Geri-chan's Journal

(Okay, trying this one more time...indenting a quoted passage somehow messed up my margins and lj-cut, and it was easier to delete the whole thing and post again than try to fix it.)

Saw this on my Friends list and thought it sounded like fun--I always love to ramble on about meta on my fics, and I love even more hearing other writers talk about their fics!

1. What was the first fic you ever wrote?

Hey everybody, go check out the awesome Summer Fest artwork that the_bitter_word made for my story Happy Birthday, Severus! It was a fic/art exchange, and I was expecting only a single illustration, but instead I am receiving an entire pop-up picture book of my story! She did an incredible job illustrating all my favorite scenes from the story, from the humorous moments (Dumbledore holding the cartoon-snake pajamas) to the sad and poignant ones (young Severus slipping away to his room while his parents fight and his birthday cake sits on the table, uneaten), and the sweet ones (Lupin arriving at Snape's door with a birthday cake hidden behind his back, and Snape and Lupin clinking their glasses of wine in a birthday toast). (When I receive the actual book, I'll take some photos and post some scans of it.) Please go and tell The Bitter Word just how awesome the artwork is!

I think most of my Friends list has already seen these, but in case you're interested, my gifts to The Bitter Word were the stories The Return of the Slytherins (Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5) and The Werewolf Jamboree.

Title: Spirits, Part 3
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Leon/D
Word count: ~5,650
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Matsuri Akino; no money is being made off this story; consider it a little wish fulfillment on my part.

Summary: Sequel to Spirits, Part 1 and Part 2; Leon and D investigate a murder which may have been committed by a vengeful spirit.

Title: Spirits, Part 2
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Leon/D
Word count: ~4,970
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Matsuri Akino; no money is being made off this story; consider it a little wish fulfillment on my part.

Summary: Sequel to Spirits, Part 1; Leon and D investigate a murder which may have been committed by a vengeful spirit.

Another old petshop fic, set in the same slightly AU world as "Revenge".

Title: Spirits, Part 1
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Leon/D
Word count: ~4,770
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Matsuri Akino; no money is being made off this story; consider it a little wish fulfillment on my part.

Summary: Sequel to "The Day After"; Leon and D investigate a murder which may have been committed by a vengeful spirit.

Yet another old petshop fic...

Title: Kitsune Reunion
Rating: PG
Pairing: Gen
Word count: ~6,415
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Matsuri Akino, Mercedes Lackey, and Rumiko Takahashi; no money is being made off this story; consider it a little wish fulfillment on my part.

Summary: Sequel to "FX"; crossover with Mercedes Lackey's "The Chrome Circle" and Rumiko Takahashi's "Inu Yasha". Ten-chan and FX are asked to baby-sit a young kitsune cub.

Another old Petshop fic...this probably won't make much sense unless you're familiar with Mercedes Lackey's Serrated Edge fantasy novel series, though there is a brief synopsis of events in the author's notes.

Title: FX
Rating: PG
Pairing: Gen, with a bit of implied Leon/D
Word count: 1660
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Matsuri Akino and Mercedes Lackey; no money is being made off this story; consider it a little wish fulfillment on my part.
Summary: Stand-alone fic, not part of the series that starts with "Revenge"--D and Leon are not a couple in this story. A short and silly crossover fic--I thought it would be funny if the kitsune character FX from Mercedes Lackey's novels turned out to be related to Ten-chan.

Here's another one of my old Petshop fics...

Title: The Day After
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Leon/D
Word count: ~3,320
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Matsuri Akino; no money is being made off this story; consider it a little wish fulfillment on my part.
Summary: Sequel to "Revenge"; Leon struggles to come to terms with his feelings for D on the day following the events in "Revenge".

I've been working on a new Petshop fic that references characters and events that took place in old stories that I originally posted on the Pet Shop of Horrors Fanfiction Yahoo Group and on personal archives, including my own website. I thought it might be easier for new readers if I re-post them on LJ and IJ, and it would be convenient to have all my Petshop fics in one place. The first couple are pretty AU, since they were based solely on the anime (as stated in the author's notes) since the manga had not yet been licensed by Tokyopop, but I hope that people will enjoy them anyway.

Title: Revenge
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Leon/D
Word count: ~2,420
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Matsuri Akino; no money is being made off this story; consider it a little wish fulfillment on my part.
Summary: When D's life is threatened, it forces Leon to make a choice he has been avoiding.

Title: Fragaria Vesca
Rating: PG
Word Count: 457
Pairing: Vesca/Papa D (University age)
Characters involved: Vesca, Papa D
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Matsuri Akino. No money is being made off this story; consider it a little wish fulfillment on my part.
Summary: This story grew out of a discussion on the ds_petshop LJ and the Petshop Yahoo Group about Tokyopop's decision to write Howell's first name as "Weskar" instead of "Vesca" in the second series.
Author's note: Much thanks to kayirowling, whose comment inspired me to research the meaning of Vesca's name, and for added clarification on the Fragaria Vesca.

I had already planned to write this story before portus_envy (also unofficially terminus_envy, and soon to be hpcon_envy) was created, but in honor of the comm, I threw in references to Lupin attending an anime convention, and Snape a Potions symposium! ^_^

Title: Watching Videos
Rating: R
Pairing: Snape/Lupin
Word count: ~7240
Disclaimer: No money is being made off this story; consider it a little wish fulfillment on my part.
Warning: AU; part of my Always series, but you don't need to have read the other stories to follow this chapter.
Sequel to: Fathers' Day (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) and Vanilla.

Summary: The further adventures of Snape and Lupin at the love hotel. (More silliness than smut!)

Special thanks to: myene_01, who not only suggested the title of the video, but came up with the porn names for the most characters as well! ^_^ I wasn't quite as creative, so the silly but non-smutty names are mine.

Author's note 1: For readers who are unfamiliar with the previous stories or the Japanese concept of love hotels, they are places where rooms are rented out, hourly or for the night, specifically as a place for couples to go and have sex.

Once again, I have an awesome banner, created by snapedom mod sylvanawood! This one was for the July challenge on "Severus the Death Eater". My essay was "How far did Snape go as a Death Eater?" and I tried to answer the question, based on canon hints, of whether Snape had ever directly committed murder as a Death Eater (the answer: probably not). There was a lot of interesting discussion in the comments about the morality of killing directly vs. indirectly; about whether the young Death Eaters really knew what they were getting into; and about whether the Order members (like James, Sirius, and Remus) killed during the first war. Now that last idea was one I hadn't really thought about, and it raised questions about whether it's justified for the "good guys" to kill during combat and about how ruthless the kind and mild-mannered Lupin can be. After all, he was the one who scolded Harry for only using an Expelliarmus on Stan Shunpike in DH, and someone on Snapedom reminded me that he was ready to kill Wormtail in PoA until Harry stopped him.

There was also some good discussion on the original challenge post, which provided some of the inspiration for my essay.

This was written for snegurochka_lee's Least Favourite Character/Pairing Drabble/Drawble & Ficlet Challenge! This isn't exactly my least favorite pairing, but I certainly don't like canon-Sirius, and I'm not generally fond of gender-switch stories. However, this did turn out to be fun to write!

Title: Double Date
Rating: PG
Pairing: Sirius/girl-Snape, James/Lily
Word count: ~3550
Disclaimer: No money is being made off this story; consider it a little wish fulfillment on my part.
Warning: gender-switch Snape

Summary: Set during the Marauders era, Lily agrees to go on a date with James--but only if he can find a date for Snape, too.

Author's note: Inspired by Alison's comment on this snapedom discussion on "What if Snape had been a girl?": On the "Snape-as-a-girl" thing, I had to laugh: if she and Lily had still been friends, then Sirius would probably have been expected to double-date James and Lily, ie the whole "I'll only go out with you if your best friend dates my best friend" thing!

Check out my latest snapedom essay banner--this one is for June's essay on Snape and the Muggle world, which has my thoughts on what Snape's life in the Muggle world might have been like, along with a few fic recs on that topic. I am so steeped in my AU Always series fanfic universe where Snape is a pureblood that it was an interesting exercise to step outside that and try to speculate a little about canon Snape's life.

And I absolutely love the banner that sylvanawood made! I love all the banners, but I thought that this one was especially nice. I really like the newspaper layout, which makes it look like a real Daily Prophet issue, and I love the photo of Snape on his cell phone! (Or I guess that would be "mobile phone" in Brit-speak?)

Actually, it occurs to me that this would make a great candid captions subject for lupin_snape, or just for Snape fans in general. Who is Snape talking to and what he is saying? Personally, I'm thinking along the lines of...

"I do not have time to play your silly games, Lupin, and no, I will not tell you 'what I am wearing right now'!"

I'm supposed to be working on my fics, but I've been seeing a lot of controversy on Metafandom about concrit lately, and I got the urge to write some meta. One camp, dubbed "the Cult of Nice," feels that it's rude to offer unsolicited concrit, and people should refrain from doing so unless invited because fanfic authors are writing merely as a hobby, not a profession, and it might hurt their feelings. On the other hand, the pro-concrit crowd ("the Cult of Mean") argues that if someone posts in a public forum such as LJ (without friends-locking it), they have to understand that strangers might wander in and comment on their stories. And they also argue that they're not trying to be mean or getting any sadistic glee out of hurting a writer's tender feelings, but they just want to offer advice to the writers to help them improve.

Okay, here's part 2 of recs and ramblings, and also weird plot bunnies eating at my brain... (Part 1 is here.)

lore made this wonderful post on coming out of the yaoi closet, so although most of my Friends list are HP slashers, I thought I'd share a few of my favorite yaoi titles, and non-yaoi titles that have slashy potential.

EDIT 7/23/08: Oops, just realized that I forgot to warn that there are a few minor spoilers below the cut, but I try not to reveal any big surprises, and I'm not giving away anything that hasn't already been officially published in the US.

Sorry to spam my friends who are also on snapedom and lupin_snape, but I wanted to make sure that my fanfiction list here is complete. I've posted my second Summer Fest entry over at Snapedom:

Title: The Werewolf Jamboree
Pairings: Snape/Lupin
Rating: PG
Word count: 6,540 (not counting afterword)
Disclaimer: No money is being made off this story; consider it a little wish fulfillment on my part.

Summary: Written for Snapedom's Summer Fest exchange, and based on the_bitter_word's art, The Annual Werewolf Jamboree and Bake-Off. Snape and Lupin are invited to the Werewolf Jamboree and Bake-Off.

Author's notes: This is a stand-alone fic, and not part of my Always series. Takes place post-war, using some canon elements, although I've twisted them around to suit my needs. For the purposes of this story, it is assumed that the werewolves transform into a hybrid wolf-humanoid form during the full moon, rather than a normal wolf.

The story can be found here on Snapedom, or at my personal LJ.

I was browsing Metafandom on LJ, and came across this post on "why the editor-in-chief of Ace and Roc thinks there's no print market for m/m romances". *rolls eyes* Obviously this editor has no knowledge of the very healthy yaoi manga market in the US, or about all the women who read slash fic on the web. Anyhow, in answering my reply the OP mentioned a couple of small publishers that have GBLT Young Adult lines that I might be interested in. Which reminded me of a couple of excellent YA authors who write about gay characters, Alex Sanchez and Brent Hartinger. I looked up Hartinger's website and found his blog, which has this hilarious Sex and the City parody video that he and his partner did on gay marriage. If you're a Sex and the City fan, you'll love this!

Apparently they have a video blog called "Two Gay Guys," so I'll have to go check out their other entries.

For any Matsuri Akino fans, I just wanted to mention that I made some icons of Genro from Genju no Seiza and posted them over at my LJ. Please feel free to help yourself.