a fool's musings

Boreas by Waterhouse
Fool, said my muse to me,
look in thy heart and write...

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07.01.03 - 1:52 p.m.

I should rename this diary, "All Remus, All the Time"

Hope Is a Killer is up on the site. Post-OotP Remus fic, so 'ware spoilers.

And here's a snippet of a fic I started pre-OotP, called, of all things, "Hope Abides" (sigh), in which, yet again, Sirius goes to lie low at Lupin's.

I don't know, now, if I'll finish it or if I'll fold it into something else. But it could make an intersting little companion/prequel to Hope Is a Killer. Maybe I'll go back even further and write a post-Hogwarts story about them and make it a trilogy.

Hmmm...

Anyhow, the snippet. No OotP spoilers. I like the tone of Dumbledore's letter here, but I totally fell into fanon!Remus territory afterward, so that'd have to be redone if I do finish this. (And that part's not here. Fanon!Remus. ::shudder::)

Hope Abides

He stared at the parchment, fingers trembling slightly. There, in Dumbledore's careless, sprawling calligraphy, was the news he'd feared for the past fourteen years. He could hear Dumbledore's voice, gentle yet resolute, as he read.

There is no easy way to say this, Remus, so I shan't try. Voldemort has returned. Harry is fine, though shaken. You should be proud of him -- he showed true bravery and resourcefulness, and a greatness of heart that reminds me of his parents.

While Harry survived, there was, unfortunately, a casualty. You remember Cedric Diggory, I'm sure. Remus sucked in a breath and closed his eyes for a moment, but the words were still there on the parchment when he looked again. Cedric had been a good student, a promising young man. I'm sorry to have to tell you that he was killed by Voldemort, simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I know that you need no convincing as to the urgency and danger of our situation, but I did want you to know the truth, as the Ministry is currently choosing to live in denial about what has occurred, and instead laying the blame on the madness of Barty Crouch Jr.

His brow furrowed in confusion. Barty Crouch Jr. had died in Azkaban. Unless Sirius had not, in fact, been the first ever to escape. Dumbledore didn’t provide him with the details, though, and he supposed there were more important things right now.

I am reassembling the Order of the Phoenix, and have sent an emissary out to gather the old crowd. I believe you are familiar with him -- he is traveling under the name Snuffles.

He choked on a laugh, and decided he was going to be all right, if he could still laugh at a time like this. He continued reading.

He should arrive at your door in a few weeks' time. I hope you can take him in and give him a place to rest. There is much work to be done, and I need both of you in top form. If you need anything -- anything at all -- this was underlined three times, and Remus knew it was an invitation to ask for money, but he'd been doing all right since he'd left Hogwarts, and wasn't in a position to need charity (not that he'd have accepted it if he were) for the first time in a long time -- do not hesitate to owl me or Minerva. I will be in touch should the need arise. In the meantime, prepare yourselves for what is coming. Much depends on you, and I know my faith is not misplaced. It may be possible for you to visit with Harry later this summer. I shall let you know when it is feasible. Please rest assured that while his time with his family is unpleasant, he really is safest there when outside my protection. Take care and be safe.

~AD

Voldemort was back.

And Sirius was coming to stay.

Remus wasn't sure he could handle the contradictory emotions these two bits of news sent flooding through him.

He had gotten brief notes from Sirius over the past year, starting with one immediately following their reunion in the Shrieking Shack. Part of him still couldn't believe that Sirius was free -- innocent -- much like, years ago, he had had trouble absorbing the idea of Sirius's guilt and incarceration.

He had his own guilt to tend to, the shame of having done nothing to attempt to discover the truth while Sirius rotted away under the control of the dementors. He knew Sirius would smack him and laugh at his overly dramatic turn of thought (or the Sirius he had known fifteen years ago would have. He wasn't sure what the grim, emaciated fugitive he'd last seen would do), but he couldn't help it.

He had been so torn up with grief and then so *angry* about what he'd lost, and about what he'd obviously never had at all, that he hadn't been able to think. Hadn't thought clearly in the two years following James and Lily's deaths, though he wasn't particularly proud of that fact. A broken and enraged werewolf on a two-year bender. Pathetic. He still wasn't sure he hadn't bit anyone in that time. He wasn't sure about a lot of things that had happened during that time, and waking up one morning strapped to a bed in the psychiatric ward at St. Mungo's hadn't really helped.

He shook his head.

He had more important things to do than puzzle over his own stupidity.

***

So, yeah. Unsure if I'm going to continue it. I've also got a short bit of something written from Sirius's POV (which I'm less sure of), that may get merged with this, though it's currently written in present tense and this is in past.

Plus, I have an idea for a romantic comedy type story starting in MWPP's (are they ever actually referred to in the text as "the Marauders"? I don't think so, and the map is "the Marauder's (singular) Map." So I'm hesitant about referrring to them that way. Yet another bit of my strange longing to cling to canon that hurts me.) fifth year and going on through til the end of their schooldays, covering the Sirius->James, Peter->James, James/Lily, Sirius/Remus aspects of the group. High school love triangles. Ah, so familiar from XMM and BtVS and SV. *g*

We'll see if that ever materializes. Plus, I promised Pru that Remus would get laid sans angst. *g* So I have to write that. And also Crazy!Remus (which may now have a post-OotP epilogue). And I have to finish the Remus Five Things fic.

Gee, can you tell I like Remus? *snicker* I should just rename this diary, "All Remus, All the Time."

Links to fanart of him (and others) as well as fic (both post-OotP and other stuff) are up in the LJ.

I'm going to have lunch now.

~victoria



link

[current mood: amused]
[current music: All Apologies + Nirvana]
[random quote: How long must I suffer? Dear God, I've served my time This love becomes my torture This love, my only crime]

~*~

06.30.03 - 1:19 p.m.

Cutting loose from the noose

They're playing "Back in Black" on the radio.

Hee!

This brings back memories of high school, of getting ready to go to dances, dressed all in black, heavy black eyeliner, blood red lipstick, hair spiked with Dep, boucing around my bedroom screaming this song at the top of my lungs.

It's just a great "preparing to go out song."

***

So this morning, E comes over to the pantry to make his coffee, and we're chatting about it being a short week this week, and MW comes out of his office to say he's making it a three day week. So E and MW and I are chatting away about various inconsequential but amusing matters, when all of a sudden E realizes he never put the coffee pot on the burner, so the coffee is now flooding the pantry.

*snicker*

He and MW rushed to clean it up. I said, "You know, if this happened around my family, I would be blamed for the spill, regardless of my actual guilt."

So E says, "Well, you distracted me with your talk of a three day week, so I do blame you!"

But MW admitted he was the distractor, not I.

I have a feeling the whole week is going to be quiet and somewhat amusing. I hope, anyway.

For those interested in more fannish musings, I've written a few things over on the LJ: Mary Sue and hetsquick, the preference of some fans for non-canonical ships, and of course, Hope Is a Killer, a brief Remus POV OotP-spoilery fic.

Go. Read. Leave me comments.

~victoria



link

[current mood: nostalgic, also, amused.]
[current music: Back in Black - AC/DC]
[random quote: They've got to catch me if they want me to hang Cause I'm back on the track And I'm beatin' the flack]

~*~

06.29.03 - 5:16 p.m.

rent stabilized, my *ass*

So I got my lease renewal papers in the mail yesterday.

You know, they don't take that 4.5 percent increase off the rent I'm actually paying. Oh, no. That'd be too *simple*. No, the increase is based on the legal rent as it's registered with... HUD? Whatever governmental organization with which it's registered. So instead of having the rent increase being something in the area of $30 a month, it's actually $77 a month. And if I want the two-year lease (which I do), it's $130 a month more (a 7.5% increase).

And this is with rent stabilization (which is less stringent than rent control, but still better than nothing).

::shakes head::

I wish I could have locked in the rate I'm paying *now* for two years, but I wasn't offered the opportunity, and I was so *thrilled* to get the apartment at this rent at all, that I didn't push. Being new to the whole process also hurt me, I think.

(Ooh, the acoustic live version of Everlong. *so* *sexy*. Buh. This song makes me melt.)

So I was talking to Daddy, and even though the two year rent is about $50 more than one of my paychecks, we were talking about how I could swing it, with a loan from them to pay off the last of my credit card debt.

Because I really have been living on the cheap and not minding it. It's paying off the damn credit cards that's been eating away all my money.

So I have hope that it will all work out, and I can be here for two more years without having to face moving. And by then, maybe I'll have gotten good enough raises that it won't be as much of a problem as it sounds like it is now.

I mean, it's really not. Popcorn and ice cream are my dinner staples. And cheap lunches.

And maybe I'll be able to start putting money back in my savings again, which would make me feel a lot better.

~victoria



link

[current mood: mellow]
[current music: Everlong (live acoustic) - Foo Fighters]
[random quote: breathe out so I can breathe you in hold you in]

~*~

06.28.03 - 10:49 p.m.

Saturday dispatch

Today was very quiet.

That's code for "Victoria slept a lot, like the lazy ass that she is."

I did, in fact, sleep late. Then I ate a bagel, watched a few minutes of the Mets be inept against the Yankees, and then got to work on coding. So all the recs from the last two sets are now up on the Unfit Recs Pages.

Coding recs and links is boring. I haven't updated or cleaned out the links in about two years. Seriously. I need to do that. With the redesign of my site, I've developed a new philosophy: link to archives only. They don't move as much, there's no personal feelings involved, and most of them have links pages and most of the authors who post include a link on their stories. So that's my big plan - clean out all the links to personal sites and just have major archives for each fandom.

Anyhow, coding recs was so boring that I fell asleep whilst doing it. *snicker*

I have a headache now, probably from sleeping too much.

I also went out and did errands - such a nice day today.

And now I'm chatting on AIM with Alyssa about OotP.

~victoria



link



[current mood: blah]
[current music: Three Little Birds - Bob Marley]
[random quote: everything is gonna be all right]

~*~

06.27.03 - 12:19 p.m.

I reported myself as a spammer. I'm not having a good day, is what I'm saying.

So i've managed to report myself as a spammer to AT&T.

::shakes head::

Technology hates me.

They *had* to put the "Report as Spam" button right above the "Delete" button, didn't they? ::grinds teeth::

Meanwhile, still trying to finish off the Five Things fic, which is stalled somewhere over Germany, I can't get started on the Dawnfic until I read the transcript of Chosen (and the transcript site seems to be down. Sigh.), and I want to write a Buffy-Weasley crossover for random_hundreds but I can't figure out whose POV it should be from, and so it keeps jumping around and won't settle. Grrr...

I'm putting together a Sirius/Remus songlist and I'm reading these non-S/R focused stories where they're 'just good friends' and it totally doesn't work. I don't know if I've got the idea that they're lovers so lodged in my skull that it *doesn't matter* how they're written, or if the love is so implicit in the relationship that people can't seem to write them without the subtext creeping in (they are hardly ever wooing women in these stories, which is just... I mean, okay, sure, they're not lovers. You've cleared Sirius's name. Remus is adorable, if reticent. And yet, neither of them ever seems to go out on dates or meet women, have ex-girlfriends who pop up, or *anything*. I mean, *I'm* rabidly OTP about them and I had Remus running into an ex-girlfriend in bar, and I believe he slept around quite promiscuously during the first few months after Sirius's arrest and James and Lily's deaths.

And yet, they're always in the background, just sitting at home together waiting for Harry to come to them with romantic troubles or whatever.

It makes no *sense* unless they're a couple.

In other news, I think today was supposed to be our department outing to Belmont (see the entry about last year's), but apparently not.

Huh.

I guess no one was interested or something

~victoria



link

[current mood: exasperated]
[current music: Paperback Writer - the Beatles]
[random quote: \"We are all doomed to pay for the biggest mistakes of our dumbest competitors.\" Jerry Reinsdorf]

~*~

06.26.03 - 8:53 a.m.

thursday morning ramble

I am at work very early.

Well, very early for me.

See, FT told me that there was a candidate coming to interview for CC's job this morning at 8:30, and he gave her my name and number, just in case he wasn't around.

So of course, that means I need to be at my desk sometime before 8:30, because you know interviewees show up early. At least, I always tried to.

Of course, 8:30 is my start time, technically, though usually I stroll in at around 8:45 (no one says anything and if I'm going to be more than 20 minutes late, I call, generally, unless I'm already on the bus) and I stay usually until 5:45, so I put in my full 8 hours ::rolls eyes:: not to mention eating lunch at my desk almost every damn day.

But yeah. Here. Early. It's very quiet, which is nice, but meh.

I know the fact that I live so close means I should be here on time every day, and if I didn't have this little problem of hitting the snooze button five times, I would be. I really need to get to bed earlier. I know this. I just can't seem to manage it.

Sigh.

*SO* not a morning person.

Meh.

You know, every time I use my Copaxone ice cream scoop (or, rather, my ice cream scoop emblazoned with the Copaxone brand name), I think that when I got it, I *never* expected someone in my family to actually be *taking* it.

And they say working in non-profit never gets you anywhere. It's been helpful to me in many ways, well, except for the whole ulcer and depression thing, but those are in the past now.

It does amuse me, though, that all my life people told me I'd have an ulcer by 30 if I didn't stop stressing over the details, and goddammit, they were right.

Now? I stress over very little. Oh, I get online and I ramble about minor crap that means NOTHING in the larger scheme of things, and I'm more emotionally affected by the death of a fictional character (pick one) than I am about most stuff I see on the news, but that's because 1. I try to avoid the news and 2. the news, unless they're *trying* to pull at your heartstrings, never puts anything into context, and context is where you get your emotional whammy.

Okay, it's 8:40 now and this chick either hasn't show, hasn't called me, or FT has taken care of her.

Ah well, I was at my desk, waiting for the call. That's all I can do, right?

In other news, I'm through the Bs on recoding the site (should I do a Big List of Fic in alpha order? I mean, while I'm doing all this recoding and revamping (well, not so much revamping, though I am thinking that each fandom with more than 10 stories ought to get it's own index page, and leave the one-offs and sundries to the "Other Stories Index", but I'm not sure. Anyone got any opinions? I want the site to be easy to navigate, above all, so if you think that'd be a better way, drop me a note, here or in the LJ), I may as well tackle the big jobs, like making a whole new big list index page that will have to be updated every week. *snerk*

I joke about my productivity, but when I'm *not* producing I feel like crap on toast, so...

Anyhow, speaking of site updates and depressing fictional deaths, Better Than This is up on the site now. It kills me that it was supposed to be hopeful and now it just feels hurtful.

Just like I started writing something called Hope Abides (I may still finish it. I dunno) and now I've written something that may be a companion piece, post-OotP, called Hope Is a Killer.

*snerk*

Not too melodramatic, huh?

Now that I've spent a good half hour writing this (and perusing my friends list), I'll wrap it up.

~victoria



link

[current mood: awake]
[current music: Games Without Frontiers - Peter Gabriel]
[random quote: Games without frontiers, war without tears]

~*~

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The painting is "Boreas" by John William Waterhouse. Again, not a muse, but I like her. She suits the color scheme.

The quote is from Sir Philip Sidney.

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