The Journal

There's nothing better than coming home to a surprise--well, to a good surpise, anyway.  : )  And what did I find??  A wonderful package from abigail89 enclosing my Pay it Forward Gift!  It's a lovely hand-stitched journal that I can't wait to fill with pictures and scribblings and sorts of other things.  You can't really see it in the picture, but it's bound with silver thread and the pages are all different kinds of fancy papers.  It's absolutely lovely!  Thank you so much, dear!  Pictures are under the cut!

( My New Beautiful Journal! )

For deeply personal reasons, Thanksgiving is both my favorite holiday and the one on which I most often want to be completely and totally alone.  This year turned out—unexpectedly—to be one in which I am alone.  I am strangely comforted by this and find that watching the Ghost Hunters marathon on the Sci-Fi channel, curled on the couch and munching Cheetos is turning into a rather sublime experience.  The day is what we make it, I suppose.  And as most things are, how we ultimately view the success of the day--of our lives--is a matter of perspective.

To everyone—American or not—I wish for you a day of perspective, one in which even in the darkest of days you find some measure of comfort, some silver lining.

A very, very short post to remind everyone that posting has begun over at hd_inspired!  Some fantastic fics and art are already up, all about Harry and/or Draco in the family way.  Don't let the Mpreg squick you!  Seriously!!  At the end of the day, these are just wonderful stories about Harry and Draco navigating through life and relationships.  Lots of great people are participating, even some borderline, shifty characters (Like me!!).  ; )  Oh, and there's some hot sex, too.  So go get inspired over at hd_inspired!!

To the glorious British members of my f-list,

I am in dire need of your assistance posthaste.  I have many questions that fall within the realm of pubs and drinking and general ribaldry, which have not been answered in their entirety by my feverish review of online resources.  If you are of a mind to assist me in this most honorable endeavor, please be so kind as to call upon me at Yahoo Messenger, where I am, simply, empathic_siren. 

Yours with the greatest of affection,

Siren

Hello everyone!  I've posted a new fic at snape_after_dh based on the prompt: How long did little Severus watch Lily and Petunia?  It's Gen, but with a dose of possessiveness we've come to love about Severus.  It's 2,100 words or thereabouts.  I hope you'll consider reading! 

You can find Finer Than Spring here.

A lot has happened in my life in the last month or two. I've confronted things that challenged everything I thought I knew about myself and life itself in some ways. And as a consequence, I've been unaccountably melancholy and hurting in ways that I am unable to articulate even now.

Today was the first day I've had to myself in a very long time and I decided to spend it cleaning out my closets. I think--on both physical and metaphysical levels--I needed a sense of order that my life seems to lack at the moment. Organized closets called to me like a siren's song (pardon the pun, of course).

It's been quite the discovery process. In moving things to my hope chest, I found an old journal from my last year of college. On a lark, I read it. Whoa. Clearly, I'd not taken a creative writing course. : ) Despite my awful penchant for speaking in cliches, it was amazing to see how much my life at the moment mirrors what it was then. I'm navigating unknown waters, as it were, and the idea of my entire life completely open and uncharted is dizzying, perhaps even nauseating. But it doesn't have to be that way.  It can be exciting and energizing, too, if I just let it. 

As I read, I found a small personal essay that really struck home. I wish I'd believed what I told myself all those years ago. Perhaps I can do it now, using the past to keep my feet moving forward. No matter what. I decided to share what I wrote with you, and I'm not even editing it. Well, okay, not much. I was responding to the following quote by Oscar Wilde: Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing. Perhaps my past can help keep your feet moving forward, too. Or, if nothing else, you can point and stare and giggle. : )

March 5, 1995

Is this meant to imply that life is right and we humans are wrong? Maybe it means that life will take its course no matter how much we posture or wring our hands. We muddle and second-guess and regret. Life doesn't. Life has no regrets, no irreconcilable differences, no vendettas or grudges.  Life is on a course that is never ending and that keeps moving regardless of whether we move with it; it is like water, flowing constantly, and we simply glide along.  To think that the water flows because we're floating across its currents is ludicrous. 

Our lesson in this (maybe) is to accept life at face value, to stop hanging on to the vestiges of past lives and dreams.  This is difficult for me.  There seem to be so many things I regret, so many things I mourn.  All of this is not to say that the past has no bearing, because it is our pasts that ground us in the present.  But the past can weigh us down, too.  It weighs me down, at least. 

A desperate wish for safe passage through this life is, I think, futile.  It implies that Life bends to us.  Rather, I think we must learn to bend to it.  To experience, to endure, to enjoy all that it is without trying to make it what we think it should be.  I don't know that I believe in destiny, but I do believe that we have two choices.  We can bemoan where we are, stuck in a whirling eddy of confusion and pain, or we can move forward, even if we're moving in directions we didn't know existed.   Even if that means letting go of what we thought we wanted, who we thought we were.  It can be as simple as that, I think.  Which is what makes it so very hard to achieve.

I suppose I should start learning to swim.

It's been a while since I've posted. I hope all of you are doing well! There's not much to say on this end, but I thought of a haiku this morning and decided to share.

Her spirit beguiles,
comely voice begetting hope.
Conjured tongue stills. Grief.

I wrote this for the uber-talented nimori's patchwork challenge in which everyone took a pre-ordered chapter title and wrote it. I chose "Lost and Found," because it immediately made me think of Draco and bible camp. Seriously.

magic_helmet and I were talking earlier about her fantastic Snarry (with Severus as Father confessor) and I casually mentioned that I had written a religious satire involving Draco/Harry, posted it for the challenge, but quietly removed the "look what I wrote" post, concerned that I had offended everyone and everyone's brother. magic_helmet immediately read it and demanded that I post it. So, um, here. Again. Heh. My take on where Draco went after Half Blood Prince--a Muggle bible camp for wayward boys (it's funny. Really).

HEED THE WARNINGS: MAJOR religion bashing/satire (but, seriously, it's all in good, kinky fun), brief mentions of cross-dressing, Veela!Draco skewering, and total crack-tacular-ness. Without further ado--"Lost and Found"


( Lost and Found )

Hello, all! Here's a fic I wrote for the Daily Deviant community. The name is changed and I spruced it up a bit. It definitely earns its NC-17 rating. As well as the angst. This is both DH *and* Epilogue compliant. (And it's short. A measly 1,400 words). Enjoy!!

Author: empathic_siren
Theme/kink: D/s (sort of)/multiple partners/infidelity (sort of)/slash/rimming/rough sex/dub con (sort of)
Warnings: See under the cut
Rating: NC17
Word Count: 1,400
Compliant to: DH


( The rest of the information for this story contains DH spoilers. Click the cut for full header and fic )

Word mistakes in stories tickle me like no other SPaG error, in part because I've made some doozies. When I see them in a published fic, my heart goes out to the author, even as I'm chuckling. Sometimes you just start writing so fast, you're not really paying attention to what you're writing. And I'm not just talking about the your/you're or their/there/they're conundrums, either. I mean words that you stare at and say, "How the hell did that get in there??" Consider, for example (And thank god no beta ever saw this--I actually caught it on my own).


“Bedroom?”

“Can’t wait that long,” Harry moaned as he started pulling at Draco’s clothes, kissing and biting every inch of milk revealed to him.

Draco groaned and turned so that he was facing Harry. He kissed him hard, tugging at his trousers as he did so. “Too long, too fucking long,” Draco whispered against Harry’s SmartChili.


Worse than a cracky mad-lib, my grocery list made it into Eleven Canticles of Tradition. At least for a little while. I've saved that to remind myself that my brain is not always working at the same pace as my fingers, especially if Husband is pressing me for a grocery list at the same time. Thank god we hadn't made it to the feminine hygiene section of the list. Though--oh, never mind. ; )

This illustrates why competent betas are so important. I used to think--back when I was both a philistine and neophyte--that only people lacking a basic grasp of grammar needed betas. Heh. God, I was so, so wrong and it's terribly embarrassing to admit that I ever thought such a ridiculous thing. Betas keep us from making embarrassing errors, they teach us how to fix things we consistently get wrong, they test the soundness of our stories, our characters, our plots, and they allow us a small measure of confidence. They are (or should be, I think) the hardest, most critical readers we will ever have. They're not mean. They're saving us. Daily. At least mine do. I'd die without sansa1970, klynie1, igtow, scoradh, and others. And as a consequence, I take beta work very, very seriously.

But here's the little line that had me giggling this morning, eventually leading to this post. No, it's not mine, and no, I'm not telling where I found it.


"Was Harry Potter finally offering him a truce? Offering friendship maybe? Or was there an ulterior motif?"


Now, I kind of like the idea of an ulterior motif. It sounds like something a devious decorator might use against his competitors or hated clients. Do you think those ulterior motifs come in paisley? Or are they limited to dark, drab prints and murky florals? Are they part of the Iago line of home fabrics and wall papers? Okay, I'll stop. As I continue to flay this sad little horse, you get the point.

Clearly the author meant motive. Motif had me musing on dark prints and dodgy decorators instead of whether Draco was going to form an alliance with Harry. Not what she intended, I'm sure. I feel for the author, even as I chuckle, because I know her pain. Usually though, mine is private, or at worst, shared with a close group of women who care for my stories as if they were their own.

A beta--a good one--could have prevented the grave motif error. But on the other hand, I couldn't have trotted out quips about Iago's newest decorating line. After all, we never knew what happened to him . . .

I read an article yesterday about a new punishment system the Thai police have for mildly misbehaving policemen—they have to wear hot pink armbands festooned with Hello Kitty and hearts. The explanation? Shame. Humiliation. The belief that these big, macho (their word, not mine) policemen would rather suffer the ninth level of hell than be required to wear something that little girls like.

Somehow—when I should have been working on galleys or doing other work-ish things—this made me think about cross-dressing as a kink, and more specifically why we like it, and why we only like it when certain characters do it.

Let's get the sociological stuff out of the way first. The decision to wear men's clothing was a calculated rail against the male establishment by women at the turn of the twentieth century, an attempt to gain independent social and economic status. To be "powerful" you had to be like a man, look like a man. Today's generation (30 somethings) don't think twice about women in pants. The original brazenness of it has faded and its acceptance is nearly universal.

But we stop dead at the sight of a man in a skirt.

Unlike with women in pantsuits and oxfords, we still find the idea of men dressing as women shocking and sexually charged. A man gains nothing socially/economically by dressing as a woman, or so the theory goes. Men are at the top of the food chain. Why would they do something that presumably downgrades their status? (Almost Darwinian, isn't it?) Therefore, it must be a sexual fetish. What else could there be? (Well, a lot, but no need to get into that here).

Of course, the counterargument is, why does it matter if a man is more comfortable in silk panties than cotton boxer briefs? In some respects, the only difference is the material. The idea of wearing women's clothing changes the experience drastically, however, because the difference isn't just about cotton or silk, but one of social context. If women dress in pants to gain the power of men, men dress in women's panties to be subjugated.

I could talk endlessly about that, but what I really want to know is how fast can I get Draco into silk knickers and how fast can I get Severus out of them?

I admit it. I like cross-dressing as a kink, perhaps because it can be a gentle form of dominance and subjugation. Regardless, I'm very, very particular about who does the silk knicker wearing. For instance, it's very, very hard for me to imagine Severus, Remus, Sirius, James, Dumbledore (oh, god, just writing that made me shudder), etc. engaging in cross-dressing for pleasure. (er, yeah, I know I wrote that one where Severus was mad for it, but let's just forget that for the moment). Generally speaking, any of these characters voluntarily cross-dressing is a huge turn-off for me. And the image of most of them being forced to do it isn't so fantastic, either.

But the idea of Harry or Draco doing it? Yeah. I like that. I like it a lot. Why, I wonder? Is it because we've painted Draco as this lithe, effeminate character whose inherent aristocracy simply changes the rules about how one dresses? Is it because Harry is naturally an empathetic nurturer, despite his distinctly male bravado and hot-headedness? Do we perceive them as "feminine" characters? Is it that we like the idea of them being subjugated, regardless of gender? (For instance, under this condition, the idea of a cocky Sirius being paraded about in hot pink knickers has a certain appeal. It would likely knock that malicious smirk right off his face). Or, do we just like silk? What are your thoughts on this?

For leianora and lilyseyes, who both requested, "I'd looooove to see a scene that takes place in the future after The Thief and the Sorceress. Something when she's still little, before she goes to Hogwarts."

(unbeta'ed, but hopefully not atrocious)


( The Prince, Lady Lily and Miss Penelope )

Pay It Forward: I will send a handmade gift to the first 5 people who leave a comment here on my blog. I don’t yet know what that gift will be (and you will choose from a very short list), but you will receive it within 365 days. The only thing you have to do in return is "pay it forward" by making a similar agreement on your blog.

I love the idea of handcrafts and have long ascribed to the theory that making something for someone is one of our greatest expressions of empathy, kindness, and thought. Given the splintering going on in our community, its nice to be able to focus on something that might bring us together--even if just a little bit. So with that in mind, I gleefully join in the Pay it Forward movement. Am here by way of abigail89, who has agreed to gift me with something. So I offer the same to you.

While I am certainly no great artist, here's what I can do reasonably well: painted ceramic dessert plates, semi-precious stone necklaces, silk and needlepoint pillows, and free-hand Victorian style embroidery. Erm, I'm a amateur photographer and can make "artsy" note cards with exotic flower pictures. I tend to mix "really modern" with "really retro," but will happily make something to your specifications.

--Siren

Hi there, everybody!

First, an observation. There's nothing quite like 55 pounds of dog--oh, excuse me!--puppy leaping into your lap because he's afraid of thunder. A word to the wise.

You have to go here and play with this. It's virtual sand art!! It's addictive. I almost drooled on my galleys today at work, mesmerized as I was.

http://www.funny-games.biz/external/sand-art.html (I don't know yet how to make the link all pretty, but that's another story)

And, OH MY GOD! r_grayjoy gifted me with a paid account!! You delightful creature, thank you!!! HUGE smooches. I have no idea what I did to deserve such loveliness, but I accept it with a massive amount of glee! (psst! What's the code to make the user name appear in the post??)

Drabbles/fics/ficlets are on the way! My one from The Thief and the Sorceress has turned into a little fic all on its own. I'll likely post that one first. and got me excited about the one from Coming Home.

Now, if I could just make my journal over here look pretty . . . .

To kick off my posting at Insane Journal, I'm taking drabble/ficlet requests. Pick any of my stories and select an existing scene you'd like to see written from a different angle, POV, etc., or select a missing, prequel, or future scene that you'd like to see written. Please include the scene's character(s), context, POV, etc. in your request. (Yes, Draco's Boy is included in this).

I posted The Brass Ring on daily_deviant.  You have to be a member to read, but I hope you will.  It's a rather angsty H/D, Deathy Hallows compliant fic.  (including that dratted epilogue!)  And it's really quite short.  Just 1,400 words or so. 

Also, have joined the masses and now have accounts at Greatest Journal and Insane Journal.  I'm the same at both places--empathic_siren.

http://empathic-siren.insanejournal.com/

http://empathic-siren.greatestjournal.com/


I expect to post primarily at Insane Journal.  sansa1970 and I have made provisions for the pimp_my_3some community and I am in the process of making provisions for the two_broomsticks community.  I'll let you know as soon as both are sorted. 

I've been quiet about all of the insanity, but that does not mean it hasn't affected me very deeply.  While I believe that LJ has the right to do what it wants--regardless of our arguments and heart-felt pleas--I think it's quite sad that those who make up LJ are losing the opportunity to discover and understand such a cohesive, incredible community.  That's what this is for me, you know.  A community of people who rally together, soothe each other's hurts, teach and collaborate with their friends, kvetch with about life, share deep secrets and dreams, and become family.  So . . . I hope you'll look me up over there.  In fact, will be hosting a drabble request-a-thon to get things started. 

--Siren

Happy Birthday, alisanne! 

I hope you have a fantastic day!

When I was in London in May, I picked up a lovely book, Discovering The Folklore of Plants, by Margaret Baker.  At the time, I thought it might be a useful resource for Draco's Boy.  I packed it away and promptly forgot about it.  I found it the other day and flipped through the pages, stumbling upon the entry for yew, which made me think about magic wands and the woods they're made from.  Hardly a new consideration, but what I found was most interesting.

( DH Spoilery Abounds Behind the Cut! )

No, not that wand, you naughty minxes. His--his--(dear, God! Every descriptor I have sounds pornographic)--his wand for casting spells. Do we know what it's made of? Harry's is Holly, yes? Voldemort's is . . . yew, correct? And then, of course, the special wand . . .

Any help would be much appreciated.

Happy birthday, dear!  I hope it's wonderful!!