Greetings!

I'm a 28-year-old Texan who has been reading and enjoying Harry Potter fan fiction ever since I discovered it a year or so ago. I was bored by most of Deathly Hallows and thought that the Horcrux mechanic was overdone and not very well thought out (example: If Harry's scar truly was a Horcrux, then how did it survive inside his body alongside his mother's protection? For that matter, if said protection existed in his blood, then Voldemort should've died in agony in the graveyard after the Third Task.) I, like many Harry Potter fans, was disappointed by the epilogue and was relieved to find stories that changed it to how I feel the story should've gone. After reading hundreds of stories I finally took the plunge and began writing my own, although not all of them will see publication on this site.

Most of my stories will be Harry/Hermione, as that is the pairing I feel made the most sense from canon. I have nothing against Ginny, but I don't think her character was developed enough in canon to balance with Harry. I had been rooting for Harry and Hermione since book one, so it confused and saddened me when a minor character was suddenly elevated to the main love interest while the leading lady was relegated to the sidelines and paired with the secondary hero. It felt like an attempt at a subversion of the common romance archetype, but I feel that it missed the mark. As it is, Hermione is my favorite female character and none of my stories will pair her with anybody but Harry, and I despise the Hermione/Ron pairing, and Ron in general for that matter. My stories will sometimes have Harry and Hermione joined by other women, but not in a smutty way. I know that such relationships aren't realistic, but neither is the world in which I'm writing. The truth is that from my reading of fan fiction I've grown quite attached to secondary female characters such as Luna, Daphne Greengrass, Tonks, Fleur, Gabrielle, etc. Unfortunately, there is a distinct lack of decent blokes to pair them with, with the exception of Neville. (I never really bought into the Remus/Tonks pairing, but it's not a big sticking point for me.) I have ideas for stories where Harry becomes romantically involved with each of these women, and maybe a couple that weren't mentioned. That being said, not all of my stories will feature multiships, and I will try to avoid inserting too many Mary Sues into my stories if I can help it.

I'm not sure what qualifies as character bashing, but I'm pretty sure most of my stories will contain at least a little bashing here and there. For one thing, I'm not a good enough writer to make subtle changes to canon and maintain the characterization set down by the original author, so my characters will drift closer to the extremes of the personality spectrum, i.e. my heroes will be lighter and my villains/buttmonkeys will be darker/dumber. Another reason for this is that, like all of us, I have my personal favorite and least favorite characters and those opinions will reflect in my writing. One of the beautiful things about fan fiction is that if you come across something in a story that you don't like, you can easily move on to another story that better suits your tastes.