Never give up anything you can't go a day without thinking about

Mmm, Hellsing research.  Two nice discoveries last night:

Yogi Tea: Awesome, very informative tea site which also makes very good tea.  Has great categories and lists of ingredients for specific purposes.

List of vampire literature published before Dracula.

Old WIPs are published; new ones begun.  I hope to have various little things - or one, anyway - soon.  And meanwhile I have a strong urge to write a Harry/Ron/Hermione smutfic, the way it ought to be done - which means with oodles of hurt/comfort.  I just distantly remember reading a fic, long ago, which had how it should be.  There ought to be more, so yeah.  And it's occurred to me I've never written Harry before.  Or Ron, really.  Hermione got a line or two in Put a Light in the Window - but smutfic will be very different. :D

I ought to write Minerva/Tom, too. *is pensive*

Meanwhile, I am enjoying working on my fic for the less_for_you exchange.  Deadline May 5th, yay. 

So yes, hopefully I'll have something new (albeit short) soon.

...And if you happen to know of the RestrictedSection.org, look for a story called And in Arcadia I by Catja M., I believe.  It's not about sex; just really gorgeous, sad and somewhat dark but not oppressingly so.  It's the best I've seen on that site in a while. 

So I'm finally posting a fic here again. Because 1) I feel better about it than the last and 2) I intend to crosspost it to a few communities. It's for redandthewolf 's second challenge, Tales of Whiskey and Regret.  I'm in the middle of a second story for the same challenge, let's see if I can finish it in time.  (Meanwhile, with Hellsing, I've done an amazing amount for Out of the Dungeon [fingers crossed that I don't get stuck, parts will be tricky] as well as the crazy bathtub scene which doesn't have a title yet.  But whee!

- Really, I don't have here a lily/severus tag or icon yet?  WTF and shame on me.

...OH, that's because I never even linked my first submission for redandthewolf.  Well, here it is now: Never Spoken, Never Forgotten.

Anyway.)

Title: Stability, Safety, and Happiness
Summary: It was the insensible force of adolescent attraction, but it was strong and consuming and had carried them on for how many months now?
Rating: PG-13 (tiny bit of language)
Warnings: none but what we know happens in canon
Word Count: 1,738
Author’s Note: Okay, I like this better than my submission for the last challenge.  A bit, anyway.  And it's odd, isn't it, how I handle my OTP....  Reviews with however you truly feel will mean ever so much.

I briefly considered entering this journal for a Most Neglected Journal award, then realized I would lose.  Nevertheless, I feel really, really guilty.

It's not like I haven't had anything to update, either.  I've written and posted fic.  I have to, um, figure out what the last thing I posted here was - Mischief Managed? 

Well, there's been two more posted Hellsing things:

• Afternoon Off, written last summer and not posted until this April because that's just how I do things.  It was written as a present for Jean, to match an amusing (but wonderful) picture she drew.
• Sunday Morning Wake-Up (I want my title inspiration BACK): a v. short scene of mine and a very beautiful picture of Jean's.

Annnnd back to Harry Potter, I've joined redandthewolf, a community for Remus and Lily, shipped or otherwise.  I'm oddly excited about it, and submitted a story for their first challenge.  My first challenge!fic!  But I'm awfully un-proud of it, hence why it hasn't been posted here on fanfictionDOTnet yet.  However, I will link it here now - I called it Never Spoken, Never Forgotten.

Now redandthewolf is having their second challenge, and as I was looking over their prompts I got really excited and wrote some down as well as a start of five hundred words.  So you'll hear more about that.  Eventually.

And yeah, I haven't forgotten about nightmare-story or any of my other long-suffering (srsly) WIPs.  They're...among my priorities.

Also, it seems like I've given up my SOS reviews, since I read Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter trilogy, loved it to pieces, and didn't review them.  Meh.  Well, SOS does stand for Supply of Sanity (or was it Store of Sanity?), created in a time of great need which I am fortunately no longer in. 

Now, want to know the real reason for this entry?

Like many, I've been re-reading all the Harry Potter books in preparation for the seventh; right now I'm in chapter eight of the fifth book.  But just a little earlier tonight I was in chapter seven, "The Ministry of Magic," closely reading the descriptions of all the floors in the Ministry (which I think are the coolest thing, y'know).  And I got to Level Three, which is the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes including the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad, Obliviator Headquarters, and Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee.

Like a lot of things in Ms. Rowling's world, the obvious and most practical purpose a name suggests is not necessarily what it actually is.  Some things are silly and ridiculous or just odd.  In the names of the Ministry offices particularly, there seem to be a lot of hidden jokes.  So I puzzled over this - do they handle lame excuses from law-breaking wizards/witches, and the name is a deliberate insult to Muggles?  Is this a committee which actually creates Muggle-worthy excuses for other magical departments or whatever?  And then it hit me: it's a committee that creates excuses to present to the Muggles involved in magical catastrophes or accidents.

Once grasped, I knew this had to be one of the most brilliant jobs in the wizarding world.  Also, the committee must be almost entirely made up of Muggle-borns.

All day they receive news of catastrophes/accidents and invent the most plausible excuses for them Muggles would understand/believe.  They must have to stay up on Muggle technology, for excuses about gas lines and, y'know, technology, and wow.  Ooh, the fics that could be written about this committee.  Seeing how it has to be almost entirely Muggle-born, it could also be the headquarters of a secret Muggle-born society, for whatever purpose you like, etc.

Got three reviews today for Mischief Managed!  I am ever-so-pleasantly surprised.  They are, in order:

1. The emotional trip I've gone on while reading this - it's intense. A good kind of intense: you've not lost your talent for writing, especially when it comes to describing emotions.
   Lily reminded me of Harry in this chapter, like when she had the urge to laugh when she was threatening Sirius.
   
2. Positevely, absoulutely, heart-wrenching AMAZING! 12 bazillion jillion stars!
   
3. It's okay for an AU, I guess.

*dies laughing in delight*  I'd forgotten how much I loved the fanfictionDOTnet community.

...And okay, I'm replying to the reviews naturally, but before I type a quick "Thank you for reviewing.  *is amused*" to the last, I thought I'd look at his/her profile to see if they have a hobby of being pretentious and disdainful or what. 

Therein I found these two interesting tidbits:

Harry Potter Characters I Like-
...
3. Sirius Black (My love. I think he's a great friend.)

(Okay, for one I would really question her definition of friendship...)

Harry Potter couples I HATE-
1. Lily and Snape (EW! I don't mind Severus liking Lily, but Lily liking back is just stupid. Just because she stands up for him, doesn't mean she LOVES him!)

...And with both of them together, I find much is explained.  Ahahahaha.

(What I did end up reviewing back to her: "Thank you for reviewing. *is amused*  And I suppose I should be glad for that positive a response, since after looking at your profile I see Sirius is one of your favorite characters and Lily/Severus one of your least favorite ships, hm? ;)")

ETA:  Just got another brilliant one!

that's terrible. i'm glad james actually saved snape's life. it would have been awful for that to happen

The best part is how the first two words make you blink ("wow, that's quite outrightly harsh") and then you realize, oh.

Mischief Managed (Ishew) is SUPPOSEDLY finished.  Complete.  Except the last scene needs to be completely torn up and re-written.  Fortunately, I do know what it needs to be; I just need to make it so.  All about atmosphere.  Then the beta-process can be done.

I also plan to be posting the Hellsing dungeon scene (which will will will be named) quite soon as well.

Oh, and I also updated the nightmare-story She Had the Perfect Life on fanfictionDOTnet for the first time in over a year.  Ouch.  ...Lily and James will be getting married in the next chapter, I think.  Did not mention in the author notes how hard that will be to write, ahaha.  ...I just cannot feel Lily/James after having done Lily/Severus.

But it is nice to get (totally undeserving) reviews again.

Random Harry Potter thought of the - er, morning:

I was admiring my friends-only banner on my usual journal, and as I looked at the back of Harry's hand, thinking about those scars and how he shoved them in Rufus Scrimgeour's face in the sixth book, my mind jumped to eleven-year-old Tom Riddle snarling, "Tell the truth!" at Dumbledore.

And then I wonder if there could possibly, possibly be a connection in the seventh book between the two. 

Harry's other scar has proven itself to be er, yeah, of some significance...ooh, now my mind has jumped to how Ms. Rowling said the last word of the seventh book is "scar."  Wouldn't it be a twist if she wasn't talking about the scar on Harry's forehead?  And Tom's emphatic line is rather random and unexplained. 

"I will not tell lies" - lies about Voldemort, lies that were actually the truth, a mockery by the Ministry of Magic - vs. "Tell the truth," which stems from...we don't know exactly what. 

Any thoughts?



On another note, I have determined to try my damndest to have my Lily/Severus story finished by Friday.  It would be nice if I could get it sent off to the beta's before then, but we'll see.

Today is the second-year anniversary of the fifth book's birth into bookstores all over the world.  (Or it will be in less than an hour - give me some slack.)  I'll always remember it because eight hours after we picked it up at midnight, my parents were married.  Or actually, that's a lie - five days ago, I just remembered their anniversary because the fifth book's anniversary was coming up, and I had a Yahoo!reminder sent to me.

Anyway.  I am a faithful reader of daily_snitch, and I've read a lot of essays and rants and discussions and things on...a lot of things about the books.  Not necessarily just the fifth book.

But on this anniversary of the fifth book, and as we pass into the final month before the sixth book, I would like to conduct a little survey.  Especially relying on how many of us are re-reading the fifth book, in preparation for New Canon.

What are your favorite passages, quotes, scenes, etc. from the fifth book?  What you liked the best, thought were the most profound, thought were the best written.

*bows out, and goes to put the finishing touches on a certain anniversary gift*