A thing I just remembered, from a fic I read forever ago. ("Dear Sir", if I remember right - an OC-centric HP fic, with a disabled protag. Which delighted me both then and now, because it actually looked seriously at 'how do you cope with disability in the HP verse'.) As part of the plot, Harry gets poisoned with Dreamless Sleep during potions class and it's set up to look like Snape did it (except that everyone agrees it can't have been Snape, because he's not stupid), and there's a scene where McGonnagal is sitting watch over Harry and knitting as she thinks, and then goes "crap, I accidentally stabbed myself with my knitting needles, I'll have to get rid of this yarn, it's spoiled now". And that's the one thing I had an issue with, because....no? Author, have you seen knitting needles? They're not actually all that sharp! You don't accidentally stab yourself with one of those, it takes effort. It's not like a sewing needle, where you're going to be accidentally stabbing yourself all the time if you aren't careful.
…I just wanna know why she couldn't get blood or whatever out of yarn. Like, surely there are stain-remover spells?
The context I'm remembering was that she thought the blood meant the yarn had bad luck tied up in it now, which honestly still doesn't make sense. Surely there would be spells to fix that.
Maybe she was knitting something super super fine, like stockings? You can get needles thin enough to be sharp enough to stab yourself. But it's a tiny tiny wound and you're not going to bleed much. Honestly I would expect a safety charm to be standard on anything sharp... does anyone ever cut themself with a kitchen knife in HP?
I think it was a scarf, but I'm not entirely sure. That said, I think some of the students cut themselves with the knives in potions class a few times? But I can't recall any other sharp-object-related injuries in situations where you'd expect there to be a safety charm on the blade, and there could be an argument from tradition and/or "you can't enchant these tools, it'll mess up how the potion ingredients work" for potion-cutting knives.
I'd buy that its a superstition thing, like "even if you remove the blood it was still There and it's just bad luck now" But that would still pull me way out of the story, like how... do u injure yourself with knitting needles Another fanfic woe: Cleanwhiteroom and Elementals taking all of their stuff off their site and ao3 still kinda stings, even though fans have archived it. The podfic for Designations Congruent with Things was stopped at like chapter 19 of 26, and I am sad even tho it happened like 3 years ago
I’m really glad I have at least some of it downloaded already but also damn, it’s such a good series and I’m sad I can’t just link it to people easy.
Someone's speculative comment on an anonymous smut author's gender status feels weirdly like me and I think my own gender/sexuality status affects my writing: In fanfic I can sort of figure out what the character would be focusing on, but at the same time I think my actual descriptions are a bit awkward.
Spoiler: nsfw welp, this feels relatable. i mean, i hope my smut's not that awkward - and it's definitely not as outright bad as the smut in the excerpts - but i feel that comment so hard. like, in my smut fic, i've noticed that i spend more time paying attention to the emotions of the characters and their movements to what they look like, and i am very vague.
Emotion focus is fine, and in fanfic we already know what the characters look like, so I doubt that's a problem. (In this writer's case I don't think there was any problem either as they were writing only for their own fun, as can be told from the fact that they were typewritten and kept in binders in the basement, but you know what I mean.) I know I prefer that over a laundry list of actions. I'm always like YES WE KNOW WHAT GOES WHERE, what makes this particular couple/group having sex in this particular circumstance any different from literally any other?
I had been thinking back fondly on the binder stories recently and here they are. Very good for a laugh
A thing what confuses me: Crossover fics that have something to the effect of "Not necessary to know either fandom" in the summary/tags. Like, what is the point then? Isn't the appeal of a crossover "it would be cool to see these things I like interact"? If your fic is so entirely divorced from any canon it's supposedly related to, is it even fanfic anymore? Am I just really unsettled because I saw a Hellsing/Jane Eyre crossover tagged with that exact thing and now my brain is trying to crawl out of my ears and escape? ?? ? ??!? Seriously, though. What's the deal.
i just assume it means that it doesn't matter which of the fandoms you're in, as long as you're in one of the ones involved, honestly.
No idea what this crossover fic in question is like, but it's possible they meant more in the sense that it's accessible if you're not canon familiar (or if you're not familiar with one of the canons) than that it doesn't have anything to do with the canons? Which some fic is, either by virtue of relevant plot points being explained in the course of the fic itself, or just by not happening to involve anything that require extensive prior canon knowledge to make sense of. Less a matter of "this isn't really fanfic", more a matter of "this particular fic is also accessible to the canon blind", which is a thing I've seen come up when discussing fic now and again.
