Further thoughts on Deathly Hallows

This collection of thoughts on DH has been started about 5000 times, not because I keep changing my mind about how I feel, but because I keep changing my mind about what I'm willing to say. So I've decided to put down my honest thoughts about the book without editing to please anyone, and say some other thoughts in another post.

( Beware the spoilers herein. )

Posts that resonated with me include Cassie's, Maya's, and Magpie's (particularly the insightful discussion in the comments).

So, fannishness

So, two things, neither with spoilers.

First, after feeling rather discouraged over it for some time, I've decided in the wake of DH to write a long-planned sequel to Eight Ways from Sunday. I probably won't start it for a little while as there's school stuffs to be written first, but with the end of canon writing a story that is AU—or more accurately, GoF canon—feels like less of a "bad thing." One reason is that canon is set, so my stories can no longer be interpreted as my canon predictions. The other is that the bitching about "non canonical" fanfic—you can read a rant about it here, but be careful as there are spoilers—as well as the time I've spent in other fandoms has thrown me strongly in the other direction. I can't write canon and it isn't even my job. I'm not particularly interested in writing fic off DH. I am interested in writing down the story arcs and futures that I had seen some years ago; in finishing my fanfic100 Seamus/Dean commitment; and then in "closing the book" as it were. I'm hopeful that some of you will want to come along for that journey, but another thing that being in other fandoms has given me is a better sense of scale. I'm going to be a little cryptic here, but things in HP are not as they were, and I'm not in the same place I used to be, and I've found that having your own happy little place can be so much more fulfilling than getting into the vast rough-and-tumble. So thank you, fellow flaming_potato Rymon shippers, for teaching me that.

Speaking of which, I've also realized that yes, there are ways in which I am a geek and a fangirl, but being fannish about SF/F isn't one of them. Plots about saving the world don't really move me and I'm trying to be done feeling guilty about that. Also, I care about endings—care about them deeply—and television burned me good last year between Veronica Mars and Studio 60 and even CSI. I find myself not wanting to get back on the hour-long drama horse because I just don't trust television writers not to dick around for the sake of dicking around. There are plenty of shows that I didn't catch the first time around, and those of you who have made your way through Buffy DVDs have inspired me to walk away, to a certain extent, from contemporaneous television watching. I'm not saying I won't pick up any shows at all—people are saying good things about Pushing Up Daisies and I am intrigued by New Amsterdam—but it isn't something I'm looking for. Not that I'm getting rid of the cable TV—I'm too much of a culture whore for that! I'll be watching Ugly Betty and How I Met Your Mother and of course American Idol in the spring. And I'm loving Simon Schama's series The Power of Art right now. Plus I've been seeing a lot more movies than I used to, so expect talk about that.

And the LJ? Well, there will still be fic, and erotic fic, because I've been writing erotica for almost 25 years and I'm not sure why I should stop now. And there will be more race posts, because I find myself more interested in that these days. And of course I will still be talking about all the things I usually talk about, including the shows I AM watching. Whether I'm shunting myself into irrelevance I'm not sure, but I find that I'm not sure how much I care. (Although I might change my tune after the mass defriending!)

That whole podcasting your story thing.

I'm a little spammy this morning but I haven't posted in three days and I reckon if I'm averaging a post a day that isn't actually being spammy. Well, that's my story anyway and I'm sticking to it.

So, some pals have been podcasting their stories. I was always hesitant to record any HP stories because of my amurrican accent. Though, I may well start with idolslash.

Anyway, podcasters out there: advice on software for a mac?

(OMG I'm suddenly excited because I realized that during that dance sequence in 8WFS I can put in the SONG.)

ETA: If Jim Dale is a Brit, then why does he read the American HP on CD and Stephen Fry read the UK? Like, what's the point of two different people? And does this mean I should like, bribe wednesdayschild to read my stories lest there be a wank?