while they did live happily ever after

1) did anyone else actually love all three of the POTC movies? I mean, I'll admit the second one drags and the third one is ridiculously convoluted, but I love the ridiculous convolutedness, and the way the stories turn out, even though Norrington's problems all stemmed solely from the fact that the writers decided to screw him over. I just. Really love the canon.

2) apartment searching is the pits and we are going to be homeless and broke and waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

3) I BEAT THE DWARVES, HELL YEAH, LOOK AT ME AND MY BADASS BROODMOTHER-KILLING SELF, WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO why doesn't alistair love me yet OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

also like, dude, I played through the female city elf opening just for kicks, and dude, I was actually furious. Like, yelling at my computer screen, wanting to punch a pillow angry. So well-done, but ARGH.

also I love the fact that as an elf you can hate on humans all day long in the dialogue options. No human-curious Dalish elf for me! I KILLED AN ARL'S SON, BITCH.

(quark: and you were telling me about all the terrible things he's doing and I was like, oh God, I think--I think I freed him.)

4) why are custom mood themes so much effort. I don't waaaaaaaanna get a photobucket. That being said, my new layout/theme pleases me greatly. I just want to play "Part of Your World" on repeat and cry contemplate things.

5) All of the movies on TCM today are about, like, unrequited love and the crazy things women will do to overcome it. Thanks, TCM. Thanks a lot.

anyway, back to gathering up the nerve to call people. w-wish me luck?

I seem to be running out of "things I have written" to read. Thank goodness NaNo is coming up soon.

p.s. the lack of decent critique my fiction writing class gave me on this story still fills me with an unhealthy amount of writer's angst.

p.p.s. while I'm suffering from writer's angst I'll just point out that due to a lack of comments on this post I now have two unfinished fics sitting on my harddrive. thanks guys.

p.p.p.s. hey let's be really obnoxious! BETA.

Oh f-list.  Oh my dear, dear f-list.





Secondly...oh come on, all of you know what I'm about to talk about...




Thirdly, for just a few things I thought were weird...



And I think that was it, which brings us to...

(subtitled: Today Is Not That Day)

Every.  Time.

Every time I think, "Oh, I'll see if there's anything new that's worth reading in the HP section of fanfiction.net."

Every time I foolishly wander over to look.

And EVERY DAMN TIME I COME ACROSS A DRAMIONE FIC.

(edit:  Disclaimer:  This is what I found, just on the first page of HP fanfiction in general.  It's titled "Waiting for You" and the summary reads “This might come as a shock to you, but I’m going to say it anyway.” He took a big breathe and then exhaled. “I want you to marry me.”  Clearly I still have a lesson to learn about clicking on stories with typos in the summaries, but still.  It was just an innocent, curious click! /edit)

PEOPLE.  GET OVER YOURSELVES.  AND STOP PUTTING THEM TOGETHER.
I mean, you don't even have the slash thing going for you ("but I slash everything that moves together!"  well, fine, you're still insane, but at least there's a name for it.  "Even Worf/Spot?"  NO.  GET YOUR SICKO MIND AWAY FROM THE INTERNET).  You're just...putting together two characters...who have less than any chemistry.  Or a chance.  You're worse than the Harmonians.  I mean, honestly.  Geeze. 

Okay, I ship Draco/Ginny, which may not be canon either, but at least it hasn't been completely anhiliated by canon.  I don't think it would ever happen, but there's the slightest possibility that maybe it might happen.  Plus, Ginny's character is fieryredheadtemper+Harrythinksshe'shot, so there's a lot more speculation there.

But Hermione?  Hermione and Draco?  It's like trying to write a fic in which Ron is not only accepting that Ginny and Draco get together, but where he's also downright excited because hey, he always wanted Draco for a brother!  Do you see my point?  IT'S JUST NOT POSSIBLE.  (Unless you're an idiot and managed to completely misinterpret the books which, hey, if you're shipping Dramione, there's a chance of that happening.)

I mean, I'll sort of put up with the Harmonians, because they're just enslaved delusional clinging onto some idea that hey, when you first start reading the books, if you somehow missed the Ron/Hermione chemistry, you might think the hero would get the main girl, and it's happened elsewhere, so maybe if you somehow missed the anvils it could happen.  I still disagree with them, but there's toleration, and of course, the dreaded pity.  (I don't pity the ones who left the series because they felt JKR betrayed them, though.  Leave the series because Hermione went wacko in HBP, not because the author had a plan in mind that disagreed with yours.)

But Dramionians?  They just look "OH PROTAGONIST AND ANTAGONIST THAT ALWAYS WORKS OUT" except it just doesn't.  There is nowhere, in all of the books, the slightest hint of proof that Hermione and Draco would ever get along.  And not just romantically; platonically, they're not suited for each other.  Hermione looks down on Draco because he's a bully and Draco looks down on Hermione because she's a Mudblood.  Seeing as she's not going to be able to change that, it would require drastic character change on Draco's part for them even to be able to approach each other.  I mean, Hermione's been dealing with bullies her whole life; she's a smart kid who gets ostracized because of her zeal.  She is never going to warm to Draco until he stops being such a jackass.  And while that might happen, it's not going to be for a long time, and by then she'll have married Ron.  Because they do have chemistry, and they are friends, and while he might be a prat she is attracted to him and thus they are together.

I generally like to think of myself as not a shiphater, but I manage that by avoiding other people's ships.  I mean, I ship some weird things, mostly for experimental writing value (or really hot smex good authors), and so I try to be open-minded to other people's ideas.  And many of my ships are not canon, because I do like things that explore different characters--but the exploration must have some canonical basis.  I ship Zuko and Katara because hey, you start with their canon characters, you build on it, and you could end up with a relationship--based on who they are as people.  Same with Kakasaku--they might not be together in canon, but once she growns up, you can take Kakashi the genius Copy Ninja and Sakura the really smart nurse, and throw them in a room together, and they'll talk, and maybe something could blossom.

If you threw Hermione and Draco in a room together, Draco would end up petrified on the floor, unless he's miraculously able to cast Avada Kedavra on her first (no, I don't think he'd have qualms about killing her, like he did about Dumbledore--well, maybe, but certainly not about Cruciating her).  Maybe, maybe, if I were to find a really good author who wrote a post-Hogwarts fic, started out with a canonical treatment of the characters, made them grow in believable ways, and then brought them together, I would respect it.

But while Draco and Hermione are at Hogwarts--and I can say this now especially since we have six books out about their time there together--there is no chance in hell that they would ever get together.  Ever.  Period.  And that goes beyond the fact that we have documentation of what was going on during those six years, and thus it's a pretty safe bet nothing happened.  It goes down to how they've interacted, and more importantly, who they are as characters.

Wow.  I ranted on about that a lot longer than I intended to.  Recently I've discovered that I can still discuss Harry Potter at great lengths without even having to gear myself up for it.  It must be more deeply ingrained on my brain than I realized.

*wanders off to find some Snape/Narcissa*