lesbiassparrow

I am somewhat disappointed in you. Or possibly living a very sheltered internet life. Because nothing really has even approached the crazy of the academic who I met at an interview lunch who wrote Harry Potter fanfic to (and I quote, even if I cannot summon up the lunatic glare in her eyes) 'rescue Hermione from JK Rowling's antifeminism.' I believe that she thought that Hermione was a real live person that Rowling kept locked in a box and took out when she needed to annoy feminists. Or, perhaps, just this woman personally.

( Cut for spoilers for Deathly Hallows and for HP ship talk )

...but might get there soon if I have to read more essays. Not that they're bad just that I begin to twitch after about 10. In about 2 1/2 weeks I will be off to Ireland for Christmas; I just have to hold on till then without going mad from lack of sleep.

About a week ago I saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Ron grows more uncomely by the film, doesn't he? (Or is that me?) He is beginning to look like a deranged and pasty second-rate Romantic poet.

My new big passion is Hermione and Viktor Krum, because the actor they cast for the role was seriously rather fetching in a brutish, might leave you behind in the dacha with 5 children under 7 way. I normally am not attracted to this look, but it was tempered by his youth so I was smitten. And Hermione looked so cute with him until the heavy hand of Ron-jealousy ruined it all in a teen angst way.

Like many a foolish person before me I went looking on fanfiction.net for stories about this pairing (or even the characters). The horror! The Mary Sues! (Based on Krum lusting after other women) The improbable plots where Krum or Ron (or both - I didn't check) were abusive bastards from whom Hermione had to be saved by some unlikely hero.

And as I still don't get the Draco Malfoy love - he's an incompetent little upper-class git in my opinion - I am always astonished with the amount of stories that feature that overbred twerp.

"His deepest desire when before the mirror of Erised is to lose the painful reality of his older self through re-integration back into the womb of the family from which he was cruelly separated by Voldemort. This childhood trauma emerges through his struggle with the forces of repression and desire."

From the abstract of a paper to be presented at a conference on Harry Potter: http://www.accio.org.uk/DavidRafer.shtml

I'm not sure I can say any more except that I think I wrote that sentence about Lee's undying love for his barrel.

(Though, in all fairness, given my rants recently about jargon I should say that all the abstracts I read were very easy to understand and some did sound rather fun. Well, the Snape on trial bit sounded fun. For those interested in the economics of fandom, I couldn't work out how much it cost to attend.)