life, liberty and the pursuit of geekiness

I was reading PoA at the weekend, and I was feeling very fond of the Trio, so I thought as I do occasionally, "I hope that none of them die in Book Seven", when I hit me. Book Seven is written, and people other than JKR know what happens in it. If any of them do die, they're already dead; it's irrevocable.

I'm not sure now if the chapter-by-chapter re-read up until the last minute is such a good idea after all. Perhaps I should try to distance myself from the characters and story so that if any of them do die, it won't come as so much of shock. (and them what? Pack off all seven books and send them to Oxfam, who'll find them impossible to sell.)


In other news, why deos fanfiction.net insist on sending you new chapter notification emails for your own stories? Yes, I know there's a new chapter up, I put it there 30 seconds ago and I'm looking at it now.

The bad thing about this new username is that it's not unique; there's a thewhiteowl already at Xanga and Myspace, and several websites, according to Google. With jediowl, I was fairly sure that all or most of the hits were mine. Ah, well.

Has anyone else noticed that there seems to be a conflict of sorts between CoS and GoF?

It's those Memory Charms. In GoF they seem only to remove the memory of a specific recent event, leaving the rest of the mind more or less intact, whereas in CoS it gives the subject total amnesia—and Lockhart still has no memory in OotP. It doesn't seem to be caused by Ron's malfunctioning wand, either, because Lockhart was planning to tell the Hogwarts staff that Ron and Harry lost their minds at the sight of Ginny's body. And as far as I recall he uses Obliviate, same like in GoF.

Does that mean all Lockhart's victims are going about like stroke patients? Ugh.

So, Flint or not? Any way to reconcile it?

Today's the day for starting a chapter-a-day re-read of HP if you want to finish in time for Deathly Hallows.

Anna Nicole Smith has died. I haven't seen so much fuss over cause of death since Diana died.
Perhaps now we can finally hear the last of Jade Goody? It's astonishing how people stay famous for being famous, especially when they became famous for something like a reality show in the first place.

Oh, and when the news hit ohnotheydidnt, it BRAKE TEH INTARWEBZ LiveJournal

Oh, and it looks like we'll finally be getting a list of tags to choose from on the update page at some point. Only about two years behind...

The 'things I do not want to happen in Book #7' meme, gakked from everyone:

1. Dead Harry. We've spent six years of his time and...what...nine of ours? with this boy. I want to think of him happy and alive after all he's gone through.

2. Dead Ginny, Ron or Hermione. I don't want to see Harry have to go through that.

3. Voldemort defeated by the power of luuuurrrve. I didn't like it when the Harmaniacs* came up with the theory, and I still don't like it with added Ginny.

4. Resurrected!Everyone. I could buy the return of Dumbledore, as his demise whiffed vaguely of cod, but not James/Lily/Sirius.

5. Dead Remus or dead Tonks. Hasn't the poor guy suffered enough?

6. Evil!Snape. I'm a soft touch. Or, at least, I don't want it to be, 'He was working for Voldemort all along, fooled everyone!' It's too facile.

.....

7-111. Dead!characters, apart from Voldemort and co.

This is a problem with an open-canon fandom. You get attatched to these characters and you don't know what's going to happen to them. Especially in TV series, because then there's the actor's plans as well as those of the writer(s). I don't know how anyone can get fannish for soap operas or hospital dramas, where the characters and relationships are like revolving doors—and that's all the story is about—and your favourite character's actor decides, 'ok, I've had it with pretending to be an East End barmaid 5 days a week'. At least with my skiffy series there is a plot as well. Mostly.
Closed canons: Antonia Forest's novels, Hornblower books, Aubrey/Maturin books, probably several other historical novels. Admittedly, a lot of these canons are only closed because the pen was pried away from the author's cold, dead fingers, but I don't fan anything that you could point to and say it was incomplete.
Confusing canons: Star Wars. I came in during the PT. I always where Anakin was going, just not how he got there. The only major character whose fate was in doubt was Padmé, and I wasn't pleased with what it eventually turned out to be.
Open canons I have fanned: Harry Potter, BSG, PotC, the Vorkosigan novels, Doctor Who (Sort of. Yes, companions die or leave and the Doctor regenerates. It's still always the Doctor and his Companion(s) in the TARDIS with the lead piping week after week after week.
In all of these the authors have been threatening character deaths and other horrors, and I've been going...'no..no...no....don't kill my babies...don't kill my 'ship'....and occasionally dreaming that all the worst has happened in my currently predominant fandom.

* as opposed to the sane H/Hr shippers

Oh, here we go again. Enormous explosions of ancient kerfuffle seem to have become a monthly occurrence in Harry Potter fandom. Everyone seems to have broken out into a fit of memoir-writing. This time, someone's gone for the biggie: the entire Inner Circle, guest-starring all their friends. I was surprised to see that I've been in the fandom for as long as Heidi (summer 2000). I've no temptation to write anything though, as I was oblivious of most that went on.
In the entry below, I note that Crystalwank took place as long ago as April 2004. My years are pastede on yay.

And in other news, I'm having a day off. Closing the quarter, what's that? Actually there's no way we're going to get it done on Monday, or possibly even Tuesday. But right now I couldn't care less.

After disposing of msscribe, bad_penny now is doing Cassandra Claire and the plagiarism thing. This fandom was founded on teh crazy.

I've just got back from seeing GoF. The stupid eejit on the ticket desk told us at first that it was sold out, and by the time we'd gone back to the car to have a council of war, the only tickets we could get were down in the front corner. Emma Watson looks rather lopsided or something when you aren't looking at her straight on.

Anyway, I took a notebook (much to my brothers' derision), so this is more or less point-by-point as it struck me. ( Spoilers, of course )

Now I really, really want Book #7!

Recently there has been some kerfuffle of JKR's supposed slighting of the fantasy genre, and Terry Pratchett's comments. I saw both sides of the indignation, and tend to come down more on the Pterry side. ( Cut for length )

Olé, olé, olé, olé, olé...


You know what I mean (http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/extras/aa-jointerview2.html)