Words of Wood

Does anyone else do the thing where you start filling a prompt on a ficmeme and the whole time while you're writing it you keep on refreshing the page at intervals, being paranoid that someone'll have been faster than you and already filled it? /laughs at self

I'm currently interspersing fic-writing with revision, half an hour of each and then switching. It's going okay. Well, the end of last week and the weekend were a complete and utter loss, but I'm finally beginning to pick up again. However, when writing fic I'm even less inclined to come up with actual plots than usual. Expect continuing spam of contextless h/c.

(Speaking of which - is 'getting a bug' used in the context of having a cold in the US? Enquiring minds are unsure.)

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Book! I love this book. It's extremely funny and dark and witty. You should read it. It's... quite hard to sum up what it's about, but it mostly focuses around a soul-destroying shopping centre in Birmingham. Anyway, it's one of my favourites.

#7
She'd been staring at the words for so long, they were bled of meaning. Hobbies and Interests. What did it mean? Technically it wasn't actually a question, and it was only the two inches of white space below that would clue you into the fact that the words were supposed to elicit a response. Maybe she could just write something equally ambiguous as a response: 'Good', or 'Hello', or 'Yes'. It was a conundrum. Obviously she had no hobbies and interests, she was a duty manager... and yet there were those blank two inches, as if they wanted or expected you to have a life outside of work. It was a trap, but the thing with these traps was to act as if you didn't realise it was a trap. Lisa knew that writing, for example, 'I find hobbies and interests take up valuable time that could be better spent developing top-notch merchandising skills in store' would be too obvious. She also knew that even if she had any interests, to list them honestly would be disastrous, a clear compromise of her commitment.

After twenty-three minutes of staring at the three words, she had a flash of inspiration and wrote: 'Shopping and reading magazines.' So simple. And true! They would be delighted that her life truly was that small.

- Catherine O'Flynn, What Was Lost

I celebrated doing my viva by tidying my room. It's now immaculate. (Everyone who's ever been in my room is laughing/unbelieving right now, I know.) There's so much floor! Fran came into my room to ask me something and was literally stopped speechless.

It apparently amuses a lot of people how I'm obsessive about keeping kitchens clean and orderly, but happily live in rooms with clothes and paper all over the floor. SO MUCH PAPER.

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I've finally begun uploading my backlog of fic onto AO3. Because I don't want to annoy everyone by spamming, I decided to do two stories a day. This has already become "two stories on days when I remember". My organisational skills, let me show them to you. Okay, since I've just told you how I filed two terms' worth of lecture handouts on my bedroom floor, this probably isn't a surprise.

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Last night, for reasons which are beyond me, I made a spreadsheet of all the goods I own in Echo Bazaar and calculated out their values. Conclusion: I can comfortably afford an Overgoat. But I'd have to sell lots and lots of stuff to do that. I have an unreasonable attachment to stuff (even virtual stuff), so this is a Difficult Decision. I mean, I'm already sad that I can't have my Bifurcated Owl and Unfinished Hat equipped as pets at the same time. I kind of want them to both ride around on my Bengal Tigress.

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One thing I especially love about visiting Roz in Cornwall is that we always get loads of writing done in the evenings, usually via the game of putting loads of random words/phrases/lyrics in a ha, picking three out, and then writing a quick snippet in half an hour or so. (With wine.) Since CSI:NY is our shared fandom, that's what we write for each other, and I always remember how much I love Stella. This is what I've ended up with from this holiday:

- A scene where Lindsay is caught in an explosion and Stella looks after her

- Stella and Don arguing over whether they're lost or not

- Something where Mac's been in a car crash, probably after having been kidnapped

- A different explosion scene (I like writing explosions, okay)

- A ficlet where Stella meets Susan Sto Helit from Discworld. (I may actually post this one to AO3 or somewhere, because it amuses me)

- Half a story where there are time loops and Stella's trying to make it so that Mac doesn't die

- A scene to do with mirrors - I basically have no idea what's going on here, which is always a good sign

- Story where Mac and Stella are trapped in a sinking car. Because when you have canon trauma it's always fun to repeat it. Or something.

- A sky-ship AU where Stella, Lindsay and Jess fight creepy metal bugs and set things on fire. (I kind of want to write more of this, but like all my AUs it will probably never be finished.)

Oh, I also spent a good portion of the week trying to convince her to watch White Collar :P It may have worked. And I'd kind of love to see Stella and Diana interact in fic, I think they'd get on really well. (Also, helle_d, Roz says she could see Diana/Garcia as a ship! So we're now up to three people who support it :D)

Oh wow, I have totally been neglecting LJ/DW this week apart from to throw protest photos at you and run away again. I'm really sorry to everyone who's only just getting comment replies -- I love love love comments but I can be really terrible at answering them quickly.

Mostly, there's been this magical thing called sunshine! I have been sitting out in it and writing my epic White Collar post-finale fic of DOOM. Okay, when I say epic I mean just under 11,000 words, which isn't that epic, but it's by far the longest thing I've written in literally years so I feel accomplished. Um, I was going to beg for someone to beta-read it for me, but given I'm going to Cornwall on Saturday morning so want to post it Friday night, (I'll have internet access there, but sporadically) I may have left that a bit late.

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In non-fandom stuff, I, as usual, haven't done much :P Started a tabletop Trail Of Cthulhu game tonight with a few friends, GM'd by Fran. We survived a train crash, had a protracted argument about whether the cliffs of Dover have a lighthouse on (Tim triumphantly found via google that they did...in Roman times), and discovered that everyone else in England appears to have been killed by mysterious plants. Also Claire and I not-entirely-seriously pushed to split the party - as a racing pilot and an Oxford don we reckon we have a better chance of survival if we ditch the crazy priest and the incredibly unhinged artist. GM denied this request.

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I have also seen films. The Hunger Games, which I really want to devote an entire post to talking about, and The Most Exotic Marigold Hotel. All I can say about that one is go and watch it, it is fantastic. It has the always, always wonderful and adorable Dev Patel, and also Maggie Smith and Judi Dench and Penelope Wilson and Bill Nighy. Go and see it, seriously.

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Oh, on the subject of things you should see: Hoarders: Skyrim edition. Dead now.

Hello! This is mainly of use to people currently in Oxford. But I shall spam everyone with it anyway. Since I spend most of my LJ time spamming Ox-friends with fandom, it seems only fair :P

To copy the blurb I wrote for the Facebook event:

"On the week beginning 25th March, Exeter College is hosting the group Christian Concern to hold a conference. Christian Concern (http://www.christianconcern.com/) is anti-lgbtq rights, anti-Islam, and anti-choice.

We believe that these values have no place in Oxford and should not be implicitly supported by allowing the group to hold a conference here. Therefore we will be protesting on Turl Street, outside the conference, to make it clear that Oxford, and the student body, is absolutely opposed."

An article written for the Guardian about the situation is here.

So! I'm pretty sure I invited nearly all of you via FB, but this is another plug in case you'd forgotten. Come and join us, from 11 by the Missing Bean. We've not been allowed to know exactly when the people are arriving, so we'll potentially be there all afternoon, come and join us any time. Bring banners and stuff! (Don't bring glitterbombs, it's bad for the environment and we promised Exeter we wouldn't. Also we really don't want to be in trouble with the police.)

Also, in case it's unclear: This is in no way an anti-Christianity protest, many of the protesters identify as Christians. This is a protest against the hosting (and therefore implicit/implied support or at least lack-of-problem-with) a group with political pull which in the UK is one of the main campaigners against gay marriage, against abortion, against people who are non-Christian.

The LGBTQ campaign had a banner-painting picnic this afternoon in the parks, some photos are below the cut for your entertainment. I'm the one with the dinosaur t-shirt and the extremely frizzy hair, if you wanted to know. Also the one who's signs look like they were made by a 10-yr-old XD (I like rainbows, okay :P)

( Permission was given to use these photos as publicity. )

Expect a photo-heavy post tomorrow evening of how it goes! :D

So, I'm 22 now. Which for some reason feels a lot older than being 21 - possibly because it has less of a 'young and irresponsible' stereotype attached to it. Or possibly I'm overthinking.

In any case, so far I like being 22. Being 21 wasn't all that great, but it had some lovely bits in it :)

About half the reason for this post is so I can show off the mug Helen got me. It has RAINBOW DOTS, guys. It's the Best. Thing. Ever.



I totally cropped this image so you can't see how messy my desk is.

- Two of my housemates today individually decided that since Katherine has a chest infection they were going to do the shopping for once! Sadly they didn't inform me (or each other!) of this and I went anyway, which turned out to be a good thing because they pretty much both only bought things you need for cooked breakfasts and none of the other groceries we needed. XD XD I love my housemates, guys. Also the look of utter surprise on F's face when I pointed out we could freeze one of the bottles of milk rather than try and drink all of them before the use-by date was rather priceless.

- Despite aformentioned being ill (which I still am, and it's So Boring) I was out late both weekend nights, because people I love had things on. First there was a Mechanisms gig, and then there was the panto by Lashings Of Ginger Beer. IE two nights in a row of Musical Queerness. Which is, of course, always epic. (If you are in Oxford and haven't seen either of these groups then I am clearly a terrible friend for not having dragged you along before.)

I'm now amused by how both groups involved a love story with Cinderella and another woman. Although the panto involved significantly fewer galaxy-wide-wars and death of pretty much everyone than the Mechanism's Once Upon A Time (In Space) cycle *points to song-lyric of the day*. (Yes, these are my friends. Also, they keep trying to get me to write fanfic of their band characters XD)

- Eternal Law has finished airing after only six episodes (if there isn't a second season I may cry) and I still haven't written my post about why everyone should be watching it. This is remiss of me.

- Best Idea Ever:

Things which have happened today:

I got turned down from TeachFirst, which rather sucks, and justifies my guess that the interviews at the assesment centre didn't go that great. Ah well. I'm surprisingly not upset, actually - there are enough routes into teaching that I'm sure I'll be fine. And it's an incredibly high-pressured course, so maybe it's for the best.

This morning I accidently went to a lecture I shouldn't have gone to, because it was a genetics module I'm not taking. I have no idea why I wrote it down on my timetable. But when I realised I thought it would be rude if I just walked out, so I listened and made notes anyway. IDEK.

Oh, and I wrote a thing - well, actually I wrote and posted it in the break between that lecture and the ones I was actually supposed to go to! I woke up this morning and there was a prompt on whitecollarhc for "Peter and Neal are trapped in a dessert" and my brain started throwing bad puns at me. So, here is my attempt to cram as many of those terrible puns as possible into about 300 words. Again, IDEK. It's just been that sort of day. XD

Also, while I'm here: is there actually a consensus on how Diana's surname is spelled? Because I've seen about three different spellings being used, each by multiple authors. (This is not as bad as a brief period in the CSI:NY fandom where the actual show couldn't decide whether a recurring character was called Jennifer or Jessica for quite a long time, and her name kept changing between episodes. That was fun.)

Judging by my facebook and flist, today seems to be the day for moving back from wherever people were over Christmas! I am back in Oxford and it is LOVELY. Unfortunately I still need to unpack, and I've also remembered how when I was tidying up for Helen to stay I shoved all the clothes that were on the floor into the bottom of my warderobe. So I need to sort them out too if I ever want to find anything again.

Although I would have to get off my computer first. I MISSED IT SO MUCH. All the keys work! And the internet is reliable! And it can load more than five firefox tabs at once without freezing up! And the speakers play music which doesn't sound like tin cans in a washing machine! Although LJ did something strange when I tried to load the internet and I lost all of the open LJ tabs, ie about 20 fics I had lined up to read. MY LIFE IS HARD YOU GUYS.

Now I'm debating what to do. Unpack vs writing fic vs Skyrim vs doing something sensible like reading "The Anaylsis of Biological Data"...

White Collar has eaten my braaaain. And the fandom for it is awesome. I'm still writing plotless h/c, but I like plotless h/c.

Girlfriend is coming up to stay tomorrow! This will be lovely (esp. since the house is emptying) and we can wander around Oxford and pretend next term is a long time away. And possibly find better places for dates than the zoology department cafe (although they sell hot drinks in mugs for 30p, which definitely makes up for its other shortcomings).

On that note, I asked her what she'd like me to cook for her, and she said aubergines. Does anyone know any good recipies which involve aubergines (and hopefully don't make them come out too slimy)?

( Shark pies, crochet project of DOOM, and Something Hilarious From Japan )