"Advanced Potion-Making": Thanks, props and gifts of non-toxic mead
My long-ass fic about Snape, Advanced Potion-Making, will begin posting later today at the Marauder Big Bang site (community.livejournal.com/marauderbigbang/). (I’ll add a direct link to the initial post as soon as I have one).
Back home at my own LJ, however, there are several additional people and phenomena whose input and contributions to the fic (direct, indirect or subliminal) I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge.
• The Harry Potter Wikia and the Harry Potter Lexicon. I might have been able to write the fic without these two sources, but it would have taken three times as long and the fun of researching would have felt much less communal.
• The entire staff of Snapecast. These guys provided me with my entry point into the Snape fandom a little over a year ago, and did much not only to assist the thought process that guided my writing, but to reassure me that there was a whole audience out there that would care just as much about the points I was raising as I did. So many times, while listening to back episodes, I’d hear Becca or Rachael or Rose or Shannon express a wish for something to happen in a fic - Snape having his revenge on James Potter, for instance, or an answer to the question “Who taught Snape Occlumency, anyway?” - and exclaim, “I’m writing that! Really I am! Just wait!” If this story answers to any of those expressed fanfictional needs, I will be delighted.
Not featured in this fic
The Snapecast folks also provided me with a crucial reminder that there should be at least a little kink in this story. The Potions Master is a guy sufficiently lacking in even the basics of human affection that I actually think he’d get more than most people out of simple vanilla things, but I mean…this is Snape we’re talking about. Working Molly Weasley’s kitchen table into the mix (as per one Snapecaster’s expressed wish) proved logistically impossible (Molly Weasley herself is not in this fic, for one thing), but hopefully you will enjoy what I’ve come up with as a substitute.
• drinkingcocoa, a terrifically good writer and Harry Potter textual analyst, for her “Fully Knowable Severus Snape” essay, presented at Azkatraz in 2009 and posted at her journal here ( drinkingcocoa.livejournal.com/24106.html). Her point about Snape and defense informed (among other things) my thinking about whether Snape had a different Patronus pre-silver doe and what it might have been; echoes of her thoughts about beauty and ugliness have also found their way into the story at several different points.
• Everyone on my friends list who engaged me in passionately nerdy discussion of the Potterverse, Jo Rowling, and Snape over the past year. Your assertions, questions and musings all found their way into the brain stew from whence this fic emerged. Deserving of particular shout-outs are (in alpha order) driftingquill, drinkingcocoa, kellychambliss, pennswoods, and shyfoxling . Thanks, y’all!
• Finally, during the early stages of the writing of this fic, I listened to three songs from the Marauder era so repeatedly that they became its unofficial soundtrack, and it was with difficulty that I resisted the temptation to write one of them into the story. First, the Who’s “Bargain” (a somewhat Snilyish song, although Snape’s life following Lily’s death is no bargain and no one knows that better than he does); second, two songs about the sort of adolescent sex that Snape - and, in this story, Lily - (almost!) never had: “Go All the Way” by the Raspberries and “Teenage Kicks” by the Undertones. All three are great songs that stood up well under slightly obsessive play. So thanks also to Pete Townshend; Eric Carmen and Wally Bryson; and J.J. O’Neil. Actually, thanks should go to Pete Townshend just on general principles; he is one of my favorite people.
Back home at my own LJ, however, there are several additional people and phenomena whose input and contributions to the fic (direct, indirect or subliminal) I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge.
• The Harry Potter Wikia and the Harry Potter Lexicon. I might have been able to write the fic without these two sources, but it would have taken three times as long and the fun of researching would have felt much less communal.
• The entire staff of Snapecast. These guys provided me with my entry point into the Snape fandom a little over a year ago, and did much not only to assist the thought process that guided my writing, but to reassure me that there was a whole audience out there that would care just as much about the points I was raising as I did. So many times, while listening to back episodes, I’d hear Becca or Rachael or Rose or Shannon express a wish for something to happen in a fic - Snape having his revenge on James Potter, for instance, or an answer to the question “Who taught Snape Occlumency, anyway?” - and exclaim, “I’m writing that! Really I am! Just wait!” If this story answers to any of those expressed fanfictional needs, I will be delighted.
Not featured in this fic
The Snapecast folks also provided me with a crucial reminder that there should be at least a little kink in this story. The Potions Master is a guy sufficiently lacking in even the basics of human affection that I actually think he’d get more than most people out of simple vanilla things, but I mean…this is Snape we’re talking about. Working Molly Weasley’s kitchen table into the mix (as per one Snapecaster’s expressed wish) proved logistically impossible (Molly Weasley herself is not in this fic, for one thing), but hopefully you will enjoy what I’ve come up with as a substitute.
• drinkingcocoa, a terrifically good writer and Harry Potter textual analyst, for her “Fully Knowable Severus Snape” essay, presented at Azkatraz in 2009 and posted at her journal here ( drinkingcocoa.livejournal.com/24106.html). Her point about Snape and defense informed (among other things) my thinking about whether Snape had a different Patronus pre-silver doe and what it might have been; echoes of her thoughts about beauty and ugliness have also found their way into the story at several different points.
• Everyone on my friends list who engaged me in passionately nerdy discussion of the Potterverse, Jo Rowling, and Snape over the past year. Your assertions, questions and musings all found their way into the brain stew from whence this fic emerged. Deserving of particular shout-outs are (in alpha order) driftingquill, drinkingcocoa, kellychambliss, pennswoods, and shyfoxling . Thanks, y’all!
• Finally, during the early stages of the writing of this fic, I listened to three songs from the Marauder era so repeatedly that they became its unofficial soundtrack, and it was with difficulty that I resisted the temptation to write one of them into the story. First, the Who’s “Bargain” (a somewhat Snilyish song, although Snape’s life following Lily’s death is no bargain and no one knows that better than he does); second, two songs about the sort of adolescent sex that Snape - and, in this story, Lily - (almost!) never had: “Go All the Way” by the Raspberries and “Teenage Kicks” by the Undertones. All three are great songs that stood up well under slightly obsessive play. So thanks also to Pete Townshend; Eric Carmen and Wally Bryson; and J.J. O’Neil. Actually, thanks should go to Pete Townshend just on general principles; he is one of my favorite people.