my dragon's cave

10:25am: SPOILER: The Sword of Gryffindor
Okay, people cleverer than me, Riddle me this: How the heck did Neville get his hands on the Sword of Gryffindor?

4:18pm: Harry Potter and the Dubious Hackery
I've just started week 4 in The Artist's Way - I'm basically offline and not supposed to be reading anything :(

And WHAT a challenge it is! I think I may crack well before a week is through.

In more fannish news...

Although I won't be reading any of it for a few days at least (see above), I'm very excited that nimori's crackfic compilation, Harry Potter and the Dubious Hackery, has been posted!

I'm responsible for Chapter 13: The Supercalafragulisticexpealladosious Spell.

Let me know what you think!

9:27pm: Pervy Valentines!


Pervvy Valentine Series by Laurel_tx

8:50pm: *hugs*smooches* dementordelta & accioslash!
I'm way behind on my f-list today so I've no idea who's gushed already, but lookit - so sweet!

I got home after a LOOOONG day at work and elsewise, and there in my mailbox were (a) a book I'd ordered myself from eBay last week, for a fraction of its market price, and (b) two envelopes stuffed with Snarry goodness!

Delta & Accio, you two are tops. Such a lovely bunch of stuff to come home to.

*feels special*

Happy Valentine's, everyone!

11:17am: Prophecy 2007... in my own backyard
If I'm reading the website right, it looks like Prophecy is being held in the Sheraton hotel that I pass through, on wintry days, to keep warm on my way from the subway to work. How funny is that?

Yes, that is all.

8:54pm: journals
It occurs to me that, considering the drama and general pain-in-the-ass'ness of the livejournal that RL people read, I might think about putting the personal stuff here instead.

Considering it. Probably won't, but the idea has merit. Damn it all. Fecking boundaries.

12:51pm: The Artist's Way + random stuffs
1. Someone on my flist (sorry, I've forgotten who) mentioned this last week. I'm hooked. Word Shoot: Spell Fast or Die!

2. I've been a fan of Julia Cameron for years, and when cluegirl's post reminded me of her course, I looked up the book from my local library. I've started The Artist's Way this week - ruefully turned down the offer of a group from some not-quite-friends on my RL journal (eeh) - but I'm really enjoying the morning pages and exercises so far. It's digging things up already. I am so ready to do this (Thanks, clue, for the rec!)

Has anyone else done The Artist's Way? (or doing it now?) Stories? Tell me. :)

3. I moved. A month ago! First thing fully unpacked: my books! Doing so, though, made me want to go back and reread old favourites. I've picked up some of my old Star Trek novels (quasi-canon legal fanfic! w00t!) and - yeesh. This stuff doesn't hold a candle to online fanfic in creativity or WRITING STYLE! If this stuff can get published, I can too. Just the act of picking up something Trek - such a favourite from simpler times - has made me so bubbly and happy. Must do more of this - things that make me happy, that make me remember the child I was, are a good. I didn't realize I had even lost her.

12:25pm: Nimori's "Harry Potter and the Dubious Hackery"
I've just realized that February is around the corner - and so is this!!! I haven't written my chapter yet, but when I do I'm going to need a beta. Anyone? (There are a few chapters still up for grabs, too, if you're more interested in that.)

Hopefully I can get it drafted soon enough that you'll have a decent amount of time for turnaround. And it won't be long - the requirement is 500 words minimum, and I really (*reallyreally*) don't intend to go much beyond a thousand this time, if that.

Pleasse?

ETA: If you're wondering about pairings and such - I have no idea yet. I'll hopefully be able to tell you in a couple of days ;)

10:22pm: Help us write Book 7!
I am too tired to be clear, but check out what funness I just signed up to help write!

nimori's still looking for a few more writers to take chapters...

6:29pm: memeism
Gacked from cluegirl and, like her, I am a little surprised at how accurate this is... if you squint just a leetle ;)

1:01am: My auld_lang_snape NY's drabbles
As per the auld_lang_snape rules, 13 drabbles/ficlets written in under 3 hours on New Year's eve! Some are funny, some mushy & sentimental, some veering towards porny, some are in really bad taste, and some are crack-o-riffic.

My best advice: Read the first 7. (I stuck the weaker ones at the end, for convenience.)

( Go Fish ) Snape gen, 100 words, humour

( Lickbomb? ) Harry/Krum (almost), 270 words, humour/angst/romance?

( Her-my-own-ninny! ) Hermione/Ron, 100 words, humour/romance

( Moon ) Ron/Luna, 100 words, humour/romance

( Bean Theory ) Luna/Ginny, 100 words, humour/pron

( Junior ) Ginny/Harry, 100 words (warning for mpreg joke), humour/romance

( Sick Bastard ) Harry/Draco, 100 words, humour/romance

( Animagi Class ) Draco/Hermione, 100 words, humour/romance

( Smack ) Hermione/bad music, 100 words, humour/snark

( Bored ) Harry/Draco, 100 words, ?/pron

( Catching the Train ) Draco/Harry, 100 words, humour/pron

( Not Gay ) Ron(/Harry), 150 words, angst/humour

( Punch Drunk Dancing ) Dumbledore/McGonagall (if you squint - or maybe Ron's just drunk), 112 words, humour/crackfic

Apparently I think I'm funny tonight. Look at all my attempts at humour! And pron!

So? Whaddaya think?

12:48pm: Resolutions meme
I got a lovely one!

3:54pm: Yuletide!
I've got a wad of bookmarks thanks to everybody's holiday reccs, but I'm having way too much fun playing around on Yuletide to get to most of them!

So far, I've started on the list, sorted by fandom, and I'm down to somewhere in the F's, reading 'most everything I know well enough to enjoy. And there's a heck of a lot that I don't even recognize! (Hitting the random selection a few times got me half a dozen stories from fandoms I've never heard of.)

A few highlights...

Narnia: Further Up and Further In Every Narnia story on the list was good, but of all of them, this one rang the most true for me of the way C.S. Lewis wrote. Some of the others are lovely too, but the best are far too angsty for my childhood Narnia :) This one is simply beautiful.

Diane Duane's Tale of the Five: A to Z The cutest, sweetest little Lorn/Herewiss fic ever! (It helps that I adore these books - I named my LJ after one of the characters, didn't I? - and that I've never seen fanfic in this universe before. Score!) Herewiss is looking for Sunspark. Lorn is searching the royal libraries for a book that Segnbora mentioned. But then he starts alphabetizing...

10 Things I Hate About You and Bend It Like Beckham. It's more the fact of these two being ON the list, than the particular stories, that has me so delighted. Some enterprising writer contributed a crossover between the two. The concept alone had me in stitches. (Not a recc, precisely.)

8:27pm: 3 unrelated RECS: The Love of a Good Wizard, Cookie Wars, & slasher cats
1. Because I think I forgot to mention this one before...

The awesome and amazing sweetsorcery dazzled me yet again, several months ago, by writing a Harry/Voldemort romance that I actually believe in.

The story: The 30-chapter epic The Love of a Good Wizard (sweetsorcery's own journal is friendslocked, so the link here goes to the first chapter in an open community).
Pairings: Harry/Tom (pre-Voldemort), Pansy/Minerva
Summary: History of Magic has something to teach after all, and two resourceful students decide that the key to having any future at all lies in the past, and in Tom Riddle's heart. Assuming he has one.

From the first chapter, this fic wrapped me up in its universe and wouldn't let me go.

"And to this day," droned Binns, "it is acknowledged in our world that had he not fallen in love with the kind, self-sacrificing witch Griselda Hughes, Dante Garibaldi would have become the most powerful dark wizard of the Middle Ages." From that moment on, Pansy and Harry are obsessed with - and dubiously cooperating on - a plan to save the world from Voldemort's rise to power. By going back in time. To make Tom Marvolo Riddle fall in love with Pansy so she can save him from himself. Sound plausible yet? The story is angsty, sappy, funny, fluffy, and touching all at once, with a confusedly adorable Harry, a lonely but brilliant Tom, a loveable and only slightly Mary-Sue'd Pansy, and a Minerva that any McGonagall fan would love to get to know. Well worth checking out!

2. More recently, in a kitchen far, far away...

I am in awe at tartanshell's illustrated Cookie Star Wars. SO FUNNY! Witness her brilliance here:
Episode IV: A New Cookie
Episode V: The Cookie Strikes Back
Episode VI: Return of the Cookie

3. Finally, far less funny but still cute: Slasher Cats

4:50pm: meh - drabble
I think I'm getting warmed up for new year's. I'm SO keen to write right now!

characters: Ginny
pairing: HP/GW (past), gen in premise
set in: late October, Year 7 to the trio; Ginny's Year 6
summary: Ginny muses on her relationship with Harry and how things have changed. She's not who she used to be.
words: 101

( She had always thought she knew what she wanted... )

10:02pm: hee! Awesome
How to get a job as a Stormtrooper.

Also - check out mctabby's latest challenge: "Any D/H pairing in 25 words or fewer". I just wrote Dumbledore/Helga Hufflepuff's cup comment smut. (Eeeewww.)

Let's agree to pass it off as warming up my drabble muscles for auld_lang_snape.

10:24pm: ReviewSQUEEEE!
I'm new enough to writing in fandom that anything remotely like a review of something I wrote is still exciting to me.

I was linking my updated profile page to both postings of my snarry_games fic, when I realized that I had reviews (4, to be exact) for Shadow of our Forefathers on Walking the Plank. SQUEEEE!! I realize that fandom is naturally biased toward positive reviews, but still. I'm thrilled! :D

9:51pm: New Year's drabble fest OPENING ANNOUNCEMENT!
What are you doing for New Year’s?

I’ve spent more than a few New Year’s eves wishing that I knew where the party was, or sitting by the phone hoping some last minute plan would pull through. Not this year!

summerborn and I are hosting a brand new drabble event for Harry Potter fandom this New Year’s eve!

Please join us at auld_lang_snape to find out more about the fest and to sign up. The community is now open to be joined and/or friended - we’ll be making future announcements there as New Year’s approaches, and we’re hoping to see a lot of activity as December 31 looms nearer.

Want a fun chance to get some quick writing done and stretch your creative muscles?
Got nothing better to do on New Year’s eve?
Please visit the auld_lang_snape community info or check out our FAQs if you’re interested in finding out more!

Hoping to see you there,

~ hasaidreamer

PS Please help us get the word out by posting this or mention of the community in your journal, or anywhere you think folks might be interested. We’d like to see as many people involved as possible. Thanks for your support!

9:02pm: REC: Three Galleons (HG/SS/RL)
It seems odd, even to me, that after two months off LJ and then another two of reading but not recc'ing, I'm choosing to rec this. I suppose that oddness is exactly why: it's such an odd fic, and I am enjoying it so richly for just that. Finding myself laughing uproariously at the excerpt below didn't do any harm, either.

I don't like useless!Harry, but other than that one niggling detail this fic is quite perfect. Set two years after the war, it's H/C twice over: first Severus "comforting" Hermione, then the two of them doing the same for a much more traumatised Remus. I'm not a fan of hurt-comfort, yet this in this story it is simply, beautiful done. The 3rd part drags a little but the final part is well worth it (and has me shouting with laughter again). The sex is very real and hot. Read!

The story in question is Three Galleons by sam_storyteller, who I'd never read before.
Pairing: HG/SS and HG/SS/RL
Summary: After the war, Hermione has settled into a quiet if unorthodox life with Severus - until a small problem in the form of a refugee spy calls for an even more unorthodox solution. (4 parts)

Excerpt: "If you must weep, be useful," he ordered, handing her a wide wooden salad bowl. She stared at it. "Sit! Sit! Don't stand there like a fountain. Into the bowl," he added, tipping it up so that her tears landed in the broad bottom. She sat obediently and sniffled.

"You will stop now, just to spite me," he muttered, but she didn't stop; the tears rolled down without any willingness or assistance on her part, splashing into the bowl. He went to the shelves and began taking down paper-wrapped packets, laying them in front of her along with a brass scale and a wooden spoon.

"You will crush the aconite into the bowl until a thick paste is made," he said, "adding more when it becomes too wet. I trust you can at least manage that simple task?"

She nodded, wiping her nose.

"Very well. I suppose it's too much to hope that you're a virgin?"

Hermione, who had grasped what he was about now, shook her head morosely.

"I suppose Weasley's to blame for that -- the bowl!" he ordered, as she began crying anew. He left her sobbing in his storeroom and disappeared through the door, where she heard him haranguing everyone who dared approach.

9:05pm: Drarry Sparrington Round Robin
Fic fun found thanks to a helpful comment from fabu: For pir8fancier's birthday... a Sparrington round-sparrow! - er, round-robin, that is.

I'm new enough to PotC fandon that I don't really know the writers involved, but 'tis fun. Drop by if you're so inclined.

Nota bene: This is mainly posted as a note to me, so I can find it and watch and the story evolves. Enjoy!

ETA: And because I'm clearly haplessly silly when I'm tired, here's the link I forgot to include. :D

11:11pm: New Year's drabble fest!
Idea me, please?

summerborn and I have been bouncing around the idea of a New Year's eve drabbles-fest, sort of on a nanowrimo scheme (write lots, in a short time period) for a couple of weeks now. We've got most of the info and FAQs drafted, but we're desperate for a good name for the thing!

New Year's eve, coincidentally, is "Voldy Day" - Tom Riddle was "born" eighty years ago, on December 31, 1936.

Ideas for names for the drabble fest? Reply here or at summerborn's post: http://summerborn.livejournal.com/63838.html

4:48pm: Apology
I know I'm hardly networked within fandom, but I feel I owe an explanation to the (few?) people who may be wondering where I've disappeared to.

It's sad but true: I seem to be a one-LJ-blog girl. Some big stuff came up in my life - family stuff, place-of-residence stuff, relationship stuff (that stuff good!!) - and I started posting again on my RL blog and reconnecting with the friends on that blog whom I'd been ignoring - and it was just too much for me to keep up with 2 f-lists at one time. I think I haven't signed in on this blog in over a month now.

So. I'm alive, I'm doing well, things are madly busy. I'm moving, sort of, for the second time this month. I have a boyfriend who is amazing. I'm still writing, thought it's mainly work-related. I'm looking forward to unleashing my creative side in November during NaNoWriMo, and in the meantime I think I'm storing up all those creative juices so I can flood the page with them, come November first.

I do tend to fall in and out of fandom - don't un-friend me, count on it that I will be back.

So - that's where I've gone. Love to you all and I hopefully will be back in contact again soon.

ETA: I've just started skimming my recent f-list... and *sigh*. I've missed you guys.

1:09pm: Empowerment... conclusions of an inner debate
I've been thinking about the article that cluegirl posted last week about Lumos. There was one line in it that's been niggling at me ever since I saw it - [the bit about Hermione/Snape representing empowerment] ETA: Okay, obviously Clue wasn't the one who posted it. I'm so behind on my f-list I can't remember where or when it was. Anybody got a link so I can get the quote right?

It's been bothering me - because my instinctual response is to say that she's right, that there's nothing empowering about a 20-year-old woman engaging in a complex and often perverse sexual relationship with a man twice her age. And yet, and yet... there's something here that I know that my logic is missing, because I do feel empowered by fandom/fanfic.

I think - perhaps - the empowerment in question is not that of the characters, but of the authors and readers of these slightly deviant works of fanfiction. We're out here in a fun, vibrant, and for the most part very accepting community which allows and enables us to EXPRESS the sexual fears, desires and imaginings that women have for so long been told not to FEEL, THINK, express, and certainly not to act on!! That's what's amazing about fandom - whether you're one of the long-time creators of this little online universe we inhabit, or just a dabbler like me, there's so much EXPRESSION of things we're not allowed or only recently allowed to expose.

Against my so-called better judgement and the morals and mores that would have been ingrained in me if I listened a litte better and thought a little less, I do find it empowering. Isn't this a marvellous game?

Comments?

12:42am: Ack!
I am throwing myself an (informal, no gifts required, pay-for-yourself) birthday party!! At a local Thai restaurant. In two weeks. Inviting people from about four different social circles.

The idea came to me yesterday; I started making up invite list today; suggested it to my sis (who wanted to throw me a surprise party last year but didn't dare) tonight; and then drafted and hit the send button and zomg I JUST SENT OUT INVITES!!!

Yes, I'm having a semi-unstable day today. Some of my best accomplishments come from events spawned by semi-unhinged days.

We'll see what happens from here.

heeehee! Looking forward to this. *jumps up and down excitedly*

6:26pm: Ah, the weekend has passed...
And to think I thought I'd have trouble getting through this (((restful))) weekend!

I was so worried that the week would be too long. Now I'm clinging to the edge of Sunday, waffling in the face of only-one-more-day until I'm back to something vaguely resembling a daily grind, and I'm laughing at my own vagaries of temperment... not to mention the really long words I'm suddenly using.

Oy! I have so much to do! (Now that's more like it, she told herself smugly.)