Hogwarts Houses

I've been re-reading some of my favorite HP fanfics, and, after 17 years in the fandom, finally noticed something about the houses.

In the books, Harry's double classes are always Gryffindor/Slytherin or Gryffindor/Hufflepuff. They're no Gryffindor/Ravenclaw classes, except for the upper year electives which combine all of the houses. I'd always assumed this was to prevent Slytherin and Hufflepuff from being paired. Most of the bullying we see comes from Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, and Pansy Parkinson, all of Slytherin. They like to target people like Neville, the Gryffindor-who-also-tends-Hufflepuff. Keeping the bullies away from the perceived-to-be-vulnerable Hufflepuffs makes perfect sense (and a lot of fanfic takes this dynamic as a given). From a story-telling perspective, the double classes we do see set up more interesting dynamics: Slytherins as Harry's antagonists, Hufflepuffs as foils or as people needing protection.  Moreover, with Hermione in all of Harry's classes, the Ravenclaws are largely redundant. 

The problem is that Hufflepuff's defining trait isn't weakness: it's hard work.

And Slytherin's isn't evil; it's ambition.

What if we have it backwards?  If the Hufflepuffs and Slytherins aren't being kept apart to protect the kids?  If it's to prevent them from cooperating?

Consider the other combinations: brave Gryffindor and ambitious Slytherin work together towards goals which may be dangerous or frightening: anything from an imperialist war to a civil rights movement. Pair Slytherin ambition with Ravenclaw intelligence and you could have all sorts of massive scientific or cultural endeavors (eradicating diseases, the space program...also nuclear arms races).

But if Hufflepuff and Slytherin start cooperating, ambition and hard work...

They could do just about anything.*  

Re-structure the government of magical Britain.  Achieve full civic equality for goblins and house elves. Abolish the Statute of Secrecy. Get the Americans to start playing Quidditch like normal wizards.

Really, the first thing any Slytherin worth the name should do is make friends in Hufflepuff--unless this Slytherin isn't very smart, in which case they should start by making friends in Ravenclaw, who will point out the obvious advantages to having friends in Hufflepuff.  Good friends. 

*I mean, any objective deserving the description of "ambition" will require some hard work. There is also the possibility of exploitation of the hard-working individuals by the ambitious ones, but that isn't an inevitable outcome.

An apology

I'm afraid I hit a block The Dark is Rising (as one of the commenters mentioned--it's hard to deconstruct good writing).  That's made it easy to focus on other projects/blogs, ignoring this one.

As I reader, I hate it when writers do that.  Mea culpa.

I'll try to make myself get something up for chapter 2 within the next two weeks; hopefully that will be enough to get me going again.

Resolving Love Triangles in Fiction

[This is a snark piece I wrote the other year while making up D&D-style dice charts for getting around writer's block.]

Congratulations!  You have successfully lined up two possible love interests for your protagonist. Now, as you attempt to tie up all the loose plot threads (except for the one on which you're hanging the sequel), you need to decide how to resolve your protagonist's romantic affairs.

Flip a coin. Do you pair your main character with:

Heads: The expected love interest. (Team Edward!)

Or

Tails: The slightly-less-conventional love interest who adds CONFLICT and DRAMA to the story, by attracting the protagonist while having a different alignment/super power/social background/other complicating feature. (Team Jacob!)

Meh, let's make it really interesting.  Procure 1d10 (ie, a decahedral die, typically with faces labelled 1 through 10), and roll:

1) Conventional lost interest.

2) Less-conventional love interest.

3) Keep them both. (ie, the Mechanicsburg solution)

4) Neither! Team Bella! Team Things-over-there-need-to-be-shot-full-of-arrows!

5) Slash!*  The love interests pair up, sans protagonist.  Your fans were going to write this anyway, so you're saving them the trouble.

6) Curveball. Your protagonist hooks up with the antagonist, because Draco Malfoy is really the more interesting character...

7) Happily Never After.  Your character makes his/her decision (flip coin for #1 or #2), but the 'winning' love interest actually decides not to pursue the relationship.

8) Keep 'em all.  Add in every other named character the main character(s) have ever expressed interest in, or otherwise favorably interacted with. (See Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, Friday, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, or any other works which contain multiple adult female characters)****

9) Multi-dimensional curve ball: your character isn't actually straight/cis/human/other assumptions made to this point, and all involved characters have to reconsider whether the situation works for them.  Roll again to resolve.

9') Roll 9 twice in a row, and your character become Captain Jack Harkness.  All pairings are now canonical.

10) Flip the coin: second place marries the protagonist's future child, who is conveniently just-like-mom. (Twilight, Anne McCaffery's Damia; see also TV Tropes "Squaring the Triangle"). Better yet, re-roll for another outcome.

*May or may not actually be "slash" depending on your definition thereof and the gender identities of the characters involved; my examples tend to be love triangles which a female-identified main character has two male-identified options, making this option "classic" M/M slash.

**Ok, so the examples in 8 are not so much triangle resolution, as a suggestion of a triangle, which soon began sharing one line segment with a pentagon, which itself shortly became a hexagon, which was subsequently cubed, and eventually led to two mutually exclusive sets, such that all members of set A ("intended to be sympathetic cis-male characters") have sex with all members of set B ("hot intended to be sympathetic cis-female characters") but with no other members of set A, and that all members of set B have sex with all members of set A, but only have platonic, non-jealous friendships with other members of set B.   But, hey, it's the twenty-first century.  Your polygon can be as slashy as you like.  And it can include non-binary identified characters. And none of them need be rape-apologist jerks.  The future's awesome like that.

A Guide to Literary Washington

Dear Writers Aspiring to Set a Story in Washington,

Thank you for your kind interest in our lovely state.  Please accept these local details for use in your story, to add verisimilitude and avoid internet mockery:

• The Great State of Washington contains multiple geographical regions.  We have desert. We have a rain forest.  We have mountains, and hills and islands and rivers and beaches and another mountain range and a bunch of other things.  It does not rain all the time.
• Note: The beaches don't generally have sand.
• Even the rainy places have warm sunny days.
• Vancouver, B.C. is north of Seattle; Vancouver, WA is south of Seattle.
• You can get a ton of different kinds of apples here.  We really like them.  The red delicious are sent out of state because they aren't good enough for domestic consumption.  (...That is a joke).
• Anthropomorphically speaking, Oregon and Idaho are our housemates; we share a spacious and somewhat dilapidated craftsman house, with tall ceilings and built-in bookcases around the fireplace and windows. Oregon is a libertarian hipster, who hates hipsters. Idaho just walked off the set of The Book of Mormon, and seems nice enough until suddenly, something-something, neo-nazis.  No one gets to mock these two except us.
• Alaska has the separate basement apartment and keeps weird hours, so no one ever really sees him/her (but there's always salmon in the fridge, really good salmon).  California lives down the block in a sort of arts-commune that may currently be on fire.  We occasionally team up with him/her to laugh at the east-coasters, but mostly we just complain about his/her driving. 
• Back before we were a state, we nearly started a war with Canada.  Over a pig. (Ok, it technically wasn't Canada yet.)
• We haven't always been awesomely progressive, but we like veering near it: women's suffrage in 1854? One vote away (in fairness, there were only, like, 15 guys voting on it at the time).
• Trees. Lots of trees.  We may have stolen part of Wyoming's and Montana's allotments.  Even the desert has tons of conifers.
• Yes, we did recently legalized pot.  Did you know we also have strict anti-smoking measures to protect indoor air quality?  Now you know.
• Also, Bill Nye. Ours.
• There is a town called George.
• Our state flag is green, because apparently the left wing took a time machine back to 1889.
• That bestiality stuff that keeps showing up in the "Know your state" memes? It's illegal and really not common at all. We promise.
• Forget 50 Shades of Gray.  We have two shades of gray: 'light winter sky', and 'darker winter sky'.  There are, however, at least fifty different types of rain (in the part that gets rain).     
• Our succession jokes are about one half of the state abandoning the other (Cascadia v. Inland Empire).  I don't actually know which one is leaving at the moment.  Sometimes, we propose 'swinging' with Oregon, but so far nothing's come of it.
• Yeah, we took D.C.'s name.  Serves them right, turning down our perfectly reasonable request to become the State of Columbia.  Keep it real, B.C.!
• Fun fact: our Canadians don't actually sound funny to us.  The speak normally, but have a lower drinking age and a few more hockey fans.
• If your Twilight fanfiction story involves colleges, consider these fun (public) options:
• University of Washington (UW, 'the UW' if east of the Cascades); flagship research institution in exciting, urban Seattle.  Lots of buildings named for Gates relatives. Branches in Tacoma and Bothell. Huskies
• Western (Washington University); right next to Canada, inevitably described as a 'private school education at public school tuition.'
• Washington State University (Wazzu, Washington State, WSU); chief rivals to UW;  likes football, beer, more beer.  Located on the Palouse (SE part of state) near Idaho. Cougars.
• Central, Eastern Washington Universities: no one remembers these. EWU is the eagles. 
• The Evergreen State College: hippie-school in the woods just outside of the state capitol. No grades and no football team, but very interesting and friendly people.  School mascot is the geoduck.
• There's also a number of private schools, mostly sectarian.  You might have heard of Gonzaga.  Local pronunciation: "Gone" "zag" (as in 'zigzag') "a".  Jesuit school in Spokane; basketball team is competitive.  Bing Crosby went there, but didn't actually graduate.  Although called the "zags", the actual mascot is a bulldog.
• Professional sports teams (we don't have more than one professional team per sport, and we 'share' with Oregon/Idaho/Alaska who have even fewer):
• Mariners (MLB, American League): have never even made it a World Series; almost always has some great players, had some truly amazing seasons in the late 90's, never lasts the post-season; based in SODO neighborhood of Seattle.
• Seahawks (NFL): Won the Superbowl the year before last, having qualified only once before that in 37 years of existence. Lost last year.  We still haven't taken down the decorations from the win.
• Sounders FC (MLS): Recent acquisition, small but boisterous fan base.  Shares a stadium with the Seahawks, just across the street from the Mariners.
• Supersonics (NBA): Formerly played at Seattle Center; left the state over a decade ago, and there's still bitterness over it.
•  Storm (WNBA): Still plays at Seattle Center's Key Arena; eleven play-off qualifications and 2 titles in fifteen years of existence.  No one remembers they exist.
• Major tourist attractions in Seattle include the Space Needle, Pike Place Public Market (ie, "The Market"), and the Fremont Troll.  Most locals do not spend large amounts of time at these establishments.  To add realistic detail, have your characters meet at/walk past distinctive but less famous landmarks.  In the Fremont neighborhood, for instance, there's a rocket ship, topiary dinosaurs. North America's largest free-standing statue of Lenin, "Waiting for the Interurban", Rapunzel (on the draw-bridge), and a post marking the Center of the Universe.
• The ferry system is pretty nice.  If your characters need to get to/from Seattle and the Oympic Peninula of any of the islands in Puget Sound, a ferry may be appropriate transportation. (More info here!)
• Wool flannel shirts are very comfortable, and popular among east-side people and some west-siders.  Just don't make every single character wear them unless your story's set in a lumber camp.

In regards this blog...

It's a place for writing, meta-writing, thoughts on writing, literary analysis, and other topics which don't belong fit my sewing blog.  I make no promises regarding quality, readability, or proper use of the 'rule of three', but the blog-format is useful for organizing thoughts, so voila.  Updates will be sporadic, depending on what I have to say.