Of This and Other Worlds

I solemnly swear that I answered all the questions on this quiz with complete honesty, or at least picked the answers I honestly thought were closest to the truth of the matter:

( What Kind of Snapeist Are You? )

Also, while I wouldn't be surprised if pauraque came up with the notion of sorting Snapeists into denominations on the Jewish model independently, I did propose this very idea on the Snapefans Yahoo!Group back on July 1, 2001. (Boy, am I old.)

That sound you heard just now? It was my mind blowing. And it's all sinick's fault.

This is why.

Get out your black handkerchiefs, Snapefans. I think she's on to something here.

In the felicitous absence of my children (they're across the road playing with a friend, and the baby is asleep) I have written Snape/Luna, for which lizbee is entirely to blame. And not only did the universe not end, I find myself dreadfully tempted to fix it up and submit it as an honest-to-goodness fic. Only I won't, because I have to write Hermione and Luna gen for omniocular's January Challenge instead.

In other news, omniocular replied to my post-rejection inquiry by telling me that they like my art, but not so much my fic. My fic, they say, is a bit too prone to telling rather than showing what the characters feel and making general statements rather than giving specific details (this on the basis of "Bewitching the Mind...", "First Impression", "Cold Water" and "Cry", links to which I submitted as part of my application).

I do not in the least reproach them for this, as it's a worthy ambition to avoid an over-expository style, but it's ironic seeing as my just-written Snape/Luna consists entirely of dialogue without any speech tags and only five words of exposition (and I was thinking about cutting those), and I deliberately wrote "Secrets and Lies" in impersonal third without once telling the reader what any of the characters were thinking. So one could say that particular problem has already corrected itself...

I guess the moral of the story is that I need to write more recent stuff in this less expository style. And that it needs to be gen (by the "no romance, please" definition of gen that omniocular seems to be using, anyway -- I know that by the other working definition of "no graphic sex and let there be an actual plot, please" I've never written anything but gen, but that definition appears to be less common).

Anyway, once I've written the Snape/Lily drabble I also owe lizbee and figure out something Houseish to write for cesario, I shall post links here to all the shortfics I've written in the last few days. It doesn't add up to much, but it's still good to be writing again.

Speaking of good and writing, if you haven't seen junediamanti's splendid Snape genfic The Shipping Forecast, go and read it straight away. It's funny and quirky and heartbreaking and a great deal more plausible than the author makes it sound in the summary, and it indulges my long-held belief that Snape's present speech pattern is self-taught rather than the one he was brought up with. So of course I was bound to love it.

More later, since all the children have returned at once and my son is regaling me with the entire plot of Home Alone II.

Some random linkage for a Friday afternoon:

Community plug: housefic_meta. Right now they're looking for recommendations of "Classic" House fics, by which they really seem to mean "really well-written House fics of any sort, even if nobody's heard of them". So in the end, some useful recs could come out of this. I personally plan to submit a couple (recs, I mean). It's hard to find good Housefic.

Also, probably everybody in creation has seen the best Christmas lights display ever, but here it is in case you haven't. Snopes has the backstory -- it's the real deal, cooked up by an electrical engineer with delusions of grandeur and waaaay too much time on his hands. Now if only I could get my kids to stop playing it over and over and over...

Finally, ursulav has just posted an amusing story about editing one of her manuscripts which I think will be of special interest to lizbee, among others.

* * *

I should probably have mentioned a couple of posts back, since there seems to be some honest confusion on the subject, that I did enjoy GoF. In fact, I probably enjoyed it as much as PoA or more so -- definitely more than I did the first two movies, anyway. Not that any of them were actually painful to watch, IMO. Of course the books are better, but aren't they always?

The best thing about the film, though, I haven't yet seen mentioned anywhere -- ( costuming spoiler ). Comedy GOLD, man. I nearly spit my water all over the row in front of me.

Also, I love Neville like whoa, shiny shoes and all.

I finally worked up the courage to a) ask my parents to babysit both boys and the baby for more than two hours and b) be away from the baby for a feeding. Apparently little Paul took the bottle of expressed milk I'd left for him just fine, and went off to sleep with very little fuss. *is hugely relieved*

So... now I've seen The Movie at last! But really, what can be said about it that hasn't been said already?

( A somewhat hasty (hoom, hoom) review )

Off to pump (meh, but this is what happens when you miss a feeding) and then to bed.

For those on my f-list who might be interested, I've just created a feed for the "Sword of Gryffindor" blog, which looks favourably at the Harry Potter books from an evangelical Christian perspective: sword_gryff.

Here it is at last -- the promised post-HBP Snapefic. A very early draft of the first few paragraphs appeared in this LJ a few months ago, but there have been quite a few changes, not to mention additions, since then... hope you enjoy it!

( Secrets and Lies )

Author's Note: Heartfelt thanks to my betas lizbee and especially cesario, whose shrewd and practical observations about characterization, tone and structure helped make this story a great deal better than it would have been otherwise. Any shortcomings that remain in this final draft are entirely my own fault.

This story follows the events of "The Potions Master's Apprentice" and "Personal Risks", and is meant to stand as a more canonically viable alternative to the popular but now unfortunately AU "If We Survive". I have tried to take into account Snape's character as presented in OotP and HBP, for whatever that may be worth. I have not addressed the question of Snape's apparent megalomania in announcing himself to Harry as "I, the Half-Blood Prince!" but my take on that scene* would be better served in essay form, or perhaps in a brief genfic.

As always, comments and criticisms are welcome. Thanks for reading!

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* The short answer is that I think he was simply trying to let Harry know in the quickest and most direct way that it was his textbook he'd been cribbing off all year. Vain as Snape undoubtedly is in some respects, I really can't imagine that he'd still be preening himself on a ridiculous self-bestowed (or possibly Lily-bestowed) title that he'd used as an adolescent, especially as the term "half-blood" isn't that prestigious and any fool would know he wasn't really a prince...

Oh hey, now I don't have to write the essay or the genfic. Go me!

lizbee, I saw this and naturally, thought of you. But other squid fanciers and ocean-loving folk on my friendslist might be interested as well.

("Bone-eating snotflowers"? Now I'm intrigued.)

( I'm a Ravenclaw INTJ )

The result's true enough, though actually the "and others" part doesn't so much apply. I enjoy challenging myself (in some areas, anyway -- in others I'm lazy as a pet coon) and organizing things for myself, yes; but I really don't enjoy setting standards of achievement for or trying to organize other people. It's one of the main reasons I've never wanted to be a schoolteacher, in spite of a host of other personality traits that would ordinarily make me a shoo-in for the job...

I won't be posting for a week, since we're off camping. (No, not rustic in-a-tent camping, more like hanging out at a nearby resort/conference centre kind of place where our meals are all provided and we sleep in air-conditioned comfort. My biggest challenge will be deciding whether or not I really want to be venture out in public wearing a zebra-print maternity swimsuit. I suspect my nerve is likely to fail me there.)

Anyway, y'all take care and don't let HP fandom explode without me (oh, wait, it already has done, never mind).