This LJ is effectively inactive. I might come back to it someday, but that's looking more and more unlikely. I still use this LJ identity to comment in other people's journals sometimes, but even that's a pretty rare occurrence.

I no longer have my e-mail posted in my LJ profile, and I'm not checking any of my old fandom-related e-mail addresses anymore. So if you need to get in touch with me, your best bet is to leave a comment on this post, and I'll respond to you by e-mail.

Apparently I only posted four times during 2006. Wow. I knew I was scaling back my fandom/LJ involvement, but I never really meant to drop completely off the face of the earth like that. I guess it's just one of those things where it might occur to me to post something, but then I'd realize how long it had been since I last posted and I'd feel the need to explain and recap but then it just got so daunting and I'd feel guilty and ... yeah.

But I still exist, even though I no longer keep up with LJ or even my friends that I know primarily via LJ, including those that I love dearly (which I still do, by the way, non-communicativeness or no; see above re: guilt).

And because I'm too much of a lameass to write a real post but I still want to summarize stuff, I'm going to do that 2006 year in review meme:

01 What did you do in 2006 that you'd never done before?
Finished a novel.( More along those lines )

Btw, for some reason I recently posted some Harry/Ginny NC-17 schmoop over there.

My cat has somehow unearthed a Lego Draco that I bought as a joke back when the Chamber of Secrets movie came out. It is now his favorite toy. He is being very cute running around the apartment batting at it, so I thought I would share that with anyone still reading this LJ.

And while I'm here:

Fandom/pop culture update: Currently obsessed with "The Office" (I even tried writing fic but I kept coming up with Pam/Roy sex scenes, so I stopped); in love with "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" and The Other Boleyn Girl (dude, how can no one have told me there's gay stuff in that book?!?); have a renewed appreciation for Rachel Bilson (it's worth seeing The Last Kiss just for her character) but still don't plan on watching this season of "The O.C."; will be watching "Lost," but grudgingly.

Life update: I'm still in DC, still job hunting (interviewing with places in both DC and NYC, keep your fingers crossed for me), still single, starting to freak out about money/the future/etc, and am weirded out by revealing even this much info outside of friends-lock so will stop there.

LJ update: I have been away for a while, and in addition to those of you I know and love, my friends page now has a bunch of people I vaguely remember talking about fandoms I've never heard of and actors I've never heard of and everything is referred to with abbreviations and shorthand that I don't recognize and I feel very, very out of the loop. I see a tweaking coming up sometime soon.

I miss you guys.

I was getting all my fic together to archive on LJ (it's all now here) and I realized that I'd never linked to the last two bits of porn I wrote from here, since I posted them to communities instead. So:

There's The Night Before, a Ron/Lavender story that I figured I'd post to a Ron/Lavender community, except that it turns out there are no Ron/Lavender communities (how is this possible when there are Hermione/Flint communities? Whatever), so I posted it to erotic_elves.

And there's Education, a Hermione/Ginny smut piece based on an absolutely mesmerizing drawing of the same name by hobbitdragon.

I'm going to be taking down my URL, constellography.org, sometime in the near future. All my fic will still be archived and accessible via LJ, but if you happen to have been feeling nostalgic for my now-defunct Harry Potter femslash site, Madam Hooch's Broom Closet, or for the list of dead links that was once a Lotrips recs page, you might want to take a last look now before they're gone.

Just wanted to give a heads up before I started deleting.

(And hi, by the way! *kisses all*)

Hello. I am reappearing from out of nowhere to solicit help from anyone who may be reading this, because I am lame like that.

I am planning to move to New York sometime in the near future, and I am in need of lots of info about the city. So if you've lived in New York, I have a bunch of questions for you ( behind the cut. )

In other news, it took me a week but I actually read that whole thing about Dionne. It kind of blew me away. Wow.

Can anyone recommend a method for copying an entire blog and/or website onto one's hard drive?

Thanks much.

I was walking home from my local corner store just now when I passed a lemonade stand three 8-year-old girls had set up on the sidewalk in front of their house. I knew that I had exactly 71 cents in my pocket, which I suspected wouldn't be enough to cover a cup of lemonade in today's demanding market, so I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that their sign offered cups of lemonade for a mere 25 cents.

The girl who was in charge of the toy cash register directed her sister and/or friend to pour me a cup of Country Time and took my quarter, pronouncing, "The money we make is for the people who got hit by the hurricane."

I don't usually like lemonade, actually -- at least, when there's no vodka in it -- but wow, this stuff is tasty.

So I was reading this fascinating post by angiej, who was one of the first writers I read when I was first experimenting with fandom back in 2001, in which she discusses, among other things, the myopia that often plagues fans and how different things look once you've left that behind. Which is ... interesting, and I'm not sure I agree but it's certainly given me something to think about.

And she also says:

The rabbit hole gets darker once you go beyond this point... and I've been there, so deep that I will never be able to run for elected office *anywhere*, ever. After all, taken out of context, you could make a case that I've written what looks very much like kid characters screwing each other's brains out. Het or slash, canon-era or post-Hogwarts, to the eyes of an increasingly polarized and conservative 21st century world, it really doesn't matter... you are extra special once you start doing that.

Which... huh, I'd never thought of it like that, either. And again, not sure I agree, but the bit about running for elected office also makes me pause. Because the reason Ebony falls into that particular category is not just because she's written smut (though it is quite good smut, and she could run for some sort of smut-related office I'd think), but because she's both written smut and gone online using her real name.

And I've always been conflicted about that, myself. I've never once typed my real name into anything fannish-related (except that I did, out of a bizarre sense of guilt, have it on my name badge at Nimbus, but I covered it up). Not that I plan to ever run for elected office (but you never know, I guess) but, well, better safe than sorry, I've always thought. I might decide I want to adopt from China, or go on a reality show or date a Bush twin or something. Granted, when I first resigned myself to a lifetime of fannish anonymity I never dreamed that I'd one day be posting fanfiction in which teenage girls drink each others' menstrual blood, but seeing as how I've since gone to that "extra special" place, as Ebony puts it, I'm quite glad I decided to invent "Anna Maria Moss."

But then... it would also be kind of nice to someday decide to create something really cool in the non-fannish world, and to then be able to say, "Look, I've done all this too." I mean, yeah, I'm certainly not a BNF or whatever, but I've established myself online, I've written some stuff that I like, and I'll never be able to share any of it with anyone outside the little fannish bubble. Last year, I was dating a girl who was really eager to read some of my "writing," and I realized I had pretty much nothing I could send her -- even if I copied and pasted something into a Word document and changed the names, she'd still have been able to Google passages and wind up at my website and/or LJ in two clicks. Which was not a risk I was willing to take, or probably will be anytime soon. Just, for example. Obviously I know I can share stuff about my fannish existence with RL people on a case-by-case basis, but for me that's still quite a leap.

And I guess that's what happens when you draw that line. I'm still glad I came down on the side I did, of course, but still... yeah.

I always run out of steam when I try to write things like this. Just pretend this paragraph contains an interesting, thoughtful, witty conclusion, okay?

Pippin is being particularly cute today. He keeps yawning -- well, I mean, he yawns a lot already, lazy little beast -- but instead of doing his traditional silent yawn, he's started making short little high-pitched purring sounds at the same time. It's like, "YAWWWmewWWWNNNN." It's very sweet. Also, meme:

1. Go to the Elouai doll maker.
2. Make an ordinary doll of yourself and save it.
3. Take that doll and, leaving a couple things (nose, eyebrows, whatever) the same, Mary Sue yourself. Make the most blatant Mary Sue you can conceive.
4. Post "Before" and "After" in your LJ. Bonus points if your Sue has a backstory of some kind.

So, here's ( me )

and ( Mary Sue me )

So I guess the backstory of my Sue is that she is taller and richer than me and knows how to work a straightening iron. Also, she didn't go to sleep in her contacts last night.

See, and the problem is, it's impossible to try and write Lupin/Tonks fic without stealing that classic line that resolves all problems involving heterosexual werewolf romance -- you know, Willow's immortal "I mean, three days out of the month I'm not much fun to be around either."

Because, hello, I want to write my own dialogue.

Grrrr.

Hi.

P.S. Are we allowed to use icons with HBP spoilers in them yet?

P.P.S. This is fascinating.

I've been reading a lot of criticism lately of the way JKR writes romance and the role romance has in the series. And I disagree with the vast majority of what I've read. So, let's chat about that, shall we?

( Includes HBP spoilers. )

Before the release, I posted a bunch of speculation about the events of this book. Now I'm grading myself. I, uh, didn't do that great. ( spoilers for entire book )

This post is entirely shipping-related. ( spoilers for entire book )

OK, I'm finished. ( spoilers )

OMG, I can't go ANYWHERE online anymore without being scared of HBP spoilers. I've only got 5 chapters to go, but something tells me those 5 chapters are going to be important, ha, and I can't even go to the Washington Post homepage without encountering a big front-page story that looks like it's got spoilers in the fucking blurb (but then, I'm not about to allow the Washington fucking Post any benefit of doubt these days regarding HBP spoilers, now am I). And I can't read my friends page, even on the special no-communities filter I created for this very purpose, because I've seen stuff outside spoiler cuts that I consider to be spoilers, even if others don't; and I can't read that hbp_chapters community because it's full of speculation that I don't want to hear because I want to figure it all out for myself, and gah.

Anyway. Some general thoughts up to this point. ( spoilers through chapter 25 )

Having read chapter 24. ( spoilers )

I know it's terribly unprofessional to write fic without having finished the book, but I can't help myself.

( Untitled HBP ficlet. Spoilers through chapter 11. )