Severus' Alternate Universe

Last night I finished writing my SSHG exchange pinch-hit. Scratches head in confusion. How did that happen?
Mind you, there is still a lot of tweaking, editing, reshuffling and rewriting necessary before it can go to the beta, but the frame stands and I'm not unhappy with it. Scratches head again in wonder. I just let these two do what they wanted. Doesn't happen often this way. But it was quite the experience. Don't expect anything spectacular, but I hope it'll be entertaining.

There's an informal Yule party over on snapedom. And some very interesting discussion, too. Go take a look.

I usually get the Astronomy Picture of the Day in my flist. Today they had this picture: Venus in the moon.
Do you see the small insert? One day I want earrings made like that. The moon disk from blackened silver. The crescent from white gold and Venus as a small diamond, set in white gold. Should I start saving for it? Maybe I can wear them to my funeral. ;) (Nah, shouldn't be *that* expensive.) I suppose you can guess that I love this picture. But I love anything space-related anyway, the Hubble pictures regularly blow me away with their beauty.

I really am not the person who should blog. My life is boring anyway and I'm far too private to talk about things.

Maybe next year I'll make an effort to post once a week, with a summary of what interested me in fandom that week. There's always something going on on snapedom, I could pimp that. And maybe I pretty up my LJ a bit and cross post there again. I'm reading the flist there, so, maybe...
LJ seems to have calmed down a bit, hopefully it's not the quiet before the next strike-out storm.

My last SSHG Exchange fic Climate Change was recced by the lovely firefly at crackbroom

Thank you so much for that!

I feel especially smug that this particular fic was rec'ed there (and once before on The Golden Seeker), because this fic was the reason I stopped posting on one particular archive and almost drove me to never post one single fic on a public archive again. But apparently people liked it enough to rec', can't have been all that bad, then.

More bitching under the cut.
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In a moment of insanity, I signed up to do a pinch-hit for the sshg exchange. You may see me swear here in the near future.
So far, I'm having fun with it, and while I won't be producing anything out of the ordinary, it hopefully will be decent. I'm three chapters ahead with the WIP and need a bit of motivation anyway, the exchange is a great motivator, IMO.

It's nice to be in the exchange after all. I didn't miss the deadline pressure, though. I couldn't have signed up in the regular sign-up, I simply had no idea how things would turn out, stressed and swamped with work as I've been. Still am, but there's room for a story.

So, instead of writing frantically, what do I do? More photoshopping, you guessed it. Last week on grangersnape100 was a Grey Nighshirt challenge, and I had that idea for a manip. I couldn't finish it in time, but have now, so it's posted with an accompanying drabble here: http://community.livejournal.com/grangersnape100/1110581.html

If you avoid sshg, the picture is here, too, under the cut.

ETA: no idea why I wrote SSHG crowd. Time for the weekend, methinks.


Last week, savine_snape posted two gorgeous pictures of a younger Alan Rickman on her livejournal. There was talk about this being the right age for Severus after the war.

I couldn't resist. I snatched the pictures and started to photoshop with my amateurish little manip skills. And so I give you young Severus, approx. 38 years old, just released from St. Mungo's where they patched him up, and now looking forward to actually having a life. Enjoy.

and anyone else who likes beautiful pictures from space.

Bubble in space

septentrion1970, I thought you'd get a kick out of this. Power girl much? ;)

Yay!
Yesterday I finally got through the most difficult part of my WIP.
And it all still makes some kind of sense. Big sigh of relief.
Thanks to melusin who gave me an idea when I was stuck.
After that, everything just fell into place.
Onwards to editing, cutting, reshuffling and prettying up. Piece of cake after this.
I'm very glad that I'm not in the exchange in this round.
Did I say Yay?

Yesterday I made a blunder over at snapedom using the term oxymoron.
Just so you know that I know what it means, I give you one:

The German male and the term 'service'.

Aaaaaaaaahrghghghg!

Have a lovely weekend with rustling leaves, mulled wine, long autumn walks and no hotline with arrogant %&$$§! who have no clue what they are talking about.

Look what torino10154 wrote for me:

Looking to the Future

I asked for a moment of understanding between Hermione and Severus. I know that torino10154 currently writes mostly Snarry, so I didn't want to ask for something too 'involved', but I had no idea that she had started out as a SS/HG shipper. Look at a lovely moment of understanding between our OTP.

And please go and leave a review to coax her back from time to time. :)

I've posted the latest chapter of AMIEW. It's on OWL and ff.net, in the queue on Ashwinder. Will post to own journal next week and eventually update my stuff on wiktt, too.
It contains smut. I wouldn't read it, if I were you. ;)

Oh, and I have over 100 reviews for it on OWL now. Squee! I know, for you people this isn't a lot, but it is for me.

Off and away.

Good: I read an interesting story on Ashwinder today: The Pond by Valis2. No romance.

Not so good: I'm still overwhelmed by the huge pile of work that surrounds me. I'm a sucker. I let myself be used too much. I can't say no. I take silly pride in doing good work, and the result is that people flood me with it.

Bad: My disillusionment with fandom is growing. My disillusionment about my writing is growing. What am I doing in fandom? I don't really have enough time to be a good fangirl. Or flist-friend. I should not be on a social network, I'm not social. I can't even keep up with wishing people Happy Birthdays on time, and so I stopped alltogether. So all can be offended or no one.

It's raining, but the leaves have lovely coloring, best colours in years, likely because it was very cold in September. Now it's warm and we had a very sunny week. I think I have to get some chocolate.

Since everybody does it and I'm a sheep: Your result for The Which Ancient Language Are You Test...

Older Futhark

Language of the Norse, Older Futhark! Thirty symbols, all told. And no hardier, more warrior-like tongue has ever graced the longships of the Viki or left the Celts and Saxons in such quivering fear. There's only one drawback, that being you died 800 years ago.

You scored

Yay, runes!
And: I'll be away for a bit more than a week, and not online most of the time or at all. I'll try to catch up to you all when I'm back, in case I left something unanswered.

Chapter 3 is up, enjoy.

Summary: Are there sex toys in the wizarding world? A bushy-haired
witch is determined to find out. And what do the paintings have to do
with it?

On OWL: http://owl.tauri.org/stories.php?sid=7901

On ff.net:
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4541458/3/The_Vibrator_the_Witch_and_the_Painting

on Tales from the Wood:
http://asylums.insanejournal.com/storiesfromwood/18865.html

It's in the queue on Ashwinder.

~Reviews are a fanfic authors best motivator~

It's not my fault, it really isn't. Go and read melusin's drabble, that one is funnier. Or make your own here: http://prillalar.com/drabbles/

Under the cut:

1000 Wand Snakes( Read more... )

Here comes the second chapter of my little light-hearted smut fic.


Summary: Are there sex toys in the wizarding world? A bushy-haired
witch is determined to find out. And what do the paintings have to do
with it?

On OWL: http://owl.tauri.org/stories.php?sid=7864

On ff.net:
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4541458/2/The_Vibrator_the_Witch_and_the_Painting

on Tales from the Wood:
http://asylums.insanejournal.com/storiesfromwood/18657.html

It's in the queue on Ashwinder. I can't post on the Wiktt archives at the moment, because of the move.

Warning: more explicit sexual content, more strange humour and a lot
of gratuitous smut

My story A Most Important Element In Water is now updated to chapter
19: The Army on the March.

On OWL: http://owl.tauri.org/stories.php?sid=7833

On the WiKtT archives: http://wiktt.serpentsstratagem.com/viewstory.php?sid=1355&chapter=19
On ff.net: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3392947/19/A_Most_Important_Element_in_Water

On Tales from the Wood:
http://asylums.insanejournal.com/storiesfromwood/18219.html

and in the queue on Ashwinder (http://ashwinder.sycophanthex.com/viewstory.php?sid=15151)

Summary: While hunting for Horcruxes with her friends, Hermione learns
surprising facts about Snape's past. Will that change the way she
thinks about him? AU after HBP. May contain DH spoilers.

It is my version of book seven, fully plotted and partly written
before DH.

A while ago, melusin challenged me to write something to beat the doom and gloom that was floating around our favourite ship. So we agreed on something light-hearted and preferrably smutty. She wrote A Mutually Beneficial Agreement for me.

Here is my offering: The Vibrator, the Witch and the Painting.

On Tales from the Wood

and OWL

and elsewhere.

Warning: explicit sexual content, my idea of humour and gratuitous smut.

Such a sad day...

I'm still busy, slightly mad, too, and will drown myself in champagne-type-stuff this afternoon.

But: I saw this at starlightforest's journal and had to steal it:

http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/

(Cheers!)

We're having some major stuff going on at work right now, thus I'm very busy and hardly around.
If I owe you: a mail, a banner, a post, a reply of some sort - or sympathy, comments and hugs - sorry, will try to catch up next week.

I have the banners for the snapeartcontest July meme almost ready. In September. Oh the shame! I have an idea about the August snapedom banners and the 'Good-bye' banners for snarc, so they will come eventually. Got to think about something for the August meme though.

Writing: a new chapter for the WIP would be due, but I have to rewrite a bit because I encountered an anachronism, and hat to cut that out. Decided to cut the whole scene which was a bit silly and forced anyway. And now I have to think how I get them where they are supposed to go... will take a bit more thinking, because everything moves towards dark, and there's no way I'm going to write something really dark.

On a more positive note, the smut piece I wrote for melusin in our two-women-anti-doomandgloom-campaign is finished and the first chapter is in beta stage. So something mildly funny from me soon, I hope.

And maybe all is in vain and the world ends tomorrow. At least mini black holes are a stylish way to go, a lot more fun than all these previous doom-day fantasies.

So long, then, and thank you for the fish.

is tan. (Since everyone is doing it... which makes me a sheep. A dragon-sheep)

A TAN Dragon Lies Beneath!

My inner dragon is the true draconic magic-user. Deep down I am very wise, somewhat shy, and I have a rather short fuse. But don't worry, tans prefer to spend their time counting their enormous treasure, so pass quietly and you'll stay out of danger. Click the image to try the Inner Dragon Online Quiz for yourself.



---

FYI: My temper can also be held in line by bringing me treasure. I can purr like a cat if you do. ;)

ETA: Since the description above is incomplete, here the whole thing from the site:

Your Inner Dragon is the true draconic magic-user. Tans have been all but forgotten in popular literature, but that suits them just fine. They're slightly shy and spend most of their time in impassable mountain valleys. When feeling brave or adventurous, Tans use their shape-shifting ability to blend in with society. Given a choice, however, Tans still much prefer to be left to their own devices.

You like to spend time devising new and interesting spells and potions, and counting and hoarding your gigantic treasure. Your favorable attributes are longevity, security, magic, and reverence for life. To top it off, your breath weapon is a curious mix of Fire and Air. Just tell folks to watch out, as a Tan you've got a seriously short temper!

I'm having great problems posting something on LJ. Rich text doesn't seem to work for me there, and I couldn't post at all under my account on snapeartcontest, although I'm a maintainer. Then I tried to post something on my own account, rich text doesn't work there either.

I've just upgraded to firefox3, I thought that was the problem, but no, Safari doesn't let me do it either.

I can't use it on the Mac, no matter which browser, which is a pain when I want to play with text size and colour.

It does work on the Windows computer, but this doesn't console me, to the contrary.

Everything works here on ij. One reason more to move the snapeartcontest here for good.

Augh! Very, very annoyed now.

I do know how to use html, but for a quick post... ahrgh!

Squee: the snapedom SummerFest is getting to a close, and all the entries are fantastic! Go and take a look if you haven't seen them yet, just use the tag summerfest 08 to find them all.

There'll be a masterlist later, but we are having a few pinch hits, and they don't need to be finished before the end of the year.

People there were fantastic, and I'll get all un-Snape-like mushy on them next week. ;)

Will we do it again? If we're still around, of course! Most likely it will be even more open, though, probably asking for prompts and then chosing prompts. Crafts included in the arts was a great success, I think. Of course it was a small fest, but there were great stories and art produced. I have to go and finally review when I make the masterlist.

And: I'm envious. LOL.

Whinge 1: I've been biking from work for eight weeks now. It's 20 km four times a week. I have more stamina and am stronger - but I didn't lose one measly pound. Not one. Aaaahrgh. I know, muscles weigh more than fat, and there sure has been a bit of reshuffling of the mass... but not one measly pound? Did I say Aaaagh? Biking does me good though, I feel well and energized in the evenings, so I'll keep it up as long as the weather allows it.

Whinge 2: I'm too busy to participate at fests and exchanges, and that stings. It's a good decision not to do it, but it still sting(k)s. I'll be envious all through the SSHG exchange. I've just recently found the snapelyholidays site, they ask for signups, and that's very, very tempting, too. But I find that I can't write fast (that's not really news) and shouldn't rush it. I'm just not skilled enough to write something down in a short time and be happy with it. I'm writing, and rewriting, and rewriting, a piece of supposedly light smut for melusin in exchange for her wonderful 'A Mutual Beneficial Arrangement' - and while I think that some ideas in my story are good, others suck. Ugh. And the WIP wants to be continued, too. So no, not participating in exchanges is the smart thing to do. But did I mention that I'm envious?

</whinge>

...because there's so much work to do. And because of that the brain goes numb from time to time (shame on you there in the corner who said dumb) and so there are some memes under the cut.

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Enough procrastination. Off again...

...http://www.panda.org/news_facts/education/best_place_species/harry_potter_top_10/index.cfm