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[kelly_chambliss]

The first day of school went well enough. We did have a little snow, but I still managed to get in by 8:00 -- only to find that I'd written one of my new syllabuses on my laptop and had neglected to send the file to myself and/or put it on the flash. So I had to redo it in double-quick time from semi-scratch (I did have an earlier draft on the school desktop). But it all worked out. My students seem fine -- several old-timers and some interesting newcomers.

But since it will be at least a week before I have anything to grade, I'm taking tonight off and spending it on fannish things. And I'm going to share some of these things with you -- new comms, fests, recs, and the like. The things, here they are:

Thing 1 -- REVEALS -- Kinky Kristmas reveals have been posted! As I told the mods, I am happy to report that in my personal guessing game, I batted .1000: as in, all my guesses were 100% WRONG. perverse_idyll, it's a damned good thing (for me) that I didn't bet you any real money. I was hopeless as a guesser, hopeless! My lit crit cred is shot.

I'll go back to my rec posts and put in the authors, but my favorite stories turn out all to have been written by flisties: leela_cat, purplefluffycat, and r_grayjoy. Leela wrote my Minerva/Andromeda gift as well as that breathtaking Snape/Moody; PFC wrote that wonderful Minerva/Luna, and Rowan gave us those two hilarious Severus stories.

My own story, written to a prompt from the talented eeyore9900, is called King of Beasts, and I think it's my first threesome. It features Kingsley/Moody/and a surprise third person that no one on my flist would ever guess, not in a gazillion years. I'll post the whole thing here properly later.

Thing 2 -- NEW FEST -- In (dis)honor of Valentine's day, the clever featherxquill is modding a really fun new fest: dysfuncentine. It's low-pressure; you can write as little as you want. Anything HP goes -- any ratings, any pairings. Even if you don't have time to participate, you should consider leaving some prompts.

Thing 3 -- OLD FEST IS NEW AGAIN -- In honor of Severus Snape's 51st birthday (Jan 9), severusbigbang is sponsoring a one-week birthday bash. No prompts or assignments; you can just post any Snape-centric item you like. Already there have been several fine pieces (see the next thing).

Thing 4 -- FIC AND ART RECS FROM THE SBB:

FICS: Saturday's Child by albalark (Snape, Dumbledore, McGonagall, Dobby; PG.) An atmospheric, revealing picture of Snape's time as headmaster, ultimately shot through with hope. The next time Lark tries to tell you she can't write, just laugh at her.

Winter Gifts by squibstress (Snape/McGonagall, NC-17). A painful but believable look at one possible post-Nagini scenario. I love stories in which Severus and Minerva do most of their talking without words.

In Which Severus Goes to a Party and Has a Ball by therealsnape (Snape/McGonagall, PG). In which TRS makes us use our imaginations.

ART: W by protowilson. Most of you are probably familiar with Protowilson's witty series of comics in which her graphic avatar works at Hogwarts and has hilarious conversations with Snape at the breakfast table. This pic is different -- not a comic, and in color to boot -- but it has that trademark Protowilson wit.

Thing 5 -- ANOTHER ART REC -- Speaking of excellent art, here's a wonderful illustrated Snape/Lupin story from snapelyholidays: Exile.

Thing 6 -- NEW COMM -- Here's a very useful new comm: potterfests -- a masterlist of fests in the HP fandom, with relevant deadlines listed. If you moderate any fests, send the details along. I've long wanted something like this, but have been too lazy and disorganized to do it myself. My thanks to the obviously not-lazy and not-disorganized swissmarg for putting it together and to vaysh11 for the link.