My. Fucking. Feels.

ahhhhhh…memories

My last save date on the earliest draft is 12 February 2014 - I’ve spent almost a year writing this and…

I did it. I finally finished it.

The Drarry fan fic is compete. Done. Stick a fork in it.

29,508 words in the first draft.
20,852 words in the second draft.
32,137 words in the third draft.
20,061 words in the fourth draft.
28,418 words in the fifth draft.
127,000 words in the sixth draft. (Exactly!)

I wrote something that I’m pretty proud of and it only took me 257,976 words to get there.

And that’s before I tear draft number six to absolute shreds in the editing process.

Speaking of tears, I’m going to have to label it with the archive warning “Major Character Death” - and even though I always knew it was going to end that way, I was crying as I wrote both the final chapter and the epilogue. The middle part definitely needs some fleshing out and the beginning needs some work, but I am fucking PROUD of that tear jerker ending.

I’m not sure if I’ll publish it on AO3 right now. It’s dark and hits too close to home - and that’s even without my being happy with the depictions of both Broken!Harry and Broken!Draco. Plus, I’ve tried some different things in this fic. I’ve pushed my writing abilities to the edge and I’m not sure what others will think.

It sounds completely mental, but it’s frightening to think of someone reading this after all the work I’ve put into it. Terrifying, even.

But it’s done.

Wow.

Draco Malfoy - fact and fiction

draco malfoy

JK Rowling - if you’ve been living in a Harry Potter free world - has created the ultimate Harry Potter fan site and it’s filled with new bits and pieces about the World of Harry Potter. (Pottermore, if you’re curious. It’s really quite awesome despite the fact that it’s twice sorted me into Ravenclaw.)

This Christmas season, she’s been releasing a new tidbit every day. Today’s was about Draco.

As I’m writing slash about Harry and Draco, this really excited me because I’m digging in deep to the extended canon to flesh out the characters. Granted, I’m ignoring the epilogue to some point, but there’s still stuff going on around Harry that does hew close to the epilogue.

I get that JKR is upset that so many people like Draco and romanticise him, create relationships between he and Harry, and generally think he’s completely renounced his old life.

BUT in saying some of the things she chooses to say in the new piece published today, she’s kind of fuelling the idea that maybe he can change. That he is particularly damaged. It’s that pain that gives life to my version of Draco.

Rephrased from Pottermore (mostly because I can’t lift it from the site and I don’t want the copyright infringement Dogs to come after me) with added commentary by yours truly:

The ability to feel pain is an essential part of humanity. Draco’s ability to compartmentalise / deny pain and suppress inner conflict may have really fucked him up, which makes it easier for him to be the bully JKR portrays throughout the books.

While Draco can be a bit of an arsehole, JKR writes him as a person of ‘dubious morality’. Then she goes to say that Draco is not concealing a heart of gold and won’t ever be besties with Harry. She goes so far as to say he becomes a watered down version of his father and that his wife doesn’t hold the intense hated of Muggles that Draco grew up adopting and partially discarding.

The wonderful thing about fan fiction, and the alternate universes that comprise our fictional worlds, is that we can take an aspect of a character and expand upon it, or change it. I know that Draco’s always going to be a Malfoy, that he may not ever like Harry although he is civil to him in the original epilogue, but why can’t I take that damaged person and play with him?

I know she’s possessive of her characters - and I totally appreciate it - but it bothers me that she needs to keep going on and on and on and on that she hates how people view Draco.

If anything, it makes me push harder to really flesh out and bring to life the damaged side of Draco. (Sorry, JKR.)

Four hundred plus pages and over one hundred thousand words (in the sixth draft alone) and I think I’m close to capturing it.

Editing’s going to be a bitch.

ENOUGH

1+8, 3+3+3, 2+7, 9+0…and that’s just addition

I’m about 30 seconds from being done with Facebook.

I don’t want to go into details about my views on all the stuff that’s going around, but there’s been nothing but anger and vitriol in my newsfeed. Some of it I agree with wholeheartedly, but there’s more that I can’t agree with.

It seems that some of my friends are incapable of having grown up discussions about racism, murder, Orwell, class warfare, socialism, and even communism. (Yeah, that’s a very weird and varied list.)

I’ve been told multiple times that my political views are bullshit. That I’m an asshole for loving Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. That liberalism is destroying the world. That Ukraine deserves to be taken over by Russia. That cops are murderous pigs. That we need to have discussions about how cameras on cops fail people. That we need to have discussions about racism. That we need to be the ones to make the changes in our world.

Maybe not all of these were direct, but they were pointed enough to make me feel like shit.

I ended up having to unfriend the loudest voice and I may have to unfriend the second loudest. And that makes me sad because, for the most part, they are good people. They just aren’t making good choices when it comes to what they’re saying.

I am all for having conversations on these topics, but I know I can’t discuss them rationally because of my passion and my “bullshit liberal views” so I stay quiet.

If you want the world to change, then you should get off your fucking soapbox, take the time to learn what it is you’re shouting about, and then DO SOMETHING about it.

/end of rant/

Happy Day Before Black Friday…

alright, which one of you posted this to the interwebs?

So much I want to talk about…

Let’s start with the fact that I’m thankful I can afford to stuff my face until I feel like I’m going to barf. Or that I’m “rich enough to not have to shop on Black Friday.” I don’t know… to me (even though it’s only J and I) Thanksgiving has always been about family. Not the countdown to buy shit for Christmas.

The only store I will ever shop at on a holiday is LL Bean and that’s because - as the story goes - he opened his store 24-7-365 for hunters. He didn’t keep his store open on the holidays just to turn a profit. It’s obvious, too, that LL Bean’s employees LIKE working the holidays. A lot of the ones I’ve talked to do it by CHOICE. They’re not forced to get up at fuck o’clock in the morning so they can be prepared for the onslaught of bargain shoppers.

——

The job continues to be stressful, but for different reasons now.

They let our Director of Finance go. We were without a boss for a week. On the new Director’s third day, my co-worker gave his notice. He hadn’t done any fucking work in the two weeks he ‘worked’. Then, he bitched and moaned that we were cheating him out of a week’s salary. Jesus jumping Christ on a fucking pogo stick. I’m torn between hating myself for lying to his new boss to get him the fuck out of our building and laughing hysterically because his new boss doesn’t know what a numb nuts this kid really is.

There is sooooo much work to do and I’m not allowed to work overtime. I get where my boss is coming from, but she doesn’t get the fact that I need to work. I can’t live with the piles on my desk.

So. Stress.

I guess, it’s the ‘good’ kind. I’m in the finance office instead of a cube, I like the new Director, and I got a quasi-promotion. (More work, no title, and definitely no raise.)

——

I’m knitting socks for a friend who went through a rough time and damn! She’s got some big fucking feet! As luck would have it, her feet are about J’s size, so he’s been trying them on as I work. I don’t know what I’d do without him… and that’s not just because he kills the spiders and wears purple socks.

——

I’m going to go slip into my turkey coma now, so may whatever’s left of your Thursday be a good one and try not to kill each other tomorrow AM.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!?!?

this is ridiculously amusing

I’ve been to London three times, walked up and down this bridge countless times, and never once noticed the shadow.

HOW THE FUCK DID I MISS A PENIS BRIDGE?!?!

Photo from here: 32 Pictures That Will Make Londoners Laugh Every Single Time