"I have read your book and much like it."
- Moses Hadas (1900-1966)
MrThou's Blog
This is my personal blog, mostly devoted to writing and other related creative endeavors. It's not much, but it'll get the job done.
In the future, I hope to publish a novel-length work of fiction here. It has a working title of "Professional Coward", which is what the main character is. And yes, it is intended to be funny.
Sunday, October 19, 2003
LoM... Writer's block
Well, so much for LoM chapter 1 being done. I had a severe case of writer's block, and also had to do some last-minute work on a web-page I've been working on. Saturday wasn't much better. I think I know how I want to finish the chapter, though, so I should finish in the next day or so. Here's hoping, at least.
Friday, October 17, 2003
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
HP and the Legacy of Merlin
The Prologue is up. Only about 1400 words, but that's an acceptable length for a prologue. It's been spell-checked, but that's about it. Read at your own risk.
Character Rant: Snape from Harry Potter
I've recently read a number of fanfics which try to present Severus Snape in the most positive light possible. Some people like this character, and feel a good deal of sympathy for him, which is understandable. Unfortunately, such authors, when trying to make things a bit more pleasant for the potions professor, go to great lengths to excuse away his reprehensible behaviour. Obviously, he was driven to it. Blame Sirius Black. Blame James Potter. Blame the Slytherins of his generation. But don't blame Snape; or at worst, blame Snape the least. He is what he has been made.
I've seen various theories presented:
* He treats the students (and Gryffindors in particular) poorly to toughen them up for the real world.
* His abuse of the students and house favoritism is part of his cover as a spy.
* The rest of the world is against the Slytherins, and it is Snape's job to make up the difference, to perhaps prevent some of the current generation from falling to the Dark side.
I prefer to see it like this: Snape is a slimy, nasty, mean-spirited bully because he enjoys it. It was done to him, and now he is doing it to others. He does hate Gryffindors, and Harry Potter in particular. He has a reason to, of course. But he does not have a right to act on it. In fact, it is more reprehensible to me that he bullies students, who have no recourse against him, that is the fact that he was bullied himself. It is made even worse because he knows how it feels to be ridiculed and teased, and he willingly, even gleefully, inflicts the same on others. Snape is not a nice man. He's a bully who, for one reason or another, was never able to grow up. He was unable to escape his baser nature.
Starting a fanfic
I've finally started work on an HP fanfic. I'm not exactly sure how long it will be, but I'm shooting for at least 3000 words per chapter. The outline is in a semi-fluid state, although I have enough to get the first six or so chapters written. After that it gets a little foggy, although I've already written a few scenes that I intend to stick in toward the end.
I'm guessing it will be a year 6 fic, with the possibility of a yea 7 fic to follow. Or I might just finish off Voldemort. There's no rule that says I have to wait for Harry to be in year seven, after all.
In college news, I've passed my first two tests, one in Cisco, and a perfect in LAN II, which is about Novell Netware. It's a bit weird taking tests online, and I'm not entirely sure I like it.
I've just about finished up a web project for a small business. It's not quite done: the shopping module still has an annoying bug in it, but otherwise it's quite good. But it has taught me one thing: Internet Explorer is a buggy piece of crap. It's not fun to work on your style sheets for three hours only to find out one of the many changes you made caused all the text to disappear in IE5.5 and 6. In fact, it's beyond 'not fun,' and well into the relm of painful.
Oh well, that's life. It's Microsoft's web, and we have to play by Microsoft's rules, even if they are pretty stupid rules.
Wednesday, October 01, 2003
College has started
and it looks to be rather busy. VB.NET shouldn't give me too many problems: I'm quite familiar with VB6 already. And I think the Novell Netware class will be fun. But Cisco I looks to be rather hectic. It's the first time our instructor has taught this particular version, so my class is the guinea pig. Yippee. Also, Cisco upgraded the exam to make it more difficult. Yippee again.
What does this mean? I might not have time to do NaNoWriMo, or at least not to the extend I had planned. Maybe I could do another 50K work fanfic instead. Fanfics take a little less effort to write, since the world and most of the characters are already defined.
In other news, FFTA is sucking out my soul. It is a very addicting game.
Friday, September 26, 2003
Fanfiction uploaded
The fanfiction section should be up. The Ranma 1/2 and Slayers sites are hosted on my server, but the rest is hosted on FF.net or elsewhere. That will change as I have time to format and upload everything.
There's no original fiction yet. I probably won't post anything in that section (except as a test) until November 1, when the National Novel Writer's Month begins. In the mean time, go ahead and browse through my fanfiction. Some of it is quite good, or so I'm told.
