from the Department of Stating the Obvious

Study concludes Harry Potter is 'addictive'

Naw, really? I done tol' ya: it's a poison that, once ingested, spreads to every vein. There's a reason my friends-list title is "other partakers of the poison". (Where's a bezoar when you need one?) A cumulative poison, probably, at that. But what's especially unremarkable is that I think this could probably apply to almost any fandom, it's just that HP is a really big one.

I see in the sidebar that OotP apparently grossed nearly $1 billion worldwide (presumably an American billion). OMGWTF? We should think of some way to apply Harry Potter to the national debt. (Not that $1bn isn't kind of a pathetic chunk of that. How many trillion are we up to now?)

ETA: snapecast adds to this:

We all know that Snape fans have it rougher than the average HP fan. If quitting Harry is like deciding so stop smoking, then Snape withdrawal is akin to kicking a heroin habit. Many of us Snape fans are twitching and rummaging about in the dark corners of Knockturn alley dustbins, looking for scraps of pre-DH snark. Pssst, how many galleons do you want for that hit of AmbiguousGreySnape?

lol. It's funny (and pathetic) because it's true. That's not really what I was picturing when the nice man said "Severus tracks".

from the Department of Stating the Obvious

Study concludes Harry Potter is 'addictive'

Naw, really? I done tol' ya: it's a poison that, once ingested, spreads to every vein. There's a reason my friends-list title is "other partakers of the poison". (Where's a bezoar when you need one?) A cumulative poison, probably, at that. But what's especially unremarkable is that I think this could probably apply to almost any fandom, it's just that HP is a really big one.

I see in the sidebar that OotP apparently grossed nearly $1 billion worldwide (presumably an American billion). OMGWTF? We should think of some way to apply Harry Potter to the national debt. (Not that $1bn isn't kind of a pathetic chunk of that. How many trillion are we up to now?)

ETA: snapecast adds to this:

We all know that Snape fans have it rougher than the average HP fan. If quitting Harry is like deciding so stop smoking, then Snape withdrawal is akin to kicking a heroin habit. Many of us Snape fans are twitching and rummaging about in the dark corners of Knockturn alley dustbins, looking for scraps of pre-DH snark. Pssst, how many galleons do you want for that hit of AmbiguousGreySnape?

lol. It's funny (and pathetic) because it's true. That's not really what I was picturing when the nice man said "Severus tracks".

(no subject)

schemingreader said in response to my comment on one of her fics:

I love how he shows his feelings when he doesn't mean to, anyway, and that happens a lot when he's high.

Put that way, it rather explains a lot about why many of my favourite Severi are what they are:

• so consumed by desire that he just doesn't care what he sounds like anymore (and the completely-shagged-out!Severus that tends to follow)
• drunk/high/otherwise under the influence of something disinhibiting (whether substance or spell)
• in a fury of epic proportions
• recovering from amnesia/torture/illness/something that saps him of the energy for his usual facade
• desperate enough about something going to be taken away from him that he cracks
• so wrong-footed by an unusual situation that most of his brain power goes to just keeping it together (I like well-done bodyswaps, gender-messing, and time travel, for instance, even though the devices are kind of cliché)

That's not all of them (I have quite a menagerie up here *taps head*), but it was an interesting way of pointing out a common thread I hadn't heretofore noticed.

(no subject)

schemingreader said in response to my comment on one of her fics:

I love how he shows his feelings when he doesn't mean to, anyway, and that happens a lot when he's high.

Put that way, it rather explains a lot about why many of my favourite Severi are what they are:

• so consumed by desire that he just doesn't care what he sounds like anymore (and the completely-shagged-out!Severus that tends to follow)
• drunk/high/otherwise under the influence of something disinhibiting (whether substance or spell)
• in a fury of epic proportions
• recovering from amnesia/torture/illness/something that saps him of the energy for his usual facade
• desperate enough about something going to be taken away from him that he cracks
• so wrong-footed by an unusual situation that most of his brain power goes to just keeping it together (I like well-done bodyswaps, gender-messing, and time travel, for instance, even though the devices are kind of cliché)

That's not all of them (I have quite a menagerie up here *taps head*), but it was an interesting way of pointing out a common thread I hadn't heretofore noticed.

fic rec: This Masterpiece of Nature (gen with a touch of Severus/Regulus, R)

This Masterpiece of Nature by anneline. Snape had friends; he still has them.

This ~6000-word piece is mostly gen, featuring a bunch of Death Eaters (Severus, Regulus, Bellatrix, Wilkes, Avery, etc), and has very slight Severus/Regulus content (a brief kiss and implied fellatio). It was posted in April of 2005 so is strictly neither HBP- nor DH-compliant, but aside from how Regulus died and some timeline niggles (e.g. Bellatrix would not have been at school with Regulus), it mostly still works very well indeed.

In any event, canon-compliance is not really the point with this one; it's the characters and the overall picture painted. This is a wonderfully delicately handled portrait of these people. Death Eater politics. Bellatrix before she was crazy. Regulus the agitant. Avery the sycophant. Rodolphus being annoyed with all the philosophical talk and just wanting to talk about Quidditch for once. ;) And of course, even the bad guys have feelings when things go pear-shaped for them.

Excerpt, after an opening scene with Severus dusting photographs he rarely touches:

"Severus! Rescue me, why don't you, my dear?" Bellatrix said, "I'm being ravished."

Severus smiled, "I'm no match for Lestrange."

Bellatrix shoved his head with her free hand, "Some friend you are."

Severus laughed and fell forward with exaggerated clumsiness. Really, Lestrange he could handle -- it was Bellatrix you had to watch -- fast as a snake-bite and utterly without mercy.

He rolled down the hill a little and then lay flat on his back in the grass staring straight up. The wide blue sky stretched out, a ribbon tied around the whole future which fate had gift-wrapped just for them -- for him and his friends.

There's no photo of that day.

fic rec: This Masterpiece of Nature (gen with a touch of Severus/Regulus, R)

This Masterpiece of Nature by anneline. Snape had friends; he still has them.

This ~6000-word piece is mostly gen, featuring a bunch of Death Eaters (Severus, Regulus, Bellatrix, Wilkes, Avery, etc), and has very slight Severus/Regulus content (a brief kiss and implied fellatio). It was posted in April of 2005 so is strictly neither HBP- nor DH-compliant, but aside from how Regulus died and some timeline niggles (e.g. Bellatrix would not have been at school with Regulus), it mostly still works very well indeed.

In any event, canon-compliance is not really the point with this one; it's the characters and the overall picture painted. This is a wonderfully delicately handled portrait of these people. Death Eater politics. Bellatrix before she was crazy. Regulus the agitant. Avery the sycophant. Rodolphus being annoyed with all the philosophical talk and just wanting to talk about Quidditch for once. ;) And of course, even the bad guys have feelings when things go pear-shaped for them.

Excerpt, after an opening scene with Severus dusting photographs he rarely touches:

"Severus! Rescue me, why don't you, my dear?" Bellatrix said, "I'm being ravished."

Severus smiled, "I'm no match for Lestrange."

Bellatrix shoved his head with her free hand, "Some friend you are."

Severus laughed and fell forward with exaggerated clumsiness. Really, Lestrange he could handle -- it was Bellatrix you had to watch -- fast as a snake-bite and utterly without mercy.

He rolled down the hill a little and then lay flat on his back in the grass staring straight up. The wide blue sky stretched out, a ribbon tied around the whole future which fate had gift-wrapped just for them -- for him and his friends.

There's no photo of that day.