Hullo All

To start off with, a quick note on the name of the blog.

'Never separate a simple man from his cheese' is a bulgarian proverb. I have no idea whatsoever with regard to its meaning or provenance, but it sounds interesting enough.

I'll be blogging on pretty much whatever takes my fancy at the time of writing, and today it's the glory of fanfiction.net

Fanfiction is a wonderful website. It allows you to write your own work, using the premise which an author has already thought of, thus making your life far easier, because let's face it, it's easier to write when someone's already thought of most of the plot developments.

But fanfiction is marvellous for another reason: Harry Potter is beating Twilight.

I don't necessarily know your views on the matter, but I thoroughly dislike the Twilight series. It just lacks that certain something that makes good books good. In short, they're stunningly mediochre.

Harry Potter - although the books started to go downhill after about the 3rd book because J K Rowling decided to actually give the characters personalities, which was unfortunate, because that's when the teen angst started - has that certain something. But yet for the current generation of preteens, Twilight is in some cases the only thing they'll read. Or watch. Or dress in. Or write on. Because there's a rather intense merchandise market as well. Huzzah for capitalism.

Regardless of this, Harry potter has 447 000+ stories, whilst Twilight languishes at 136 000+, not includign crossover stories or stories concerning themselves with the movies.

All I can say is thank heavens. Fanfiction is one of the last facets of the internet unsullied by 'Twi-hards' as they are called.

One of the other last bastions of resistance is the Darkside forum (http://www.freewebs.com/thedarksidecometh/index.htm) which allows members to vent their spleen regarding the proliferation of Twilight in the world around us. I rather like the dark side. I admire their struggle. And I really must applaud them for the fact that they managed to inspire such an abusive letter from Stephenie Meyer's seemingly rather angry 'webmaster', Seth.

Keep up the good work.