I got to spend some time reading fanfic again, though could hardly make time for all the brilliant-looking Hoggywarty and rarepair winter exchange entries this year that look interesting - most of them do look so worthwhile! You creators have really outdone yourself this year, and the recipients must feel so lucky! Some hits from the ones I've gotten round to reading, most of you have probably already read them, but if you haven't: 

Fanfic: 
The Perfect Gift (Minerva McGonagall/Severus Snape, 8441 words, PG), which is a truly magical ghost story about a Christmas gift, a family curse, and these two rather private adult characters slowly and respectfully falling for each other. Read this, you will not be sorry.

Rest your Dream in My Dream (Minerva McGonagall/Severus Snape, 9k words, T/PG), is an excellent Minerva/Severus fanfic which tells a post-war story about how Minerva and Severus became a couple with flashbacks to relevant past interactions. You won't regret reading it if you haven't already!

and an honourable mention: Lit Match (Alecto Carrow/Lily Evans, ~2k words, R) by phantomanto , which is a very interesting take on this unusual pairing which they still manage to make work well.

Art:
Rejoicing (in the Greenhouse)- an illustration for an equally excellent fanfic (The Longest Night) set in a greenhouse.

Art for Reawakening - a delightful gifset illustrating the visitors to Severus' bedside illustrating the fic of the same title

What a good ending to last year and start to this one!

Title: The Great Spattergroit Lockdown of 2000

When life gives you a pandemic...



Lock Down Fest is a non-anon, self-posting, multi-ship and multi-fandom mini fest focusing on a twofold theme: a. Isolated Together, and b. Quarantine/Covid-19 related. LDF will run from 20-30 March 2020.

It's lockdownfest on  tumblr and also on Ao3.

Somehow, I'm still pretending this is not real in my head. I feel a lot like Ian McEwan, who writes, "Brexit, the most pointless, masochistic ambition in our country's history, is done".

I still cannot understand voting yourself away from a union built on the rubble of a wartorn and divided Europe, a union based on solidarity, freedom, human rights, and peace. A union in which historic perennial enemies became friends and wars became unthinkable.

I'm trying to cling to my hopes for Scotland.

Title: Home, adrift
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 9597
Characters and/or Pairings: this is mostly a story about Severus and his father, but there is Severus Snape/Minerva McGonagall, past Severus Snape/Lucius Malfoy, Tobias Snape/Eileen Prince

Summary: Professor Snape was dead, and Severus was alone. He did not mind. He was adrift, unmoored. It was difficult to feel professorial in Cokeworth. It was difficult to feel anything but out of place. Not that he had ever fitted in. He walked up and down the high street for hours, not even getting suspicious looks from the other people. This was not an area where grown men in funny clothes walking up and down high street aimlessly in the middle of the day got funny looks. This was not the kind of place where people looked at one another at all.

Author's Notes: I did a thing. There were several things floating around my mind when writing this. Mostly how I think it is unfair that working class fathers seem to be portrayed as violent substance abusers more than middle class parents, and the fact that I can see Severus having developed his precocious and excellent Occlumency skills early on as a defence mechanism when dealing with an abusive Legilimens. Also how much of Severus's life is spent doing what other people tell him to. So, this happened. Thanks so much Crocky, for bearing with me.

( Read more... )

Two more glorious weeks of Easter holidays lie ahead and I'm surfacing from work once more. I haven't touched the pile of student papers yet at all.

I haven't even glanced their way.

Crocky and I have taken a short trip across Germany and I've knitted a lot while watching The Walking Dead, but that's about it. I've backdated seveal posts about the trip with photos and notes with memories.

( Short thoughts on TWD )

I'm going back to doing drop stitches on my Gyre cardigan now. 

Since we'd spent most of our first day indoors we had planned to spend more time outside on the second day and explore the inner city and the English Garden.



( Munich )

On the second day we explored Leipzig. I discovered that my cold was not quite gone and thus my head felt as though it'd been packed in cotton wool the entire day.



( Leipzig )

Tried my hand at an actual pattern for grown up knitters: Kieran Foley's Arran Waves.

Close-up before...



... and while being blocked on our living room floor rug:



And man, this was tricky. It took me over a month, I started over twice, but ended up with a result that I'm quite happy with. What i'm really not happy with anymore after this time is the yarn. In the beginning I liked the blue texture, but on the whole, the pattern is far too busy to do it justice. It also looks as though it really wanted to become a sock. Well, it can't be changed, and I'm not about to do this again any time soon. Sadly, it's also a bit too short for my taste .