The Mad Mermaid

I didn't fall off the face of the earth; I've just been really busy and I also took a kind of hiatus from the internets. I waste a lot of time online doing nothing, so I really just stopped using the computer at all, except to infrequently check my emails. I ended up paying attention to other hobbies and spending more time with my daughter, so it was nice, but I miss writing and keeping up with fandom and friends, so I guess it's time to try to do that without sitting in front of the monitor and suddenly realizing that I've been there for five hours. We'll see how that works.

Anyway, all the exchanges I did over the summer are now complete, so I can now tell you that I wrote them.

At weasley_fest, I wrote Faking It for delayed_poet. (Draco/Ginny, PG-13)

At hermione_smut, I wrote What They're After for someone who dropped out. (Hermione/Fred/George, NC-17)

At hp_summersmut, I wrote The Right Question for ltgarrix. (Narcissa/Snape, NC-17)

At the risk of sounding conceited, I really like the H/F/G one, which is ironic because I really, really hated the prompts and requests and trying to fulfill them is what ultimately, in my opinion, made the story end up being as good as it is. The Draco/Ginny one was a lot of fun; I like banter and that's pretty much what the two of them did. The Snape/Narcissa one is the one I feel the most ambivalent; I don't feel very comfortable writing Snape, and in retrospect I don't know why I did it from Snape's POV either. Well, it was fun to look at Narcissa from his eyes.

Speaking of Narcissa, I noticed as I was skimming comment requests at a holiday exchange sign-up post that a lot of people seem to want nothing to do with her, Lucius, or any Slytherins. I myself don't care for some of the fanfiction that kind of glorifies all the Deatheaters and/or makes them unredeemably evil, psychotic murderers, but as I was contemplating what characters I wanted to write about, I found myself thinking that I'd rather write about them than some of the "nice" characters that people get excited about. This is probably another example of how I am a terrible person. Anyway, this also made me remember that at The Petulant Poetess, my Lucius/Narcissa fic has the lowest story hit count-- lower than even Charlie/Cho. I wonder if that due to the same issues?

Speaking of Cho, my next goal is to finish a fic involving her. Months ago, I wrote a piece at the last minute to submit for the Slash Superchallenge at violetquill's LJ, but due to HTML bork it didn't make it on the masterlist and I wasn't pleased with it anyhow. I mean, I think it's pretty solid, but it kind of meandered to an end that wasn't really satisfying, so I want to play with it and see if it will work as the first part of something longer. I also want to write some drabbles, probably for rairpair_shorts. I'm scared of them and I need to get over that fear.

Let me start off in saying I have been remiss in mentioning several exchange gifts that I have received. First, Mystery Author #1 over at weasley_fest was brave enough to write me a Lucius/Ginny fic, for which I must commend them on general principal. However, it's also an interesting twist with a kind of suave, courtly Lucius and ballsy Ginny: Turn The Tide.

Then Mystery Author #2 at hermione_smut gave me a Harry/Ron/Hermione fic, In the middle of a brand new world with you. I really like that it's post-Battle at Hogwarts, because I've always used the fact that in canon, Harry blows Ginny off at that time to be with Hermione and Ron as fodder for my belief that the Trio really belongs together. (Unless Harry wants to get together with Snape. Then we have to do some rearranging.)

And even though hp_summersmut has barely started posting, I already have my gift there! I decided to be brave and request art, and I'm happy to say that Mystery Artist drew me something wonderful so that I don't regret it. Narcissa/Lucius: Before Work.

Anyway, I remembered that I needed to mention all those because I wanted to recommend a story recently posted in hp_summersmut. I've tried to make sure I read all the fics from the other two exchanges and I've kind of failed at that, so I've been reading the summersmut stuff as it comes out to try to make up for it.

Anyway, Guilty Pleasure is an Arthur/Snape fic, and I have to say it's really great. I know, you're shaking your head and thinking I'm nuts. Seriously, it's one of those stories that's so well-written that it doesn't seem cracky at all. It has several warnings in the header that you should check out before reading if you're a big baby.

if someone consistently got sick each time they were supposed to go somewhere that wasn't, say, a typical errand like the grocery store? Like when they were to go out to eat, or travel away from home at least one night. Illnesses vary: headaches/migraines, allergies, kidney infection. I think it's rather suspicious myself.

My computer chair is a thing of horror. It's some weird, ancient folding chair that we found in the hallway of our last apartment. I think that it's killing me because it's the complete opposite of ergonomic. I've been working on a story for the last several hours, and my left hand is going numb and I have a pain in my right hip.

My hand goes numb like that sometimes when I drive for long distances too though. Maybe next time I'm supposed to do so, I should conveniently become ill and avoid the problem?

For some reason, the OTW debate is raging again, which typically causes me to have a raging headache. The current argument seems to be whether fandom is really sekrit anymore.

Now, I agree that fandom isn't really secret. However, I'm not sure I agree with all the people blithely asserting that zomg, everyone already knows about fandom. So some random NPR show that's been cancelled did an interview with Whatsherface from the OTW. And the Literary Review of Canada did an article. So, how many people do I know that regularly consume either one of those media? Well, none. Those are two specific points that could be quibbled over, but what I'm trying to point out is that generally, I find people DON'T know about fanfiction.

Yeah, you can get a skabillion Google hits for fanfiction, but you have to enter the right search terms.You have to go to del.icio.us in the first place. Or the tv show's website. Or read that actor's interview. Or shit, even get online-- there are still people who don't, you know. Look at how many major news events are covered by mainstream media sources that John Q Public doesn't (take the time to) know about, and you're telling me that the tiny little crumbs of information about fandom that are scattered here and there are going to be paid attention to? Does everyone seriously just bring up their slash writing with random people to find that zomg, they already know about fandom?

I wonder sometimes if I see these things differently because my lifestyle is significantly different from some fen. I get the feeling that perhaps they live in more metropolitan, liberal areas where eccentricity is tolerated to a greater degree. Well, when I'm feeling charitable. When I'm feeling uncharitable, I think they must be deluded and sealed inside some kind of subculture bubble where they imagine that the general public is really going to embrace that having Ron Weasley take it up the ass from Draco Malfoy is transformative. Have they actually gotten offline and went out in the real world lately? Or jeez, just looked at unfunnybusiness?

Guess who played Sims for at least seven hours yesterday, and befuddled by sleepiness quit WITHOUT SAVING. Eugenie, Zelda, and Angelina's first semester at Sim State University, gone. I was even playing without cheating.

How come nobody told me that John McCain is actually married to Narcissa Malfoy?

In other news... hmm, not sure where to start. The past few months have been really busy with real life stuff: job, therapy for my kid, some small bit of traveling that kid makes infinitely more complex. Anyway, that means that I haven't really updated here in any coherent manner. I have gotten a good amount of writing finished recently, but it's all exchange-related to it shall remain secret for now. I'm hoping that I will keep on working on some things that don't have a deadline, but I feel rather burnt out so I'm not sure that I will.

Also, I did a stupid thing awhile back and let my sister give me her old Sims 2 game. Fast-forward a couple months and two expansion packs later, and a great deal of my free time is now spent with my sprawling family of Lichensteins in the neighborhood of Pleasantville. I started out with Auraelia, Edgar, and Elizabetta, who are siblings, and two kids: Edgar's son Ray and Auraelia's daughter Betty. Now Edgar's married to the maid, Auraelia's a lesbian vampire, and Ray and Betty have graduated from college and Ray just got married. Elizabetta had been living with Edgar and his wife to help with their three kids (twins Eugenie and Zelda and their little brother, Simon) but she moved out last night to start her own life.

The problem is that I love having all these babies and kids, but there's no way to keep playing all these characters. Also, I have a free will hack installed so that the Sims with the "family" aspiration that are married are always running off and sleeping with each other to try to get knocked up (Edgar, I'm thinking of you here, sir). I have another hack that I can delete the pregnancy, but that seems creepy. You can also give the kid up for adoption, but that seems pretty sketchy as well.

I think the bottom line is that I'm too attached to these little characters on a screen and I'm thinking about it too much.

My last note for today is that my child now constantly makes me draw the characters from Spongebob Squarepants. There's something about Spongebob's nose that I cannot quite master. However, my Mr Krabs is so good it looks like it came from Nickelodeon Studios. I guess when I finally go over the edge and run off, I could maybe try to get a job there.

I was in a bad mood today, and what should I find in my inbox but this to cheer me up:



Yay! I love the Petulant Poetess,despite that fact that they always find at least ten grammar errors in everything I write even after it's beta-d to death. I can't wait for the reveals of all these fests so that I can archive all of those stories there.

This makes me want to wait until the absolute last second to email my story, which I was planning on sending tonight.

I've never done an exchange in which the mods just assumed that if you didn't send your story early that you were not going to send it at all. I would have been happy to, I don't know, notify them of my progress if I'd realized it was that important to them, but being randomly chastised doesn't sit well with me.


I'm also loling because the mods were about five days late in sending out the assignments. Ha, ha, ha.

Wow, this went really well.

I'm not sure what I think about it all, and obviously whatsherface is a huge bitch for starting it. However, I can't help but think of some of the mountains I've seen fandom make out of molehills and wonder how easily some people could justify say, calling my employer, a public school system, and complaining next time I start flipping my big fin on the wrong side of a wank?

I mean, it's "so obvious" this time, but what about next time? What if I am a huge asshole and call someone a fatty-fatty-two-by-four, complete with pictures? Maybe reveal my secret white supremacist agenda? Say that I don't think slash is feminist and the OTW makes me barf? I know, I'm being facetious, and it's not that I believe that anyone will be targeting me per se, because in actuality there are few people who even read this blog. I suppose I'm just rather sensitive about the concept because if it happened I really would end up sleeping on the street in a cardboard box.

And my kid that is currently screaming at ear splitting volume probably won't adjust to homelessness real well. People with autism hate change and all. Better go try to smooth over whatever crisis is occurring... spilled crackers, a block tower that fell down, a DVD episode that she doesn't like. I mean, this is life and death stuff.

I dreamed that I was at a Beck concert. There was an intermission, and these staff people were going around the auditorium where the concert was being held and asking people to volunteer. Apparently, Beck wanted to have a bunch of people from the audience come on stage and sing the chorus of a song. I was one of the people chosen, and so I went backstage with the others. It was really bizarre and like a spaceship; everything made of metal and plastic with no windows and lots of sliding automatic doors and the like. Somehow, some of us got separated from the main group and ended up wandering around; the place was huge. After some events which I cannot recall specifically, we realized that it was all a plot to convert us to Scientology.

Throughout the Lexicon Wank, there have been small hints here and there of trouble in SVA's personal life, mostly having to do with him leaving his wife for a fellow fan. However, any real discussion of it in the endless series of wank entries on the subject has been banned or frowned upon, and so those small nuggets have been all that I knew, not being connected to the issue in any way save f_w.

It was interesting to me then to recently discover through comments here that allegedly Steve's obsession with the Lexicon and Harry Potter strained his family/marriage (which still exists, he's not divorced yet), that the woman he is dating is 23 (while he is 50 and his own daughter is 20), that he has almost no contact with his kids, and that since he is in the UK at this time he is not paying any support to his family, among other sordid details.

And by interesting, I don't mean "gee, look at what a fucked up mess this guy's life is!" schadenfreude. I feel that these details, while related to his personal life, cast some of his statements, decisions, and motivations as are related to the Lexicon and this whole mess in a different light. Additionally, the recent trend in press coverage portraying him as a sad, child-like innocent seem even more odd when you consider the apparent shambles of his family life.

I say because, for example, over the course of the wank there was mention of him needing to find a job in England, or saying that he moved to England to write. Well, according to his wife, he moved there to get out of paying support and apparently his girlfriend lives there. So there's something that has perhaps a different tenor if you know the personal details or not. And the press playing up the quiet librarian angle? According to his wife, he got fired from that job due to the affair, since it was a Christian school. I could go on and on, but I don't really want to dissect SVA's personal life, just show a few instances of how this stuff made me (and I think could make others) reconsider events as they pertain to the wank.

So, I'm not sure what I think about f_w keeping this on the DL. I have seen small instances of personal nastiness popping up in relation to what limited information has been posted, and I can see where extensive discussion has the potential to set off its own wank of epic proportions. On the other hand, I can't say that I think that it's not at all relevant either. I guess that means we'll chalk this up as yet another issue where I've taken a strong, decisive stance.

I'm excited to report that I have been away on vacation. This was good because it's intrinsically wonderful to go on vacation, but it also means in this case that I apparently missed a shit-ton of fandom-drama going down. Anyway, if I missed something that was actually worthwhile, someone let me know, because I'm only skimming my various flists.

I haven't gotten any writing done lately. I've been doing more beta-ing. I feel bad because I beta-d the shit out of this one chapter I got, and the author never responded; it was a good story, it just needed some structural work. Maybe this weekend I can do some writing of my own. I'm just merrily ignoring the three fest/challenge fics I have due next month, and that will surely come back to haunt me here soon.

My gosh, have I been busy lately. I did manage to get my first ficlet for rarepair_shorts posted here. Other than that, fic-wise I've been doing quite a bit of beta work and also agonizing over what to rec for Harry/Ron/Hermione over at crack_broom. That was kind of fun, but I wasn't able to relax about it, and so I felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders to rec the most perfect, bestest fics ever. Yeah, I know. That's what anxiety disorders will do to you.

Otherwise, REAL LIFE has been a hot mess, and I've been spending a lot of time reading and throwing myself into non-computer activities so that I don't have to dwell on it. Nothing too terrible, just upheaval with my job, but see above: anxiety disorder. I hope that things will smooth out soon because I have a lot of ideas for things and also many exchange/fest/challenge assignments that I need to be working on. It'd be nice to stop clenching my teeth before they crack and fall out of my head as well.

I could blather on, but I should have been asleep about 24 minutes ago, and instead I am still sitting here at the screen, completely unprepared for the workday tomorrow. >_

I ended up having a good time writing that Cho/Charlie fic for that erotic_elves challenge, so when I discovered THE HP SLASH SUPERCHALLENGE, I was excited. I could do some f/f and some wild pairings! So I used a random number generator and made my comment.

The excitement lasted until I got the three choices: Tonks/Andromeda, Cho/Padma, Bellatrix/Hermione. I usually refuse to write Bellatrix or Tonks when asked for fests and whatnot, so there's a strike against those two pairings right there. Plus, the idea of Tonks/Andromeda is total squick for me because of the incest (mother/daughter is like, the only kind that grosses me out). So it's looking like fate has thrown me and Cho together again, unless I can stomach Bellatrix, which is doubtful.

I need to write more, but I'm depressed that my grammar isn't perfect. Boo hoo hoo! ;_;

This post is to remind myself that I have two exchange fics due June 21.

My erotic_elves challenge fic is posted here in case anyone ever wondered how I could contrive to have Cho Chang and Charlie Weasley get it on. It ended up being rather sweet, which kind of wasn't where I thought it would be ending up, but hey.

Now I have one short L/G to edit, one to write, and then, I'm not sure. I do have a couple challenges I've signed up for, but they aren't due in the very near future. I may try to tackle the sequel to Apple (cue ominous music here), but I might go ahead and try to finish all the L/g shorts first.

I can now tell you that I wrote a short Lucius/Narcissa piece for melfinatheblue called What You Came For for the wizard_love exchange. There were a lot of great fics written for the exchange, including the one that wieimmer wrote for me.

Going back to work after my short Easter break has been depressing. I want moar vacations!

Psst-- Any mice out there who long to beta HP fics?

Thank god someone posted a wank entry about the content strike, because I couldn't have lived without everyone's thoughts on yaoi the subject. I mean, I laughed so many times reading it that I couldn't keep count. Wait, I did keep count, and the count was none.

I haven't gotten as much writing done lately as I'd hoped, and that makes me disgruntled. I wish that I didn't have such specific criteria regarding a good writing situation, and could be one of those people scratching out shit on napkins at the drop of a hat. I mean, once I am writing, I can produce things fairly quickly, but I need an environment that pretty impossible when you have a full-time job, full-time kid, and tons of people in your home which conveniently located near nothing in particular. Oh well.

Happy Giant Bunny That Promotes Tooth Decay Day!

I want to pimp my Wizard Love exchange fic that was posted today, A Date With The Night. It's a fabulous NC-17 tale starring a confused Draco, bewildered by the advances of an extra saucy Hermione.

I'd say more but no time!

So, LJ is working on their policies. I guess my general feeling is that they aren't as bad as they could be, but they aren't as good either. A lot of people are asking good questions, and a few people are being twatwaffles.

I don't usually let the serious business of the internet bother me, but if I had a free pass to smack that guy upside the head, I would.

Now I have Parliament stuck in my head.