Hello!

I've been reading fan fiction on/off for over ten years (I started back in the nineties with X-Files fan fiction), but I'm ashamed to say I was a silent lurker until the fall 2012, when I decided it was about time I started to at least type some reviews. Mostly, I was kind of shy considering English isn't my native language. Anyway, you know what? I discovered it was actually a lot more fun to review and interact with authors! I read a lot more fanfics ever since. :D

I've read many different categories of fan fiction over the years (books, movies, television shows, cartoons, games, animes and mangas) but I've always had a fondness for Harry Potter fan fics, ever since the third book came out, which is when I got introduced to the Potterverse. My OTP is Snamione (or Sevmione or Snanger, as it is sometimes said), as it has been since the very first time I got introduced to this amazing world, so that's why those are the fics you'll mostly find in my favorites. I sometimes read Lumione or Dramione, but I don't like Tomione, even though I agree Riddle's character can have a lot of depth. I just feel Tom is just too much of a psychopath to really feel love for someone else. I think Hermione is better off with a Slytherin, but any pairing for Hermione really is better than canon. I mean, Ron Weasley is the worse pairing ever for Hermione, I don't understand how JK could think that it was a good idea (or anyone really). Plus it was utterly predictable. And Hermione would either end up killing Ron or dying of boredom with him, or her spirits would be crushed little by little by all his insensitive remarks and laziness, and expectations that she must be like his mother, while her dreams are buried beneath his needs. I sincerely believe that. Ron is better off as some kind of friend or 'brother', at least for Hermione's sake. :o)

I'd be offering to beta-read if it wasn't for the fact that English isn't my native language, but I ended up beta-reading sometimes anyway by simply exchanging PMs with authors. So I might miss a lot of grammar or spelling mistakes, or punctuation mistakes (believe it or not, I did enough English in high school and college to know that the rules for punctuation are actually different in English compared to French, my native language). What I can do is help translate some parts in French, and I usually try to leave thoughtful reviews. When I started beta-reading, it was because I tended to write a lot of dunderheaded comments between the lines of the chapter I had received. Weirdly enough, I don't like to read French fan fiction of Harry Potter. I did read the books in French once (and I read them in English many times), but I thought that it lost a lot in translation. Plus the names often change in French, and I sometimes end up confused. And I also think that changing Severus' last name was a crime (they did that in the French version!).

I don't like people who leave hurtful reviews or suddenly say they'll stop reading a story because of the way it went. If you want to stop reading it, it's quite alright to do so, but don't say it. And disparaging comments without any constructive criticism suck, especially if you don't have the guts to actually post a fan fiction. Keep them to yourself. If you don't, you're discouraging authors from posting, and if authors don't post their stories, we won't have any fanfic to read. And in my books, that the worse thing that could happen.

Cheers!

-bluefirefly ;P

Update March 2016: Well, still alive, though life's getting in the way of fanfiction. Again. Grrr...

Addendum: I want to thank the following authors for whom I used to beta-read (please go check out their work if you have a moment!): FalconLux, StrangerEmotion, ChristinaFay and Ataraxie!

I also want to thank all of you guys who looked at my little profile since I've created it. I'm quite flattered by the list of all the countries from which all of you came from:

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and United States.