It's little to surprise to anyone who knows me that I'm slightly obsessed with fanfiction. I mean, it's not like

1. I've been reading them since I was 11
2. I've written a good number of them myself
3. I'm an editor for them (and may have edited a few chapters of Commentarius aka one of the best Jily fics ever written. not that I'm biased or anything)
4. I have over 400 bookmarked on my computer
5. My most visited site is fanfiction.net (even over tumblr. I know, it's pretty amazing)

Meh. Just a bit obsessed.

I read a lot of fanfiction. I don't feel ashamed when people kind of give me a look that screams wtf-you're-so-weird-why-would-you-cry-over-made-up-stories-when-you-could-be-melting-your-brain-by-watching-silly-tv-shows-like-me because I honestly, truly enjoy doing this. I love coming home to five unread emails talking about how my favourite fic was updated, or calling my friend Catherine to freak out over a new chapter of a fic. I love going through a chapter of something and finding all the grammatical errors while simultaneously groaning and laughing at it. I love spending hours crying over my favourite pairing who died before one of my favourite book series ever began.

Okay, maybe that last one was sarcasm.

ANYWAYS, I have this favourite fic of mine called Every Other Midnight. It's a Jily (James/Lily) Harry Potter fanfiction. There are some errors that drive me crazy, but that's what happens when you're an insane editor who wants to do this in college. Other than that, the story honestly entrances me.

So Lily Evans is an orphan whose only real friend is Hagrid. One day she and Hagrid find an injured baby unicorn in the Forbidden Forest whose parents were just murdered by Death Eaters. Hagrid calls Professor Potter (oh snap breaking the little canon we have) down to the scene to offer protection. The story follows the friendship that Potter and Evans gain while going down to feed Mercury (the unicorn) every other midnight, and the subsequent relationship that inevitably follows. I don't want to spoil anything on the off chance that one of you will read it, so I'll just explain why I love it without going into too much detail.

I've always been so amazed at what these authors can come up with. In the HP series, we as readers are only given a few sentences about the nature of James Potter's and Lily Evans' relationship ("She hated him!" "Nah, she didn't."). This leads to both good and bad things. 

Because there are no boundaries for the authors, they are free to create whatever characters they want without being too far outside of canon. Since they can basically do whatever they want with the characters, there are so many different types of fics out there. Lily/James as Professor, the normal Head Girl vs Head Boy, the Lily-hates-James-and-calls-him-an-arrogant-toerag-every-other-sentence cliche, and so many others.

But is that really a good thing? Sometimes I could be reading a new fic, see something I've seen in a billion other ones, and automatically be turned off. It wouldn't matter how good the writing is or how well the characters are developed. Seeing cliches that exist even when a basis hardly exists really annoys me. Like, honestly, there are a million different options out there! Don't conform with everyone else and do what they do. Be original. That's the beauty of fanfiction--it allows you to be original while still not really being original (wow that made no sense).

The reason why I love EOM as much as I do probably has to do with that cliche aspect. Every time I turn the virtual page, I'm greeted with something that surprises me. Granted, some things I could predict, but that's expected of many stories. Here's some things that surprised me (you've been warned):

• James being an Auror
• Lily creating her own spells, potions, etc. (her arousal spell o h m y g o s h)
• Sirius' character development. It was flawless.
• Lily's strength as a witch and as a character
• The dynamic between James and Lily
• Lily's other form (not saying anything other than that)
• The original characters. They were perfect!
• The fact that she didn't use arrogant toerag at all praise the Jily gods for allowing this to happen

But my favourite part of the fanfiction?

• the length

You're all going to think I'm crazy, but I LOVE to read things that are over 100k words. If they're not, I feel like they're missing so much. I loved this fic almost 10x more because the total word count was (drum roll please) 932,487 words! AND she's not even finished it yet! Isn't that incredible? Her dedication to the story is so admirable. Her love for what she is doing absolutely shows through when you read it. It is honestly one of the best things I've ever read (in the ways of fanfiction. Trust me, nothing beats Austen or Bronte or Shakespeare or McCarthy).

I could sing Kathryn's praises all day, but that would waste the time you should be spending reading this! So go. Enjoy the beauty that is James Potter and Lily Evans combined with an adorable baby unicorn and a horrific dark wizard, then come back to me and tell me how often you cried.

You might need this and this along the way.

Angst--A Bad Thing?

I was on tumblr this morning filling up my queues so I wouldn't have to worry about my blogs for the next two weeks when I saw the following post. And, honestly, this is exactly how I feel at all times when I'm reading:

I’m not a sucker for love stories.

When I say I ship something, I don’t care about the happily ever after. I don’t care about romantic comedies or princess movies with a seamless love arc and a fairytale ending. That isn’t what I’m in it for.

I’m not a sucker for love stories. I’m a sucker for character stories.

I want to read a story in which the characters don’t fit perfectly. Where they complement each other when they’re happy but tear themselves apart in desperate situations. Where their relationship is healthy but not always, equal but not always, happy but not always.

I want to see characters suffer because that’s how I know they’re real.

I don’t ship to be happy. I ship to feel real. I ship because I love relationship dynamics, not relationships themselves. That’s why I don’t just have otps. I have brotps and dream teams and favorite family dynamics and favorite characters alone.

I ship because I like to see how a given character will respond to another given character in any given situation. I like to see how they mesh together, how their personalities match and mismatch, how they push and pull at each other and then come together or fall apart.

I don’t ship for the what of the situation. I ship for the how and the why. Don’t give me characters waywardly thrown together for the perfect puzzle-piece ending. Give me the two people who would seemingly never fit. Make it work. I don’t want fireworks or fairytales. I want realism. Passion and lack thereof. Heat and coldness and love and hate.

Don’t give me love. Give me character. Don’t just tell me. Convince me.

 My mother always asks me how I can read "angsty" stories (stories that either give the reader or the characters a feeling of dread or fear) without immediately having to go read fluff. When she reads angst, she can enjoy it, but afterwards she has to read something happy to make herself feel better. I suppose I could do that, but where is the fun?

Here, I'll give you an example most of you know about or have heard of. In the Hunger Games, Katniss and Peeta do not have a perfect relationship, yes? Katniss is headstrong and awkward, rude and inconsiderate. Peeta is the opposite--a tender, loving person who is in love with her. When they are put against each other as enemies in the Games, it's obvious that Katniss will do anything to get out alive for Prim; she just drags Peeta's emotions along with her. After the Games, Peeta learns that she was toying with his emotions the whole time, just trying to stay alive, not caring how he felt. Yet, through Catching Fire, he still defends and protects Katniss as much as he can because he loves her.

Katniss and Peeta's relationship is exactly what the above passage is implying. How and why are the two of them going to get into a relationship when there's obviously so much that is forcing them apart? They are not the perfect characters who are in a perfect, lovey-dovey relationship that some readers search for. They are damaged, selfish people who go through exactly (okay, not exactly because of the Games, but you understand) what we do now. They are real. Everything that they say, every action they perform, comes from a place readers can relate to. How often have you been rejected? How often has someone ruined something that was precious to you? How often has someone told you lies about the person you loved, and you believed them? True, you probably would not attempt to strangle them as Peeta did with Katniss, but you would have been hurt.

Katniss and Peeta go through the worst experiences I could imagine, and it sometimes seems that they will not be together. It is angst through and through, especially in Mockingjay. Angst is delicious though. Angst, when written correctly with the correct characters, makes you feel so much until you think you might explode. It does not always guarantee a happy ending--instead it guarantees that you will relate to the characters, you will feel for them, you may even cry. That is what I love about angst, and why I read it so often. It makes me feel.

I find that beautiful.

Prejudice in Harry Potter

So I was sitting at my table with my laptop, wondering what the heck I was going to blog about, when I heard the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow's score coming from my family room. I was humming along to Polyjuice Potion (because I know all of them, don't judge) as I typed random words into a post, trying to find some inspiration.

I heard the lines from HPDHP1, the part where Tonks is trying to tell Harry that she and Remus are having a baby but gets cuts off by another character, and got insanely angry. It's not just because Tonks is my fourth favourite character (honest!!), and it's not because Remus is the sole living member of the Marauders, my favourite group in Harry Potter. Siriusly (see what I did there? hehe).

I got angry because of what Remus and Tonks represent in not only the Wizarding World, but our modern world. For those who have never read, seen, or heard of Remus, or for those who may have forgotten, Remus is a werewolf. He was bitten by Frenrir Greyback as a young child because his father did not repay a debt, and consequently grew up with the prejudices that accompanied the bite of a werewolf. Although the Ministry would not care to admit it, werewolves (even though they were deadly only once a month) were denied opportunities that were available to even the most dangerous of men. Because Remus was bitten before he turned eleven, it was a real possibility to his family that he would never be accepted into a school. Dumbledore (if you don't know who Albus Dumbledore is, then shame on you) was the only administrator of a magic school willing to allow Remus to learn there. So Remus was admitted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, met the Marauders (James Potter [he is actually the perfect man], Sirius Black [why are all sexually promiscuous men attractive], and Peter Pettigrew [he's a rat. literally.]), and was finally welcomed for who he was (even though only the professors and the Marauders knew of his "furry little problem").

Growing up, Remus never imagined that he would find someone who would love him for who he was. Remus believed that he was a monster, and who could ever learn to love a Beast [@2.15]? That's the beauty of the relationship between Remus and Tonks. They were both so different, so excluded from society, and a war brought them together. They are literally the perfect match for each other, in every way, shape, and form.

People believe that Harry Potter is a children's series. Yes, it may be written in simple sentences and have plot lines easy for children to understand, but the issues addressed in the series are so utterly NOT childlike. Once you look underneath the sentence structures and "cute" moments, you'll see a huge array of contemporary conflicts such as racism, ethnic cleansing (hello...the whole Muggleborn Nazi-like extermination? How is that a children's issue?), anti-terrorism, capitalism, and so much more. As J.K. Rowling said, "People like to think themselves superior and that, if they can pride themselves in nothing else, they can pride themselves on perceived purity."

That quote is SUCH an accurate statement for both how people today feel and how people in the Wizarding World feel. Their arrogance, conceit, and selfish disdain for the feelings of others lead me to feel you were the last man in the world whom I could ever marry mirrors the racial prejudices of today.

I got so emotional over the cutting of Tonks' announcement of her pregnancy because they represent a minority, a group of people are not socially acceptable. If the writers of HPDHP1 had kept the line of her pregnancy in the movie, even though it obviously wouldn't have fixed everything, maybe more people would be aware of the racism in our society today.

Maybe it's also because of how much I love Tonks and Remus.

Maybe.