3 unrelated things: Remix; potluck; & family visits (with digressions on timekeeping and allergies)

1. I cannot wait for the remixredux09 reveal tomorrow. (Okay, technically it's later today since I am posting after midnight, but I run my life on the principle that the clock lies and the day does not really change until I go to sleep and wake up again. This does sometimes mean it can be 7am on, say, Wednesday and I will insist it is still functionally Tuesday until maybe 3pm in the afternoon, but I do not care. I freely acknowledge that A) I am weird and B) my sleep schedule is fucked all to hell and back. *grin*)

Anyway, I very badly want to know who remixed me (so I can check her other work and also post useful link information on my own story page and my master fic list), and also to be able to respond to the people who have reviewed my own remix. Also, I just want to blather about writing process and stuff, and it is like torture to hold my metaphorical tongue. *figuratively sits on hands*

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2. Downstairs Neighbors L and M hold a weekly potluck dinner on Sunday nights. Unfortunately, I usually close the store Sunday nights so thus far I have only managed to show up for the tail end, and my only food contribution was a bag of cherries my mom accidentally left in my fridge when she visited a couple weeks ago.

But! I am not working this Sunday. So I have purchased vegetables and I am going to make a sort of stir-fry thing: red and green bell pepper, sweet onion, yellow squash, red potato (cooked separately and added to the frying pan at the last minute), and baby spinach leaves (likewise added at the last minute). Normally I would cook that in oil and soy sauce, but I believe one of M&L's friends is allergic to soy, so I am thinking of using Italian salad dressing and maybe a dash of cayenne pepper sauce for flavor. (I have done that before with chicken and it works fairly well.)

I do stir-fry wrong. My understanding is that you are supposed to leave the vegetables slightly chewy -- what I'd call al dente if it were pasta -- but A) I cannot stand undercooked onions and peppers (flavor and texture reasons, respectively), and B) I have a mild paranoia about uncooked vegetables. This is not irrational at all, trust me. I have a potentially life-threatening allergy to raw fruit, and I get mild, related symptoms when eating some raw vegetables (salad always gives me a tingle and tightening in my throat, for example), so I tend to cook vegetables within an inch of their lives out of pure self-defense.

Whatever. Stuff will be cooked. It will taste good. And if people do not like mushy vegetables, that is their loss. *nods firmly*

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3. Monday morning I am off to Iowa to visit Grandma Doris. This is a family obligation rather than a vacation -- we make sure somebody visits her every month and this month is my turn -- but I suppose a break in the routine is good for mental health regardless? Anyway, I arrive in Omaha Monday afternoon, rent and car and drive to Denison, see Grandma Doris in the evening, and check in to a motel.

Tuesday I eat breakfast and check out and then spend the day visiting with Grandma Doris, driving her around, and maybe organizing her stuff with breaks for lunch and dinner at Cronks (a local restaurant) and a sanity break for me in the midafternoon (which doubles as a chance to check email at the local library). Tuesday night I drive back to Omaha, turn in the car, and sack out at a motel for the night.

Wednesday morning I get up abominably early, catch a 7:20am flight back east (with a four hour layover in Newark, thank you very much Continental... *makes face*) and presumably am back in Ithaca by 5pm, early enough to catch a bus home from the airport rather than have to pay for a taxi. Hurrah!

...

I am going to be exhausted on Thursday, I just know it.

[Fic] "Cast a Long Shadow (We All Meet in the End)" -- Harry Potter

Remix reveal day!

I wrote Cast a Long Shadow (We All Meet in the End): Lily left empty places behind her. A story about family, loss, memory, and the passage of time. Contains familial dysfunction, mention of war and related issues, and offscreen canon character deaths. [The final version is now posted here on AO3 and here on ff.net... but the livejournal version has better comments. *grin*]

(Now you know why I had Petunia and Lily [Rationalization], and adult!Dudley [Points of Division] on my mind this past month or so. *sigh* Obvious Liz is obvious.)

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Cast a Long Shadow (We All Meet in the End) is a remix of Points Where All Shadows Meet, by osmalic. The original story was written for snape_after_dh, which means it takes all DH canon about Snape's childhood acquaintance with Lily and Petunia into account... and then gives one other canon element the finger. In other words, Snape faked his death.

Aside from that element, "Cast a Long Shadow" meshes almost seamlessly with my previous stories about Petunia -- most specifically with Family and Falls the Shadow. I admit that this was semi-deliberate; I have a particular interpretation of Petunia and of the Evans family, and it's hard for me to hold another view in my mind strongly enough to write a story based on it. Using 'Maureen' as the name of Dudley's fiancée, on the other hand, was very deliberate, and was basically a sop to my compulsive need for tidy edges.

On a more random note, I have now created enough backstory for Petunia that I have a bizarre urge to write a semi-comedic romance wherein bank-teller!Petunia meets drill-salesman!Vernon, they flirt awkwardly, she introduces him to her disapproving parents, he introduces her to his unbearable sister, she wonders how to broach the topic of her little sister's magic, and everything is very cute and silly. Then Voldemort brutally murders Mr. and Mrs. Evans, Vernon is horrified by the revelation that magic is real, and Petunia thinks she's lost him... and then he comes back and they get engaged, the end. But I am not going to write that story.

Instead, I am going to talk about remixing. *grin*

You see, "Cast a Long Shadow" is not the story I meant to write. (Though I am quite fond of it nonetheless!) What I really, desperately wanted to do was a sort of backwards mirror version of osmalic's Sea Call Burn, which is a beautiful story about Ron Weasley visiting the Philippines for somber reasons that are only slowly revealed. That story is about grief and promises and letting go. It's also a love song to a particular place and culture, with a bonus theory about every region having its own system and 'flavor' of magic.

I wanted to write about Hermione searching the world for reasons that are revealed upfront (so as to connect the story back to osmalic's story); to have her come to Ithaca and visit Seneca Falls and talk to people and sit on on some classes at the Community School of Magic, Music, and Arts (CSMMA), and so on; to extend osmalic's idea of different magical systems (because America, I am convinced, has at least four or five all muddled together -- immigration and cultural erasure will do that to a country -- and she touched on American magic a little with her HP/Supernatural crossover Turning Pages for New Worlds); and to write a love song to America in general and the Finger Lakes region in particular.

But I was not sure if that idea would have enough connection to the original, and also I suck at real-world cultural intricacies, so I decided to remix "Points Where All Shadows Meet" instead, on the theory that that story, at least, I knew how to do justice. (I had hoped to then have time to attempt a remix of "Sea Call Burn" as well, but alas, it was not to be. Time management is not my friend.)

I think I did generally manage to do Petunia, Snape, and Lily justice. It just took me a lot more frustration and several more trashed outlines than I expected it to. Then I did not get the rough draft finished when I needed to, after which my computer crashed and I had a guest for the weekend, so I had to request an extension, write like a mad thing on Monday and Tuesday, edit on Wednesday (which, thank god, I had off from work), and make my sister do a thematic beta job over the telephone because she didn't have the password to get online from my parents' computer (she was in the NYC area for a work project while my parents were in France) -- but I got it done and I got it in. And while I think, in retrospect, I should have sharpened Petunia's edges more, I am fairly pleased with the final result.

(I am also so relieved I managed to think of a title other than "Four Weddings and a Funeral," because while that is probably the most literally accurate title I have ever thought of, it is so thematically distracting -- honestly, can you read "Four Weddings and a Funeral" without thinking of Hugh Grant and romantic comedy? -- that it would never have worked. "Cast a Long Shadow (We All Meet in the End)" refers to Lily's effect on Petunia and Snape and then to the way both Snape and Petunia end up in King's Cross watching Harry and his family... or at least this is how I handwave it to myself. *grin* It also keeps three words -- 'shadow,' 'meet,' and 'all' -- from osmalic's original title, which may be more immediately relevant.)