![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rj_andersonI was busy packing up boxes, listening to the boy's new album, and steadfastly ignoring Chapter Sixteen of my novel, but ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lizbee and cesario nagged me into doing this. So...
Step One
- Make a post (public, friendslocked, filtered...whatever you're comfortable with) to your LJ. The post should contain your list of 10 holiday wishes. The wishes can be anything at all, from simple and fandom-related ("I'd love a Snape/Hermione icon that's just for me") to medium ("I wish for _____ on DVD") to really big ("All I want for Christmas is a new car/computer/house/TV.") The important thing is, make sure these wishes are things you really, truly want.
- If you wish for real life things (not fics or icons), make sure you include some sort of contact info in your post, whether it's your address or just your email address where Santa (or one of his elves) could get in touch with you.
- Also, make sure you post some version of these guidelines in your LJ, or link to this post (it'll be public) so that the holiday joy will spread.
Step Two
- Surf around your friendslist (or friendsfriends, or just random journals) to see who has posted their list. And now here's the important part:
- If you see a wish you can grant, and it's in your heart to do so, make someone's wish come true. Sometimes someone's trash is another's treasure, and if you have a leather jacket you don't want or a gift certificate you won't use--or even know where you could get someone's dream purebred Basset Hound for free--do it.
You needn't spend money on these wishes unless you want to. The point isn't to put people out, it's to provide everyone a chance to be someone else's holiday elf--to spread the joy. Gifts can be made anonymously or not--it's your call.
So, that done, here we go:
My Christmas List
1. I wish someone on my flist who has not read the gospel of John before would do so, trying to put aside all preconceived notions of what Christ was like and what he taught, and tell me what they think after reading it. (No, I will not comment on your comments or try to start a discussion based thereupon. Unless you explicitly say that you want to discuss it.)
2. I wish for a copy of J. Budziszewski's What We Can't Not Know or Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death - Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Used is fine, I don't really care if it's shiny.
3. I wish fora copy of Steve Burns' Songs for Dust Mites (yay eBay!), Kurt Nilsen's I, or Clay Aiken's Christmas CD. Or a gift card for Puretracks so I can download some of the umpty tracks on my wishlist there (which is only viewable by me, alas, or I would provide link to same).
4. I wish forlizbee to write a fic in which the young Gabriel Snape is the lead singer for a rock band. Ha ha! Only kidding! Mostly.
5. I wish for Snape/Luna fic or art. No smut. Romance is nifty, gen is good, drabbles are perfectly legit.
6. I wish for someone experienced at icon-making to make me a Kalan icon with lyrics from "After All", using a recent pic or screencap. Bonus points if it's from one of his performances on the Vicki Gabereau show, or from the West Edmonton Mall. (Yeah, I tried to do one myself, but it kinda sucks.)
7. I wish for more paid LJ time. More paid LJ time is always good.
8. I wish for detailed, insightful feedback/reviews on some of my lesser-known fics (i.e. not the D&L trilogy). Or squeeback, or an amusing flame. Whatever you can spare.
9. I wish I knew what I was doing with Chapter Sixteen, but nobody can grant that for me, alas.
10. I wish that nice agent I talked to at Bouchercon would get back to me, but nobody etc.
You can tell I started running out of ideas fast around the end. However, I may edit this over the next few days as I think of other things...
I won't be able to grant anybody else's wishes until after the move and the settling-in period, but around mid-December I will do my best to be obliging!
lizbee and cesario nagged me into doing this. So...Step One
- Make a post (public, friendslocked, filtered...whatever you're comfortable with) to your LJ. The post should contain your list of 10 holiday wishes. The wishes can be anything at all, from simple and fandom-related ("I'd love a Snape/Hermione icon that's just for me") to medium ("I wish for _____ on DVD") to really big ("All I want for Christmas is a new car/computer/house/TV.") The important thing is, make sure these wishes are things you really, truly want.
- If you wish for real life things (not fics or icons), make sure you include some sort of contact info in your post, whether it's your address or just your email address where Santa (or one of his elves) could get in touch with you.
- Also, make sure you post some version of these guidelines in your LJ, or link to this post (it'll be public) so that the holiday joy will spread.
Step Two
- Surf around your friendslist (or friendsfriends, or just random journals) to see who has posted their list. And now here's the important part:
- If you see a wish you can grant, and it's in your heart to do so, make someone's wish come true. Sometimes someone's trash is another's treasure, and if you have a leather jacket you don't want or a gift certificate you won't use--or even know where you could get someone's dream purebred Basset Hound for free--do it.
You needn't spend money on these wishes unless you want to. The point isn't to put people out, it's to provide everyone a chance to be someone else's holiday elf--to spread the joy. Gifts can be made anonymously or not--it's your call.
So, that done, here we go:
My Christmas List
1. I wish someone on my flist who has not read the gospel of John before would do so, trying to put aside all preconceived notions of what Christ was like and what he taught, and tell me what they think after reading it. (No, I will not comment on your comments or try to start a discussion based thereupon. Unless you explicitly say that you want to discuss it.)
2. I wish for a copy of J. Budziszewski's What We Can't Not Know or Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death - Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Used is fine, I don't really care if it's shiny.
3. I wish for
4. I wish for
lizbee to write a fic in which the young Gabriel Snape is the lead singer for a rock band. Ha ha! Only kidding! 5. I wish for Snape/Luna fic or art. No smut. Romance is nifty, gen is good, drabbles are perfectly legit.
6. I wish for someone experienced at icon-making to make me a Kalan icon with lyrics from "After All", using a recent pic or screencap. Bonus points if it's from one of his performances on the Vicki Gabereau show, or from the West Edmonton Mall. (Yeah, I tried to do one myself, but it kinda sucks.)
7. I wish for more paid LJ time. More paid LJ time is always good.
8. I wish for detailed, insightful feedback/reviews on some of my lesser-known fics (i.e. not the D&L trilogy). Or squeeback, or an amusing flame. Whatever you can spare.
9. I wish I knew what I was doing with Chapter Sixteen, but nobody can grant that for me, alas.
10. I wish that nice agent I talked to at Bouchercon would get back to me, but nobody etc.
You can tell I started running out of ideas fast around the end. However, I may edit this over the next few days as I think of other things...
I won't be able to grant anybody else's wishes until after the move and the settling-in period, but around mid-December I will do my best to be obliging!
Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-11-23 10:50 pm (UTC)vexation
Date: 2004-11-23 10:53 pm (UTC)He groaned aloud when he saw the name atop the next parchment in the pile. This student always wrote hideously disorganized, painfully incoherent papers. An essay from this student was inevitably full of incomprehensible digressions and meaningless trivia. But somewhere in that meandering morass, the student also always managed to display an adequate--even good--understanding of the principle in question. If only someone could take that mind in hand, train it to be focused and disciplined, this student would rival even Hermione Granger.
A chair elsewhere in the staff room creaked gently as its occupant arose. Brisk footsteps passed Snape's worktable, heading towards the door. Snape did not look up; to look up from this student's work would be to have to start from the beginning again. The footsteps stopped abruptly, then returned and stopped in front of him.
"Severus," said McGonagall, a distinct burr of amusement in her voice, "since when has Miss Lovegood become your most vexatious pupil?"
Re: vexation
Date: 2004-11-24 05:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-24 06:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-24 09:42 am (UTC)As for #9... well, all I can say is "How are the fairies in your garden?"
*chortles*
p.s. Good luck with the move.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-24 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-24 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-24 04:02 pm (UTC)It just weirds me out, is all.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-25 06:24 am (UTC)Part I, wherein Snape receives a shock...
Date: 2004-11-24 10:37 pm (UTC)Snape blinked down at his desk. And blinked again. A mirror-image of his own cool black eyes blinked back at him from the garish cover of a magazine lying on top of an open potions textbook. The thing seemed obtrusive, in a way--not because it was particularly large or unwieldy, but because its very presence, in all its technicolor flashiness, on his otherwise sparse, old, heavy, wooden desk, was vaguely insulting. Worse was the large, bright red ribbon tied round the magazine, a big and somewhat lopsided bow tied right on top, half obscuring the dour-looking portrait of himself underneath.
The Potions Master stood for another few seconds just staring down, unsure what he was supposed to do with the thing on his desk. He was so shocked by the words underneath his picture (a shoddy bit of photography that looked rather as though it had been snapped hurriedly--and illegally) that he couldn't even gather his wits enough to brush the magazine into the rubbish bin.
TREACHEROUS OR TRUE? THIS MONTH'S SPOTLIGHT: PROFESSOR SEVERUS SNAPE, POTIONS MASTER OF HOGWARTS, ON TEACHING, WORKING WITH ALBUS DUMBLEDORE, AND DEALING WITH REQUESTS FOR LOVE POTIONS. SEE PAGE 48!
Snape glanced up, and scanned the twenty-odd heads bent over his written exam. At the very back, a screen of long, stringy blonde hair shrouded the wan face of a student whose crow-quill pen was scratching hurriedly over her parchment. Snape narrowed his eyes, incredulity and belated anger drawing his brow into a furious tangle.
Five minutes later the class ended, and Snape, with characteristic but perhaps overly vehement harshness, took up the papers; some he pulled straight out from under the quills of dispairing students. As the children, freed from bondage but not from the overhanging cloud of doubt as to their exam answers, shuffled miserably out of the classroom, Snape paced deliberately to the back of the room and smugly reached out a hand to pull the last paper out from under the blonde hair and furiously scribbling pen.
But just as he reached the desk, two big eyes turned up to him and the exam paper was placed primly into his outstretched hand. The slight girl stood up and collected her pen, ink, and paper into a shoulder bag, then brushed quickly by the Professor and headed for the door.
"Ms. Lovegood."
(Cont. next post--too long for one post)
Part II, wherein Luna makes her escape.
Date: 2004-11-24 10:38 pm (UTC)"Yes, Professor?"
Snape stared hard at her from across the room a second more, suddenly seeing snatches of visual memory from the past few months--when Luna Lovegood would, for no apparent reason, come up to him after class or in the halls and ask him random questions. Sometimes the queries would seem to pertain to homework, or to potions in general, and the other questions, the truly odd ones, had been asked far enough apart that he'd never supposed them to have any connection. Besides, they'd been asked, he'd assumed, for no reason in particular other than that Luna was a bit disconnected, mentally, from the real world (and, he'd decided from day one of their acquaintance, perhaps more than a little mad).
Now, though...
Snape walked to his desk, feeling...well, he didn't know what to feel. It wasn't possible. Was it?
Carefully, as if afraid to touch it, Snape lowered the fingertips of his right hand to the blinking, scowling cover of the December issue of The Quibbler lying on his desk and turned his glare on Luna Lovegood.
"I suppose...you have no idea how this--magazine--found its way onto my desk. I also suppose you do not know how it came to be that my photograph is on the cover, and that an interview I do not recall sitting for is apparently recorded inside?"
Luna appeared puzzled, but those overlarge eyes never lost their secretive, dreamy quality.
"Why, no, Professor, I'm afraid I don't. But it seems someone has some good connections...the December edition isn't due out for another week and a half. That's what my father told me, anyway. If you think it's a fraud, sir, you could report it to him, before the proof-copy goes to print." Luna appeared to think about that. "Tomorrow, I believe, would be the deadline."
Then she smiled, and Snape realized he was in such a state of disbelief and rage he had nothing to say.
"But, really, Professor, someone went to all that trouble, the bow and everything, you might want to keep it. Anyway, I'm sorry, but if I don't go I'll miss the train home for the holidays." Here she adjusted the strap of her satchel and suddenly noticed the spare quill she'd tucked behind her ear at some point. Pulling it out of her long hair, she stuffed it into her sack and nodded curtly to the Potions Master, who stood, speechless, still leaning heavily against his desk, his hand pressing ever harder on his two-dimensional doppleganger and flattening the red bow.
Luna turned and walked out the door.
"Happy Christmas, Professor Snape."
Merry Christmas! Hope that was okay; I also hope it's okay to do two things on this list, because I'm feeling Snape/Luna fanart coming on...
ISJ :)
Re: Part II, wherein Luna makes her escape.
Date: 2004-11-25 06:24 am (UTC)*dies of love for this ficlet*
Oh, I love Sneaky!Luna! Too brilliant. Thank you thank you! And I would love the fan art -- that would be great!
no subject
Date: 2004-11-28 08:36 am (UTC)There goes the gift card idea, for most of us, anyway.