meddow

Damn it Torchwood, exploiting my soft spot for characters who are civil servants and using it to keep me on tenterhooks.

I do have a huge soft spot for civil servants though. I was actually way more upset about what happened to Yvonne Hartman in Doomsday than I was about anything to do with the forcible ending of Ten and Rose's co-dependence. Of all the things Laura Roslin did in BSG, which included election fraud, ordering a genocide and baby stealing, one of the few things I can't get over were those few times she was mean to Tory (even after what Tory did in The Ties that Bind) and in fact what happened to Tory is my biggest Daybreak gripe, and I was totally a Percy Weasley apologist in Harry Potter fandom.

And then if you tally up my favourite characters in various fandoms, a hell of a lot of them work for the government in some kind of fashion: Nymphadora Tonks and aforementioned Percy Weasley, James Norrington and Weatherby Swann in PotC, nearly every character that has ever worked or been affiliated with UNIT in DW along with Yvonne Hartman and now John Frobisher, Billy, Gaeta and Tory in BSG, and, although technically elected officials, in my mind I lump them in with the above lot: Harriet Jones, Harvey Dent and Laura Roslin. There is most definitely a trend.

I blame The West Wing, it being my major fandom through my wilderness teenage years and nearly every character being a noble and put-upon civil servant.

As for the episode, I could have done with out the slime and certainly the slime sound effects. Reminded me of Aliens of London Saying that, oh I would laugh so very hard if the 456 turn out to be the Slitheen. And then I would throw things.

Oh, JKR, you are back! And now totally forgiven for the Remus and Tonks had to die because Arthur lived remark.

(Though Hannah/Neville? Really? – I maintain that he falls for a shy Muggle botanist which leads to much cuteness).

I’ve been for the past few days feeling very pleased with myself because I’ve taken Deathly Hallows very calmly and rationally. Particularly when compared with my reaction to At World’s End. But it occurred to me tonight that I haven’t touched the book since I put it down. So of course, I think to myself that I should reread it, particularly the bits concerning two characters of note. But I can’t. I can’t read it again. I was at the movies watching AWE again within three days of seeing it the first time, but I can’t open a bloody book.

Bugger.

Maybe I’m not as okay as I thought.

Oh, and I love this icon.

This is 100% Spoiler free post, everything contained within is my own fanon (I haven’t read any so I couldn’t spoil even by accident).

I don’t want to read Deathly Hallows.

If I do, then the fanon in my head has to die and I think this crappy feeling I have now it that I am pre-emptively mourning the little endings for characters that I made up, all the stupid little things that never made it into fic and probably never will now.

Tonks won’t be showing up to shareholder meetings of the chocolate frog company with popcorn ready to watch the twins. Percy won’t have had a revaluation of his life, grown his hair, fallen in love with Cho, gone to law school and become an activist. Remus won’t be struggling with his autobiography detailing the first and second war while at the same time campaigning with Hermione and Percy to bring about better human rights by getting large groups of wizards to amass in Muggle places and start singing “It’s a Kind of Magic.” Tonks, Ron and Cho won’t have to mope about the Ministry wishing they were their instead of performing crowd control and wondering if their jobs are in danger.

Luna and Susan won’t be living in Neville’s house, one that is overrun by magical plants. In the course of assisting Tonks and Ron in an investigation, Neville will not run into an equally shy and somewhat insecure Muggle botanist, sparking a romance that will survive misunderstanding and Ron’s terrible “how to date Muggles” advice. Draco won’t be let out of Azkaban after ten years and retire to a quite life away from the public glare, forced to live in the world he never wanted to see. Gregory Goyle won’t befriend Hogwarts students as their groundskeeper.

Molly will not host large meals every Sunday for the extended Weasley clan. Bill and Fleur won’t have their hand full with a pair of female twins with Fred and George’s minds and their parent’s looks. Ron and Hermione will not have to struggle to adjust after they find out their first born child is a squib. Harry and Ginny won’t be going on a very very long holiday leaving the defence of British magic in the capable hands of everyone else. Snape won’t have escaped to Russia and send Harry letters every now and again to torture him with the reminder that despite everything he did and every sacrifice he made, evil can never be eradicated.

I know it's a bit silly, but I’m really going to miss having that ending in my head.

What started off as a simple little comment before breakfast turned into this monstrosity. I'm really not that bothered by the Tonks thing, rather it's something that's been building up for a while.

So Tonks is a Hufflepuff. It’s about time we got another Hufflepuff hero and thank goodness I haven’t made too many references to her being in a different house in fanfic.

But I was always leaning towards Tonks as a Slytherin, mainly because joining a secret band of rebels whose objective happens to run against her employers doesn’t scream “loyal” to me, and getting the Dursley’s out of the house for the Order to get in was pretty cunning.

That and to fulfil my own personal wish that we have a good Slytherin character who doesn’t need a redemptive arc, because ambition and cunning by themselves do not make a person evil. Ambition, despite what JKR and the writers of Pirates of the Caribbean think, it not a “bad" quality for a person to have. Ambition is drive; it is a person reaching for something that others tell them is beyond their reach, and what is so bad awful about that? In fact, some of the great think have resulted out of person's or a group's ambition to achieve change, civil rights movements for instance. What we don’t like is ambition without a moral code, but ambition in itself does not remove a person’s moral code. Same goes for cunning. What is so awful about a person using their mind instead of there brawn or magical ability to achieve what they want? On the sport field we love players with cunning, it can win a game. Again, cunning in itself is not a “bad” quality; it is when it is used without a moral code. (Okay I’m going to stop with the quotation marks around bad now because it’s now bugging me).

You know what; the act of seeking knowledge without a moral code can be despicable. Do I really have to get into the heinous acts that have been committed throughout history in the name of “science?” The thought of an amoral Ravenclaw running around doing experiments is far too frightening a thing to put in a kids book.

Further, loyalty has been one of the most devastating human qualities throughout history. We all want to belong and when we do, we have a tendency to follow without question. Some of the worst acts I can think of, genocide, terrorism etc are a result of either loyalty to a person or an ideology or just basic everyday people who would normally not do such things losing the ability to say ‘no’ because of the loyalty they feel to the people in their group.

And bravery’s all well and good until it’s used without thought it gets another person killed (see: Black, Sirius)

The thing that really bothers me is that the moral message tends to be that either ambition and cunning do make a person bad, or that anyone who enters into Slytherin House ends up bad, corrupted by the environment of the house, and this removes a persons choice (Well, there is a choice, but you make it when you are 11 and nobody ever tells you what the full ramifications are, which is hardly fair), and neither of these sits comfortably with me.

I’ve been watching The Hand of Fear and I don't think it's possible to watch it an not want to do a possessed!Sarah Jane impersonation. I've discovered that school Doctor Who is awesome, cheesy old special effects and all. I eventually gave up on the library and ran out to the video store and now have Genesis of the Daleks and Pyramids of Mars, which I haven’t seen yet, but I have completely fallen for Tom Baker’s doctor. Not quite sure how on earth Ten has managed to usurp him in the favourite Doctor stakes. Though DT is much better looking, I’ll give him that. But if we were going only on looks, surely Eight would be ranked very highly. Not that I’ve actually seen the TV Movie. But I have seen Withnail and I and Hornblower.

I hope I don't bother people by being so multi-fandomish at the moment. I know a lot of you friended me through Harry Potter. It's just that with the lack of fresh canon Harry Potter's kind of boring me a bit at the moment.

In other exciting news, they’ve finally released a trailer for Sunshine which is (other than AWE and OotP of course) the movie I’m waiting for this year. Danny Boyle and Cillian Murphy doing space opera with added bonus Cliff Curtis - I am so there.

author_by_night has taken on Hagrid-hate, and I thought - what a good idea. I think I shall defend another apparently much hated Harry Potter character: Dolores Umbridge

I’m not going to sit here and type that she is misunderstood or that I agree with her politics because I don’t. I think she is hateful, dangerous and sadistic and that she is the greatest villain in the books, which is exactly why she’s in my top five favourite characters.

Which character manages to take over Hogwarts without firing a curse? Which character once and for all confirms my suspicion that old women who wear pink and like kitties really are evil? Which character teaches readers that it is not just evil monsters that they have to defend themselves against but it is those people who look normal and slowly take away their rights one by one? Which character shows us why we should question our governments? Which character shows us why loyalty can be just as dangerous a trait as ambition? And which evil character is not aligned with Voldemort and thus will still be around to antagonise our heroes after the war and so makes for a brilliant post-War foil?

If you answered Dolores Umbridge, you would be right. Now think, with all that going for her, wouldn’t the series be worse off without her?

So Harry Potter fandom, next time you see the question who is your least favourite Harry Potter character think twice before putting down Dolores Jane Umbridge.

OotP comes out in early July and so far we have promotional photos and a teaser trailer. Not to mention that because it’s an adaptation, we know the ending.

At Worlds End comes out in late May and so far we have squat.

I think it's pretty clear who wins.

Come on Pirates. My heart is not cute fluffy bunny land where everybody wins, you must fight for my fandom love and affection. Give me something, anything.

With JKR’s revelation about character death I was making a mental list of characters that cannot die or I will cry. So far JKRs only killed of characters I’ve been indifferent about, Sirius and Dumbledore never really appealed to me and though I cried in the movie, I never felt I got attached enough to Cedric to feel bad for him when reading GoF.

Of course that had all changed now I’ve started writing fic. I’ve written from the perspective of Tonks, Remus, Peter, Molly, Kingsley, Snape, Narcissa and Neville, and I will be devastated if one of them were to bite it. Even Peter and Narcissa, who I don’t particularly like but still emphasise with. Though, to be honest, I wouldn’t care much if Snape died. However I want him to survive to antagonise Harry.

Though coming back to what I was on about. I think one out of Ron, Hermione, Luna, Ginny and Neville is going to be killed, somebody close to Harry and about his age and he cares about. Thinking about this, I came to the realisation that I no longer like Hermione. This is rather sad since I used to like her a lot. But I think a combination of movie PinkPowerRanger!Hermoine, bad Hermione/Snape fics where she treats Harry and Ron like crap and the huge amounts of wank surrounding Hermione pairings has really left a bad taste in my mouth for the character.

I was tagged by le_parapluie: ( Music Meme )

Other people, lets see: I'll tag melusinahp, laverinth, fishity, author_by_night and ragdoll.

ETA: Ghana got knocked out of the world cup by Brazil. And with Michael Owen out with injuries the rest of the tournament, I no longer care about the World Cup.

So I blew off spending the afternoon in the library for a trip to the movies and caught Mrs. Henderson Presents, which was rather good. Natalia Tena was in it, quite a bit actually, but her character was rather minor to the plot. Now I’ve seen her do punk (About a Boy), seen her do ditz (Mrs. Henderson Presents) and she’s been good at both.

In a random thought, why one earth is there not a large Ron/Draco movement in the fandom? I really like the idea of the two getting together (well I like the idea of Ron/Anyone - Ron/Meddow = OTP). There is a lot of potential there for drama since I can’t imagine either character enjoying the idea of having a crush on the other. And there is the whole “Weasley is my king” thing. Actually, I wonder why Ron is the character least likely to be portrayed a gay (it is much more likely than Ron the wife-beater)? Or are only effeminate men or ones with long hair allowed to be gay?