![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasse- Having found several foodie sites gushing over ‘oeuf à la coque’ was highly amused to discover that it’s just French egg & soldiers.
- Does every Simon and Garfunkel album have to feature The Sound of Silence? I like the track certainly but I’m starting to get a bit sick of it.
- Why Nerds are Unpopular - Paul Graham. Interesting look at opportunity cost.
- Addition of mint and lemon to Palanquin’s Masala Chai works well but surprises me far too much every time I take a sip.
- The HMS STFU is proving to be a suitably entertaining alternative to Fandom Wank these days.
- Reading through Harmonian wank I still don’t understand how if Harry isn’t worthy of Hermione, Draco’s then the better choice.
- There is a Harry Potter musical out there.
Actually, I’ve been reading a Harry Potter AU fic over the last few days: I have a fondness for the sorts of AUs that require gratuitous suspension of disbelief because they veer off from canon so dramatically that there’s no comparison. This last one I’ve been reading was another one of those pieces where Harry gains knowledge of the future and with it tries to set things up so that certain scenarios don’t play out. It seemed interesting enough and began relatively well with his attempting to make various adjustments that would benefit his friends/prepare them better to deal with what was to come. Unfortunately it then moved on to Harry making pretty gratuitous pre-emptive strikes and then being surprised when that sort of thing went rather badly wrong. I stopped liking the fic at around about that point because when my first thought is ‘Economic Consequences of the Peace, anyone?’ it’s already thrown me out of any suspension of disbelief that I might have previously been engaged in.
I could cope with the Americanisms all over the place as well as evidently American attitudes because the author very obviously was an American themselves and thus were writing an American version of the story. Though I did find it amusing that the author’s notes contained the implication that they’d done so much research to make their writing sound as British as possible. In fact, I’ve never really understood that especially with in the Harry Potter fandom: you don’t have to sound like the original author when you’re writing fanfiction, you’re trying to tell a story, your story, not mimic someone else. And when you’re in a situation where you will never sound like the original author trying to only makes matters that much worse. After all, I will never sound like Tokyopop’s translation of Sunao Yoshida , a fact that I thank the gods of Literacy, Literature and the English Language for daily.
Of course pre-emptive strikes and other Americanisms aside I decided to continue reading because it was possible that the author had just had a lapse in judgement for a chapter or two. Unfortunately matters only got worse. Not only did Harry ‘fix’ everything but he’d tipped head first over the event horizon into fixing people too. Around about the time that one non-intensive year of martial arts training were enough for people to pull off moves that would make Chuck Norris proud I just gave up. Martial arts just don’t work like that, muscle memory just doesn’t work like that and if you try to push ahead too quickly you simply won’t have the muscular conditioning not to hurt yourself in the attempt.
Initially when the pre-emptive strikes blew up in Harry’s face I’d thought the author would take that idea somewhere interesting. After all that little talk with 11 year old Draco about his ability to choose his destiny was deliberately ludicrous since it would have flown right over his head, or so I thought. Alas, the author didn’t explore the consequences of such events and just had Harry brush such situations aside without learning from them, which was odd considering that he was meant to have the maturity of a 30-something jaded and battle-hardened survivor of the war with the Dark Lord at that point.
It’s a shame really because I rather enjoyed the start of said fic, even to the point of being amused at the Snape pwnage going on. Of course I like Snape, he’s one of my favourite characters in the series but that doesn’t negate the fact that he’s awfully petty for an adult who one would hope would have tried to work through his issues by then. Harry beating Snape at his own game was entertaining in so far as he was giving as good as he got but in contrast his actions against Draco seemed rather pointless to a fair degree. He wasn’t fighting against an equal which seemed to have slipped the more mature Harry’s mind, nor was he fighting against Lucius by proxy. He seemed to be chasing the shadow of what Draco was evidently meant to become which was only succeeding in making the matter worse because his actions were priming Draco to hate him all the more. That in itself would have been really interesting concept to deal with but alas the author seemed to get carried away with ‘making things right’ which is a shame. Because while trying to fix matters would be the logical route for Harry to take, it simply wouldn’t be tenable for his actions not to have both negative and positive consequences and if the negative consequences weren’t explored then the entire process becomes a rather dull exercise in writing a happily ever after.
- Does every Simon and Garfunkel album have to feature The Sound of Silence? I like the track certainly but I’m starting to get a bit sick of it.
- Why Nerds are Unpopular - Paul Graham. Interesting look at opportunity cost.
- Addition of mint and lemon to Palanquin’s Masala Chai works well but surprises me far too much every time I take a sip.
- The HMS STFU is proving to be a suitably entertaining alternative to Fandom Wank these days.
- Reading through Harmonian wank I still don’t understand how if Harry isn’t worthy of Hermione, Draco’s then the better choice.
- There is a Harry Potter musical out there.
Actually, I’ve been reading a Harry Potter AU fic over the last few days: I have a fondness for the sorts of AUs that require gratuitous suspension of disbelief because they veer off from canon so dramatically that there’s no comparison. This last one I’ve been reading was another one of those pieces where Harry gains knowledge of the future and with it tries to set things up so that certain scenarios don’t play out. It seemed interesting enough and began relatively well with his attempting to make various adjustments that would benefit his friends/prepare them better to deal with what was to come. Unfortunately it then moved on to Harry making pretty gratuitous pre-emptive strikes and then being surprised when that sort of thing went rather badly wrong. I stopped liking the fic at around about that point because when my first thought is ‘Economic Consequences of the Peace, anyone?’ it’s already thrown me out of any suspension of disbelief that I might have previously been engaged in.
I could cope with the Americanisms all over the place as well as evidently American attitudes because the author very obviously was an American themselves and thus were writing an American version of the story. Though I did find it amusing that the author’s notes contained the implication that they’d done so much research to make their writing sound as British as possible. In fact, I’ve never really understood that especially with in the Harry Potter fandom: you don’t have to sound like the original author when you’re writing fanfiction, you’re trying to tell a story, your story, not mimic someone else. And when you’re in a situation where you will never sound like the original author trying to only makes matters that much worse. After all, I will never sound like Tokyopop’s translation of Sunao Yoshida , a fact that I thank the gods of Literacy, Literature and the English Language for daily.
Of course pre-emptive strikes and other Americanisms aside I decided to continue reading because it was possible that the author had just had a lapse in judgement for a chapter or two. Unfortunately matters only got worse. Not only did Harry ‘fix’ everything but he’d tipped head first over the event horizon into fixing people too. Around about the time that one non-intensive year of martial arts training were enough for people to pull off moves that would make Chuck Norris proud I just gave up. Martial arts just don’t work like that, muscle memory just doesn’t work like that and if you try to push ahead too quickly you simply won’t have the muscular conditioning not to hurt yourself in the attempt.
Initially when the pre-emptive strikes blew up in Harry’s face I’d thought the author would take that idea somewhere interesting. After all that little talk with 11 year old Draco about his ability to choose his destiny was deliberately ludicrous since it would have flown right over his head, or so I thought. Alas, the author didn’t explore the consequences of such events and just had Harry brush such situations aside without learning from them, which was odd considering that he was meant to have the maturity of a 30-something jaded and battle-hardened survivor of the war with the Dark Lord at that point.
It’s a shame really because I rather enjoyed the start of said fic, even to the point of being amused at the Snape pwnage going on. Of course I like Snape, he’s one of my favourite characters in the series but that doesn’t negate the fact that he’s awfully petty for an adult who one would hope would have tried to work through his issues by then. Harry beating Snape at his own game was entertaining in so far as he was giving as good as he got but in contrast his actions against Draco seemed rather pointless to a fair degree. He wasn’t fighting against an equal which seemed to have slipped the more mature Harry’s mind, nor was he fighting against Lucius by proxy. He seemed to be chasing the shadow of what Draco was evidently meant to become which was only succeeding in making the matter worse because his actions were priming Draco to hate him all the more. That in itself would have been really interesting concept to deal with but alas the author seemed to get carried away with ‘making things right’ which is a shame. Because while trying to fix matters would be the logical route for Harry to take, it simply wouldn’t be tenable for his actions not to have both negative and positive consequences and if the negative consequences weren’t explored then the entire process becomes a rather dull exercise in writing a happily ever after.
