Harry Potter, fanfiction, and miscellany
I've recently discovered this amazing Harry Potter fanfiction called Reparo by amalin. Google it. I'm serious. The Harry Potter craze has been dying down a bit. I myself have even stopped being so obsessed. I'm just waiting for Pottermore now... and that encyclopedia that J.K. Rowling promised she'd publish eventually... But I discovered Reparo (recommended by a fellow fanfiction author) and I'm totally hooked again. Anyone else disappointed with how Deathly Hallows ended? With that huge nineteen year gap between the end of the war and the epilogue? I know I'm not the only person who would've liked to see the wizarding world, and especially Hogwarts, build itself back up from the rubble it was left in. I mean, in the epilogue we see that all is well again. We see that the scars from the past can be healed. But we don't see the process of that healing. The aftermath of war isn't pretty, but Harry Potter isn't exactly sugar and spice and everything nice. After everything we've been through with Harry, I wanted to see him pick his life up again. I wanted to see him have a life of his own, and not a life with Voldemort hanging over his head (or should I say inside his head, to be more accurate?).
Reparo by amalin covers the time period of reconstruction after the war. Sure, it doesn't go all the way up to the beginning of the epilogue, but you get a glimpse of what life's like when Voldemort is gone... but the terror isn't. After war, you don't go from fearing for your life to sending your kids off on the Hogwarts Express. I don't doubt that in that nineteen years they would've all moved on. But it seemed... hollow, somehow, with nothing to fill the gap.
Reparo is a Draco/Harry fic. I don't exactly support Drarry, though I must admit that Reparo may have changed my perspective on slash just a bit... If you can stomach Drarry enough to read a fanfiction that is practically like Rowling wrote another book, go look up this fic. It's that good. Dead serious. Amalin writes the Harry Potter characters so well. Sure, there are those fleeting moments where the illusion is shattered and you realize it's not Rowling writing, but it's as close as anyone will get without being J.K. Rowling. She captures the post-war feeling perfectly. She really gets Harry's character right. He's noble, kind (but not to a fault), stubborn, uncertain, Harry freakin' Potter, and down-to-earth.
Before I start my rant about fanfiction in general, go look up Reparo. You won't regret it. I promise. If you're dead set against slash, which I know one of my friends is, skip the sex scenes. Or at least read halfway through chapter four. It's enough to get most of the tying up of loose ends. The rest has a lot of the Drarry relationship development though it is interspersed with more tying up loose ends. I will admit that one of the most poignant moments is later on in the story, but take that as you will. (Can you tell I'm trying to convince you to read this?) It's just that we get some info about the good side of the war (not that there really ever is a "good" side... only the winning side) but next to nothing about Voldemort's side. What happened to the Death Eaters that didn't die? Like the Malfoys. Lucius Malfoy and Draco Malfoy to be more specific. When the war is over, they can't run and hide. You can't hide from the entire wizarding world. Draco's just a teenager, but he's still been branded with the Dark Mark. Who would testify for a Death Eater? Harry Potter perhaps? Hmm? War isn't just one side wins and suddenly the losing side disappears. There's a huge mess to clean up.
Now, all of the above isn't to say that I blame J.K. Rowling for skipping those nineteen years. I mean, sure, I'm a little indignant, but it's not as if it's unforgivable. If she wrote through those nineteen years, or even just through the reconstruction of the wizarding world, she'd need a whole other book. Not as if I'd complain about that... but what we're supposed to be left with is a feeling of hope and a feeling that justice has been served. Right after Harry's defeated Voldemort, you feel the elation that the terror of the past seventeen years is gone. You feel the loss of the deaths in the war, but you know a new world has just been born. Had Rowling written the aftermath, things would have started to get murky. When it isn't you either raise your wand and say "Avada Kedavra!" or get struck by that green light yourself, the line between right and wrong blurs. What do you do with those Death Eaters that are still loose? How do you rebuild a world that has just been knocked flat off its feet? How do you deal with the terror that still lingers in the hearts of the people? If all this was added to the end of the book, we would be left with a completely different feeling altogether. While it would be more realistic and more complete, it wouldn't send the message Harry Potter was supposed to send.
Of course, this is exactly what fanfiction is for. If these gaps didn't exist in stories, what would fanfiction authors write about? Some fanfiction is innocent as could be: holding hands, kissing, talking, etc. But then... there's the crazy pairings, crazier ideas, and even crazier authors who manage to make all this craziness work and fool your mind into thinking this was all canon to begin with. Props to them. When I say crazy pairings, I mean crazier than you could ever imagine. Even as a fanfiction author. Think Drarry is strange? How 'bout Drapple? Draco and an apple.
Go rewatch the films. Do you realize how often Draco is with an apple? Pretty darn often. How do you write a romance fic about Draco and an apple? I'm not sure. I haven't looked it up yet. Apparently, Tom Felton knows about fanfiction and fanart. I mean, I suppose it's hard not to being an actor in the most popular series. But there's been interviews of him talking about Drarry! He looks suitably embarrassed each time, but it's pretty awesome. He mentioned Drapple too.
I absolutely love Tom Felton after seeing him in interviews. Actually, I love British and Canadian actors right now. Not American ones though. With the exception of Chace Crawford. I do live in America. I'm not sure about Canadian ones, but I imagine they're pretty down-to-earth too. To quote one of my friends who loves Draco Malfoy, "He's aged very well, hasn't he?" And yes, he really has.
He looks much better in real life than in Harry Potter. It's startling to see how different Tom is from Draco. I've always expected that the roles actors play are at least somewhat like themselves. But it appears I was wrong. Tom is so nice and funny! He makes a very good villain. And he and Dan Radcliffe are good friends! Shocker, much? He's very indulgent with his fans. He seems like the one you'd have the easiest time having a conversation with. Not to mention, he's very, very attractive. For someone who used to roll her eyes at my friend's obsession with Draco, I'm just swimming in praise for him, aren't I? I just can't get him out of my head. I tell you, this is all going to spill out of me the second I see another Harry Potter fan.
I've always wondered about actors' reactions to reading fanfiction about themselves. How weird would it be to for Dan Radcliffe or Tom Felton to read Drarry? I mean, for them especially since half their lives have been devoted to this one character. I would expect that Harry and Draco, respectively, feel like an extension of themselves now.
Click to viewNow, for some background. After filming this scene in Dumbledore's office, Jason Isaacs wanted to add something, so he and the director decided they would do another take and he would improv a line. However, they didn't tell Dan about this. So Jason Isaacs said that line about Harry always being around to save the day, and without batting an eye, Dan improv'd his "Don't worry, I will be," line. Can you believe that wasn't part of the script? It fit in so seamlessly! And Dan was what? Twelve? Thirteen?
To return to fanfiction, you people really need to go read Reparo. It's amazing. Fanfiction is a slippery slope. When you first start reading, your limits for what you will and will not read will be a mile high. You'll start out finding out about M rated fanfiction and the crazy things that go on, and say, "I would never, ever read M!" Then one day, you'll find yourself coming upon that fic you promised you'd never read and think, "What the hell?" and read it. Then pretty soon, you start relenting and reading more of these M rated fics. Then, god forbid, you find yourself liking these fics. And then, and then! Gasp! You find yourself clicking the rating filter and looking for M rated fanfiction. And then one day... you'll realize that you no longer have any limits on what you will and will not read. I must admit that I have cleared the final hurdle and made it to the "limitless" stage. Just yesterday too! Thanks to Reparo. You see, I started out saying I would never read M. Much like the quote above! But that line was crossed ages ago. In fact, that line has been so thoroughly stomped on, scoffed at, and scrubbed away that it's quite funny. I don't believe I recall the other limits I set myself when I first began this activity we call "reading fanfiction." But the one thing I always vehemently refused to read was slash. That hurdle has been thoroughly smashed through thanks to Reparo. It's not as if I haven't given it a try before when I felt particularly adventurous. I came across a Sora/Riku fic for Kingdom Hearts once. But I only liked it because it was very short and the slash was so mild that if you squinted just a liiiitle, you could pretend Sora and Riku were just very close friends. Which they are. Of course... then I decided maybe I would be okay with slash and looked up Sora/Riku straight out. Then, I found a particularly explicit fic and was turned off the idea immediately. Haven't thought to try it since. When I started Reparo I had a feeling it might be Drarry, but only because somewhere it said Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy. Being my previously non-slash-reading self, I deluded myself into thinking that just meant they were the main characters. How my mind managed to work that out... I'm still not sure. No one uses that notation to denote main characters. The "/" always means romance. But the thought just kept popping up in the back of my mind. And when the Drarry part started... I kinda just accepted it. My mind had already been trying to convince me it was true from the beginning. Evidently, it succeeded. I plan to look up more Drarry. Though I'm not sure if I could stomach any other slash pairings...
I suppose "miscellany" was not covered in this post. I did mean to go into Kingdom Hearts, but that may make this double in length. To be brief, I had the hardest time beating Ursula in Atlantica the first time around. Such a hard time that I even left Atlantica to go back to Traverse Town to smack some soldiers around for catharsis. I managed it at the end, but now I have to beat her for the second time. In giant form too. Wooo... Who else hates Atlantica? I certainly do.
P.S. This entry and all the entries before this one were moved here from my old blog. So the dates are all screwy, and things I posted over the course of nearly two months is now a day... But what can you do?