(no subject)
2 things I only just recently realized that made me feel like a dolt...(both things are kinda HP-related)...
I was getting really frustrated when I was talking to Layla a while ago about who has been cast to play Professor Slughorn in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince because the name Jim Broadbent didn't mean anything to her when I told her who it is and I knew that I knew him from something we had both seen plenty of times but could not for the life of me remember what he was from. After not really bothering to look it up, it finally hit me - he's Harold Zidler in Moulin Rouge. My favorite movie? LOL. Of course. He's goddamn perfect for Slughorn...
(Hahaaa. I kind of forgot that Slughorn first appears in the books when he's Transfigured himself into a couch.)
A long time ago I was also trying to remember the details of some myth I knew I'd heard of several times, the first time in the book Echo though that did not mention where the myth was from or who the character's name was. Because in my fanfic I still want to write about Andromeda Black Tonks and how she met Ted, 'Dromeda is a really passive-aggressive and quiet kind of girl who takes out all her anger and real feelings about people by writing things in which they're inserted as sort of mythical people that represent them. She is into Greek mythology and knows her astrology, and therefore inserts herself as a chained woman in some of her nonsense poetry or Bellatrix as a murderous warrior or basically anybody she hates as something she finds appropriate. Andromeda finds the way her family has marriages in its recent ancestry between people who are a little too close to the same families (as is evident in J.K. Rowling's own drawing of the Black family tree) to be very disturbing and disgustingly vain and I thought of having her compare them in her head to the guy in this myth who falls in love with a beautiful woman he sees by the pool and then realizes he is in love with his reflection. But I couldn't remember if this guy has a name so that it could be a more specific reference. Then while skimming through a book of paintings at the bookstore, I came across this and realized - DUH - his name is Narcissus. For which the flower is named. For which Narcissa Black is named. How perfect is that? It's almost too obvious a comparison to use.
...If I'm still going to write this after all. My recent repossession by this story idea for my original novel has me wondering lately if I'm starting to reach the point where I'm ready to move on to different things (and I mean without having to make myself, haha). I've just written the thing I'm probably more satisfied with and proud of than anything else I've ever done, "Hell Is In Ourselves", and some of the kind of feedback I got for that was sort of in a different league than what you're happy and lucky to get for fanfic and what you get used to being the best you should expect, and it was the first time that the things people said in praise of my writing made me start to think Wellll...what am I still waiting for to be doing something more than this, then? I think I don't have much of an excuse anymore because there's probably not much more I have to learn from playing around with this medium, though it is soooo fun. It's hard to imagine giving it up entirely anytime soon, but then again, it's been a long time since I was doing anything original and I may have forgotten just how satisfying that is in its own totally different way. I definitely feel like I got over a period of self-doubt I was in that may be partially responsible for fic having monopolized all my creativity for a while, and I'm just not so afraid of sucking anymore. Maybe I just needed to write a lot of fic and have people read it and tell me I don't suck in order to feel like I can write other stuff, too. Haha.
(BTW guys......don't ever be afraid that you suck. Cause then you may just be condemning yourself to suck. Nothing good is ever made with the intention of impressing anybody or by people who were the most concerned about what others want from them. Even if you're a self-important, stuck-up ass who's not even as good as you think you are, at least you'll be getting somewhere and less likely to become a depressed alcoholic or something.)
I was getting really frustrated when I was talking to Layla a while ago about who has been cast to play Professor Slughorn in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince because the name Jim Broadbent didn't mean anything to her when I told her who it is and I knew that I knew him from something we had both seen plenty of times but could not for the life of me remember what he was from. After not really bothering to look it up, it finally hit me - he's Harold Zidler in Moulin Rouge. My favorite movie? LOL. Of course. He's goddamn perfect for Slughorn...
(Hahaaa. I kind of forgot that Slughorn first appears in the books when he's Transfigured himself into a couch.)
A long time ago I was also trying to remember the details of some myth I knew I'd heard of several times, the first time in the book Echo though that did not mention where the myth was from or who the character's name was. Because in my fanfic I still want to write about Andromeda Black Tonks and how she met Ted, 'Dromeda is a really passive-aggressive and quiet kind of girl who takes out all her anger and real feelings about people by writing things in which they're inserted as sort of mythical people that represent them. She is into Greek mythology and knows her astrology, and therefore inserts herself as a chained woman in some of her nonsense poetry or Bellatrix as a murderous warrior or basically anybody she hates as something she finds appropriate. Andromeda finds the way her family has marriages in its recent ancestry between people who are a little too close to the same families (as is evident in J.K. Rowling's own drawing of the Black family tree) to be very disturbing and disgustingly vain and I thought of having her compare them in her head to the guy in this myth who falls in love with a beautiful woman he sees by the pool and then realizes he is in love with his reflection. But I couldn't remember if this guy has a name so that it could be a more specific reference. Then while skimming through a book of paintings at the bookstore, I came across this and realized - DUH - his name is Narcissus. For which the flower is named. For which Narcissa Black is named. How perfect is that? It's almost too obvious a comparison to use.
...If I'm still going to write this after all. My recent repossession by this story idea for my original novel has me wondering lately if I'm starting to reach the point where I'm ready to move on to different things (and I mean without having to make myself, haha). I've just written the thing I'm probably more satisfied with and proud of than anything else I've ever done, "Hell Is In Ourselves", and some of the kind of feedback I got for that was sort of in a different league than what you're happy and lucky to get for fanfic and what you get used to being the best you should expect, and it was the first time that the things people said in praise of my writing made me start to think Wellll...what am I still waiting for to be doing something more than this, then? I think I don't have much of an excuse anymore because there's probably not much more I have to learn from playing around with this medium, though it is soooo fun. It's hard to imagine giving it up entirely anytime soon, but then again, it's been a long time since I was doing anything original and I may have forgotten just how satisfying that is in its own totally different way. I definitely feel like I got over a period of self-doubt I was in that may be partially responsible for fic having monopolized all my creativity for a while, and I'm just not so afraid of sucking anymore. Maybe I just needed to write a lot of fic and have people read it and tell me I don't suck in order to feel like I can write other stuff, too. Haha.
(BTW guys......don't ever be afraid that you suck. Cause then you may just be condemning yourself to suck. Nothing good is ever made with the intention of impressing anybody or by people who were the most concerned about what others want from them. Even if you're a self-important, stuck-up ass who's not even as good as you think you are, at least you'll be getting somewhere and less likely to become a depressed alcoholic or something.)