Tuesday thinks Lucius is Luscious

I just paid $600 so I could have a maid of honor at my wedding. Good stuff.

I consider myself a casual fan of make up. I don't really wear it myself, but I like the idea of it. I just don't have the face for it. I wear lip gloss or chap stick from time to time, mostly because I'm always biting or smacking my lips. I'll probably be wearing some light make up on the day of my wedding, if only for the sake of formality. But just going out around town, or chilling at home? No. Also, I just don't find it to be worth the price. Even drug store makeup costs more than I'd want to spend for the product I'm getting.

So, Harry Potter. I was introduced to the series when I was in the third grade. Our teacher would read us a chapter every day at the end of school, as we were antsy youngsters who just wanted to go home and she could barely get anything done when we were like that. It was the first book I enjoyed. I was a big reader already - though not by choice. My father could be a bit of a grades nazi, and I had read a good deal of children's classics (he rarely cared for more modern works, though he did end up liking Harry Potter) and even a few adult novels. My mum was a Stephen King fan and those occupied most of the shelves in our library, so I read some of them to ease the boredom (and because I liked the movies, particularly 'The Shining'). But I never really liked reading, in spite of this. It was just how I was raised. Harry Potter changed that, and even without the nostalgia goggles, I can acknowledge its importance in my life for that much, if nothing else.

I was always a fan of Slytherins. I like all of the characters, at least a little, except Colin Creevey perhaps. But Slytherins always held my interest. Severus Snape, Tom Riddle, Draco Malfoy, and - after the movies came out - Lucius Malfoy. I should say that I am big fan of Jason Isaacs. If a movie has Jason Isaacs in it, it doesn't suck. Even if it is 'The Patriot'. The biggest complaint about 'The Last Airbender' is the fact that they replaced Jason Isaacs with Asif Mandvi. Knowing that, and knowing that I already loved Lucius Malfoy's character, I think you can imagine my reaction to seeing him playing the character. It was perhaps my first act of fangirling as a youth. Indeed, Harry Potter was many firsts for me. The first fanfiction I read was a Harry/Draco fanfic (and, indeed, Harry/Draco was my first shipping).

My favorite book in the series was probably either 'Half-Blood Prince' or 'Chamber of Secrets', which are perhaps the two least liked books in the series (save, I suppose, Deathly Hallows). As I said, I'm a fan of Slytherins. Both books focused heavily on Slytherins, so they get some bonus points. 'Chamber of Secrets' does, I agree, follow a similar story to 'Sorcerer's Stone', but I think the second one was simply better executed. I don't tend to like the storyline of a (if you will) muggle learning of the magical world, and though every book has that to some extent, the first had it in spades, and though I understood why it was there, it made it hard for me to enjoy as much as the second book. Additionally, I simply preferred the the story. The sorcerer's stone inevitably didn't do anything to impact the overall story. It doesn't show up again, it was destroyed. It introduces many things that would pop up later (invisibility cloak, Norbert/a), but nothing in the core of the story ever shows up again. 'Chamber of Secrets', however, throws out a horcrux and our means of destroying them. Half-Blood Prince, well, yeah, that was almost entirely due to the Slytherins. I loved the Gaunt family, loved the extra Malfoy, loved SNAPE KILLING DUMBLEDORE (OMG!), loved Slughorn.

I've stuck with the series because, well, it was sort of my life. I loved Harry Potter as a kid, I saw all the movies, I made more than a few friends because of our mutual love of the books, and I've been a fan for nearly 12 years of my life. It's hard to break away from that. I think it's hard to deny that most of my love for it comes from the old nostalgia goggles, though. I read it now, and I can't help but notice the little clichés, the often subpar writing, and other things that keep me from saying it's just a great series. It doesn't help that I hit that stage in my life as a reader just before 'Deathly Hallows' came out (and let's face it, even if I hadn't hit that stage, it wasn't a book without its faults). Still, I'm here to stay, even if my love is routed in loyalism.

My favorite Harry Potter pairings are split into two categories: things I ship because Harry is a vessel for the reader, and I love the other half of the pairing, and things I ship because they actually make some canonical sense. For the latter, my favorite pairings are Molly/Arthur and Harry/Luna. I don't have a problem with Harry/Ginny, per se, but I think he could have done better. And though I didn't care for the movie, I think the fifth set my lingering ideas of Harry/Luna in stone. For the former, it's a toss up between Harry/Fenrir and Harry/Lucius. Because...

To answer Cassie, Harry, as a character, is pretty bland and inoffensive. I don't love him by any means. As an author, I like him because he serves his purpose very well. He is simple enough, inexperienced enough, to work as a reader avatar, so that we can live through the stories as though we are there ourselves. Yet he is still a character in his own right. Not one I care for, but a character. That is where many characters of this nature fail (*cough*Bella*cough*). He's an alright character. I care enough about him for it to not affect my ability to read the book. Except perhaps in 'Order of the Phoenix'. And I like shipping him with older male villains.

Also, my birthday - September 2nd, 1991 - is Harry's first day at Hogwarts.

Tuesday Writes Way More Than She Reads

It's true. I'm a writer, and that takes up two or three hours of my day. I still read at least a book a month (usually two to five), but I read a lot less than I did back in high school when writing was something I just did for fun. I keep up with all of my favorite authors, and reread those books that really inspired me, but honestly, I've torn through a fair few books in my life (my goodreads suggests 1,166, specifically) and there aren't really any that I'm dying to read nowadays. It's basically just new releases in long-loved series and rereads for me, although I am going to be giving George R.R. Martin another shot since Game of Thrones on HBO looks right fantastic. If I can just push through his bulky prose, I'm sure I'll enjoy it highly.

Recommending books is not that easy, because I do not like books most people like (and even the ones I do I have a few problems with), and I certainly do not like YA. As an author, I am perhaps more inclined to think of books less in terms of "favorites" and more in terms of "inspiration", as well. As such, I will simply review two books that I consider to be the most influential to my own writing, and perhaps give you a little taste of what you might expect if you ever peak at my own works.

Iron Council, by China Miéville

Iron Council is the third book in Miéville's Bas-Lag series, and everyone seems to have their favorite. They stand alone, and each explores something different - though they all stay close to New Crobuzon, the big city of Bas-Lag - this one is my favorite, however, and I will admit a lot of that comes down to the fact that Judah, one of our protagonists, can make golems out of abstract concepts, like darkness and time. Awesome.

If I have any criticism of the novel, it is simply that I don't like stories that follow multiple POVs. The story follows three characters, Judah, Cutter, and Ori. The first two are deeply intertwined (indeed, those two characters have been 'intertwined' in the past, if you catch my drift), while the third reinforces the message of the other two, while serving to flesh out the narrative. It's a dark fantasy/steampunk story, about a train that travels freely, lifting up the tracks behind it and putting them in front to move forward and away from Crobuzon, until that time when they finally decide to fight.

Miéville will not appeal to everyone. It is dark fantasy beyond the term's common use. This is legitimately dark, not just gritty, and, at times, horrific. It's adult fantasy at its finest. The prose is very heavy, perhaps the only indication that he was influenced by the fantasy greats at all. It is beautiful, though. It doesn't waste time on "flowing raven locks shadowing her frame, flowing before her sapphire eyes" or any of that. If he's going to spend a paragraph describing something, it will likely be a creature with a mucus membrane on its face and fur in its unmentionables.

Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy

This book is not a fantasy of any sort, though what it lacks in that, it makes up for by being one of the darkest books I have ever read. At face value, this is a Western with some Biblican overtones. Nothing particularly unusual, particularly from this author. But it's grim. Gratuitous violence fills the pages, and for good reason. This book wants to break your spirit. It wants you to be as down as possible, and it is only through the allusions to Christ we find in our protagonist that we can hold any hope in our hearts. Prepare to have those hopes (and your heart along with it) crushed.

The kid and the judge are the focus of this story. The Kid is our protagonist. We follow him around, but it's hard to really say that this is his story. He's too young for the frontier. There is also the Judge, a ruthless man whose crimes cannot be described in a manner appropriate for this blog. The prose is perhaps as beautiful as Miéville's, but in a very different way. Where Miéville is extravagant and perhaps, at times, gratuitous (to great effect), McCarthy excels by using precise words and cutting language. This is a powerful book, it would appeal to fans of Herman Melville (of Moby Dick) and, to an extent, any fan of Westerns who can make it through some heavy prose.



To answer the other question posed, I suppose I have my fair share of 'procrastination' tucked away, but since I've left school, I haven't had much to procrastinate about. I certainly don't do this with my writing, not anymore. The only thing I can think of is scratching myself when I have dry skin (during the transition between months), since that just makes it worse. I don't care, I'm itchy, darn it.

Who the eff is Tuesday?

Tuesday derives from Teiwaz, more popularly known as Týr or Mars. Týr, my favorite of all Norse gods, is perhaps most famous for the story of Fenrir. The wolf needed to be shackled, lest it would be a danger to the gods, yet he could break free of anything they put around him. At last, they created a shackle made of unbreakable silk, but Fenrir was suspicious and agreed only to be bound if someone put their hand in his mouth. Týr agreed, knowing that the shackles would not break, and lost his hand for it.

Oh! You wanted to know about me? Well, you can call me Alexandra, or Ophiucha, in the future. My full name is Alexandra Victoria Hollingshead, though my surname is going to be Smith come August 15th. The man who is going to simplify my name is humorously named Alexander. Ophiucha, if you cared, comes from the constellation 'snake bearer'.

I am a nineteen year old woman, born September 2nd, who at one point considered herself the typical 'woman of tomorrow'. I was in the Top 10 of my graduation class, I had excellent scores on the SAT, I got accepted to a wonderful college in Vancouver, and I had intended to become a translator of books. It took about three months for me to realize that I could not learn a foreign language, and about a year more for me to realize that, short of going for medicine or law, college was not for me. I could not learn something that could not be applied to my job. I left my university late last year.

It is odd to think about, really. Where I am now. Everything about me now. I was very different in high school. I made a promise to never marry a man with a simple surname, particularly a short one, for I pride myself in the uniqueness of 'Hollingshead' in America. I am engaged to a Smith. I certainly would not have considered forgoing a college education, even if I just got an English degree for the sake of taking up a teaching job. Yet here we are. I was proud and boisterous, and now I am cynical and shy. I could read Cassandra Clare and enjoy it for the demons, yet now I cannot read past the bad writing and overused story lines. I spend twice the time I once did online. But I don't regret it.

My tastes are more refined, my interests more secure, my opinions more concrete, and my knowledge more widespread than I ever thought it could be. I have fallen in love with a man who loves my cynicism, yet he's the sweetest man I've met. I have found a passion for cooking, and am free to spend hours in the kitchen preparing a meal. I live in a country that I love far more than the one I was born to, and though I miss certain aspects of my youth, I could never go back to the way I was.

I love many things. I love fantasy books that were written contemporaneous with or before J.R.R. Tolkien. The King of Elfland's Daughter, The Faerie Queene, The Worm Ouroboros, Titus Groan, there are just so many masterpieces that have been all but lost to time. I love cheese, my favorite being Bleu d'Auvergne. It is a strong blue cheese, but it isn't as salty and it is nearly buttery in terms of its texture. Wonderful to spread on some thinly cut baguettes. I love unreliable narrators. Vladimir Nabokov was the master at that particular facet of writing. Damn if I didn't enjoy reading Lolita through Humbert's eye. I love bad movies. Particularly zombie movies. One in particular, Wild Zero, chronicles the events of an alien invasion in Japan, which causes zombies for reasons unexplained, and the only way to defeat them is through the power of rock n' roll.

I am Alexandra Victoria Hollingshead (to-be Smith), I am a nineteen year old woman with a knack for writing and cooking who dropped out of college to find herself. I grew up in New York, in the richer part of Long Island, to a British father, New York mother, and with a brother who likes lyricism. I'm a misanthrope with a lot of friends. I am a social democrat, an atheist, a curvy girl, a novelist, a foodie, a Slytherin, and a nerdfighter. I'm a lot of things, and perhaps this year you'll learn what those things are.

I haven't had a picture of me taken in years. Not with any recent friends, not with my fiance, not with anyone or anything I care for. If I had to choose, I'd say a picture of me at three with my Nonna and a boa constrictor.

I'll be seeing you tomorrow, Carlyn.