten a commission from her who said they hadn't heard from her in some time either.  She seems to have completely fallen off the map.  

What would you guys say the etiquette here is as far as using her art for banners for a fest?

Also --

How do I customize an LJ with my own banner?

I just noticed  a review over on Ashwinder where someone pointed out an inconsistency in Bride.  It's not something which, I think, really has much effect, but it needs to be fixed.  Now I've just got to figure out how I want to fix it.

Finally got around to coloring a portrait of Lupin I drew a while ago.  Actually, I was wanting to listen to more of my PoA audio book, so I figured it was a good time to do some art as well.  Great thing about audio books, good for multi-tasking.  (Incidentally, I'm not all that fond of how Fry reads him in quite a lot the same way as he reads Dumbledore for some reason.  Hard for me to picture him as I do when the voice sounds like a tired old man.)  Incidentally, I drew another profile of Snape the other night; like this one better than the others.  Perhaps I can color it soon as well.

( Click for Lupin art )

Yes, I drew him shirtless.  I still seem to have a distaste for clothing when I draw people.  Ah, well.

I feel like I've arrived. 

I just got on Google and, as I do sometimes, Googled "Bride of the Potions" (leaving off the "Professor", as some people persist on mistaking it as "Master").  And guess what I found?

Someone created a fanfiction.net account in my name and began uploading Bride to it.

Oddly, I feel like this is some kind of compliment, that someone would care enough to do such a thing, but of course I'm also rather offended that they would do so without my knowledge or consent.  In fairness, whoever it is did it under my name and used my bio in the bio field, so it's not like they're claiming it as theirs.  But I'm still sort of like... Wow... WTF?

What should I do about this?

For right now, I guess I'll just go read the nearly 100 reviews it has so far...

ETA: Just read the little notes this uploader left at the beginning of the chapters, which very much do claim that she is the author, whoever she is.  She even makes a little tribute to Michael Jackson, which just annoys me, as I am in no way a Michael Jackson fan.  Yeah, now I am pissed.

ETA2: I sent a harshly-worded PM to the "author" in question, and sent an e-mail to fanfiction.net about it.  Hopefully the situation will be remedied soon.  In the mean time, if anyone who has a ff.net account feels like posting a "review" of this story, or PMing this person, to express to them and other reviewers what's going on, please do so.  I'd post a review with the account I do have, but unfortunately that account is a very old one where I have a lot of mostly mediocre stories, which I don't want connected to my current pen name and writings.

ETA3: Issue resolved.  The person took the story down.  They don't seem to have realized that it was not an okay thing to do and did as I asked right away.  So, I'm glad that they weren't one of those people who did such things knowing it upset authors like some of the horror stories I've heard.  I've asked them to delete the author account so that I can open up my own there.  If they do and I can, I still don't plan to put Bride up, but perhaps some of my lower-rated ficlets.  I suppose I should have had some sort of presence on that site anyway, given it's the major fanfic site.  But anyway... Thanks for the support, guys.  Thankfully, this worked out well.  Though I think I saw another site where someone posted it (sans commentary).  I should get that seen to, once the site becomes reachable again...  I have to say, I never thought I'd have this problem.  Oh, well.

It's come to my attention recently that some of the people who read my journal have not read Bride of the Potions Professor.  This generally surprises me, as I assume that's how most people found me.  But then, I suppose I have been on LJ for a little while now, so it probably shouldn't.  Of course, there are also those people who I friended first, but unfortunately I'm not entirely sure who all of those people are.  I'm not terribly good at keeping track of such things.

So, I'd like to know: if you did not find my journal by following the link to it from my profile on Ashwinder or one of the other archives after reading Bride, how did you find me, and why do you bother to keep reading my journal if you're not just waiting for updates?  (Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that there are such people.  I'm just curious.)

Well, my Scorpius/Rose fest fic is completed and submitted, so now I can completely focus on my original story and Bride.  Of course, there's still some stories (such as my exchange fics) which I'll likely post when I'm allowed, or when I feel like it.  And then there's the chance that I might write some ficlets or something at work, where I simply can't work on Bride or my own stories (rather hard to focus as there is a major thoroughfare behind my desk, so pretty much everyone tends to glance at my computer screen as they go by, which means I have to be careful what's on there as well as just being very distracting).  

BUT!  I'm done with my exchange fics, so there aren't any more of those that I absolutely have to complete (and I managed to avoid signing up for any more fests or big bangs, though I nearly had to tie my hands away from my keyboard to do so).  So that feels good.

In other news, I'm thinking of going to Whimsic Alley this weekend.  I hear they have feather pens, and that just sounds like fun.

Offhand, I can think of two common fanfic things which really annoy me.  And by that I mean, things people write as commonly as if they're canon, but they're not.

One is the use of "potions master" as some kind of degree or title, like Hermione deciding to study under Snape to earn her "Potions Mastery" or some such.  I admit, I fell into this at first, as well, but I have since realized that "master" is basically just another word for "professor".  Saying Snape is the Potions master is the same as saying he's the Potions teacher.  If he left Hogwarts, he would no longer be the Potions master.  Hence why "master" is not capitalized.  This mostly stays a minor annoyance, but when the entire plot revolves around it, like in the hypothetical example I gave above (which is probably the plot of many existing fics), it makes the fic unreadable to me.

The other thing that irks me is the assumption that the school uniforms are different depending on what house someone is in (as in Slytherins wearing green trimmed/lined robes, Gryffindors wearing red, etc.).  This is admittedly to be blamed on the movies.  There is no such differentiation in canon.  In book 2, Harry mistakes a Ravenclaw girl for a Slytherin.  If this had been in book 1, early enough that he hadn't caught on to the difference in uniforms, perhaps this could be excusable.  But clearly if there were a way to tell what house people were in just by looking at them, he wouldn't have made this mistake.  Again, like with the "master" thing, this usually stays a minor annoyance, but when the plot revolves around it, I just can't handle it.  When could the plot possibly revolve around such a thing?  Well, I read a fic not too long ago (or the first part, at least) where a group of Slytherins beat Hermione to within an inch of her life because they wanted to beat up a Gryffindor and/or Mudblood--despite having no clue who she was, since this was 20 years in the past, and somehow just assuming she was a Gryffindor Muggleborn, even though they found her in the dungeons. Personally, I've met this half-way on at least one occasion by theorizing that, while the uniforms are the same, perhaps they do have different-colored scarves which they wear in cold weather.  To my knowledge, canon doesn't specifiy either way--but please, if someone does know if canon says something on the matter of colored scarves (or other accessories), let me know.

Do these things bother anything else?  Are there any other similar things that bother you?

I'm nearly done listening to Chamber of Secrets, and I've got a couple thoughts.

First, I did not at all remember that bit with Percy mentioning that Ginny had walked in on him doing something she'd promised not to tell anyone about, which he doesn't say what it was.  That part was just... so hilarious.  I couldn't help thinking that if Ginny hadn't been going through much worse things that year, that could have been especially traumatizing.

Second, I have to wonder: what's the point of Lockhart?  All the other one-year teachers had a point.  Quirrell was the villain.  Lupin taught Harry the Patronus Charm (as well as being an introduction to a secondary character who'd be relevant for the rest of the series), Moody/Crouch was the villain and set things up for the confrontation with Voldemort at the end of the book, Umbridge pretty much guided the entire plot of that year with her meddling, and Slughorn was important for finding out information about Tom Riddle.  But Lockhart ultimately had very little purpose.  It doesn't seem like anything he was there to do couldn't have been worked around some other way.  It seems the most important thing he did was provide access to the Restricted Section--which, granted, may have been the entire reason for him.  He certainly wasn't all that important to the climax.

Bah.  I still like Lockhart.  Even though he's a complete boob who would drive me crazy in real life, I can't help feeling a bit giddy whenever he's "on screen".  It really is a shame they cut him out of the fifth movie, because I loved his little cameo.

It's time I properly introduce you, my dear f-list and random readers, to my favorite fanfic author. In fact, I enjoy her writing so much that I'd probably say she's one of my favorite authors, period.

She goes by the name fernwithy , and she writes gen (though there are still 'ships in there, of course). (The best place to see most of her stuff is at her LJ, as she only has some things archived, and this is where she posts all new stuff.)

( and this is why she's awesome )

Seriously, check her out. She's got a bazillion short little ficlets with just about every character you'd want to read, so there's no excuse not to at least take a look at her.

I was just thinking about this Dragon Cave thing, and it led me to wonder about a math thing.  Say I've got two eggs.  As I understand it, the odds of each egg being male are 50%.  So, would the odds of the two eggs producing a male and a female be 50%?  If not, what would it be?  What would be the odds of the eggs producing two males?  Two females?  

I know, this is like super basic simple stuff... and yet I can't think of the right answer with any certainty.  It's rather pitiful, really.  I used to be good at math in junior high.  But then as my creative skills improved, my math skills diminished.  Oh, well.  I'll call that a fair trade.

Random question: does anyone know any people in Southern California who think that their house is haunted?

Got this from subvers . This doesn't really surprise me. Though I think I'm more in the middle. I mean, I don't go around fighting and drinking beer and I guess the parts where I said I wasn't really assertive were outweighed by the parts where I said I'm not sensitive to others' feelings.

Your result for The Bem Sex Role Inventory Test...

Masculine

You scored 50% masculinity and 37% femininity!

Take The Bem Sex Role Inventory Test at HelloQuizzy