Thank you sparkymonster for telling me this first when the news was hot off the presses. Now, of course, it's 12 hours later almost exactly. I bibbled in IM rather than here, initially.

What? Oh, have you not heard? ( Hagrid never married. Whoops, I mean: Dumbledore is gay. )

Also: She was surprised that no one had ever asked her what Dumbledore’s wand was made of. If ever asked this question she would have simply said "It’s made of Elder" and left it at that. Well, yes. That's why I wouldn't have asked.... Oh, wait, she means before book 7 came out. When eight-year-old Mia asked an Aberforth question, Jo asked her age and said that just for her the answer would be "that the goats were easy to keep clean and that they had curly horns," as the audience roared with laughter. Really, the second (HPANA) link has all the stuff of greatest fannish interest, as you'd expect.
( Yet more quotes. )

I'm amused. As saylee said in IM, "It does confirm my theory that JKR does better gay subtext than straight romance." Ayep. The vibe from just that one description of the picture of the young Dumbledore and Grindelwald was quite clear, and, I must agree, more convincing than any of the overt, straight romantic relationships we were shown.

Yes, not the gay subtext many would have liked to have seen. It does cause a bit of a problem of double vision--confirming one gay identity puts the nail in the coffin of others that were not confirmed. But I have great faith that fanfic-writing fandom can not only only accept JKR's interviews when it wants to, but also accept them with one hand and ignore them with the other. Carry on!

I'm still in veiledintention, a post-book-6 game where we can always use Death Eaters or characters of Marauder age or older or just more players in general.

But now I'm in a post-book-7 game too, aww_rpg. Is there anyone on my friends list who cares about Harry Potter spoilers but hasn't read Deathly Hallows yet? Heck, I'll cut the post ( anyway. )

ravenna_c_tan and I sat down and wrote our last-minute guesses (in the hour before Deathly Hallows went on sale) on some plot points we expected would be addressed in the book. She posted hers here (and yes, the comments are spoilery). Here are mine. We sort of shorthanded the questions to each other so may not have answered exactly the same questions. ;-)

( questions )

( cut for the vast majority of my friends who don't care about Harry Potter fanfic )
Edited to add "Just Another Soldier in the War", which my imperfect filing system led me to lose.

please see wrog's ideas about book 7, so far superior to my own.

I'm sure some people's friends lists are afire with the news, but amazingly few people have said anything on my f-list and besides, I wanna talk about it!

So. Harry Potter book 7's publication date has been announced: July 21, 2007. A mere fortnight after the rumored 7/7/7, but this way it comes out more than a week after movie 5 rather than several days before. I assume the movie side of things is just being inflexible. Oh well.

(But ya see, 21/7/7 = 3x7/7/7, which is equally nifty in its own way. See the 3, and the three sevens? Okay, I'll put the prime factoring subprocess back in de box for now. Don't be scared.)

I don't want to quote J.K. Rowling about what will or won't happen in the book. Go ahead and do that in comments if you like--I just don't follow her interviews closely, nor do I care to. I just read the books. And the fic. And play the RPGs*. ;-)

And I just want to talk about what I want to see, and what I think I'll see.

( Want: )

( Predict: )

* Oh yeah, my RPG is still looking for a Bellatrix and other characters, though I know there are applications pending for some characters. Come play! Personally, I want to see more Death Eaters and more older characters, but the more the merrier! *bats eyes*

... and other fanfic writers. And other pornographers. You know who you are, and you're probably not reading this. (Nobody take this personally. Every one of these I found in more than one place by more than one writer.)

I have conducted an... ahem... careful study of a broad swath of fanfic over the last several weeks, and here are some pairs of words I would like you to be sure you know the difference between.


discreet, discrete: You almost always mean "discreet". Secret? Discreet.
palate, palette: The first is the one in someone's mouth. Google doesn't actually back me up on this one, but I know it to be so. Is this a British/American English distinction I was previously unaware of? Please advise.
prone, supine: Just look it up. No more bizarre sexual positions because you flipped one of the characters over, thank you.
compliment, complement: I think this is perhaps the trickiest one on my list. Flattery? A compliment. But a shirt that flatters you may complement your eyes, meaning perfecting your look. Careful!
principle, principal: Morals are principles. The main something is the principal something.
illicit, elicit: Is it sekrit and naughty? Use the first one. Is it a verb? Use the second one.

Oh, just look it up:

• taut, taunt
• breath, breathe
• loath, loathe
• baring, barring
• bound, bond

The phrase is just deserts, unless you're actively punning at the time. It does sound like "desserts", but that's because it's not the sandy "deserts", it's "deserts" derived from "deserve".
dominate, dominant: I don't even understand where this comes from, but it's really common. Dominate is a verb. Dominant is an adjective or noun. There is no such thing as "the dominate" in a scene or relationship. No really.

And please, for the love of all that is holy or unholy, learn the difference between
prostate, prostrate: The fun thing for men having anal sex? Only one "r".

Thank yew.

EDIT: tongue tongue tongue Accept no substitutes. (courtesy of kjc007)
baited/bated: Breath is bated. Traps are baited.
rein/reign: Oh, where to begin. Horses are controlled with reins. Kings reign. The idiom is rein in your emotions. No really. (these two pairs courtesy of calanthe_fics)

... and not necessarily in a good way.

Collecting weird fan reactions to Harry Potter 6. Spoilers within.
( Read more... )

Yes, I finished the book late Saturday night. No, I didn't hit LJ on the subject until today. Yes, a Firefox crash means I need to go back and re-find all the HP posts I thought I was about to read. So I'm posting first, then reading, then coming back and editing if necessary.

Oh, and I'm meta-complaining about people complaining about the phenomenon that is Harry Potter. I think it's nifty that there's a pop culture phenomenon that involves reading, yes. So there. Yes, there are better-written books out there, but so what? Sharing the reading experience with others can be fun, that's why there are book clubs.

Everything else goes behind the ( lj-cut )