First and foremost, a heartfelt thank you to everyone who bid on my offerings at livelongmarry. *loves you all*

More joys and glee:

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ravenna_c_tan, organizer extraordinaire, has posted additional details on how to get to Quimby's. It is on Wednesday night and it is open to the public. You do not have to be registered for Terminus to attend this reading. There will be fabulous prizes (some of which are on my "To Make As Soon As Work Stops Eating Me Alive" list). ETA: Yet more info from the store's blog.

I have received my Quidditch team assignment: I will be playing for Betas Anonymous Punctuation Pixies. (There are least three readers of this journal now laughing their sweet arses off at the sheer appropriateness of this assignment.)

Via tjwritter: Tears of the Phoenix is hosting a gathering at the conference, Saturday night. Copying and pasting the description from the Intersections page:

Tears of the Phoenix Presents "The Little Room"
RSVP: Tamela at littleroom_intersection@terminus2008.org
Date: Saturday, August 9, 2008
Time: 8 p.m. - midnight
Location: Kitty O'Sheas Irish Pub, Hilton Chicago Hotel
The 1920s Literary Renaissance of Chicago was called "The Little Room". We want to recreate that resurgence Harry Potter-style by having a night of creativity with drabbles, flash fiction, drawbles or whatever else your gin-soaked bunny demands. Drop-ins welcome, challenges every half an hour! Twenty-one years of age and older only, please.

[As listed here, my other Saturday commitments include a 9 p.m. drabble booth shift and a 11 p.m. reading of "D'accord, d'accord," so I'll be holding off on the gin until those are done.]

In personal news, I'm still in the midst of making my mother's house saleable, among myriad other chores. The professional docket remains crowded, and the warren of plot- and poem-bunnies seems to have multiplied by a factor of twenty over the past week, which is exasperating at the moment, since I have way too many things on the "To Finish" list as it is. At the same time, it's rather exhilarating looking at the world through the eyes of new characters-to-be. I should shut up already and write, so I will. More later, my dears. *scatters carrots amongst all your bunnies, and hugs to those who want/need them*

Woke up with a plotbunny. A vicious plotbunny. A plotbunny that's not going to leave me alone until I depict Remus Lupin collaborating with Sawa Nagisa on a script that then sends Iwaki and Katou to a drama festival in Kentucky --

*cries* snapelike, what have you done to me? *wails*


---

I have also just been molested by the most aggressively affectionate cafe cat I've ever met. Moggies do tend to like me, but I've never encountered one that climbed onto my chest and then repeatedly headbutted my chin as the BYM hastily rescued my Cubano. It can't be a BPAL reaction, I didn't put any on today...

In late 1944, while the allies were rapidly advancing across Europe after the success of the Normandy invasion, J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings, wrote a letter to his son Christopher, who was serving in the R.A.F. (the British Royal Air Force). Tolkien himself, the father, had fought the Germans in World War I; he was in the infamous trenches of the Battle of the Somme. These were not pacifists, in other words. The father wrote to the son that he was very disturbed by the way the British press was relentlessly depicting all Germans as irremediably evil. One of his local papers was seriously advocating "systematic extermination" of the entire German nation because "they are rattlesnakes and don't know the difference between good and evil." What of the writer? "The Germans have just as much right to declare...the Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select the Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they've done" (The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, 93).

... All of us share in the human condition; that is the meaning of Lent. All of us have dark impulses that could have become murderous had we been brought up in a garbage dump or been catechized by a father full of hate and revenge. Who knows if Saddam's sons are evil? Do you know? How do you know? Who told you? And if they are evil, who knows what influences made them evil? Let me be clear: action has to be taken against evil deeds. But the Christian will beware lest more evil deeds begin to erupt from within as well as from without. ...The Lord Jesus did not die for the righteous. He did not die for the godly. He did not die for the exceptional so that we, the saved, could delight in our own superiority and gloat over others.

- Fleming Rutledge (an Episcopal priest), "The Enemy Lines Are Hard to Find," 16 March 2003 (Third Sunday in Lent)
In Sermons from Duke Chapel, ed. William H. Willimon, 2005, pages 342-43, 346

As seen at bethbethbeth's and LJ:kassrachel's...

2007: I quote lamentations on the dearth of Wimseysmut and transparent compost.

2006: Brain vs. bunnies. Doomed as always.

2005: "My main preoccupations this past week were meeting various deadlines and following the goings-on at [LJ:]triumvirate (= my current favorite soap opera equivalent)."

2004: Holding One's Own [Vorkosigan/TDIR ficlet]

2003: I wasn't really involved with journal-based fandom at that point, but reading Rumi in Boston and celebrating "I Would Never" being published in Clean Sheets.

I can't bid on everything that catches my eye, but oh, so many shinies! (and unholy amusement, too). Some things that might interest some of y'all:

Care packages. Themes include BPAL, places (Spain, Bugtussle, etc.), and fic-with-objects.

fanfiction virginity

baseball chibis!

medicinal teas (insomnia, cramps)

World of Warcraft instance help and power levelling (I actually have no idea what either of these mean, but some of you are pretty intense about WoW...)

get depicted as an evil fairy

Bidding starts July 1.

I don't plan to bid on these myself, but I had a vision of "why didn't anyone tell me about THAT" flailing in certain quarters of the f-list if someone didn't point them out:

scanlating service (up to 60 pages!)

Tripperfunster's offer includes a willingness to portray the winning bidder with a fave fandom character

hand-turned dildo
*squints at above phrasing, which sounds somehow filthily off* --oh, just go read the description, it's a hoot

custom-made character cookies

gilleonen's work looks yummily storybook and her list of willing-to-draws is the most comprehensive I've seen. In addition to the usual suspects, she also lists Shakespeare, Arthurian legend, and "pirate-ified portraits of real people."

I couldn't resist peeking after seeing this mentioned multiple times on my friendlist... and there's lots of fantastic stuff on offer, all to help "raise money for the fight against the California initiative."

...and you can bid to have me write a sonnet or a villanelle for you... :-)

Highlights from the dance-card so far:

* Slash reading at Quimby's Wednesday 6 August, 7 p.m.- 8 p.m. There is much scheming in progress for this - stay tuned for what's in it for you (in additional to hearing good slash, of course! And yes, Snape/Lupin and/or bronze ribbons will be audible and/or visible in some fashion or another...)

* Working two shifts at registration (4 to midnight, with a dinner break) on Thursday. See some of you then. :-)

* Quidditch in Grant Park - Saturday morning and afternoon

* Drabble booth 9 p.m - 10 p.m. Saturday

* Reading "D'Accord, d'accord" 11 p.m. - 11:50 p.m. Saturday

* OotP screening Sunday midnight (I still haven't seen it yet. I figure I'll wait and really make a party of it. *g*)

I haven't gone through the whole schedule yet, and there's a heap of you on the schedule, f-list, but I do have to say I'm really looking forward to gmonkey42 and valis2's presentation on "Snape's Mary Sues: A Visual Field Guide for Identifying and Understanding Mary Sues Paired With Snape" (Sunday morning). Just reading that title fills me with all sorts of anticipatory glee. :-D

It's still free-flying month at LJ's Crack Broom comm, where any member can post 1 rec of their choice on any pairing. The only caveat is that it can't have been rec'd at the comm before... but the past recs are indexed by pairing in the comm's memories, and there's also a handy-dandy alpha-by-author list of past Snape/Lupin recs.

So, please take a look, and if you don't see a favorite fic on that list, go forth and rec it!

Title: Hard
Word Count: 100
Rating: R
Characters: Remus/Severus. A threesome if you count the table. ;-)
Notes: Originally written in response to snupin100's "Alphabet" challenge (April 2007). The prompt I claimed (to absolutely no one's surprise) was "Whomping Willow."

( from grain to groin... )

[cross-posted as part of a longer entry on my otherspace journal]

From W. A. Mathieu's The Musical Life:

Mozart is at once my ideal of perfection, my inner voice, and the ancestor who nurtures me. But he is also my rival. What jealousy Salieri was supposed to have had I also have had, and have. It is a station of the cross, an albatross, and I wrestle with it. Probably many composers do, the ambitious parts of them, anyway.

From the gallery of great composers, Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven especially are the ones to beat, and they will beat you every time. Even though the issue is fruitless and constrictive, one still is haunted and tormented by the unimaginable excellence of these musical minds. Why write second-rate music? Why add to the bins of lesser works? There are obvious answers -- your culture needs you; you are not competing with the dead; you are working out your own salvation, etc. -- that assuage reason. But your vulnerable part curls up and whimpers. Surely most composers outgrow these pains, but they are part of the learning game. At some point we want to kill Mozart.

Tags: amadeus, quotes

Humeur actuelle: anxious

The rec:

Syne's series of Percy/Neville ficlets. (Link takes you to the most recent one, which has links to all the others.) I know I keep mentioning Syne's writing here, but there's a good reason for that: it's a lovely blend of dry humor, keen observation, and slow revelations - a combination I personally groove to, and which resonates with others of you, methinks.

A quote:

In my boyhood, each time I played Mozart for my Grandma Clara, she said, in a flat voice, "Sounds just like water." One day, on a picnic, she announced factually that the creek sounded just like Mozart.

- W.A. Mathieu, The Musical Life: Reflections on What It Is and How to Live It.

[Seen most recently at Gramarye's. A somewhat different version was x-posted to my rest-of-life journal - apologies to those of you getting spammed.]

This is probably a good time for this, as there have been a couple of Awkward Moments lately from folks missing posts from earlier in the spring... and the same has happened to me, so please don't think I'm singling anyone out. *rueful smile* (I don't remember everything everyone's ever posted, and certainly don't expect it from others, but fewer Awkward Moments would be good, methinks.)
( Stuff About Me )

(1) drachenmina's An Unpleasant Man at the Bellona Club (drabble with LP, Bunter, and Snape...)

(2) drachenmina's An Inconvenient Affliction. Author's summary: "Harry’s been kicked out by Severus and is having to share Ron and Hermione’s spare bed with Crookshanks. Who gets Kneazle Flu. Can things get any worse? Oh yes." Ribbons's reaction: It's NC-17 Snarry, which I know some of you would normally avoid like the plague, but I feel compelled to point out that Harry's of age, there's non-sickening Hermione/Ron, there's mention of Bagpuss, and that the author knows cats. Oh, does she know cats. Put beverages out of range of keyboard before reading.

(3) It has been a hell of a week - one of these years, I hope to get my shit together enough to stop feeling like I haven't managed to get my shit together since, well, ever...

...but it is also absolutely impossible to feeling sorry for myself for more than a few moments at a time, considering the myriad blessings in my life -- including a surprise package in Monday's mail that contained...



...a necklace featuring the Whomping Willow. With a Snape quotation, no less. Made by the utterly, unbelievably fabulous westernredcedar. (I almost titled this post "From tree to shining tree..." *eg*) I feel like I've somehow won some sort of cosmic bingo for OTP-indulgence I didn't even know I was playing - I can snuggle the pendant up to my squid when I'm not wearing it, and when I feel like celebrating my other OTP, there's a Remus-keytag marginaliana made it can nestle with.

And I can also go revisit the other treasures written and drawn and translated for me, or inhale a scent, or brew some tea, or reread cards and letters, or fondle feathers, beads, and ribbons -- I have such clever, crafty, comforting, generous friends. I am so utterly grateful that you are in my life. It's not the things in themselves, fun and hilarious and charming as they are - they wouldn't matter one bit if they weren't infused with how you are fun and feisty and thought-provoking and thoughtful. And because they are and because you are, my life is rich beyond measure.

...because how else would I find out about Wikipedia's lamest edit wars?

(I'd say more, but I need to recover from LMAO, and then I need to finetune another umpety-teen citations before I let myself hit the hay. My projects, they are unholy fun, but the timing? Oof.)

David Sedaris, on hearing some of his earlier writing quoted:

“I thought, ‘It’s too dense, and it’s trying too hard.’ ” Though his prose slips down as smoothly as a Häagen-Dazs ice cream bar, he goes through the sort of process described by John Kenneth Galbraith, who said that “I do not put that note of spontaneity that my critics like into anything but the fifth draft.”

For Mr. Sedaris that process involves at least seven drafts and a great deal of reading aloud new pieces while on tour, listening to the cadences of the sentences and noting how the audience responds: when people laugh, when they lose interest. “You realize you’re repeating yourself or being lazy,” he said.

- Sarah Lyall, in today's New York Times

100 words for Nineveh-uk, who wanted something about Cherubino and women:

( Voi che sapete che cosa e amor... )



Snape and Salieri. PG. 200 words. Triggered indirectly by Nineveh_uk's prompt (because of the Mozart) and a westernredcedar comment (because it got me mulling over the Snape-tropes I tend to revisit...):
( When Snape regains consciousness, he's still on a floor, but it's covered in an expensive carpet... )



Teddy and Bunter. 369-ish words (a prequel to this):

( Teddy is not proud of how he broke off his engagement with Victoire. )

This is for marginaliana, who prompted me with "Bunter" and "storytelling." 200 words.

Come Again, That I May Cease to Mourn

( When Bunter first sets eyes on Teddy Lupin, he momentarily thinks senility has overtaken his mind... )

Title: Of Cabbages and Kings
Author: jadzialove
Genre(s): Post-war and Romance
Prompt(s): Sleeplessness
Rating/Warnings/Kinks: NC-17, see the Snarry Games post for the others
Word Count: Approx. 23,830
Summary: Harry was supposed to enjoy life after the war. Instead, he can barely stay awake for it. Running out of hope, he finds help from the most unusual sources, and in a wholly unexpected place.
Why I'm rec'cing it: one of the cleverest, well-thought-out fics I've read this year. Also, some of you are keen on farm-based AUs, some of you on opinionated cats, and some of you on forced-bond situations, and it would be a shame for any of you to miss out on this fic because you didn't know it offered all of these. :-)

Seen at odogoddess's, zephre's, and elsewhere:

You are in a mall when the zombies attack. You have:
1. one weapon
2. one song blasting on the speakers
3. one famous person to fight alongside you (real or fictional)

1. A wheelbarrow loaded with brains. (I'm Southern. It seems guns often fail to work against the undead. That leaves food.)
2. "Dangerous" by Roxette
3. Cordelia Vorkosigan. She'd figure out what to do with the wheelbarrow after we ran out of brains.