paulamcg

Challenge #11
In your own space, create a fanwork.

Challenger #12
In your own space, resurrect an old meme.

Today I'm only posting both on AO3 and here a fic I wrote as early as in December. It was fun to try the I Write Like meme with the text, because I've felt that the style changes when my protagonist gets more emotional. Now it seems that at the beginning



and in the later parts



I'm not totally convinced, because I did the meme several times with a few other fics, and always got various authors' names even when I used excerpts from the same story. (You can guess why) I found it interesting that I got two writers born in 1962, David Foster Wallace and Chuck Palahniuk, the latter more than once when I tried different stories. Almost every time I tried excerpts from my only WiP and only non-fest fic since 2019, the very stream-of-consciousness version of an early fic, I got James Joyce.

Here's the fic in Rice/Tolstoy style:

Title: New Joys
Author: paulamcg
Pairing(s): Amelia Bones/Molly Weasley, Molly Weasley/Arthur Weasley
Word Count: 1300
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: These characters won't help me make any money.
Notes: This fic can be read separately, but it also continues the little story I started in Festive Mood. This one was intended for December's prompt Songs at HP Femslash Minifest but couldn't be posted in time because that would have undone the anonymity of the earlier story at Mini Fest. Thank you for being my beta, Liseuse!
Summary: At Christmas 1987, Amelia's music collection and her Muggle devices evoke excitement in one of her guests, and build up an atmosphere for a tender moment between her and the other one.

Read here on AO3
or right here:
( come for a nightcap )

After the holidays I've been busy and exhausted due to work and some real, deep snow. I have to confess that the time I've been able to spare for fandom over the past week has been spent on posting a couple of gift fics and replying to comments. Tomorrow, as I've promised, I'll be Snowflaking, and tonight I'm finally making a Snowflake post of my own.




Challenge #8

In your own space, create a wishlist.

My wishes are about the same as a year ago, but I want to express them more briefly and not only due to lack of time. :) There are only two of them, and they are related.
1. I wish for more feedback on fanworks – mine and anyone's who loves feedback.
2. I wish for a supportive, active community in the Harry Potter fandom.

( the same a bit less briefly )

Challenge 13

In your own space, create a fanwork.


Thanks to all the shiny Snowflakes I’ve felt inspired and encouraged to write and publish fic. Without these challenges I might not have completed a draft for a fic and contacted my beta yesterday. In case that piece turns out to be a separate short story and not the (failed) fest fic (failed because the character who was supposed to be the protagonist ended up sleeping through most of the piece), I’ll be able to post it here sometime after Wednesday. And after challenge #12 was announced, I’ve tripled my word count on another fest fic started at the end of December. Besides, all the interaction here has made me post more of my LJ-posted fics to AO3. I think it’s appropriate to post today a fic about friends getting together – and to post it both here and

on AO3.

Title: Layers of Treasure
Author: paulamcg
Rating: R
Pairing: Lily/James, Alice/Frank, subtle Remus/Sirius
Characters: Lily, Alice, Frank, James, Remus, Sirius, Peter, Amelia
Summary: At the end of their second summer after leaving Hogwarts, old friends gather to a welcoming and farewell party.
Disclaimer: Lily and her friends will never help me make any money.
Notes: This piece can stand on its own, but it also belongs to the same extensive story in my Rowling's-first-five-novels-compliant universe as the rest of my fanfiction. My Lily and (other) Marauders and a lot of their friends, including Lily's dormmates Alice (future wife of Frank Longbottom) and Amelia Bones, left Hogwarts in summer 1976. Notes on the music after the story text.
Word count: 6675


( she feels like breathing )

Challenge #10

Talk About A Creator/Someone Who Inspired You.



I remember vividly how a lot of people, strangers (except through their fiction) and friends (who became friends thanks to our fiction) have inspired me since the day I entered fandom in August 2003. And this winter all of you in my access/subscription list here, and also people whose writing I’ve seen on LJ or AO3 but whom I haven’t found on DW, have inspired me – at least to all this rambling around Snowflake!

Since I have to pick one person, I want it to be kelly_chambliss, who is here to see this – and for you all to meet – and who also was there for me before my hiatus, in 2009 and 2010. Kelly was new to HP fandom back then, still looking for places with more stories of the kind she was most interested in.

(Oddly enough I can’t remember the exact beginning of it but) the two of us must have commented on each other’s small one-shots and gone on discussing our writing. And this amazing lady gave a chance to my post-OotP Remus novel (Remus Lupin and the Revolt of the Creatures – yes, I urge you to click the link, because you’ll see not only the humble beginning of my fic but also some of Kelly’s most extensive contribution, her concrit right there in the public comments, just as I wanted to leave it) which I had started writing six years earlier and posting on LiveJournal a month earlier. At my request she included beta corrections in her thoughtful, generously praising comments.

Kelly stayed loyal to me and my Remus novel, even though she was finding more of those fests and communities that she wanted to focus on. She went on – for a whole year – and commented quite as wonderfully on each of the twenty-one long chapters, until the story was completed and published in its edited form. This was extremely important for me, because during the long process of writing the story almost all of my original readers (on the small forum where I’d posted it as WiP) as well as later readers of my short stories had left the fandom, and in 2009 I thought I’d also lost the beta and dear friend whom I’d found on LJ in 2006. Without Kelly’s support it would have been harder for me to succeed in the final scenes and to believe the story was worth finally sharing on LJ and FictionAlley, and her comments helped me fix mistakes particularly in the early (previously unbeta’ed) chapters.

At the same time Kelly inspired me to explore new corners of HP fandom. Thanks to her I started reading more about female characters and older characters, and enjoying femslash. Her own wise and beautiful stories made me finally begin to know Minerva, from whom I had, back in 2003, just taken part of my user name. Reading Kelly’s gorgeous fiction – for instance Genius Loci (characters Rubeus Hagrid, Minerva McGonagall, Poppy Pomfrey, Aurora Sinistra, Pomona Sprout, Severus Snape, Aberforth Dumbledore, Argus Filch, and the Genius of the Place. Wordcount 6200) at recent hoggywartyxmas) – is still an inspiration.

Challenge #8

Rec at least three fanworks that you didn’t create.



Here you are: three fics (here in alphabetical order) I’ve recently admired.

full moon twofold (T, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin) by renaissance (necessarian)

This fabulous AU succeeds excellently in making canon elements both deepen the characterisations and serve the fascinating plot. The writer also has a genius way of using two perspectives and non-linear narrative for more than one good reason. The main characters are impossible not to fall in love with, and a more minor character’s role is intriguing.


The Weighing of the Wands (R, Garrick Ollivander/Albus Dumbledore) by purplefluffycat.

(This one I’ve alrady recced in December, but as a fic by Anonymous.) From a simple canon scene the writer has extrapolated a rich, deep story. There’s amazing magic: detailed wandlore treated like art, true magical art. There’s a touching depiction of an evolving relationship between two men, whose characterisations acquire new dimensions and nuances. And it all illuminates some most essential canon issues as well. An(other) enviably excellent fic!


Winter of ‘79 (E, Sirius Black/James Potter) by writcraft

The brilliant writer has combined the canon situation and (excellently-researched) 1970s reality in Britain into a convincing world, in which the fabulously-portrayed characters live as whole persons. These circumstances make the turning point in their relationship into a both more poignant and more satisfying story than I could expect. The sex is the most beautiful I could possibly hope for, and the language is gorgeous.
This fic works perfectly on its own but is part of Little Compton Street Series. Incredibly enough, the other parts, which I haven’t finish reading, seem to be even more amazing.

Challenge # 6

In your own space, make a list — anything between one and ten things is a sweet spot, but don't feel constrained by that! - of things that you wish existed in fandom or elsewhere, or that you'd like someone to make for you.



In this challenge I’ve taken the time to go through all the comments on the Snowflake post. This is the first time, because I’ve found the number of participants overwhelming, and I’ve wished that there were an easier way to find people who share my fandom. I understand that the point is to find something new. But I’m so hopelessly limited to Harry Potter fandom, because I’ve never really been into watching any TV shows at all, and I’m so addicted to the same fanfic universe I’ve kept writing since 2003 that I feel I can’t afford branching out and starting a new addiction based on another book canon. Perhaps I’ll still end up having an adventure before the challenge is over.

Anyway, due to being limited to HP fandom, I haven’t found many wishes I could grant. At least I have added a transformative works statement to all my profiles (DW, LJ and AO3), in addition to filling the AO3 profile, as analise010 wished everybody do that. And I think I can rec some genfic to author_by_night, and try my best to do my share for the fulfillment of nyctanthes’s wish:
For fandom to regularly leave its comfort zone and engage with a wider range of fic, vids, art, etc. There's a lot of good stuff out there, and I believe at least *some* of our desire for more reviews and a more engaged audience could be addressed if we all tried out works outside our sweet spot - and didn't limit our adventures to "what my friends have created" or "I read and commented in an exchange I participated in." I can't expect people to get into my fanworks/fandom/OTP/whatever if I never do the same for anyone else.

I’ve also got some ideas of what the wishes could be. A lot of people wish for transformative works, particularly visual art. I decided that I, too, can always wish… Because of my conviction that all art’s value is in its active reception, I’d truly love it if dreams like this came true.

( Wishes directly related to my fanfic )
4. I wish for replies to the comments I leave on other people’s fic. I love discussing the contents of stories as well as how the text works, and hearing about writing processes.

5. I wish for a community (and I mean a community in general and possibly also as an account) on DW where people in HP fandom share recs and discuss fics, perhaps make review exchanges… I don’t know how that could work: how large the active HP fandom on DW is, and how the topic of the community should be restricted (perhaps leaving out Cursed Child and Fantastic Beasts, or focusing otherwise on what appeals to people interested in this kind of interaction – while I hope we could be open-minded and try out things outside our sweet spots, even outside our comfort zones). Maybe someone who’s got experience with starting and modding communities could develop more practical ideas.

Challenge #4

In your own space, set some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private.



Perhaps partly because I’ve found this challenge hard, I’ve ended up reading several people’s excellently-crafted, balanced and wise goals, and I find this ever harder.

Let’s try with fannish goals…

1. To keep writing the story I care about and find important and fascinating, and write it well, perhaps better.

2. To learn something new about writing well.

3. To interact with people in fandom.

Perhaps I’d better leave it at that. The rest is hopes and dreams.

( Outside fandom, in the life some people say is the real one )

The first challenge: introduce yourself in your own space. This turned out to be for the second challenge: In your own space, talk about your fannish history!



Thanks to pauraque I’ve understood what I want my introduction post to be like. Not all about my Harry Potter – or rather Remus Lupin – fanfic as such, or about me and my wider interests. Just about what fandom has meant to me. My history.

I was… well, around canon-era Remus’s age when I discovered the fandom. I’d started writing fiction when I was ten, shifted to poetry as a young adult, made the mistake of having a family – and that lead me to not only putting writing on hiatus, but to enjoying children’s books and fantasy worlds again. I’d missed Professor Lupin after PoA and started imagining an opening scene with him saving Harry from the Dursleys’ before I got to read OotP. Moved by OotP – and moved by and partly disappointed with Remus and Sirius’s roles in the book – I yearned to discuss it, googled for Harry Potter, and found my first fandom home.

( The Snitch Forums )

( FictionAlley )

( live journal )

Now when I’ve started connecting again, I try not to be too much focused on desperately desiring readers for my fic. I hope I’ll get a chance to offer something in a community.