where his civilizations, including our own

Posting has started at hp_kinkfest (yaaaaaay), and my entry is up:

Rest Your Head Close to My Heart (R, Harry/Hermione) [AO3]
It's almost time to wean her last child, and Hermione is thinking about what she's losing. Meanwhile, Harry is thinking about what he never had.
content: Lactation kink, adult nursing, non-sexual ageplay, epilogue-compliant fidelity issues (i.e. Harry and Hermione are both married, and not to each other)

I might just go ahead and make it my mission to travel the fandom as a kink-knight-errant, filling all the ageplay prompts in every fest. That's cool with everybody, right?

The title's from this (worksafe video, unless your boss doesn't like to see you crying at your desk).

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Feel free to comment wherever you're comfortable.

Kinky Kristmas reveals are up and I am filled with shame at how little I managed to read before disappearing into the holidays. :| Well, at least the fics aren't going anywhere, right?

My two lovely gifts were written by tjs_whatnot (Forever and Always) and dexstarr (Sin and Salt). Thank you both very, very much. ♥

Now, Kinky Kristmas is a double-blind fest where you don't know who you're writing for, and yet I have managed to pick songquake's prompts two years in a row. We are clearly on the same wavelength in a wonderful way. :)

I wrote:

Theme and Variations (NC-17, Padma/Lavender) [AO3]
"Ready?" Padma asks with a raised eyebrow, sliding her belt out from the loops of her jeans.
content: Daddy kink, ageplay, gender play, D/s, spanking, dirty talk

Um... my id is showing, isn't it? I really like gender play, and I really like Daddy kink when Daddy is a girl, but it's not such a common thing in fandom. I am happy to contribute to there being more of it. >:D

Aaaaaand posting has started at severus_fest where I'll have a fic going up at some point, and of course I haven't managed to read anything yet, but OMG did you guys see this amazing art that was posted for it?

Snapebastian (PG-13, Snape, worksafe) by Mystery Artist

Brilliant take on Snape as St. Sebastian, with very insightful use of the traditional imagery.

And now to put together a 2014 roundup post, and then contemplate how the hell I managed to sign myself up for so much that is due in January and February. /o\

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Feel free to comment wherever you're comfortable.

Some things I've been enjoying over the past, er... more than a month. I'm no good at that insta-rec thing some people seem to be able to do.

ST:TNG fic: New Days (G, Deanna-centric ensemble fic) by cosmic_llin
Post-Ethics AU. Following Worf's death, Deanna struggles with her promise to raise Alexander.

   It's rare to read a story that understands grief this well — not just the emotions, but also how families and communities reorganize themselves around the empty space where the person once was.

HP fic: Haunted (R, Lily/Sirius, Lily/James, implied Sirius/James) by writcraft
Dead or alive, Sirius Black has always haunted Lily.

   A beautiful and delicate look at the complexities of this triad, both before and after death.

HP art: Rat (worksafe, Padfoot) by akatnamedeaster
In his dreams, he always catches him in the end.

   All the more powerful for its stark simplicity.

HP silly thing: HP Quotes Taken Out of Context (worksafe) [no creator credited]

   And on a completely different note, if you need a laugh after those three rather serious fanworks, indulge your inner 12-year-old with this! If anyone needs me, I'll be on all fours in Snape's office.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Feel free to comment wherever you're comfortable.

Mixed feelings about hp_reunion, since so many of us are still here and have no need to be reunited! But I realize for many people HP fandom is now a long-ago memory and a reunion makes sense. I guess we should be glad it's stuck around long enough for that to happen.

Either way, today seems to be the day people are recreating or pointing to their first post in the fandom. Mine seems to have been on a mailing list called HP Improv.

But then! My friends from X-Files fandom persuaded me to get an LJ, which I had previously said I would never do. At the tender age of 20, I was already a stodgy old-timer who'd been in fandom for years, and I was sure this newfangled LiveJournal thing would never catch on. Online diaries were for high school drama, not Serious Fandom Business. Usenet and mailing lists forever! (Not sure whether to laugh or cry here.)

At last I caved and joined the 21st century, and broke the champagne bottle on my LJ's bow by reposting my very first HP fic, which I'm pleased to say is not embarrassingly bad. (Fortunately I was only new to Harry Potter, definitely not new to writing.)

And here's the post: May 6, 2003.

( Notable things )

This entry was originally posted at http://pauraque.dreamwidth.org/47840.html. Comment here or there.

I wrote this for hp_het_taboo:

Two Can Keep a Secret (NC-17, Fred/Ginny, canon-compliant Harry/Ginny) [AO3]
Ten years after Fred's death, Ginny looks back on the secret they shared.

I want to emphasize here that that this is a story about abuse, and not a fun incest romp. Romps are good too (I've certainly written my share), I just don't want anybody to skim the headers and think this is one.

( a few comments about why I wrote this (mentions of RL abuse) )


Anyway, this is shaping up to be a busy end to 2014. I've got a daily_deviant fic to write for October and hp_halloween due on the same day, Kinky Kristmas due in November, severus_fest in December... so, yeah, probably not signing up for Yuletide this year. Treating is more fun anyway, IMO!

This entry was originally posted at http://pauraque.dreamwidth.org/46520.html. Comment here or there.

As usual, there were too many great entries in hp_beholder to be comprehensive about this, but here are a few that especially stood out to me.

A Lonely Road (R, Severus Snape/Aberforth Dumbledore) by wwmrsweasleydo
A perceptive portrait of Severus and Aberforth's relationship, as well as a vivid picture of the ever-absent Albus, drawn in negative space between them. Every detail adds to the ominous and oppressive time these characters live in, and not a word is wasted.

we lay together on a cold hard floor (R, Severus Snape/Peter Pettigrew) by tarteaucitron
Over the summer holiday, the house hourglasses are taken down and Severus and Peter can approach each other as something less like players in a game, and more like people. The author strikes a perfect balance between pointing out the effects their choices have had and will have on their lives, while also making it clear that these aren't free choices -- they're constantly being pushed, by so many factors.

No Charity (PG, Aunt Marge/Rita Skeeter) by fluffyllama
Two threads are woven together well here: A deft and funny satire of English conservative culture as embodied in Marge, as well as an intriguing deconstruction of Rita and her self-created identity as a media gadfly. You wouldn't think it would work, but it does. The author struck just the right balance between letting the characters be vulnerable without sanding off the rough edges.

A Short Treatise on the Social Lives of Ghosts (PG, various ghost pairings) by dueltastic
Utterly charming and hilarious.

[eta: authors]

This entry was originally posted at http://pauraque.dreamwidth.org/45306.html. Comment here or there.

April's daily_deviant challenge was to make something based on a piece previously posted to the community. I chose to write about osmalic's art piece A Good Big Brother Always Shares (NSFW), though it turned out sort of... different than I expected.

The Lion's Share (NC-17, Regulus/Sirius[?]) [AO3]
Regulus knows he's not allowed in his brother's room, but something keeps him coming back.
content: underage sexuality, incest fantasy


In other news, one of my RAM sticks has gone bad! Yay! I expect the computer will continue limping along well enough until the replacements get here (the symptom is sporadic freezes), but still not something I'm happy about. I just hope it's that the stick was faulty to start with, rather than there being something else wrong that killed the RAM. It's not overheating inside the case or anything, so, fingers crossed.

This entry was originally posted at http://pauraque.dreamwidth.org/44515.html. Comment here or there.

Today's the last day to sign up for hp_beholder!

As I was writing my sign-up I was thinking about how my requests in exchanges tend to vary a lot, even in the same exchange from year to year. My interests fluctuate, so one year I might ask for slash, another for femslash — one year I'll ask for darkfic, another for romance, and so on. I've done Beholder for a few years running, and each time my requests have been different and so have my offers. It's not that I've stopped liking the characters I preferred before, it's just that once I've written some character or pairing or topic I tend to feel like, well, I did that already. Not always, but often. Same for receiving a gift fic about them.

I guess it's easier to feel this way in a fandom with such a huge range of reasonably fleshed-out characters, but sometimes I feel like I'm the only one! It seems that most people have their favorites and they pretty much stay the same. They're not writing one Snape fic and moving on, they're writing him year after year — and that's not a bad thing, it's just not how my head works. There's no way I would copy and paste my Beholder sign up from last year, because it doesn't reflect what I feel like now.

This entry was originally posted at http://pauraque.dreamwidth.org/42844.html. Comment here or there.

Oh man, I haven't posted in a while, have I? Real life was doing a number on me, not in a bad way, just in a busy way. I am going to get to all those December meme prompts, too, but first... the Kinky Kristmas reveals post is up at daily_deviant, so I can say that I wrote this, to songquake's delicious prompts:

Pomona Sprout and the Five Points from Hufflepuff [AO3]
(NC-17, school-age-but-probably-legal Pomona/Minerva, kinks including tickling, teasing, and embarrassment)

Speaking of which, I found an embarrassment of riches in my fandom_stocking! There seems to be a glitch right now where I can't comment there without it being screened, but rest assured I love my gifts and deeply appreciate everyone who took the time to make something for me, including but not limited to:

- State-Transition Function by sineala (ST:TOS, Uhura gen with linguistics!)
- Your Move by moontyger (WoW, Anduin/Wrathion with UST!)
- For the Horde by hannelore (WoW, Thrall & Vol'jin gen with barely-subtextual D/s!)
- An Introduction by smallbrownfrog (HP, Luna/Minerva pre-femslash with Gilbert & Sullivan references!)
- Outstanding by chokolattejedi (HP, Hermione/Septima with power play!)
- Krycek and Scully art from ani_bester and another Krycek art from tarlanx! *rolls around in XF nostalgia*
- Uhura art from trobadora! Uhura! ♥♥♥

I really meant to do all kinds of things for this fest, but what actually happened was I signed up for it and then promptly forgot about it until the deadline had, in fact, passed. I suck, I know. Next year I'll do better. But due to the technical problems that delayed the fest going live, I managed a few icons for people, at least, and one ficlet, which is so tailored to hannelore's interests that it might be incomprehensible to anyone else, but here it is anyway:

The Terrible Secret of Warsong Gulch
(G, Venture Bros., 21 & 24 friendship)

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Feel free to comment wherever you're comfortable.

I wasn't signed up for femslashex, but I picked up two pinch hits:

Opening (Explicit, ST:TNG, Tasha Yar/Deanna Troi) for ariestess
Tasha can read Deanna's body as well as Deanna can read her heart.
content notes: D/s play including light bondage

All Roads Lead To (Teen, HP, Cho Chang/Luna Lovegood) for sharpest_asp
After leaving Hogwarts, Cho isn't sure if there's a place for her anymore in the fight against Voldemort. Luna comes to convince her that there is.

Now to read! And then to work on all the holiday fest fics I need to write! /o\

This entry was originally posted at http://pauraque.dreamwidth.org/39260.html. Comment here or there.