Trabia Garden

Oh, man, I wish I had a camera or scanner or something at my university lodgings. I just returned after the Easter holidays to find two hand-drawn postcards from draegonhawke waiting for me: one of Jack Harkness serenading Sam Tyler, and one of Sam Winchester as a very annoyed Mew. Amazing.

Speaking of Sam Winchester suffering unwanted transformations, thank you so much for your lovely comments on the miniature-Sam fic! It was enormously fun to write, and I'm glad people enjoyed it. DEAR SUPERNATURAL FANDOM: WHY DO YOU HAVE THREE MILLION FIC COMMUNITIES? I can understand having a separate wincest community, but come on, both sn_fic and supernaturalfic? That's just unnecessary. I try so hard not to crosspost! Stop making things difficult!

Not speaking of Sam Winchester suffering unwanted transformations, I have in my hands right now a copy of High School Musical on DVD. I'm not even ashamed. (HERE IS AN IDEA SO STUPID IT IS ALMOST WONDERFUL: what about a High School Musical world in the next Kingdom Hearts game? I HASTEN TO ADD THAT I DO NOT MEAN AN ATLANTICA-ESQUE APPALLING RHYTHM ACTION LEVEL: JUST, YOU KNOW, HUNTING THE HEARTLESS IN EAST HIGH OR SOMETHING. I haven't read much Death Note, but several people have pointed out the admittedly freakish similarities between Zac Efron and Light Yagami, so clearly Light is actually Rotyx, Troy's Nobody. Yes.

And Sora can become Ryan's boyfriend. Because Ryan needs a boyfriend.)

For the past week, I have woken my brother up every morning by singing 'Heeeeeeeeat of the moment!' at him. I really need to stop being so ridiculously fannish. (Um, he did want me to wake him up; I wasn't just being a git.)

Firstly: mission_central. In apiphile's words, shortly before its creation:

...it would be a fic challenge community where each week the moderators took a different problem/challenge/ludicrous situation (anything, from a simple "get more milk" to the stuff from the Survival Scenarios prompts to "three team members are dead and one of the others is the killer" or whatever) and the community members would write a fic or several fics each about how the Torchwood team dealt with it. It would be AWESOME.

It's not only for Torchwood; you can have any fictional organisation carrying out the missions in your fic (SG-1, for example, or a SeeD unit). The first challenge isn't up yet, but it is a brilliant idea, so I'd advise you to add it to your watchlist.

Secondly, an account of Riona's Exciting Adventures in the Less Familiar Parts of the Internet: today, I went on Runescape (this is not, I hasten to add, a frequent habit of mine - the game helpfully informed me when I logged in that the last time I had used my account was over two years ago - but my brother had called me up to say 'HEY LET'S GO ON RUNESCAPE AND WANDER THROUGH HORDES OF UNGRAMMATICAL HEROES TOGETHER', and it's always nice to slay goblins with my family when I'm physically separated from them by university), and, while my character was happily hacking away at an oak tree with his hatchet, another character marched up and said 'Out of the way n00b'.

I, raising an eyebrow (and also another eyebrow, because alas I have not yet developed the fine eyebrow control I would like), typed 'Well, if you insist' and wandered away.

What interests me is that my displacer then took over the role of abusing the tree with a 'ty'. A 'thank you', even an abbreviated one, is slightly jarring when one has just been called a 'n00b' and ordered to 'get out of the way'. I can only conclude that 'out of the way n00b' is perfectly acceptable in polite Runespeak.

(Seriously, everyone on Runescape speaks in the same way. It is frightening. I was playing for about an hour, and not one correctly punctuated message did I see. I think it would be a fascinating site for psychological study.)

EDIT: Oh! And I forgot to mention that sacred_sarcasm sent me a lovely card! It is very colourful and tells the highly amusing story of how Captain Jack Harkness, rather unusually, did not have sex with Richard Hammond. Also, it is addressed to "Harriet" Evans, scare quotes and all, which is a bit bizarre (it is my real name, I swear!). Thank you so much!

Today, I received a letter from the Doctor. It is written on beautiful paper and contains a drawing of a Dalek in a hat.

I also received a letter from draegonhawke, which contains many extracts from some severely awesome-looking fanfics about the Doctor and the Master. My favourite of the lines is probably 'He unfolds it and it's another note, but this one only says [Fuck you] eighty-seven times.'

It has been a good day for post. Strange, admittedly, but good. Thank you for writing, draegonhawke and unexpected Time Lord!

In other news, I have been considering perhaps having a silly LJ game in which everyone suggests truly terrible opening lines for fanfics ('Jeremy Clarkson had been weeping uncontrollably for three days now', for example, or 'Ash knew it was wrong, but he couldn't deny his feelings for Pikachu any longer'). I was going to suggest that everyone should then pick someone else's suggestion and try to write the fanfic it opens well, or at least plausibly, but, now that I think about it, we should probably not put any more Ash/Pikachu fanfiction than absolutely necessary into the world. That said, if you really want to adopt a terrible opening line, please do!

SO. Suggest some truly appalling opening lines for fanfics in the comments. It could be fun, right? If you feel that you need some inspiration, I'd suggest that you take a look at the entries for the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

Things That Are Amazing And Wonderful: returning to university after the Christmas holidays to find a letter and two Christmas cards waiting for you! THANK YOU SO MUCH, YOU GUYS.

Selected extracts:

ms_katonic, who sent a very pretty, sparkly snowman card: They do not sell cards with zombies, Veyrons or Silent Hill references, so I got you this one instead. It has glitter. (And it is lovely! Eeee! Although I do think that the lack of zombie-themed Christmas cards is a sad oversight.)

thebaconfat (I KNOW YOUR NAME NOW), who sent me a Dr. Seuss card and labelled three little creatures racing around on a toy train as 'May', 'Hammond' and 'Clarkson', which made me laugh myself silly: Much as I love the Grinch, this year I had to ask myself, "How much better would it be if it were Balthier and Fran stealing Christmas?" - And I'm sorry, squeemu just walked in to ask my opinion on spider mating dances, and then she did a spider mating dance, and I completely lost my train of thought.

twilit_wanderer, who sent a letter about Thanksgiving, among other things, and included a helpful diagram illustrating the fact that turkeys and tofu are not the same thing: Because I am very cruel, I keep wanting to pin him (Richard Hammond, if he were a character in Final Fantasy XI) as a Tarutaru. He'd have a melee job, and Jeremy would perpetually be annoyed about that, because Tarutaru are 'supposed' to be mages. The apparently less-cruel part says to make him a Hume (essentially a human) who is very short, so they could call him a Tarutaru. ...This is not me promising to write anything. This is just idle musing. (Oh, but you will write about the Top Gear trio in the world of Final Fantasy XI. You will.)

I love my friends so much. (I've said it before, but it's still true!)

Keeping to the theme of this post: for Christmas, I got letter-writing paper and matching envelopes, so who wants a letter? Comments are screened (I'll probably unscreen your comment if you're not including an address, so let me know if you want it to stay screened). If you include a specific request in your comment, I may include a tiny ficlet with the letter. Or I may not! Who knows?

Today, a letter from twilit_wanderer arrived.

It relates, in detail and with pictures, my adventures in a fictional world with one of her Final Fantasy XI characters. For fourteen sides of A4.

It is the best thing that I have ever received.

SPEAKING OF GIANT MECHANICAL SPIDERS, which do you think would be the more competent group of alien-hunters: Torchwood Three or the Top Gear trio? It is the one field in which the Top Gear trio actually has the slightest chance of being better than the people who are already there, which says truly terrible things about the ability of the Torchwood team. And which other groups would you like to see attempting Torchwood's role (and probably doing a far better job of it)? I'd rather like to see Balthier, Fran and Captain Jack Harkness taking the aliens on. Of course, Jack is a member of Torchwood already, but he would be the Doctor Who Jack when with his sky-pirate friends, and the Doctor Who Jack is ten times better than the Torchwood Jack. YOU CANNOT ARGUE WITH ME; THIS IS SCIENTIFIC FACT.

ASKJHFSDKJGDSHGDGH WHO SENT ME A BOOK OF SIXTIES SONGS FOR THE UKULELE? Oh, wait, I've just found the cunningly-hidden order info. THANK YOU SO MUCH, livii; YOU ARE AMAZING.

Also, draegonhawke has sent another letter, about interesting potential moral dilemmas for the Stargate team and SOMETHING I CANNOT UNDERSTAND BECAUSE IT IS INEXPLICABLY WRITTEN IN RUSSIAN, and an incredibly awesome flat plastic magnifying-glass thing! I am genuinely ridiculously fascinated by it and have been using it to examine everything within reach for the past five minutes. HOW DOES IT MAGNIFY THINGS WITHOUT BEING NOTICEABLY CURVED? IT IS LIKE MAGIC. And it comes with its own little case! Although the case does not appear to have incredibly tiny secret messages anywhere on it, which would be the logical thing to include on a magnifying glass case, surely.

I also have a letter from _princess_han_ (I AM SO GLAD THAT THE POSTAL STRIKES ARE OVER), in which she talks about Richard/Richard (WHICH PEOPLE NEED TO WRITE. People have written Jeremy/Jeremy and James/James; why not Richard/Richard? Richard is the only one of the Top Gear presenters, to my knowledge, who has looked at a photograph of his younger self and said 'I quite fancy me... which is wrong') and the Top Gear boys writing fanfiction about each other (WHICH PEOPLE ALSO NEED TO WRITE. I do not care that 'the characters find out what people write about them!' is an age-old fanfiction cliché; I want there to be more Top Gear fic about the trio discovering topgearslash. And getting involved. And competing for reviews. And mocking/stealing ideas from/becoming slightly unnerved by each other's fiction. Or possibly Jeremy and Richard stumbling across the community, clicking randomly through a few fics and suddenly recognising James' writing style. Oh, go on), and, er, as you may be able to tell, it has given me some fairly powerful fic cravings. When was the last time someone posted a fic challenge to topgearslash?

I love you all so much!

There was a guy with a Griever necklace in my Approaches to Meaning in English lecture. I stopped him on his way out and told him how awesome he was and asked him where he'd got it from and generally made a complete prat of myself, but I have an excuse, and that excuse is Griever necklace.

Also, I have got more post, because you are all ridiculously lovely. I will talk about it under the cut, because I imagine most of you are fed up with my 'eeeeee, post!' entries by now.

( Squeeing about post from draegonhawke, reipan and twilit_wanderer. )

I have realised, rather to my alarm, that the way in which I write Balthier can sometimes make him sound very similar to the Master. I'll have to make them meet at some point and see what happens. (If Balthier hadn't been a hero, he could have made such a good villain.)

Getting actual things through the post really is the best thing ever. I don't know why I haven't given out my address before! Well, actually, I know perfectly well why I haven't given it out before; it's because I'm horribly paranoid and it's clearly only a matter of time before darthfi or jantalaimon sends me a severed leg. But still, dracothelizard sent me a card! With a dog on it! I AM NOT REMOTELY SURPRISED BY THIS. It's not a Labradoodle, though. Also, she orders me to corrupt the people of this noble institution into writing crackfic. I shall try.

I'm still working on my gigantic crossover project, albeit slowly. Part of my problem is that I keep thinking of ideas that I would love to include and then can't work out how I could possibly link them into the main plot. Awesome as it would be to have the Master, Professor Moriarty, Team Rocket, Zombie Piers Morgan, Kefka, Dr. Cid from Final Fantasy XII and quite possibly Iago from Othello all team up in the Pokémon world, I can't really include it, because a) quite a number of them are probably too proud to work with others, and b) what on Earth would I do with them? Alas.

I would like to get Zombie Piers Morgan into the fic somewhere, though. I don't know why he didn't occur to me before.

(P.S. kadrin HAS WRITTEN POKÉMON/SILENT HILL AND IT IS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. READ IT.)