emansil

Look!! 3rd post of the New Year. It's almost a record.


I intended to post earlier, but the last few weeks have been bizarrely busy. With work and with ailments. Splinter under the nail of the right index finger, which had to be cut out and then got infected. Do you have any idea how many time with use our right index finger? A lot, i mean a whole fucking lot. Any use of a computer or a mouse requires extensive and intensive use of the index finger. I spent several days unable to do anything but watch t.v and even changing channels on the remote was a challenge.

But its better now and I've almost finished off the antibiotics.

In between time I may have signed up to partake in the eatyourheartout valentines thingy going on over tumblr and Ao3. I do hope that I actually finish this one in time. I'd signed up and dropped out of so many things in the years past, i stopped signing up. this seems very low key and should be a lot of fun, in a really creepy horror sort of way.

I hope you all are staying warm (or cool, depending on which side of the equator you reside) and staying safe, or as safe as you can from Covid.

Stay well and happy.

Well, Happy New Year to everyone. Here I am again, attempting to once again joining in and attempting to be part of fandom, as well as encouraging you all for whatever you have going on that brings you joy, and offering support for things that you're struggling with.

So, as for me this year, there have been a few changes. For one I got myself a 5 year old cat, that had been in 3 previous homes, and suffered some attacks by other animals in the home, as she has no claws to protect herself. She's a lovely grey and white, and came with some emotional and self care issues. But she's sweet and lovely and we're learning to get along together.

Fandom wise--was pretty much a bust for me. I posted one story throughout the entire year, back in April. I was pretty proud of it, but the rest of the HP community didn't view it in the same light. It was pretty much a bust in terms of feedback. Since then I've worked on four separate stories, but never ever did I finish any of them, not even enough to send for beta lookover.

Most of my time has been spent on Tumblr, which I still struggle with in regards to how best to connect with others. Most of my time is spent flipping though the posts and becoming more and more depressed, as the same group of 20 or so keep getting the same recs the same reblogging and the same commenting. Knowing that will never happen for me, is a bit of a serious downer. I even actively left fandom for most of the last quarter of 2021.

I am starting to look into other fandoms outside of Harry Potter. My newest obsession is "The Maze Runners" by James Dashner. Lots of lovely young men stuck in dangerous situations that require them to form bonds of support. There are also some decent films to watch as well as the books. Also still loving the Dark is Rising series, as well as Generation Kill. I love the Marvel movies, and enjoy some of the fic, but they just haven't completely pulled me in yet.


Anyone got other things fandom related that are bringing you love that you can point me to?


Wishing everyone all the best.

I thought I'd take a stab at posting my doings for the month, sort of like [Unknown site tag] does.

First, like many of you I am working from home. I guess I've been home about 2.5 weeks. It took a while to get us all here, but I'm loving it. No real interest in going back to office. Though I do , somewhat, miss the chatter and camaraderie. I am wondering when companies will start making the employees come back to the office.


So, this month I read two novels: Archangel
It's marketed as sci fi, but other than maybe one sentence about "humans on other planets" there is nothing to indicate in any way that it would considered Sci fi. An interesting read. The second novel was All the Light We Cannot See A stunningly beautiful book that I found well worthy of its Pulitzer Prize win. Some novels allow you to rush through them trying to get to the end. Not this one, this one demanded you slow down, take your time, savour the choice of words and the way he put them together. It is not always a happy book, by a long shot, but's its an incredible beautiful one.


I read three major fan fics, all of them quite long, and all of them are rereads. There's something about our current lives that makes me want to be surrounded by things that comfort me.


Finally posted the last chapter of the Of love and Basketball a Harry/Hugo fic I started posting in Nov of 2019. It was fun to write, but I'm glad its finished. I've got another I've been working on for several years, that may or may not qualify for hp-nextgen-fest if there even is another fest in the planning. The thing about me and fests is that unlike most others, when I have a deadline is when I find i'm incapable of writing or completing anything. sometimes its better to just do what I can and if it happens to be complete in time, great... if not, that's fine too.


Are most of you guys still working, but maybe working from home--like me? if you're not working how's everything going for you. My daughter works in retail and she's been furloughed for about 6 weeks now, luckily the stimulus is helping her through it.


I hope to try and do one of these every month, but who knows how long that will last. I'm not good with keeping my goals. I would post what my plans for the month of May are, except I know I will most likely keep none of them. Better I post of what I did accomplish, not what I plan on doing.

Stay safe everyone,

My decision to try and post more recs sadly lasted a very short time. The decision was firm, but then I got employed. And I have to tell you, this 40 hour a week business is kicking my ass. I was in bed by 8pm every night for the first 2 weeks including the weekends. I only now feel I may be able to stay up past 10.

I can barely finish reading a fic, forget being able to concentrate clearly enough to remember and put down in words why I liked it. Maybe, I'll get back used to the daily grind ad be able to do that again. One day.

The free time I have I'm trying to spend it writing. I've all these half-written fics, (25 of them, at last count). And what am I spending my time on? One of them, no. I started a new one for possible entry into kinkfest.

It's my own prompt, and I don't even know if it qualifies as kink. But it came to me one evening, and it's not leaving until I spend at least some time exploring the idea. But, I can almost know that it will never be finished, like all the others. I'll get to a certain place, and either get tired of it, feel it's a piece of crap and I should just stop, or the date will come and go, and I'll never pick it back up again.

I seem to be great at starting things, completing them---not so much. Am I the only one that suffers from this condition?

Those of you who sign up for things and manage to have them done months ahead of posting date, or even just finish them the same month are like creatures from another time and place to me. I simply am amazed by you all.

Question about word counts. I tend to throw in everything, and I mean everything, in my initial drafts, and when I edit I usually lose word count, or at the least change the words. How do I count that? Can I count that? I may have spent 2 hours or longer working on a story, but the actually word count may only change by a hundred or fewer words. Is it only the actual words of a story that can be counted? Somehow that doesn't seem quite fair. Maybe I just want the time I spend doing it to count for something.

Though really, now that I think about it, it does. Spending my time making up stories and putting it down on paper, or screen as you will, makes me happy. for the most part. Sure there are times when I send it to a beta and the response is less than I had wanted. Or when I post something and it gets very little response.

Maybe that's why its so hard for me to complete anything. Once its finished it's expected that it will be posted. And that part of it tends to make me really sad and lonely. Makes me feel unworthy. Especially posting to fests. There are always all these wonderful writers that post to fests. It gets really tiring to always have the lowest comment count or kudo count or any other method we and others use to determine if we have value or not.

Comparing yourself to others is an exercise in futility and I try really hard not to, but sometimes it just happens w/o intention on my part. Or I get in a really depressed mood and I go around looking for things that support my feeling bad about myself. May be a stupid thing to do, but please...we all do it, at least once in a while. I know I'm not the only one. but I may be the only one that admits to it.

So, maybe I'm not meant to finish things, maybe I'm just meant to work on them as long as that gives me joy. Weirdly enough this post that started off with me feeling sort of blah, and morphed into my silently weeping, has turned into something that I can sort of feel pretty damn okay about.

That's all. Have a great day, good luck with all the reading and the writing and whatever else you've planned for the day.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm sort of super stoked about the Kamala Harris news. she's got a lot going for her: bright, intelligent, doesn't easily back down, but appears to have a quick wit and an amazing heart when it comes to those taken advantage of by banks and other corporations. I'm sure there are probably some dark secrets hidden in her past. we all have them, no one is perfect. But, I think she definitely could be a contender.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this. (yes, I know its ridiculously early to be talkin about this, but she's the first to get me exited about the possibility.)

So, I wrote exactly one story for the year of 2018. It was a spontaneous decision, but once I saw the pairing--Draco/Neville, and the prompt--Neville /Draco Christmas at St Mungo’s with Neville’s parents--I really wanted to give it a go.

This is it: (though it came really close to not getting finished)

Title: "Joy to the Fishes in the Deep Blue Sea, Joy to you and Me"
Author/Artist: emansil
Pairing(s): Draco Malfoy/Neville Longbottom
Prompt: 2018, prompt 26: Neville /Draco Christmas at St Mungo’s with Neville’s parents
Word Count/Art Medium: 2698
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Notes: Beta by Ruth, who helps me out more than I ever deserve. Thank you as always. This is a new pairing for me, but I found them extremely compelling to write.
Summary: Neville and Draco enjoy Christmas morning with Neville’s parents. Afterwards they have their own Christmas traditions of their own to follow.

( Read more... )</cut

I just want to say to those of you who Rec on a regular basis, MYGOD! kudos, kudos, a thousand kudos to you. This reccing shit is HARD. I mean not only are you reading a crap load of fics, but apparently carefully enough that you can with a great deal of insight comment and repeat what it was about it that you loved. Not to mention the back and forth of adding in the link, and getting all the coding correct.

I've done one Rec's post of 4 fics and it took me close to an hour to get it completed.

Just wanted to give a shout out to those of you who do it on a regular basis. You deserve all the love.

I'm trying to work out a good way to keep track of all the fics I either may have read, or have at least made copies of previously. I keep finding myself printing off a fic that I don't recall reading only to find that yes I have read it already. And if it's one of the rather long ones that's a lot of paper and ink, not to mention the trees that I'm killing. I've tried reading them online, but if its longer than a couple of thousand words I get lost as to where I am. also it's impossible, (for me) to highlight or make notes while I'm reading.

I've kept notebooks for the past 10 plus years trying to log them all in, but there's a lot of fics listed in there, and they're in multiple notebooks. Recently I started a couple of excel spreadsheets to try and organize, but I'm not sure that's going to work either.

Has anyone found a foolproof way that seems to work for them? I'd love to know what it is. I know a lot use the bookmarks aspect of A03, but I use mine to keep track of the fics I most want to read, not the ones I've already read.

This seemed like a good time to do an end of year wrap up. I feel bad that I've been so lax here and other social media platforms, it's just I've felt very unsocial in all aspects of life.

I tried Facebook for awhile, and decided that was a total bust. Got myself a Tumblr account, and spend hours scrolling through it, but after the first week or so, have had absolutely no communication with anyone on it--so that doesn't seem to be the thing for me either. I've read the different posts and meta/beta guides on how to make it work for you, truthfully I just don't get it. And seeing the same thing reblogged multiple times just annoys me, especially the things that you have to scroll, and scroll, and scroll to get to the bottom of. (sorry to anyone I may have offended there).

I miss having an actual conversation with people. I don't know how to do that, and occasionally I don't want the entire Tumblr world to know what I'm thinking, (what am I saying? I never want the entire Tumblr world to know what I'm saying)

So DW and LJ are the place for me, even though for the most part they both seem to be a deserted desert. I just hope I'm able to get back into the swing of things.

I traveled to Prague, which sadly for me was an absolute disaster. it's a beautiful city and others would love it, I'm sure. I went to Virginia and North Carolina, which was more enjoyable, but since walking is so difficult for me anymore, it's hard to really have a good time anywhere I go. Traveling is being put on a hard hold for a while.

I had a job for a while, and on paper when toting up the pros and the cons it was full of pros. Had an incredible amount of positives, but I was miserable and so quit after a month. Looking back, I'm sure it was my own incredibly disabling social anxiety that drove that decision. But then after I quit, I was informed that I had to obtain a new roof or lose my homeowner's insurance. The stock market took a nosedive which affected my retirement and investments in a unpleasant way, so beginning in a few days I'm back to employment search, again And I expect I will be working full time for the next 5 to 10 years to come, and as someone who has hit the magic age for Medicare, that is just too depressing for words.

I expect that when employment is found, I'll have even less time for fandom, other than the mindless scrolling. Tumblr is good for that.

Anyone got plans for the upcoming year they want to share?

So, I'm here with my hand out begging for, if possible, full time alpha and/or beta readers. While alpha reader is my first choice because I've some issues on staying on track with the original plan. I'm hoping an alpha reader could help me with that. But...I can also use a beta reader.

Most of the ones I've used in the past have either left Harry Potter, left fandom completely, or we just didn't really work well together. The relationship ended by mutual agreement, or their heart was in the right place, but it just didn't work out. Hey, it happens.

I've three fics that are 75 percent of the way finished, and have been in that status for two of them for at least three years. They are each perfect for the next-gen fest. I would really, really like to get at least two of them finished in time for claiming and submitting. But I can't do it by myself.

So if anyone thinks they may be interested, message me, I'll let you know what I'm working on. Maybe send you some bits of it, we can talk about what's best for both of us.

thanks to everyone.