Books are always first you know

So lycoris stayed over last night which was awesome and we had long and weird conversations that only two people with similar slightly twisted worldviews who are hyper on overtired can have, and we watched a lot of stuff.

Well, we watched a lot of episodes. We watched two shows. Live Action Sailor Moon and Old Who.

(Who was awesome we watched Warriors of the Deep which was Fifth Doctor with Turlough running around with a gun! There was also a sea monster thing. Murta? It looked like a pantomime horse. There was also a bit where Tegan got trapped under a very heavy really door. That wobbled.)

And then tonight. I came back. Fiddled with some work. Looked dolefully at the last episode of Legend. Then thought - 'hey, I wonder if jdramas has Kamen Rider Kabuto up?

...

it does.




*See, I have this thing I do. I absolutly GORGE myself on a series and I love it to pieces and I don't let the episodes have time to rest from downloading before watching them. Then I come to the last episode. I stop. I eye it warily. I invent procrastination. I fret and chew my finger nails.

Finally weeks later I pluck up the courage to watch it. (Because once I watched it it's ooooooover.)

This drama made me CRY. I have tears running down my face and my nose is all snotty and my mouth is crumpling up and THIS HARDLY EVER HAPPENS TO ME. I get teary eyed, but I don't SOB.

YOU HAD BETTER MAKE THIS BETTER DRAMA, DO YOU HEAR ME?!

You know, I just had a rather wonderful thouhght. Dreseden Files and Due South. Has anyone written that crossover yet?

Cause can I just say. Dief and Mouse. They would take over the world.

I wonder if the Turkish Delight industry ever curses the name of CS Lewis? I know I never ate the stuff when I was the kid cause it was teh evil.

For Christmas I got...

An ipod! And it is pretty and gorgeous and plays video and the first things I loaded onto it were the transformation sequences from Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon for I am a sad, sad person. And my sister (who also got an ipod) has figured out how to download videos from youtube! *various squeeful flailing*

Um, other swag (for there was other swag) included books! And books! I said to Mum before Christmas that if anyone burglared our tree, they'd be pretty disapointed. Books don't have much resale value. (Of course I didn't know about the ipods at that point. But I suspect they were kept Elsewhere.)

Let's see, I got a puzzle. And At World's End, with pretty post card pictures included! And a make-your-own skeleton dodo, which I have dubbed Pickwick.

And books of special mention. I got. I can't believe I got this. My wonderful, genius mother managed to track down for me Eight Skilled Gentlemen by Barry Hugart! I dropped it in my excitement when I unwrapped it. Just. Master Li. Number Ten Ox. Looked for it for years. *flails*

Virtual pressies!

[Unknown LJ tag] wrote me the wonderful New Leaves for Yuletide! An absolutly wonderful, beautiful note-perfect coda to The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold with a lovely blend of humour, hope, and past darkness.
http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/38/newleaves.html

My as yet unnamed Saiunkoku Secret Santa has written me a lovely, gentle moment, a slice of life fic set before the start of the series, in which Seiran savours the familiar domestic rituals, even the noisy ones and the ones that involve extremely bitter tea.
http://community.livejournal.com/saiunkoku_fic/43875.html#cutid1


For Yuletide I wrote Marginalia, a Mushishi fic. I've never wrote anything resembling a detective story before, so it was an interesting challenge! I'm not sure I achieved everything I wished to in it, but I'm quite pleased with the attempt nonetheless. :) Archived at antique_land - http://antique-land.livejournal.com/19865.html#cutid1


And now I must sign off to attempt to write a bit more essay. For we are going out to the Panto tonight! To see Aladdin. Starring John Barrowman. *does the: "I'm going to be in the presence of the pretty* dance.*

That will make two members of the Torchwood cast I've seen on stage! Jack, and Toshiko in the West End production of Avenue Q. Now if Ianto would just get into musicals...

Lest we forget.

So I was all set to make this post about the Yuletide Gremlins and, if I had opened my email thinking it was my actual assignment, I would have been absolutly terrified because the matched fandom is one I put down to be a good sport

And then I would have gone on to say how actually I'm a bit dissapointed that it wasn't the real one, since this isn't a fandom I'd ever write for otherwise and I would have enjoyed challenging myself with it.

I've just got my 'real' Yuletide Assignment. It's the same person.

...

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! *runs around flailing in absolute panic*

(Yuletide letter to come when I've stopped hyperventilating.)

So, been back at Uni and a postgrad student for almost two weeks (one week of seminars) so far. Different. Yet the same.

May blab later.

12 questions meme now.

Tired.


1) D
2) Youko
3) Balsa
4) Miles
5) Hiro
6) Ryu
7) Ryuuki
8) Claire Bennet
9) River
10) Kaiba
11) Shuurei
12) Taiki

( Read more... )

The Requests:

This was much easier last year. I just went to my last sign up confirmation email and copy and pasted my three unfulfilled requests. Now, because over the wonderful Stocking Stuffers instituted last year I only have one request left that hasn't ever been written for and I'm wondering if it would be greedy to repeat the stocking stuffed ones...

Stolen from quite a few people.

The Why Character A Loves Character B Meme
Give me the names of two characters and I will tell you why character A loves character B. I might answer with a drabble, a quick bit of meta, or a list, just to make things that tiny bit more OMGSOEXCITING!

I learned today that Robert Jordan has died.

It's strange. I fell out of love with his books a long time ago. They were all my pocket money went on at one point - big, thick, satisfying bricks of books that really made you feel that you were getting your money's worth. But then I read more books and began to develop more selective tastes and there were things about this world that grated on me and there got to be so many plot lines that one of those great big bricks only lasted a day. I never bought the last couple.

But I remember. There was a party at one of the houses on the street and I mouthed some excuse at my parents to sneak off early. I curled up in the corner of the sofa in the empty house and opened my latest purchase and started reading and didn't stop until my parents got back at about two in the morning. I hadn't moved a muscle in all those hours and I was feeling all floaty and disconnected from my body, which felt heavy and unreal when I tried to move it next to the words of the page.

I've said and thought a lot about Robert Jordan lately since I've become an English Literature Student and learned stuff about Deconstructionism and Lacan and New Historicism. But all I'm thinking of now is that late evening when I read myself into a trance I was so lost in his world and I think that is the best way, is the way I choose, to remember him.

My Life in the past two months:

Two weeks in Kalami, Corfu. If there is paradise on earth, its here, although it was getting worryingly biblical at times. Left the floods behind in England, got the fires in Greece. I was watching worriedly for the plague of locusts, and wondering if they planned on infiltrating in the guise of Cicadas. No actual fires in Corfu, thank goodness, although everyone was worried - it almost made us feel guilty for how completly de-stressed we were.

Of course, then I got home to learn that 1) I hadn't got my funding for my MA. 2) The job I thought I'd got till the end of the summer had replaced me with a permanent person. So yes, been running around like a chicken with a head chopped off, trying to scrounge up a couple of weeks temp work and pin down work for term time and christmas. Am tired. Also broke.

Meh. *flaps hands*

In other news, sister and I are making a go of Risings Stars of Manga - once again starting something far too late to have it actually done on time. But! At least there is actually a faint possibility this might actually get done, if late, unlike the Neverending Manga. (One year, two months of plotting and still counting.)

So, yeah, beginning to slow down a bit from frantic 'Must Fix Life NOW' mode and beginning to look around and remember hey, there is stuff that I actually like to do out there! Posted one drabble. Fingers itching to write more. I think I might actually have been proactive enough to let them without guilt. Yay!

Doctor Foster went to Gloucester
In a shower of rain.
He stepped in a puddle, right up to his middle,
and never went there again.

We haven't been touched by the flooding thankfully, but all the telly is showing at the moment is swans sailing down high street.

*checks the sky worriedly for rainbows"

Okay, so I have been back from university for almost two weeks now. So far this has been taken up with looking for a job, going back to a lot of different universities with my sister as she tries to decide which one she wants to go to, preparing for her birthday, preparing for her to go to China (china) and watching an awful lot of Heroes with her.

So, highlights.


Couple of weeks ago - went to see The Last Confession which was brilliant and poignant and chilling and filled with painful 'what ifs.' It told the story of Pope John Paul I, who reigned for only three days, and explored all the conspiracies around his death. He was a liberal Pope, supportive of birth control, of the Church's responsibility to fight temporal evil as well as spiritual. (One of the best lines of the play, I think, was his response to one of the Conservative Cardinal's protestation that the Church's business was God - 'it's men seeking to find God.') One of our friends, Paul, has a walk on part and is an understudy - for the Nun.

Got my degree results. Beautiful day in the courtyard behind the English Department. They served us Pimms, then posted the results up in the window. (I got a First *makes repressed squeaky noises*)

I then got on a train and rushed back home in order to see an open air production of The Comedy of Errors in the ruins of Ludlow castle. We had a picnic on the grass outside, and thankfully the rain held off. The play was amazing - hilarious and implausible (two sets of separated identical twins) and it had a Bollywood setting which was ridiculously perfect.

Sister's party went off without a hitch. Except, you know, when she threw a cookie at me and it hit my eye and I was in agony every time I blinked for two days before I finally went to Minor Injuries where they put dye on it and told me I had an abrasion on my pupil and gave me so antibiotic paste to put on it. No, I'm not milking this for all it's worth, why do you ask?

So now she's off to China, and the next event is my graduation. I am going to do some writing this weekend.

So today, because all the other societies were doing it, LUMAS held a barbecue. Yeah.

Everything went swimmingly for the first twenty or so minutes while we got the barbecue set up, played with fire, waited for the charcoal to get that nice covering of ash. Then everything went swimmingly. Only in the other sense of the word.

Hi, North-West of England! Yes, we know you have a reputation to regain after the last two weeks of heat wave, but did you have to pick today? Well, we were under a tree so we had a bit of shelter and we decided to tough it out - hey, we're english. We've got a reputation to maintain as well. The barbecues died a slow death as we valiantly attempted to shield them with our bodies, but they managed to cook us some bacon and kebabs before finally giveing up the ghost. We then hung around for much longer than is sane having rain water fights and attempting to answer the immortal question: is it possible to sexualise everything? The answer, we concluded, is yes.

Finally sick of us the heaven's made the move from merely 'persistent' rain to 'torrential' and we legged it.

I am now going to watch Pirates of the Caribbean and watch other people get wet, and look a lot better while doing so.

So, finished my exams this week. Last exam I'll ever take. ever. (hopefully.) So can finally do stuff other than revise, which so far has seemed to consist of revamping the anime soc for next year. Which has been fun. :D God, I am both a power hungry control freak and an organising maniac. The things you learn about yourself given people to order about. :)

And, um, I might have rewarded myself for finishing the exam by going to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. For the, um. Fourth time.

I-I can't help myself. I adore this film to a ridiculous degree. It hit all my buttons. It hit buttons I didn't even know I had. And I've been reading fic in the fandom, somthing I've done very little of before - mostly because Will has been my favourite character all the way through the films, and pre- AWE there were very few fics that both contained Will and wrote him in a way that didn't make my teeth grind. I'm happy to report that this seems to have changed, and I might actually have to put together a recs list just so I can keep track of them all. Oh, such hardship!

So, yes, AWE babbling.

( SPOILERS warning )

Will probably have more to say later.

Stolen from just about everybody.

Name a character and I'll tell you three (or more) facts about them from my own personal pseudo-canon.

Had a full but lazy day. Went to town, then invited lycoris over to rewatch the Kamikakshi Arc of Detective Academy Q, since she had her first exam today. DAQ is still awesome. We then spent a lot of time plotting more evil things for her to do to Ryu and Kyu in the epic fic she's writing after which I tagged along after her to pagan soc.

We did a couple of visualisation things in trance states, which was interesting because I've never done anything like it before. We entered our own 'houses' and then interacted with a divinity. This, for me, meant arguing with Ti Kuai Li of the Eight Immortals of Taoism over whether he was real or a construction of my imagination.

Not sure what that says about me. At least it wasn't Shou Taishi.

Have I mentioned how much I love my exam schedule? Because I really, really do. Tipping over into monday, I'm looking forward to (almost) three weeks before my second (and last) exam. Which is especially nice because I haven't had a moments pause for the last fortnight. Shakespeare exam friday and creative writing portfolio due the friday before that. Did not help that I came down with a viral infection three days before my exam.

Yesterday Anime Soc held a Wii part which was enormous fun and I made an absolute fool of myself leaping around with a Wii controller which was a large part of the fun, though arms are aching today. Totally worth it, came second in the boxing tournament against the guy who KO'ed his previous opponents in like ten seconds. And I had him on the ropes I tell you, the ropes.

But today, ah, today. Had a lie in to ridiculous time. THought I might try writing some of the fanfic I've been itching to write for two weeks (majo_chan I haven't forgotten your fic, honest, though you might have by now *guilty smile*) but then what did I do? Moesed on over to beckerbell's latest pimping post, though 'hmm' and... Well, it's getting dark now. All I have done today is read about Bruno and Boots. (And Cathy and Diane and The Fish and god, where were these books when I was twelve?)

I -I think there was something lacking in my life and I never knew it till now. I have killed myself laughing multiple times today. And, yeah, the one with the American Football? Good thing I found Eyeshield 21 before this otherwise I'd have had no clue what was going on but I kept having to pause to put my head down on my desk and just shake for a little while as my brain tried to decide whether a Hiruma/Bruno or a Hiruma/Cathy pairup would be more likely to make the universe implode.

Meanwhile, Boots and Kurita are over in the corner having cake.

I have had a proactive day! Actually, y'know, done certain jobs that needed doing before they became huge screaming issues of DOOM which I feel is a valid reason to feel pleased with myself. Also, the Azalea on my window sill is thick with blooms that are a beautiful shade of red except where the sun shines through the thin petals, which then become this lovely shade of really, really deep pink. Ah, May. I also got my first sun burn of the season today! Yay! *snort*

Also I was attacked, brutally beaten, blasted, bowled over, and other such things beginning with 'b' in my creative writing seminar today. I know I (and my creative writing portfolio which is due in in about a week ack!) will be thankfull for the pain, once my bruised ego has recovered a bit. *whimper* However, it did remind me of something I've mused on a couple of times about the difference between writing original fic and fan fic.

( boring self-writing-analysis )