I'm unemployed -- aren't we all. However, my British mother taught Shakespeare, I have forty years of writing stuffed under my mattress, and nothing has improved my life more, over the past ten years, than reading fan fiction. I began with Buffy slash. Satisfying, but eventually, the good stuff got a bit thin on the ground. I read a lot. A while ago, after the fourth book disappointed me, I turned to Harry Potter fan fiction. Much better. Much, much better. I have very firm ideas about the source material; the characters are iconic, although I disagree with the original writer's own reading of their ultimate worth and underlying motivations. The world is rich and satisfying, and in the orginal -- again -- far too simplistic. The plots are mush full of holes; not easy, but somehow -- she managed. This is one franchise that desperately needed, and should forever be grateful to, talented fan fiction writers.

While I'm only getting started on this forum, one of my pet obsessions is already showing. Out in the real world, Britain is transforming itself into a facimile of the world revealed in "1984". What disturbs me most, as an ex-nanny, is the continuation of the British hatred of children. This is a dark strain that has marked the history of England -- their children have been used in every form of commerce and manufacturing; it was a societal norm for unwanted children to be worked to death, and both middle-class and upper class schooling often consisted of little more than bloody beatings and molestation. Today, toddlers are kept imprisoned in homes out of fear they will be harmed, and school children are denied any adult guidance; they are turned out into the streets, to be feared by the elderly and blamed for all petty crime in an increasingly age-segregated society. Their educational process has evolved -- it is now the general action in British schools that, rather than either verbally redirect or physically interfere in a classroom or schoolyard dispute, the teacher is expected to call the police and let officers trained to deal with felons handle child discipline. It is presently a weekly occurance that a child, well-known to child protection services and with records that reveal constant medical attention, is tortured to death over a period of time, without any interference from an increasingly callous nation. Children are reviled in England, they always have been, and I cannot begin to express how much that disturbs me. End skin-creeping rant.

I'm really excited about the amount of non-response I'm expecting. Every critical word will be appreciated; nitpicking encouraged.