Happy belated birthday, Remus Lupin!

March 10th is Remus' birthday, and because it's a round birthday this year (born in 1960!) I had the idea of writing a little birthday-related fic about Remus, maybe a series of moments about some good birthdays he's had over the years, despite all the hard times. But my own life has been so intense – I'm in the last flat-out sprint to the end of my dissertation – that I didn't find a free moment even to write this post by March 10th, let alone write a whole fic by then.

But today is my birthday (yes, just 4 days after Remus...well, 4 days and 20-odd years), and I was remembering one time (6 years ago??) when I spent my birthday writing a fic, just because that was what I most wanted to do on that day, as a present to myself. And also because that was back in the days when I tossed off one-shots right and left, instead of pondering and revising things for years before posting them... Anyway, so last night and today I determinedly made time for a tiny bit of writing, so I could at least get started on the first few sentences of a fic. So maybe I'll finish it by, you know, next year or something.

It's hard to feel very birthday-ish right now, as the world hunkers down in coronavirus quarantine. Things are changing fast, over here in the U.S. where we're finally taking the pandemic seriously: over the course of less than two days, my entire town went from "we're concerned, we're taking precautions, but everything's still open" to "SCRATCH THAT, TIME TO PANIC, EVERYTHING IS CLOSED!!!!" I'm really glad we're taking this seriously, but it's hard not to feel like this is the start of the apocalypse. Or, you know, the more visible version of the climate apocalypse that's already been unfolding around us for years.

But anyway.

I hope you all are staying safe, and keeping your loved ones safe.

One last Remus thought:

Yesterday, as I was replying to a reader's comment on AO3, I was struck by this thought: What if Remus had been the one to raise Harry? I mean, in a serious, nearly canon-compliant way. There are lots of fics where Sirius raises Harry, or they both do, or where they're able to step into his life at a later stage and rescue him from the Dursleys (à la Stealing Harry).

But this, I'm thinking, could be a quite plausible canon-divergent-but-nearly-canon AU: Remus raising Harry is something that nearly could have happened, without really having to change the facts of canon. James and Lily still die (not that I'm okay with that), Sirius still goes to Azkaban (not that I'm okay with that), but in this scenario, as in canon, Remus is out there in the world and theoretically could be there for Harry. In my own headcanon, at least, the only thing keeping Remus out of Harry's life is Remus' own self-doubt, his belief that he's a danger to others and the best thing he can do for the people he cares about is to stay away. So what if Remus got over himself (and I say that with love!) and stepped up and demanded of Dumbledore that he, Remus, be the one to raise Harry, not the Dursleys?

Yes, yes, I know there's the whole thing of Harry having to live with a blood relative of his mother's, so that her sacrifice continues to protect him. I think possibly I'd be willing to disregard that, since it's so clearly a plot device created to justify the set-up of canon, of Harry living with the Dursleys and thus never having found out that he's a wizard. (Unlike the more immutable facts of canon, like James and Lily's deaths and Sirius' imprisonment.)

OR, though, this Remus-raising-Harry scenario could be done even keeping that plot element: What if Remus did some digging and was able to find out that he's actually distantly related to Lily? Making him a blood relative and thus an acceptable candidate to take Harry in? It's not totally impossible; certainly it's a little more likely that Remus could be related to James on his wizarding side, since the wizarding world is so small, but it's not impossible that he could be related to Lily on his Muggle side.

So every other thing about canon stays the same, except that Remus raises Harry from the time he's one year old. And then Sirius comes into the picture too, but only later, after he escapes Azkaban in book 3, same as canon. And they all have to figure out what they are to each other then, what that new constellation looks like. Whereas Remus has been raising Harry all along, as a single parent, and holds the role of Harry's go-to father/uncle/mentor figure the way that Sirius does in canon. Has anyone written this? I kind of want to write it. But also I'm deeply aware that this would need to be a big, long story to do the premise justice, and the last thing I have time for right now is a big, long story! (When I already have a big, long Remus/Tonks WIP that I haven't had a chance even to touch in months...)

It's my last day in Scotland, it's the first time I've been starting a new Doctor Who series/new Doctor together with everyone else (I discovered Doctor Who late, and have spent the last years very gradually catching up to the present), I have made myself a very appropriate cup of tea, LET'S DO THIS THING!


Also, a friend pointed out to me that the public library here has been giving out free postcards with poems on them for National Poetry Day. Including this delightful one about Doctor Who, in Scots:




AAAAAH, new Doctor excitement! Here we go!

Today I'm flying from Aberdeen to Arlanda via Amsterdam...and every time I think of this I think of Cabin Pressure!

After 26 alphabet-ordered destinations, from Abu Dhabi to Zurich, we last saw the Cabin Pressure crew flying off into the sunset (literally), bound for Addis Ababa – i.e. starting at A again, but this time with double-letter place names. In the new canon John gave us a glimpse of in his stage show this year, we caught up with Arthur between San Sebastian and Trinidad and Tobago. But where will the crew go once they've made it through the doubled alphabet? Is it possible to go triple?

Maybe they'll do a flight from somewhere that starts with A, bound for somewhere else that starts with A, via a third location that also starts with A. :-)

This weekend, I took the smallest plane of my life, flying from one remote Scottish island to another. Yes indeed, the plane was much smaller even than our beloved GERTI from Cabin Pressure. :-)

Here it is, with a fuel truck and a baggage cart for scale...




And here's a view over the pilot's shoulder, coming in to land. Yes, it was the kind of plane that's the size and shape of a minivan (and the engine sounds like one too...), and my seat was directly behind the not-at-all-separated-off cockpit. Like Arthur from Cabin Pressure, my main role was to sit there and be REALLY excited.

Second semester of my master's course has begun, and I'm cautiously going to say that all the classes look like they're going to be fun. Intense, but fun. We mainly have the same professors from last semester, but with one new addition, and she's got me quite intrigued: When we introduced ourselves at the first session of our class, one student mentioned having a background in writing fiction, and the professor said, "Original fiction?"

Now, "original fiction" is a phrase that only people with a fannish background use. (To everyone else, original fiction is just "fiction.") And indeed, this professor mentioned that though she doesn't write fanfiction herself, it's one of her research areas. (In the context of copyright issues and digital media stuff.) She also went on a brief but delightful tangent about how what we think of as fanworks sometimes go on to become canon, with fans becoming creators, e.g. in the case of Doctor Who's present-day showrunners having been fans of classic Doctor Who.

Sweet! I know fannish professors exist all over the place, but this is my first encounter with one in the wild. :-)


That photo is from Iceland, if you couldn't guess. Yes, I went to Iceland AGAIN! ;-) Here's how my January went:

Very brief time off for New Year's/Hogmanay, then back into intense intense intense time finishing all coursework by the deadlines in early/mid January. (Each class only has ONE assignment that makes up the entire grade, so these assignments are SUPER HUGE SO MASSIVE OMG.) Knew I needed to take a proper break away from everything if I wanted to have a hope of coming back ready to do it all again for second semester, but I didn't have any time even to plan anything, while I was deep in that sprint to finish all my coursework.

But all semester I'd been longing to be back in Iceland. (After, yes, I was just there in August/September, on my way to moving to Scotland.) So the day after I handed in my final piece of coursework, I booked the flights, contacted all the friends, and a couple days later I flew to Iceland to spend my break. It was perfect, exactly the break I needed, with wonderful people I adore in my favorite most beautiful place.

Then I flew back to Scotland at the end of the month to start it all over again!

Also, somehow in there I was able to participate in the "Write Every Day" challenge, which trobadora was hosting for the month of January. I highly recommend this! What a great idea. Last year in January, I set myself a specific word count goal to meet; this January's goal was simply to write something, anything, every single day. It turned out to be an excellent way to keep moving forward on writing projects during a busy time, because even if it's only a tiny bit each day, if you do it every day it does add up. In the first half of the month, I wrote a fic for rt_morelove that I almost certainly wouldn't have found time for otherwise, and in the second half I turned my attention to, at long last, doing the final final final edit of "The Snow Wolf," that big fic I've now been working on for over a year. I'm now 3/4 of the way through it! And that's definitely thanks to Write Every Day.

Here, have another picture of twilit, wintry Iceland, to break up all the text:


Meanwhile, the new series of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme is currently airing – this is that sketch show by that writer I admire so much that I planned a trip to London around getting to see a recording of this show. Yes, a recording of material for this series that's airing now.

I know they often air sketches in a very different order from the way they record them, putting together each show out of pieces from many different recordings, and not all the material recorded even makes the cut. But I've still been a bit surprised that now, with 5 out of 6 episodes having aired, each of these episodes has had one sketch – precisely, only one sketch – that was in the recording I attended. And none of the sketches so far have been the really especially awesome bits from that recording. But from the description of the upcoming, final episode of the series, it sounds like that's when all the "it was so brilliant to be there when it was recorded, can't wait to hear this in its final form on the show" stuff is coming!

I also got distracted the other day discovering that some BOOKS I'M VERY EXCITED ABOUT are coming out soon! (No longer working in a school library & reading book catalogues as part of my job, I've fallen out of touch.) Primarily, I'm dying of anticipation for Rachel Hartman's new book, Tess of the Road. Hartman's novel Seraphina (fantasy, YA-ish) is one of my favorites ever, and this is a separate series but set in the same world, following a different character. Oooooh. It sounds wonderful. Also, Kristin Cashore (author of Graceling) has a new book, which I didn't even realize. And the conclusion to Brittany Cavallaro's Charlotte Holmes series is coming out soon, too – I don't even know whether to be excited about that or not. The first book, A Study in Charlotte, was an immediate favorite, but the second book was such a terrible disappointment. The third book will either pull it all back together...or prove that Cavallaro really didn't know what she was doing all along. Hm.

Anyway, in a final note, I recently remembered that February is oft known as Femslash February, and I'd kinda like to write something, because I'm always trying to represent more women characters in my fandoms! At the moment I don't have any particular ideas, and goodness knows I don't actually have the time in this especially intense grad school semester, but it's a thought to at least store away somewhere in my brain.

Hey hey, I live in Scotland now! Still haven't quite wrapped my head around that fact. And yes, that makes me something of a compatriot to J. K. Rowling, which feels rather sweet. :-)

Speaking of which, I really need everyone to know about the awesomeness that is The Twitter Feud Between the Libraries of Orkney and Shetland, and Also That Time J. K. Rowling Got Involved in It. (You can find tons of gleeful articles about this, for example here. Orkney and Shetland are both fairly remote Scottish island groups – Orkney just off the north coast, and Shetland much further out than that – and they're both small, population-wise, but it turns out they have amazing Twitter presences!)

Also, one of our professors (I'm doing a master's in library studies, did I mention that?) listed out a ton of places where graduates of this program now work as librarians, to give us an idea of all the possibilities beyond just public library/school library/academic library. His list included a bunch of acronym-heavy British public sector things, including...GCHQ. You know, the British intelligence agency. There are librarians working at the British intelligence agency.

Librarian spies!! I feel this needs to form the concept for an AU fic somewhere.

Wotcher, Potter fans!

Oh my goodness, the twentieth anniversary of the first Harry Potter book – published on June 26, 1997 – is almost here. June 26, that's this coming Monday!

I did manage to write a fic in honor of the date (which I'll post on Monday), despite an intense month of deadlines and stuff, plus now being knocked out by some kind of awful respiratory illness. I'd wanted to do more rallying of "who else wants to write twentieth anniversary fics and all post them on that day??" ...but, yeah, see above re: work + illness.

BUT, if anyone else wants to write something anniversary-ish, even a drabble, I can attest to how satisfying and momentous it feels. :-)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Meanwhile, Holmestice is wrapping up and the RS Games are kicking off, so for a moment my two main fandoms are overlapping. Aw. Fandom is nice.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Today was my last day of work for this school year. (Sort of... I've been out sick for days, so I wasn't there to catch most of that year-end feeling. I shouldn't really have gone in today, either, but it was the last day and I needed to get my things and tie up some loose ends.)

I took out SO MANY BOOKS from our library for the summer...





HAPPY SUMMER!

Have you ever been in a room with 35 quietly studying students, 35 teenagers just barely managing to rein in their innate need to be squirrelly and giggly and rambunctious, and despite all odds turning that energy towards independently focusing on schoolwork instead... When out of nowhere one of them falls off a chair?

A whole morning's entertainment in that!

(Especially when he stands up, half sheepish, half proud, holding the now-detached chair back in his hand and announces in response to everyone's exclamations of concern, "...Yeah, I'm good.")
 
 
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I was thinking yesterday that I need an icon for writing, since that's one of the things I talk about most. (I actually made one for books, when I set up here on Dreamwidth, though so far I've forgotten to use it; but I don't have one for writing.) Now I think I also need one for "teenagers are great and they amuse me." 

Hello!

Import is complete (well, comments are still queueing to import, but otherwise all's in place), so this journal now has everything my Livejournal has, but this is the first post I'm making directly on Dreamwidth. I've set it to continue to crosspost to LJ, at least for now.

It bears saying: Dreamwidth, you are amazing. The function to import an entire other journal from elsewhere and have it appear here, fully intact, a perfect mirror? Magic!

I'm sad Livejournal is imploding because Livejournal has been my fandom home for a long time, a place where friendships formed that I never expected, the place where I learned to stop being a silent lurker and be an active part of fandom! But I'm so impressed that Dreamwidth was here all along, being quietly awesome. I hadn't joined Dreamwidth before now only because the communities I interacted with happened to be on LJ, but now I am here, and most of my friends and communities are popping up here too, and Dreamwidth has been so gracious to the flood of panicking LJ-ers arriving on these shores. I'm full of goofy, grateful feelings.

Hello, Dreamwidth!

(Now, back to revising the first draft of 35,000 words about rescuing the person you love from an ancient shape-shifting beast who lives at the frozen north of the world...)

About to embark on an all-day writing retreat, looking out over a gentle hill muted under fog. Wish me luck!