13 replies to this topic

[TheForgottenMuse]

. . . this is me . . .

Hello! I'm The Forgotten Muse, but you can also call me Nichole, seeing as that is my given name. I live in the good ol' US of A and I'm starting my freshman year of college soon (eek!). I own over 50 pairs of shoes. I've never had a cat or dog, but I really love my beta fish Sven and my cactus Kristoff. I like to paint my nails and do it all too often. I love to read but hate being told to read something by school. I'm deathly afraid of spiders.

. . . how it happened . . .

When I started reading Harry Potter, I was about to go on a three day school trip to Chicago. I wanted something long and substantial to read on the drive there. I didn't expect to fall in love At the time, only the first five books were out and I needed more while I waited for HBP to hit shelves. One of my best friends suggested fanfiction, specifically in the form of HPFF. And I've been here ever since.

Obviously, I haven't been around that long as The Forgotten Muse. Before, I was known as Lady Prongs, named such for my love of James Potter. At that time, I wrote mainly James/Lily fics. And by "wrote" I mean that I had about six WIPs with only one or two chapters each. I was that person - the one that started tons of stories that never made it past three chapters.

. . . what i write . . .

I like to think that my current repertoire spans a lot farther than when I was Lady Prongs. My favorite time period is still the Marauders, but I also enjoy the newer characters of the Next Generation as well. However, I also have one-shots that take place Pre-Hogwarts, Hogwarts, and Post-Hogwarts. To fully view my stories and to (gasp!) read them, click here. (The link itself is 12+, but stories are rated up to Mature).

. . . finally . . .

Thanks ever so much for clicking over to this page! It means a lot to me. So, ask away! I'll do my best to answer

[LiveLaughLoveHarryPotter]

Dude. This part, "I've never had a cat or dog, but I really love my beta fish Sven and my cactus Kristoff. I like to paint my nails and do it all too often. I love to read but hate being told to read something by school. I'm deathly afraid of spiders." was completely me. I've done my nails three times in the past four days, and am planning on doing it tonight, spiders terrify me, and reading is amazing other than when told to. Well, I have a cat, and have never had a cactus, and I WANT a dog, so that's not the same as me, but still really interesting to read about.

By the way, you're beta fish is totally pretty. I love those fish. Always have.

[TheForgottenMuse]

Thanks! And - holy crap! - Mulan was like my favorite movie when I was a kid! I feel like we were separated at birth or something! Honestly, my current nail polish obsession is this gem. Best buy I've ever made. On light polish it makes your nails look like opals, and on dark it's super funky.

And thanks I rather think Sven is quite the looker myself. You can't tell on the picture but he looks almost like an oil slick because he has tones of red and blue and green in him as well. One of my friends said that he looks like a dementor!

Edited by TheForgottenMuse, 07 September 2011 - 05:23 AM.

[LiveLaughLoveHarryPotter]

I love Mulan, Pocohontas, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast. I love them all.

My nails look terrible today. I was going to splatter paint them today, but I don't think I could handle the smell of the polish or the remover because I'm sick right now. They're bright pink with diagonal white, black, and silver stripes.

I have this awesome scented nail polish that I love. There's strawberry and watermellon scented, and I adore them both.

Sven sounds awesome.

[TheForgottenMuse]

Scented nail polish?! I must get! I hate the smell of it, so it would be utterly perfect.

Also, I'm very impressed with how often you paint your nails. I pretty much go until it starts chipping badly before redoing mine. Mainly because the remover makes me nauseous. :S

Yup, I love all those movies along with The Lion King, Sleeping Beauty, and the new Princess and the Frog (although I was quite upset at first that it did not follow the plot of E. D. Baker's book, which was my favorite as a child). But The Lion King is my all-time favorite. When I was little, my room was Lion King themed and I had all the stuff animals

[LiveLaughLoveHarryPotter]

It's amazing. I don't usually paint my nails three times in a weekend, even on a four-day weekend. Right now they're black and white. One of my friends said they were kind of Cruella de Vil-esque. I didn't even notice until she pointed that out. I didn't do a good job though.

If I absolutely had to choose a favorite, it would be the Lion King. I love it so much. I never really liked Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, I always thought they were boring. Sorry. :/ And by the way, I would LOVE to have a Lion King themed room. That would be amazing.

[TheForgottenMuse]

I'm trying to decided what to do next with my nails. Maybe my school's colors since I have move in next week? I'll figure it out

Ugh. Yes. I did not like Snow White at all. People say it's great but I just didn't care for it. Actually, come to think of it, I didn't really like the typical Disney princesses that much. They didn't have enough nerve. Also, it's not Disney, but I LOVED Anastasia.

[LiveLaughLoveHarryPotter]

My best friend will kill me if I change them too soon. She said it's hard to get used to me changing them all the time. Next time I do them, I'm going to do either splatter paint or newspaper print. They're really cool.

I agree. My favorites were like Little Mermaid, Mulan, Pocohontas, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin..... Not the usual damsel in distress type thing, where the princess NEEDS the prince to save her. I was never into that sort of thing.

[TheForgottenMuse]

Newspaper print?! How does that work? I'm obsessed with the idea of having words as patterns on fabric, so this would be perfect.

For sure. I also didn't like the stories where the prince is some guy with a stick up his butt that the girl doesn't even know, but falls in love with. Hence, me not liking Cinderella and Snow White. Which is quite similar to how much it annoys me in books where the female main character says she "loves" the romantic interest after two days of knowing the guy. No. That's not how it works.

[LiveLaughLoveHarryPotter]

I'll PM you the link to the tutorial I found.

And I agree. I used to love Cinderella, but now I think it's really degrading to women, you know? I like Beauty and the Beast because Belle has to save the Beast, right? And in Aladdin, Jasmine WILL NOT marry someone her father chooses, because she is her own person. I think that goes a lot farther than a damsel in distress story.

[MissMuggle]

Hi! So I absolutely love Immaculate and wanted to ask you a few questions
1) When are you updating Immaculate?
2) Where did you get your inspiration for Immaculate?
3) What is your favorite HP book?
4) What is your favorite HP movie?

[TheForgottenMuse]

Oh yes! By all means!
1) I'm not quite sure when Immaculate will be updated. I'm not afraid to admit that I have been severely neglecting writing anything for it lately. But, I'll be sure to get on it again now.
2) Hmmm. That's a hard one. I'm unable to exactly pinpoint what it was and I rather think that there were several factors to it. One of the main ones was the model that I use for all my images of Victoire, Jessica Stam. For me, she's the embodiment of Victoire. Then there was something about Fleur probably milking her children's beauty for all it was worth. Also,the fact that I wanted to write something that was a Teddy/Victoire and I had some perfect scenes in mind. Perhaps a bit too much of America's Next Top Model too XD
3) Favorite book, eh? For awhile I've maintained that I loved the Order of the Phoenix more than any other because of the insight provided about the Marauders. But, of course, I find them all delightful
4) Movies are far more difficult. In terms of closeness to the book, Chamber of Secrets. In utter enjoyability and acting and everything else, Deathly Hallows Part II. I really felt like all the actors gave it 110% and I was utterly blown away by how fantastically Helena Bonham Carter was able to match her acting style to Emma Watson's when Hermione was disguised as Bellatrix with the Polyjuice Potion when they were about to break into Gringotts.

Thanks, darlin'. And you've made me realize I need to get working on Immaculate again!

[Wistful]

Demented was such a good read.

I've got to ask, what make you think of it-?

[TheForgottenMuse]

Oooooh. Good question. I have been asked this before, but it was strictly in reviews and I absolutely DO NOT expect you to click through all of my reviews to find the answer.

I know that the site lists Demented as first being published in 2009. I think it was about a year or two before that when I came up with the idea. I was just sitting in my room, rereading the PoA for what must have been the gazillionth time. I was at the part where the dementors are first introduced and, for the first time, I really sat back and thought about them. I wondered briefly on how they actually were able to reproduce, because I don't think JKR really specified...except to say that all the doom and gloom in later books was partially caused by the dementors breeding. So I got to thinking about what would happen if someone was half dementor. Fluer was part Veela...and I'd read other stories about characters being half fay or vampire. And so my little story about Elaina Marshelle was born.

For a while, I put off actually posting anything about it. I was quite attatched to this plot and didn't want it to be like all the other things I had done up until that point - good ideas, but dying off after about three chapters. I decided that I wasn't going to breathe a word about this project until I had finished the story. But, once I hit about eight hand written chapters in a series of stupid little notebooks I took everywhere with me, I wanted to share this with HPFF. I figured that I was in deep and needed to get it out there.

But then came another problem. At this point, I was still just known as Lady Prongs. I didn't mind being that, but I associated it with the silly James/Lily "novellas" that I always seemed to start but never finish. I knew that this was a new step in my writing and had to be dealt with appropriately. So I came up with my new name of The Forgotten Muse, playing on my love of mythology. Next thing I know, I'm typing up dusty old words and giving them new life, and making chapter images of my characters....not to mention an entire slew of different banners and models as Elaina until I found one that I like perfectly (the one that's up now).

Alas! My troubles are never over though! As it had been a few years since I had written the earliest chapters when I posted, I quickly found that they were juvinile and not entirely believable, thanks to the helpfulness of some reviewers. And they were quite right. Remus wouldn't have punched James. That's just out of character. And the Marauders would not have been all hunky dory with Elaina right off the bat. Some things needed to change.

So, from then on, as I typed each chapter up, it was as though I were writing it twice. I had to go through with a more critical mind and tweak what I had once thought were good ideas. And though I'd only written up to the eighth chapter or so at the time, I'd already planned far beyond where we are currently, going on Chapter 13.

Now, here's another twist to my tale. As you may have read in Chapter 12, I recently took a trip to Greece to study abroad for nearly two months. It was awesome...except for the last day. Because not only did I have to say goodbye to the country I'd come to love so dearly, but I also spilled peach juice all over my laptop. My laptop that has EVERYTHING on it. All the writing I did in Greece, which was quite a fair amount...I'd nearly finished Chapter 13 of Demented and part of Chapter 14. Not to mention that I started a new one-shot and added on to another. I even started writing some original things. AND. All of my pictures from Greece (luckily, I had posted most of them to Facebook already). So now I don't have anything on my laptop that won't even turn on. I'm going to have it fixed with in the next day or so, and I guess that's when we'll see if I lost everything or not.

Right now, I refuse to try and rewrite anything that I had on my computer in hopes that it's still there. Almost like, if I don't start over, it'll be like it never even happened. Hah. One can hope.

Wow. I really trailed off from the original question there. Eh. I'm sorry, but I can't find it in myself to care too much. I feel like it's time that the full story got out there. Enjoy! And I hope to have more of Demented up soon!