Allow me to introduce myself: I am a 23-year-old college student from Washington, DC. My primary interest in writing is Harry Potter and my own original fictions, but I'm interested in just about any well-written science fiction and fantasy.

As far as ships go, the majority of fanfiction is, as far as I'm concerned, made up of extremely improbable ships. The canon Harry/Ginny I have no problem with so long as it's well-written. The canon Ron/Hermione I have a problem with...Ron is not mature enough--yet--to have a meaningful and long-lasting relationship with Hermione. Either Ron needs to grow up a great deal (and gain some experience in tact) or it hasn't an elf's chance in the Demonweb Pits of surviving. Remus/Tonks is another one that I only have a slight problem with. My EWWW factor is canceled by how much longer wizards and witches live than Muggles, so age difference doesn't matter to me. The canon of Lily/James I'm perfectly happy with but don't really read MWPP era fic so I don't care either.

Now, to the popular non-canon ships. Harry/Hermione I have no problems with...so long as it's well-written and they provide an explanation for why he's not with Ginny if it's post-HBP. Harry/Luna I have no problems with, so long as it's not love at umpteenth sight. If you can actually develop them into a relationship, I like it. Harry/Draco makes me go NO! I try to avoid homophobia, but slash gives me a very minor squick factor that raises my quality standards. On top of that, sorry folks, but as far as I can tell, Harry ain't gay. Draco maybe, Harry, no. Even if he were gay, and Draco were gay, somehow I doubt that archrivals would get together. I'm not discounting the possibility, but it's unlikely. Oh, and all those people who write them being magically bound together into a forced relationship? Well, that's what is known among certain people as a deus ex machina: God from the machine, or basically you wrote in that thing just to have an excuse for doing something. For another example: a soap opera loses a cast member and needs to kill the character, so the character randomly gets hit by lightning. If you have to do it, disguise it. It's frowned upon in writing circles to be blatant. Gandalf is a great example of a well-disguised but really cool deus ex machina, and Tolkein is awesome.

From Harry/Draco we now go to Harry/Snape, Harry/Voldemort and all the other damn near impossible slash ships. Sometimes I think you guys just write them to see if you can find anything that hasn't been written already. Trust me. It has. To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, most writers are FAILED writers. That especially includes fanfic authors, people.

Other popular ones are Ron/Luna, Neville/Luna, and Draco/Ginny. I can take all of those. You see, Luna comes off quite well with almost anyone. She's just that cool so long as you actually write Luna and not some bimbo who happens to be blonde and be named Luna Lovegood. And Ginny's the only non-Slytherin who could handle Draco. He'll never de-pureblood enough to go for Hermione, sorry.

Here are the slash and femslash ships I percieve as easily possible. First, Remus/Sirius. Yes, I believe it possible. Likely? Make it believable and write it up to my slightly het-biased standards, and I'll read it. Next, Trio-fic that's a true trio. Harry/Ron/Hermione? Totally believable. It solves a great number of problems and allows some nice Ginny-bashing. A clarification: I like bashing every character so long as it's not the point of the story (parodies excluded) because they all have their glaring faults. That's also why I like the Potterverse so much, because the characters are real. Anyways, more slash that I can take: Ginny/Hermione or Ginny/Luna (or either of those in a trio with Harry). Makes sense to me. Not much, granted, but some, enough to be written. Lastly, Parvati/Lavender makes sense as a pairing but isn't something I'd bother to read because they're not important characters to me.

Now to odd or squick fics. The Giant Squid can just stay lonely, dammit! Fawkes no except if done with a phoenix animagus, and it better be funny. Dumbledore/McGonagall: if you insist, fine, but I don't want to know the details, thank you. Same goes for Dumbledore/(any woman of the appropriate age) or McGonagall/(any man of the appropriate age). Not outside their generations, please, and neither of them comes off as anything but totally heterosexual to me. Remus/Ginny squicks me but I can take it. Remus/Hermione and Snape/Hermione are somewhat better. Snape/Ginny is very very bad. Snape/Lily frightens me. Slughorn, Flitwick, and the rest of that lot can either get married to OC #37102523432 or go take long showers. For that matter, Snape/(just about anyone) frightens me. The only non-Death-Eater I've read him with that somehow incredibly worked was Hermione and I don't understand why it didn't scare me. Harry/Tonks: either adjust her age or bash Molly Weasley. If you don't, it won't work. Sorry. Harry/Bellatrix? That she-was-mind-controlled thing is another one of those deus ex machina things I mentioned. It's slightly easier than Draco is a veela/vampire/demon/everything to disguise, I might add. Also, either Harry goes Dark, Bella goes Light, or they meet in between. Do something about her husband. Lastly, she's about twice his age, so eww and fix that somehow, hopefully disguising that deus ex machina too. Same goes for Narcissa, people. And any OCs involved with anyone had better not be Mary Sues. They can be leaning that way, but they can't be outright Mary Sues. And don't use Mary Sues or Gary Stus as your deus ex machina. That is rather hypocritcal of me, as Alexander Smith is one of my pseudonyms, but that's why none of my actual fiction is continued: I'm trying to make him a real character who is a different person than me, although I still want to use him. To use Tolkein again, Gandalf was his deus ex machina, but I'm pretty sure that Sam was his Gary Stu.

Harry/(Random but real female his age) is acceptable. So long as you don't take that person's near lack of defined personality and turn them into a Mary Sue. A note on Pansy: the only one I've found that I like is Jeconais' White Knight, Grey Queen version.

If I've missed anything, this was written at 5 in the morning when I was too tired to sleep and really bored.

I support Sarinileni and I refuse to join the Witch Hunt. I support the Great Break.

I am a member of Jeconais' Yahoo Group and www.fanficauthors.net