Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings

Ever since the decline of the HP fandom, I have found it increasingly difficult to write fic in other fandoms - even if I happen to fall in love (or lust) with a source. This is partly due to the fact that I find it more difficult to write in TV fandoms than in book fandoms, and partly due to the fact that, compared with the HP fandom, other fandoms are so tame.

I have just quite accidentally wandered into the hd_tropes comm, which stipulates that "all entries must be rated R or NC-17".

I love it. I'm not remotely interested in the exchange as such, but I love the fact that it's a fest that requires you to write porn. Other fandoms don't do that sort of thing that much. Every time I dip my toe into a new fandom, I feel such a deviant, because, well, there aren't many explicit fics around. Which is sad.

Right now, for example, I would like to try my hand at writing Lord Peter Wimsey fic. But there isn't any porn there, and I feel inappropriate. I mean, Lord Peter has canonically slept with a lot of people - and he is great in bed, which is actually explicitely stated in the books (admittedly, it is he who does the stating). And yet, there is no porn. And hardly any slash, either - despite the incredible h/c potential of the Peter/Bunter pairing.

In conclusion: I wish there was more porn. That's what I joined fandom for. That, and fangirling.

Do any of you read weepingcock? If not, you totally should. It's highly educational. Today, for example, I learned that a) there is a Rammstein fandom (which shouldn't have surprised me, and yet it did) and b) that, apparently, it's filled with fluffy fics in which the Rammstein guys cry a lot.

What is the world coming to?

It's Rammstein. They sing about eating people out of jealousy and about men raping their daughters and about getting off on whipping "white flesh" into bloody shreds. They sing about sick pervy stuff. They should be awarded with sick pervy fics with lots and lots of fetishes and bloodplay and suchlike.

I am shocked.

I've been having a Horrible Time* lately and could do with some entertainment. And because you** brim over with creativity and humour, I've got a request to make: Write me something funny. I could do with a good laugh. Write me a crack!drabble (Shrek x-over: Animagus!Minerva/Puss-in-Boots!), in defence of a crack pairing (Bill/Dudley!), share some humorous*** anecdote from your eventful RL or tell me a seriously silly joke. I laugh at everything, I promise. I'm easy like that.


*The Horrible Time is nothing to worry about. I'm doing all right, on the whole, I'm not depressed or fed up with things or anything. But Things have been happening on which I have no influence and which affect my life in a negative way. The Things are of external nature, mind, and they will be done with at some point. It's frustrating and enraging at the moment, and I don't really want to talk about it. I'll explain when it's all over. So don't worry about me and entertain me instead, 'kay?

**This is not exclusive for my friendslist. Passers-by are encouraged to share teh funny, too.

***or frivolous****

****Rosina...

Quick, rec me a Snape/Harry fic! I want: book canon, preferably set during/shortly after OotP, angry!Harry and bastard!Snape (also known as IC), no romance, no love, just need. I also want plot and porn (violent rather than vanilla). I don't want: mushy I've-always-loved-you scenarios and mutual forgiveness.

I know such fic exists somewhere. Tell me where before the urge to read it subsides.

I am not a particularly busy member of the fandom - what with work, university and getting-drunk-and-discussing-porn-with-young-men occupying a lot of my RL time - as I can't be bothered to make fandom one of many chores, which I have to regularly attend to. As much as I enjoy the interaction online, I want to have the freedom of disappearing from time to time without worrying about community maintenance or fest deadlines. But there is one thing about the fandom, which attracts me immensely (and hasn't got anything to do with hot steamy boysex) and makes me come back over and over again: Reading fanfiction, writing fanfiction and - especially - discussing canon with all you lovely people is a therapy method which has cured me from a severe trauma inflicted on me during my school years.

In secondary school, I suffered under the ignorance and narrow-mindedness of a couple of teachers (well, two: German literature and English literature), who at that point had taught for many years, making generations of pupils read the same books, which they (the teachers) knew by heart, and never, ever allowing us to draw our own conclusions and interpret the books in a manner that differed from theirs. I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about.

I can't emphasise enough how much I hated that approach to teaching. I hated the condescending way those teachers dismissed my ideas as invalid, simply because they differed from their own. Good arguments were shrugged off, because they introduced a new aspect of reading a novel. My English teacher in particular was the most narrow-minded idiot I've ever come across, and I don't think I've ever hated (and I use this word very consciously) a person as much as I hated him. He managed to make me dislike novels such as Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies and Brave New World, simply because I'll always associate them with him.

So - after this therapeutic flashback - I just want to stress how much I love the fact that the fandom is full of intelligent, well-read people with academic and literary background, who read the same books as I do and who read them in a completely different manner. This is a main reason why I love reading character and canon discussion, and why I never feel insulted when other fans dislike my aproach to characters and never try to convince anyone that their interpretation is wrong. (Of course, I know that my interpretation is the only valid one, but that's beside the point.) On the contrary, it is most interesting to read other people's opinions on plot points and characters, especially when they are well thought through and well argued.

This applies not only to my main characters of interest (Remus is Teh Kewlest!!), or the fandom's main characters of interest (The Malfoys are Teh Hawt!). Some months ago, there was a plethora of Hagrid-related essays, which I found exceedingly interesting, because they opened my eyes for a totally different approach to him, which I would never have considered myself. I like Hagrid, and I will always like Hagrid, no matter how well argued an anti-Hagrid essay might be, because no essay makes me change my feelings for a character. It might affect my opinion on what makes the character tick or what made Rowling to write a character the way she did. However, for me liking and disliking characters has nothing to do with logical approach to them but with the initial gut feeling. Logical analysis is only an attempt of an explaination of that gut feeling, and it is always a great pleasure to read other people's analyses, be it in the form of essays or fics.

*offers virtual drinks all around*

Well the characters are revolting... and pretty darn mad too. They have had it and are challenging you to justify yourself. The only real requirement is that you, as an author, and a character of one of your fics have a confrontation. No length restrictions or time frames. Frankly, I just want to know what the hell you were thinking. Please link to your original piece for reference and pimping, The Treacle Tart said. And yes, so I did:

Wherein Snape and Lupin pop by and cause Donna to turn into Donna-Sue

My new life as an LJ user has, in fact, its origins on January 1, 2002. On this day, I went to see 'Private Lives' with Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan, a play I liked well enough to search the Internet for a possible video or DVD release date. Instead of finding 'Private Lives', I stumbled across a Professor Snape fanpage, which led me quickly enough to the unexpected, thrilling world of SLASH.

Up to this memorable day, I was a rather indifferent Harry Potter reader. I liked Philosopher's Stone, yes, and I loved Remus Lupin, but I couldn't even be bothered to buy all four books; I would merely listen to Stephen Fry's soothing voice on the audiobooks - every now and then before falling asleep. SLASH changed it all. Here I was all of a sudden - a sociable, widely computer-ignorant woman of twenty-something - spending every waking-yet-not-working hour in front of the PC, combing the Internet for every piece of smut and romance I could find.

My initial amazement and excitement have long made way for a fully-fledged addiction, the logical consequence of which was my starting to write fanfiction myself. Getting an LJ (special thanks to lea_ndra) to share my passion (not to say 'condition') with legions of people who understand has been the recent step in this development - but not the final one, I'm sure. I will learn all about computers and formatting, and I will have an own website! So Lord help me!