>VERBOSE

Signups for less_for_you will open tomorrow.

(In case it wasn't well known already, I'm not involved with the fest this year.)

FYI, I did get a response from orpheus_samhain sometime this weekend while I was away, and she says she is still planning to do the exchange. Didn't say when, though (and the comm info still says "signups will be up in January").

Has anyone heard any murmurs from orpheus_samhain about whether she is planning to do another less_for_you exchange, maybe later in the year? The last two times, signups had already begun by now, but I haven't heard anything about it maybe going on later or something (like heads-up or gauging-interest posts). I'd hate to see it die (although I'm also a little leery of stepping on her toes by trying to start another). Anyone? Bueller?

FYI to the general populace: I'm no longer co-modding less_for_you. orpheus_samhain and I had some differences of philosophy on what my "job description" was, and since I kept unintentionally stepping on her toes, I said that I should resign after this round. She thought it would be better just to deal with it now and so it is effective today. This is all cool and stuff, no drama. I'm disappointed that I couldn't please her because I liked being involved in the exchange, but it seems it was not meant to be. So the upshot is, don't use me as a contact point for any questions or anything because I am no longer in a position to be such. (If anyone is worried about anonymity, no, I don't know the entire match-up of the gifts, since I did not create it and never saw the list. I only know the identity of the one person I am betaing.)

Signups are now open for less_for_you! Go forth my hordes of darkness and prostrate yourselves upon the sacrificial slab sign up!

(Man, I gotta get a grip on this advertising business.)

It's official: sign-ups for less_for_you will open on January 2. There's a preview post here (here on IJ) with the schedule and the signup template if you'd like to think about that for a bit. Please note that is not the signup post -- you can comment if you have some question, but don't try to sign up there!

If you like Severus/Lily, take note: less_for_you, the ship fic and art exchange, will be opening for signups for the second fest at the beginning of January. orpheus_samhain is keeping me around as co-mod (yay!) so I wonder if that will turn out to mean I do three pinch-hits (ha). I hope to see a few certain parties that I have collected on my flist since then!

less_for_you reveals are up. Here are the three fics I wrote (author's notes slightly edited):

Summer Shade
Rating: R
Words: ~5,000
Warnings: None
Summary: Lily shares some of her young sexual curiosity with Severus, but that may not have been the best idea.
Author's Notes: Request was for "whatif!scenarios, pre-Hogwarts, angst, hurt/comfort, unrequited love". Sort-of-three out of five ain't bad? I think it's at least ambiguous whether it's requited love or not, and there's angst at the end. AU: Severus and Lily didn't grow apart and then crash and burn they way they did in canon. They are still quite good friends in the summer after sixth year. Thanks to my betas who_la_hoop and juniperus.

Lilies Are Red, Roses Are Blue
Rating: NC-17 (barely)
Words: ~5,500
Warnings: Sexual activity between teenagers (who are of age in their jurisdiction); gratuitous ignoring of canon; fluff; extreme sappiness; Severus being too pretty; no nutritional value.
Summary: Best friends? Maybe so, but clearly there have been some other thoughts occurring on both sides as well.
Author's Notes: Request was for Marauder era, shy Snape, long hair, awkwardness, first time having sex/kissing/etc (but no PWP), fluff, and preferably above PG-13. Wa-hey, I think I might have ticked most of those boxes.

aaand... I've just now noticed I didn't thank my betas on that one. Wow. Let's see, that would have been spidermoth and... um... oh crap. Once these were posted I deleted all the betaing emails. Now it's totally escaped me. Um. Pipe up, and I'll add in a thank-you note? (I can't believe I've forgotten this; now I feel like a heel... :( )

Call of the Dark
Rating: R
Words: ~3,800
Warnings: Some purple prose, brief drug use, slight dub-con (but see rating; no sex).
Summary: Severus has learned that Dark magic can burn away his imperfections, but can he convince Lily to see it his way?
Author's Notes: Request included plot, angst, dark, after Hogwarts, Lily not returning and/or playing with Severus's feelings, and Severus as "a flesh and blood person: desires, ambitions, complexes, weaknesses but also brains". Thanks to my betas hobgoblinn and lilyevans_snape, who did record-breaking turnaround time on this.

All three of these are pinch-hits, which means they were written under some duress, so please to excuse their not being the greatest things ever. The last one especially was squeezed out in about two days.

I'm still startled that I wrote over 14,000 words of fic for an exchange I never signed up for in the first place. Between that and all that Snack blither I tried to do for drachenmina that means I've written something like 23,000 words in a little over a month's time. O.o (Still, that ain't hacking NaNoWriMo. ;) )

Why Summer Orchids Wither

This 9600-word fic is a little hard to classify, as you can see in the subject. Lily's been hit with a curse that makes her lose some of her recent memory. She doesn't know why she and Severus are no longer friends, or how she got engaged to James. So she calls on Severus to help her out with it, since she figures her best friend (as she still remembers him) would know, and as he works out a cure for her, things go from there.

This is one of those fics that pulls the rug out from under you. There's such tenderness and love and you glow with what's happening to Severus and Lily and then wham, the end just breaks your heart. My reaction when I first read this fic about three weeks ago was to want to scream out loud. "You bitch, you bitch, how could you do that!!!1!1!" Someone commented on another fic in the exchange that it was a success because it had made her feel an emotion, and wow, did this ever do that for me.

ETA: Gosh, a link would help, wouldn't it?
The Place That August Brings

This is my second gift in the less_for_you exchange. (So I guess that gives away that I wrote two fics for it -- insert guesses here. I think I totally fail at anon, but perhaps others are not familiar enough with me to recognize what I see as a blindingly obvious prose and, especially, punctuation style.) Here slightly-edited is the comment I left:

I posted about this when I saw it in the mod journal on the 13th. At the time I was hard-pressed to describe how it made me feel except by writing extemporaneous poetry:

it is October, and dark too soon
in the dregs at the bottom
of that barrel called summer.
the breeze from the window
was warmer at first, and now
too chill too fast after sunset;
but it is this faded photograph
and not that wandering wind
that's set a shiver in my skin.

I enthusiastically adopted this out of the exchange orphans because I loved it so much. I adore the sort of fairy-tale quality to it; it's got hints of a kind of Charles de Lint - urban fantasy thing going on. I feel like I'm looking at a dusty abandoned playground, listening to a tale being told to me by an old woman who once played there, and seeing and hearing ghosts of the children she's telling me about. It also reminds me of finding hidden places on the grounds of the summer camp I used to go to as a girl, and all the magic stories we used to cook up about them.

For the header art, I think I like Lily best, the shape of her hair and the bright contrast of the color with the blue of her top. Severus's patched clothes are cute too!

This fic packs a lot into its 2000 words. Go thou and read, but not too fast (says she of the 300-400 wpm) -- let it creep in your mind like a mist.