>VERBOSE

This is the kind of thought process that goes on in my diseased brainmeats:

1. Read a sentence in a fic which includes James and Sirius playing endless chess: "best two out of three became best three out of five, and on and on."

2. Snicker and connect this to the scene in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey where Bill and Ted defeat Death not only once, but two out of three, three out of five, and on and on ("Best four out of seven?" "Damn right!").

3. Have horrifying vision.

4. Explain goggle-eyed expression to husband by saying "Does the phrase 'James S. Potter, esquire' mean anything to you?"

5. Elaborate unnecessarily by pointing out that many people have humourously conceived of the Marauders as being a rock band.

6. Utter in my best Keanu Reeves voice, "You see, dude, to pass our History of Magic OWL, we have to go back in time!"

7. Be somewhat soothed by the idea that this means Dumbledore will be played by George Carlin.

Some random f-lister mentioned a dream, and that made me OMG remember that I'd had a dream of a Certain Type last night: Severus/Sirius, with hidden voyeuristic masturbating Harry.

Whoa, dude.

Stowing this for future use. ariadneelda says:

Oh, and this: "Why couldn't Black have hidden in Snape's office, eh? He could have finished him off for us!" (Ron after Snape gave him a nasty detention. PoA, Grim Defeat chapter.)

Please tell me there's fic out there for that! It could be an excellent Snack. :D

Just stowing this here for future reference. This is from an FFN review on "Summer Shade".

Honey, I think you just gave us ALL masterbation material for ions [sic]. Maybe you
could do another chapter of Sev for that? [...] I always thought if James had lost his virginity to some other girl during the Lily-hates-him-days then Lily would feel fine losing hers to Severus since James hadn't waited for her.

Lately I have been having strange ideas of not-exactly-songfic (which is a format I generally loathe), but inspired-by-song-fic, which would in some way be thematically related or if possible take the plot of a song and use it as a framework for the plot of the fic. All well and good for things like The Cure, but this morning while I was making breakfast, I had "Mad Maudlin's Search for Her Tom of Bedlam" in my head (aka "Bedlam Boys").

For to see Mad Tom of Bedlam,
Ten thousand miles I've travelled.
Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes,
For to save her shoes from gravel

Somehow got turned into an AU where Sirius and Severus had been in Azkaban together for some period of time, and just as it did no good for Sirius's full sanity, so it wore away at Severus's as well. But then Severus was released for whatever reason, and later on, Sirius escaped in the canonical way, perhaps even for the canonical reason. In any event he was then "Mad Maudlin" seeking "Mad Tom", i.e. Severus (not literally by those names; it would have been more like allegory) and was even doing so "on dirty toes for to save his shoes", i.e. as Padfoot.

Still I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys,
Bedlam boys are bonny,
For they all go bare, and they live by the air,
And they want no drink nor money.

That came with an image of a scene where Severus is standing naked on a balcony, looking out over a view, refusing to eat or drink or in fact even speak, hugging his arms to himself but otherwise paying no apparent heed to the cold wind as it whips his hair around and chills his flesh; and when Sirius comes upon him the only response he gets is an unfocused gaze from dark eyes empty not from being a cold and cruel person, but like mourning something beautiful that was lost.

(Or if it was not beautiful then at least it was mine, and they took it from me... but... what did they take? I can hardly remember... And there even is not much "I" to do the remembering... but the wind, the wind tells me other things to fill that place...)

Yeah. Um. That's just an image I find very compelling.

Anyway, what else could be squeezed out of it, I don't know. Translating some of the rest of it into Potterverse plot would actually take eerily little work now that I look at a verse collection. But I just don't think I have the chops to write such a thing.

I slept not since the Conquest,
Till then I never waked,
Till the roguish boy of love where I lay
Me found and stript me naked...

comment in hp_essays:

severed_lies: I never thought about how keeping Sirius and Severus apart by fostering their mutual disgust and hatred would also keep them from collaborating against Dumbledore to protect Harry.

That sounds like a good bunny for an AU fic.

Then she got an idea! An awful idea! THE esmestrella GOT A WONDERFUL, AWFUL IDEA!

In the spirit of fairness, I want to state outright that this is an idea almost certainly doomed to failure and nothing may ever come of any effort you, the hypothetical gentle reader, may put out. But if I can't give it the old college try, I ought to at least give it the old third-grade try.

Can anyone point me to general resources on Lancashire? Stuff that would help me, a complete ignoramus on the subject, write something that was set there?

It doesn't need to be very great -- I have, if not outright parody, then at least something very silly in mind. But it should be sensibly silly; the silliness should fit together. And I, having been born in California and never set foot anywhere in England, much less Lancashire specifically, am pathologically unable to achieve that without help.

Another late-morning, not-quite-awake-so-not-quite-a-dream image for the That's Crack but I Still Wish I Could Draw file:

Four-piece band. Lily on vocals, Severus on bass, Sirius on guitar, and James on drums. (Yeah, that last one kinda made me *eyebrow* too.)

I think this is the fermented love-child byproduct of yesterday's driving-home-from-work flash-visual of Severus playing that über-sexy bass line in "Number One Crush", that Garbage poster in enotsola's room with Shirley Manson's really red hair, and that actual dream that I had last year where Severus was a 60s folk guitarist and I dreamt his picture on an album cover (and let me tell you, he looks weird with 60s-style fonts and psychedelic graphics alongside).

I had an odd dream yesderday morning. Albus/Severus. Yeah, you heard me. Not Albus Severus -- Albus/Severus, something I usually rather squick at. It was afterlife, and only barely above the level of friendship or platonic love, almost pre-slash I suppose you could say. It was poignant and thoughtful and comforting and contained the idea that Dumbledore had actually had to kill Grindelwald, so he knew plenty about damaging your soul by killing someone, please and thank you. I even dreamt an illustration (which I have no hope of drawing -- detailed close-up drawings of hands? forget it). I wonder if I could possibly capture the feeling I had if I tried to write it. It seems like the kind of thing where you see a magnificently coloured sky, and photograph it, and the colour all washes out and it's never the way you saw it in your head.

ETA: Ah! What I am fumbling towards here is the fact that it was sympathetic to Dumbledore. I don't usually Dumbles-bash except for humourous effect, but I don't feel very warm towards him anymore. The feeling of the scene I was dreaming was very much so. That's what I couldn't put my finger on, heh.

snegurochka_lee posted this great little Severus/Remus fic, Fulfilled, a couple of days ago. T'ain't my ship normally, although I am warming to it a little. Any of the incidents mentioned could be expanded into their own fics, but this one really grabbed me by the... uh... by... some part of my body:

"Two," said Remus a bit louder. "April, 1979. An old mill on the outskirts of Cardiff. Your makeshift 'laboratory.' I broke in with barely an Alohomora and had you flat on your back in under four seconds."

I am picturing one of those "negative/positive countdown snapshots-in-time" devices, as in, second by second, details of the four seconds before Remus comes in, his entrance on second 0, and then the following four seconds. (24, now under new micromanagement!) Perhaps whatever Severus is in the middle of doing gives off profoundly aphrodisiac fumes in its middle stages, which he in his businesslike way is mostly ignoring while he focuses on the delicate prodecure and the end product. Remus' arrival is fortuitously timed and pr0n ensues. Unfortunately, I definitely don't have down the Remus chops (...2G 6S the pound) necessary to write such a thing.