darkhavens

Thank you, so very much, to the anon(s) who gifted a whole bunch of my comms with glass heart v-gifts; also to ellia and sciencegeek, who gifted bloodclaim with the hearts; and to literati, tabaqui, and another, or possibly the same, anon who sent me beautiful glass heart v-gifts.

The last few months have been rough, and 2012 has not gone well so far, but your thoughtfulness and kindnesses had me crying my first happy tears of the year, so again I say ♥THANK♥YOU♥.

I hope you all had a good Half-Price Chocolate Day Eve. ;)

I hope you're all having/have had/will have a wonderful, festive, celebratory moment of your choice, even if your choice is not to have one at all. ;)

Yeesh. Nearly two months since I've posted anything. What a fun time that's been!

I signed up for ae_match, with oodles of enthusiasm and ideas for fic. I wrote the first chapter of an Inception/Harry Potter crossover (Eames is a Malfoy squib, dontcha know!), building on art by the amazing pearljamz, and then... came down with a month long bout of bronchitis that had me coughing up enough green goo to provide special effects for a remake of the Exorcist. Bleh.

Once I could breathe again, I mostly slept for two weeks, told everyone I was feeling much better and started work on chapter two... and then the bronchitis boomeranged back and wiped me out for a second time.

I still feel like I want to sleep for a month and eat nothing but Tesco Midget Gems - they were all that kept me going through both bouts, odd but true. I was constantly ravenous but too wiped to crawl to the kitchen. Mommie Dearest was delivering them in bulk.

Now, every time I think 'I'll write something!' or 'Oh, dear gods, I have so many emails to wade through in my inbox, I'd better get started on that right now...', I somehow end up at neopets (I KNOW!), or playing just one last game of freecell, or urgently needing to watch this movie or the entire season x of y show.

I want to write! I just...

I started this post two hours ago, got the title in place, and realised I hadn't opened tweetdeck in forever. 106 tweets later (and a dozen linked in webpages and images and hey, while I'm on channel 4's news website, I'll just see what's been happening in the world...) I actually started to type.

ae_match is officially over, but there's a grace period until the end of September and the fic is sitting in my brain waiting to come out (and the one where Arthur is the baby of a crime family full of much larger brothers, and the one where he and Eames (are) own(ed by) a Maine Coon called Mr Charles who hates Cobb), but... words fail me.

So, how you all doin'? :D

(Apparently I can post but still not comment. DDoSers, you suck monkey balls.)



Womanthology is a large scale anthology comic showcasing the works of women in comics. It is created entirely by over 140 women of all experience levels, including top industry professionals such as:

* Barbara Kesel (Writer/Editor Marvel, DC, Crossgen, Image, Dark Horse)
* Gail Simone ( DC writer, Wonder Woman, Birds of Prey, Secret Six)
* Annie Nocenti ( Marvel writer, Daredevil, Editor for Uncanny X-Men, New Mutants)
* Ming Doyle ( Boom, Image, Marvel artist)
* Devin Grayson (DC writer; Batman, Nightwing, New Titans)
* Lauren Montgomery (Director & Storyboard Artist - Justice League, DC)
* Fiona Staples (DC, Wildstorm, IDW , Vertigo artist)
* June Brigman (Creator; Brenda Starr, Power Pack)
* Samantha Newark (Voice of JEM, Singer/Vocals - God of War, Hook)
* Bonnie Burton( Grrl.com)

The purpose of the book is to show support for female creators in comics and media.

"Read more and/or pledge your support at the Womanthology Kickstarter page.

And as an added incentive point of interest, DC Women Kicking Ass have published an interview with Kyrax2, the Batgirl!Steph at San Diego ComiCon who called DiDio & co out on DCnU's 'diversity'.

Ten days ago, I finally got all my ducks in a row, holiday okayed, finances healthy enough that I could decide, yes, I was going to writerconuk's meet in Coventry for the first weekend in August. Yay!

Seven days ago, I woke up with a tickle in my throat.

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So, no fun fannish weekend. Which meant I suddenly had money to spare and a resentment of DC burning a hole in the pit of my stomach.

And then someone on my Twitterfeed (either @GailSimone or @dcwomenkicknass) linked to Womanthology, a startup large scale anthology comic showcasing the works of women in comics, and their fundraising page, Womanthology@Kickstarter, and an hour later I was pledging $70 to the cause.

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While all this has been going on, I've been dipping my toe back into the waters of original writing, over at lj_scribe - a weekly prompt-based short-form writing comm with regular prizes of lj tokens.

My first entry, a haiku, was chosen for the final poll and seems likely to be a winner, and last week's prompt of "This will be our little secret", inspired a poem, "Little Man", that made my skin crawl as I was writing it, and has garnered some stunning comments. (If you click the link, please read the warning at the top of the post.)

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*smooches you all through a prophylactic* (NOT LIKE THAT! So I don't infect you all with my lurgy, you dirty buggers!)

This post is a WIP. There are 20 drabbles in my baby!vamp!Xander 'verse, but the posting deadline in the comm I wrote them for is four minutes away, so I'm posting it roughtly now and then cleaning it up once I've posted links in fics20in20. (Damn lj and BT Broadband for conspiring to make me think I wasn't going to be able to post it and then quit with the errors and the snail-speed connection at the last minute!)

Author: darkhavens
Fandom: Pairing: Buffy: Spike/Xander
Rating: see individual drabbles (from PG to R)
Words: 20x100
Concrit: Please. If you spot a typo or a grammar glitch, feel free to tell me in comments.
Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be. No harm, no foul, no money made.
Warnings/Squicks: see individual drabbles (mostly gore, some sexual content)
Notes: 20 drabbles for fics20in20 round 2, set in my baby!vamp!Xander 'verse. You don't have to have read the rest of it, just know that Spike turned Xander, and then spent 30,000+ words worth of drabbles teaching him how to be a vampire and having fun along the way. :D
Notes2: (All the warnings about Vamp!Xander are because the drabbles will be linked individually from the comm for voting purposes.)

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Results are now in at fics20in20:

Four firsts, four joint firsts, and a second place win. Score! :D

Author: darkhavens
Fandom: Pairing: Inception: Arthur/Eames (+ crossovers with Stargate, Buffy, Harry Potter, White Collar and Batman.)
Rating: please see individual ficlets
Words: 4250 (15x250, 5x100)
Spoilers: None
Concrit: Please. If you spot a typo or a grammar glitch, feel free to tell me in comments.
Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be. No harm, no foul, no money made.
Warnings/Squicks: please see individual ficlets
Summary: A little bit of everything in 250 word snippets.
Notes: Written for round 1 of fics20in20. Signups for round 2 are open here.
Thanks go to: literati, outsideth3box & entrenous88 for their unstinting support and cheerleading.

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Anyone modding a community needs to read this.

LJ is at it again. They've introduced a new OPT-OUT 'Spam Protection' feature, which is actually a new privacy setting (found here: http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=privacy ). It automagically screens comments containing links onto a special 'suspicious comment' page if the link is to a site that is not on their unpublicized whitelist*.

The user who made the original post cannot see these hidden comments and receives no notification that they exist. Only moderators/maintainers can see these hidden comments, BUT! no notifications are sent to inform mods of the screening. Also, it's been active about two weeks, and it's still buggy as all hell, so if you're a mod, you need to go to each of your comms and check each post to see if any comments have been auto-screened.

As an added bonus, if you have custom comment pages in your comm, you probably won't be able to see the 'suspicious comment' link even then. I ended up appending ?format=light to the url of each post in bloodclaim to hunt down the comments that had been dropped into lj's nifty little oubliette without warning.

NB: The '# suspicious comments' link is only visible if there are suspicious comments, so don't worry if you don't see the link on lj's default comment page layout, or in ?format=light mode, it just means there are none. Yay?

The setting applies to personal journals as well as communities, but this is a post about how it affects communities and their mods.

To turn it off, uncheck the ticky box for 'Spam Protection: Comments containing a link to a non-whitelisted domain will be marked as spam and moved to a special section.' and then click 'Save' at the bottom of the page.


LJ are still working on 'improving' the whole mess, so I have no idea how long this post will remain accurate, but with the way it's working right now, it's not fit for use in any community.

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Author: darkhavens
Title: whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling
Fandom: Pairing: Inception: Arthur/Eames
Rating: NC-17
Words: 1200
Concrit: Please. If you spot a typo or a grammar glitch, feel free to tell me in comments.
Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be. No harm, no foul, no money made.
Warnings/Squicks: **graphic violent imagery, psychopath!Eames, complicit!Arthur, character death (not A/E)**
Summary: **Eames gets bored while waiting to see if Ariadne survives the twelve hours (topside) in limbo that he's sentenced her to for kissing his Arthur.**
Previous chapters: Sequel to The Sky is Green
Notes: Written for npmexchange, for starfleet and her prompt, i carry your heart by ee cummings. (I was obviously in a very literal frame of mind when I wrote this.)

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Interesting week...

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So, how has your week been?