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. . . but Much Ado is on my PPC reading list, at least! And hopefully I can get to Twelfth Night eventually, too!

—doctorlit might read things online more frequently than actual books nowadays . . .

Well. I have learned things tonight. Painful things.

—doctorlit has learned things

(It's actually a tossup between Much Ado and Julius Caesar, but, you know. It is really high on my list, though! Love the Gender Is A Performance vibes.)

Part of the intermingling is because, theoretically, House rivalry comes second to ~wizard pride~, plus Slytherin doesn't really have the evil reputation it has in canon because Salazar Slytherin's kinda a key religious figure in this world. Since he, uh, wrote the Tome of Avalon. But yeah, it does let Slytherin students hang out with other students without the same baggage they've got in canon. And also, I just think writing about people adhering 100% to school cliques is boring :P

Hermione is really just in perpetual girlboss mode, honestly.

Yeah, Peter talking like a creepo misogynist is on purpose, actually :P

Linky link

I'll put my thoughts in a reply once I've had the time to stew on this a bit but I am very, very excited. The Ineffable Husbands are back!

I suppose there's a wry observation about kids being forced to grow up fast in these sorts of climates re: Neville levelling up fast...

Yeah, it did make me happy and sad at the same time to write about this Harry having so many more happy memories, because canon Harry specifically mentioned having trouble finding a happy memory at all.

This is DRUGS. They are DRUGGING THSES CHILDREN in a way that manipulates their emotions when they get older! Forces them to pair up, and want to reproduce! I hate this! I am so angry now! How many poor ace/aro folks got forced into unwanted bonds when they grew up?!? Aaaaaargh!

So, not-so-funny-story, I just finished watching the new documentary about the Duggars on Amazon Prime, and, I'm just gonna quote one of the ex-IBLP folks in there: "In this culture, you are not really allowed to say no to who shows up and says they want you. If a man says he wants you, then he's God's man for you, and you have to learn how to adjust your feelings and thoughts around that."

Very Maiden's Kiss vibes, I'm afraid! Coupled with how the Duggars themselves were all about ~saving the first kiss for marriage~... really, I'm not writing about anything that hasn't already been done out there to real people.

After Helena and Sheen introduced Fáelán to their home 'verse, what will follow up next? Fáelán's introducing them to his home 'verse, of course.

I think I've got the whole Narnia series, and a couple other Lewis books lying around, incluing The Screwtape Letters. I might have a Rick Riordan book somewhere, one of the Trials of Apollo books. I usually get stuff from the library, so this isn't exactly an exhaustive list of books I like.

-Ls, being brief

. . . though I don't remember many of the details, which probably means I couldn't put it down, and got through it too quickly! (Actually, I don't remember for certain, but I feel like I may have read that during my zoo's 2020 shutdown, during which us keepers were starting and leaving earlier than during our operating hours, which also meant I was leaving while the sun was still up more consistently. And with no public in the park, I could read during the golf cart drive from my department to the exit! That would also explain why I had a faster reading rate during Midsummer.)

So yeah, it's good, but there's just something about Hamlet . . . the characters are so big, and present, and it's hard to feel as excited about other Shakespeare plays . . . Hamlet just has me by the brain, man!

Forgot to mention on my original list, but an honorable mention goes to the Magic: the Gathering series, which currently has 66 titles represented on my shelves, which would actually put them at second place, between Stine and Applegate . . . if they weren't split between 24 separate authors! (And that's only on the novels; I'm not looking through all the anthology collections for each short story's author!) (I guess I should admit I'm counting The Arabian Nights as one of the 66 there, since it does technically and canonically take place in that universe, even though the producers never really acknowledge it any more.)

I am very excited to see what's coming in checks dates two weeks!

—doctorlit, replying to replies in a normal amount of time

I know I’ve mentioned this before on other chapters, but I still love how much more willing you are to let characters interact than Rowling was. Seeing Pansy attend Lupin’s Dementor class with Harry, and Luna and Draco just hanging out making snowmen together (which leads into them being part of a big plot discovery!) goes so far to making it feel less like Harry is the only character who matters, even as the focal character. And it makes Hogwarts’s student body feel much more alive, as well; yeah, there are cliques, but no kid observes that kind of social more 100% of their life. (Further reinforcing why the school houses would be super unhealthy for growing kids’ psychology . . .)

Man, Hermione is such a boss. Like, I know the time turner situation is way unhealthy in the long term, but I have to respect the “okay, Harry, I’ll take a nap,” and then waking up and immediately rewinding time to participate in the group work project anyway. Like, instruction fulfilled, but now we’re back to work . . . (Ever since I finished the original Prisoner, I’ve been trying not to think about the extra hours Hermione is aging compared to the rest of the student body, but now I’m going to look it up. Let’s see, third-year students take nine classes normally, and there are four class periods in a day . . . does that even work? Seems like all nine classes couldn’t get enough hours that way. Astronomy is only held after hours on Wednesdays, but that still leaves eight classes. Do they each only meet five times every two weeks? Anyway, putting that aside, if Hermione is using the time turner for every non-Astronomy class period, she’s doing eight classes a day, and therefore aging an additional four hours a day, 20 hours a week. That’s nearly a day per week! Assuming Hogwarts has 39 school weeks, like Muggle/real UK schools do, that’s 780 hours a week! Hermione aged 32.5 additional days this school year, not including any additional uses of the turner for naps or, you know, possible hippogriff rescues! And if she had continued that through to her seventh year, 162.5 days from the end of her natural lifespan would have been sunk into taking extra classes. Why would any version of the Ministry allow teenagers to make this choice?!)

Oh, my gosh. The local Jenni just can’t keep her mind off the local “Snape,” can she? (Or is Severina the local Supernumerary, rather?) Either way, “Some things truly never change” indeed!

Ooooof, I know it’s lame to dunk on Peter when he was still a teenager, but “ . . . would like to remind her that she would be a lot prettier if she smiled.” Nah, Peter. That’s not cool, Peter. We don’t say that to people, Peter. No.

—doctorlit looks a lot weirder when he fake-smiles

Alternate title for the year: “Peter Pettigrew and the Non-Stop Series of Heart Attacks”

Ooooooh yes, Neville is leveling up fast in this timeline! I love how confident and outspoken he is already. And he fundamentally understands what too many folks today don’t: the only correct way to engage with supremacists is to NOT ENGAGE. I know that’s putting Harry and co. in a tough spot, almost having to choose between friendships, but Neville is still correct in general, and his sense of betrayal is completely understandable, in-universe.

Astute observation from Harry, that his largely calm and peaceful childhood leave it hard to distinguish what his nicest memories are. He obviously doesn’t have the benefit of knowledge of the original canon, like we do, to compare with the abused Harry, but it makes an interesting comparison all the same.

Oh no, it's the sex ed at Hogwarts! I love that Liu is using loopholes to educate the kids on important things, right under the Board’s noses. And I know observing that Hogwarts is missing a bunch of important classes is a cliché at this point, but yeah, anatomy! That’s not one I had thought about before! Wizards and witches don’t know how their own lungs work! They don’t know how blood circulates! Everything is fine and normal! Oh, but then we get to that bond-enhancing potion . . . “. . . it helps you create Matrimonial Bonds after you are fully grown.” “. . . when a mage has been dosed with a bond-enhancing potion, they’re capable of initiating Matrimonial Bonds through a kiss . . .” This is DRUGS. They are DRUGGING THSES CHILDREN in a way that manipulates their emotions when they get older! Forces them to pair up, and want to reproduce! I hate this! I am so angry now! How many poor ace/aro folks got forced into unwanted bonds when they grew up?!? Aaaaaargh!

Anyway, haha, Pettigrew got catted. Bold choice to kill him offscreen with no explanation; I’m sure the rest of the year will be nice and calm. >.>

—doctorlit finally gets a weekend with no social obligations

Hey All,

Well, here they are another round of prompts to have a go at.

1) One of your characters is hunting for something

2) Liberating

3) "you're a hero."

Good luck, have fun.

Nova

Harry deals with losing Ron's friendship, the anti-Dementor lessons, and a shocking discovery in the Shrieking Shack. Also, borrowing the Marauder's Map from Fred and George leads to unexpected consequences.

I did get a bit confused by the right-to-left arrangement at first, until I remembered how manga works...

I can't speak to the canon, but the story is cute. I think you could probably have lingered over some of the scenes a little longer; the underwater training would have been lovely with some different camera angles, to really show that they were doing a lot and having fun. (Also, I hate it too, but that's not how you spell yacht.)

I did catch Nikki and Keiko's namedrops... and I admit I laughed out loud at the shot of Corolla hogging the director's chair. :D

hS

Some time ago, I had a kinda weird dream in which I was reading a couple chapters of some kind of sequel of Cardcaptor Sakura in which Sakura and Syaoran were roped into helping a young magician from a tropical island do... something? in an underwater temple.

Unfortunately, a lot of details were missing (that's dreams for you) and I didn't manage to get to the end of it before waking up. But...

It was my own brain that made it up. I have the storytelling ability. I can't draw at all, but I have the technology. So I completed it myself.

And so, Sakura and the Sunken Temple is now a thing! Hopefully, one that is fun to read.

and both point to m.fanfiction.net.

Still archive everything! This site sucks and will probably go down!

Apparently fanfiction.net (not www equivalent) has never lapsed; the reply can be seen here.

"All Souls Night" has been deleted, but there's an archive capture here.

Probably should update the link.

-Ls

For now I have backed up the raw text on a Google Drive doc, though, so that's coming... soon... perhaps. I actually intended to move IrregularS since I backed up all my PPC stuff on it, but never got around to do so.

So the blessing in disguise is that it gave me the wakeup call to actually do so. I'm really, really glad I moved to AO3 for everything now...