Trabia Garden

An entry of bullet points today, some of which are not about Waterloo Road!

- I dreamt a couple of nights ago that I ruffled Kurt Hummel's hair and it was incredibly satisfying.

- I have taken to exclaiming 'OH NOOOO' in delighted horror whenever a terrible plot development comes to light in Waterloo Road. This happens a lot. A pupil develops a crush on a teacher! OH NOOOO. One teacher inadvertently breaks up another's family! OH NOOOO. The exception is when I'm actually seriously emotionally invested in a storyline; I am far too busy wanting to hug Josh unconscious whenever something goes wrong in his relationship with his father to make fun of his pain.

- Waterloo Road is very reluctant to embrace the concept of bisexuality, it seems. Both Ros and Josh, despite having previously shown interest in the opposite sex, are labelled unambiguously as gay after developing an interest in a member of the same sex. Odd.

- Finn, I now know from watching his relationship with Amy progress, is an absolute controlling bastard nutcase. It makes me wonder what poor Josh would have gone through had Finn actually been receptive to his advance. You don't want a relationship with Finn, Josh; he will make you brand his name on your chest and punch your father in the face to prove your love. I do sort of want to read fanfiction about their incredibly unhealthy relationship, though. It could very well make me cry, particularly if Josh's relationship with Tom suffers for it.

- Perhaps I should write fanfiction about Josh and Tom? I haven't written much about parent-child relationships, but I've really fallen for this one. (In case there is any doubt, I am using 'relationship' in a platonic sense.)

- Overheard in my life recently: 'Harry, a sperm bank isn't a bank where you, like, put your sperm up as collateral.' Also, a man on the train whose ringtone was a child saying 'Dad, I'm in your pocket!'

- Rather lonely and bored at the moment, as perhaps evidenced by my incessant updating, but my housemate should be returning over the weekend and I've booked an appointment with an advisor who will hopefully be able to help me find one of those elusive job things. Fingers crossed.

- Just stumbled across the following note to self amongst some of my old university notes:

DEAR RIONA: PLEASE DO NOT POKE YOURSELF IN THE EYE.
PLEASE.
YOU LIKE YOUR EYE.

...sound advice, Past Riona?

Looking through my old notebooks, I have stumbled across a bizarre snippet of a Real Hustle/Final Fantasy XII crossover. The Real Hustle, for those unaware, is a BBC Three series that demonstrates various scams, refunding the victims afterwards, and gives advice on how to avoid them; here is an example. The figures who actually perform the scams are called Alex, Jess and Paul, and I totally 'ship them. And, apparently, at some point I saw fit to write a snippet of them swindling people in Ivalice, narrated by the slightly tedious voiceover from the show itself.

Who writes Real Hustle fanfiction? Nobody writes Real Hustle fanfiction. I wrote a fairly silly Alex/Jess piece three years ago, and rhosyndu wrote a drabble in the comments, and I think emmarrrrr has a snippet or two somewhere, and that's basically the extent of the fandom output.* So many things for which I write have fandoms of about three! Coming across this did sort of amuse me, though, so I'm going to post it.


( The Real Hustle: Ivalice )


* Actually, I do also have some unpublished snippets in which they steal Gene Hunt's Cortina in 1973 and then return to the present via TARDIS and then try to take Jeremy Clarkson's Ford GT and get arrested by Sherlock Holmes, but that fic was abandoned long ago on account of being far too complicated.

Thank you so much for being so lovely in the comments to my panicky previous entry! My dissertation supervisor has proposed a course of action that means I can simply add a couple of explanatory paragraphs to my dissertation and keep my sentence analyses as they are. The day is saved! (Seriously, I would have had to redo everything.)

Naturally, this calls for celebration with stupid crossovers. Have the beginning of an incredibly ill-advised Top Gear/Prison Break fic; I wrote this a while ago, but it never actually got anywhere.


"Good evening!" Jeremy addresses the camera, beaming despite his obvious exhaustion, the thin layer of grime coating his features and the inexplicable forest setting. "Now, eagle-eyed viewers may already have noticed that we are not in our traditional studio for this episode, and there's a very good reason for that." He pauses, apparently for dramatic effect. "We are on the run... from the law."

Another pause, this one somewhat less dramatic.

"James?"

James, sitting on the ground behind Jeremy, gives the camera a look of deepest misery.

"Well, as James is sulking, I suppose the task of introducing the segment falls to me," Hammond says, coming into shot and somehow managing to project a sense of soul-deep exhaustion and bouncy energy at the same time. ("It's our lives," James mutters audibly in the background. "It's not a 'segment', and what we should be doing right now is covering our tracks, not making a bloody television programme.") "As a car programme, one of the questions we're always getting asked is, of course, 'what do I do if I accidentally crash a home-made tank into an American government building and get arrested for terrorism?' Well, fear not, people of Britain; tonight we have your answer." He nods solemnly. "You can't say we're not thorough."


I think I was planning to have Jeremy sharing a cell with Scofield. This seems unwise. Quiet break-outs are difficult enough even when one's cellmate isn't the loudest, most unsubtle man on the planet. (Hammond, meanwhile, was going to be with T-Bag. That could not possibly have ended well.)


I just flicked to another page in my notebook and came across the line 'Dreamt about Charlie Brooker fighting Mewtwo'.

It can't have happened more than a month ago, but I cannot remember this at all. How was he fighting Mewtwo? Physically? Mentally? With the power of scorn? Why were they fighting? Who was winning? We may never know. (But I suspect that Mewtwo was winning. Sorry, Brooker, but Mewtwo has incredibly powerful psychic abilities and it does not know compassion. Your psychic powers are moderate at best.)

Why I Must Never Learn How to Create Fanvids, Reason One of Many: my first creation would inevitably be a video set to 'I Don't Dance' of High School Musical 2, with David Mitchell in the role of Chad and Jonathan Ross as Ryan.

It would be awful. I would be immediately and universally despised.

(Here, in case you are unaware of the context for this thought, is the clip from The Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2009 in which Jonathan Ross encourages David Mitchell and Charlie Brooker to dance, and they rather wonderfully refuse. Later in the quiz, I believe, Ross offers to take Mitchell's virginity if Mitchell dances, thereby further cementing the Ryan-and-Chad parallels. If you ignore the fact that Ryan Evans is considerably more adorable than Jonathan Ross (although there is something strangely endearing about the Top Gear fandom's wossy60) and Chad Danforth is completely unlike David Mitchell in every respect other than that of reluctance to dance, the comparison is exact.)


Well, as I'm not too far from the subject area, I'd like to discuss this secret, which was posted to fandomsecrets a few days ago (possibly by one of you? I wouldn't be surprised). In case the image is taken down at some point or you don't want to load it: it is a picture of David Mitchell and Charlie Brooker on the Big Fat Quiz, with the text '[...] I want fic where they're together, with all their combined social awkwardness and their mild misanthropy; the sex is mediocre and neither of them get relationships, and yet they're kind of fond of each other.'

Thank you, secret-maker, because now so do I. Possibly with a slight element of Mitchell's unrequited love for his comedy partner. I want Mitchell and Brooker to have awkward, uncomfortable glance-conversations when Webb is around and never overtly bring it up. Brooker knows and Mitchell knows he knows and they both know it would probably be best if they just talked about it, but if Brooker's just some substitute he'd rather not confirm that, thanks, and Mitchell feels that maybe he can pretend the issue isn't there so long as it never comes up in conversation.

Oh, dear, I'm making this scenario a bit sad, aren't I? Also they would obviously have amazing banter and genuine fondness and it would be, well, nice, despite all the problems they don't talk about. I would be delighted were someone to write this.

(The sex is mediocre! That is my favourite part. Firstly because I can readily believe it (sorry, guys; obviously I have not had sex with either of you, so I wouldn't know, and even if I had my lack of a frame of reference would prevent my reaching an educated conclusion, although at least I'd have a great story for my Livejournal), and secondly because there's something rather lovely about the concept of their having a semiromantic relationship despite rather than because of the sex.)


Just to bookend this entry with terrible ideas: a couple of nights ago, in a deranged haze of tiredness and essay-panic, I scribbled down an idea for a television programme in which celebrities crept into the beds of members of the public whilst they were sleeping, and hidden cameras filmed the subjects' reactions when they woke up to find themselves in bed with Robert Downey Jr and with no recollection of how he got there.

So long as no one ever, ever makes that, there's still some hope for society.

Riona: This is a long shot, but do you by any chance have any brown waistcoats, suitable for an eighteenth-century blacksmith or rather classy pirate?
Shop Assistant: I very much doubt it.

What I learnt from my enquiries in ten or eleven clothes shops yesterday: it is extremely difficult to find waistcoats in Brighton, and even more difficult to find a suitably piratey one. Eventually, I had to settle for one that was slightly too modern and not as brown as I would have liked. My Will Turner outfit is going to be a bit rubbish. Sorry, th_esaurus. But I love my new waistcoat and, as my real-life acquaintances will know, I rarely purchase new clothes, so I'm actually rather pleased.


I didn't post about Merlin, did I? I enjoyed it! It managed to interest me in Merlin/Morgana, which was the only pairing within the Arthur-Merlin-Gwen-Morgana group that hadn't really appealed to me before. And it was nice to have a Morgana-centric episode after the sad lack of the previous two.

(Spoilers for the episode (2.03); highlight to read: )

I have also rewatched some first-series episodes of Merlin, and I have three things to say:

- Merlin really isn't a fan of subtlety or suspense, is it? If someone arriving at Camelot is evil (and they always are), you will see a little bit before the opening telling you 'BY THE WAY, THIS PERSON IS EVIL'. Of course, by now we've realised that no newcomer to Camelot is ever good (Lancelot excepted), so Merlin won't be able to surprise us even if it stops going 'HEY, THIS GUY IS ABOUT TO ARRIVE AT CAMELOT, BUT FIRST LET'S WATCH HIM KILL THIS OTHER GUY.'

- In the episode 'The Gates of Avalon', Sophia is Derren Brown. YOU'LL NEVER SEE HER KISSING ARTHUR IN THE SAME WAY.

- I want Anthony Stewart Head/Bradley James fanfiction and I don't know why.


Derren Brown recently Tweeted that he had dinner with Dan Radcliffe. I am taking this as evidence for the theory that he is, in fact, Albus Dumbledore. Also, here:

Just spent 5 mins looking for my slippers to find I was wearing them. Don't tell anyone, it doesn't fit the brand at any level.

He is so cute! So evil and yet so cute! It is ridiculous! (This mental lapse from the man who memorises the layout of London in his spare time.)

(EDIT: AND NOW HE HAS COMMENTED ON HIS ROULETTE FAILURE IN THE VOICE OF STEWIE GRIFFIN FROM FAMILY GUY. DORK. DOOOOOOORK.)


[INSERT SOME SORT OF SEGUE IN A VAIN ATTEMPT TO MAKE THIS ENTRY SEEM LESS DISJOINTED HERE], something I scribbled down in my notebook just before going to sleep:

In the Avatarverse, Derren Brown is the son of a female Waterbender from the North Pole and a male non-bender from the Earth Kingdom, so he was born and raised in the Earth Kingdom despite being a Waterbender himself. Due to the sexism of the Northern Water Tribe, his mother could teach him only how to heal, not knowing any offensive Waterbending, but Derren became fascinated by the possibilities of bending and began to experiment on his own. He discovered not only Bloodbending, allowing him to manipulate people physically, but how to manipulate people mentally (perhaps by somehow influencing the mood-altering chemicals in their bodies?). Yes, it's possible to force people to obey you with Bloodbending, but it is somehow so much more satisfying when you make them want to do it.

Have I been thinking too much about this? It is quite possible.

Honestly, there are almost five hundred Pokémon by this point. I can't believe not one of them is based on a badger. th_esaurus wanted the Hufflepuff house Pokémon to be a Bidoof, but I realised as I was making this that there was a general first-evolution theme running through the houses. Also, Sandslash is quite a lot cooler than Bidoof, and I rather like Hufflepuff.

Anyway, I was looking through one of my notebooks and came across the declaration 'HARRY POTTER IS A PIKACHU'. This is undoubtedly true. He is special and does not always play by the rules, much like Ash's ridiculously powerful somehow-able-to-electrocute-Ground-types Pikachu! He has a lightning-bolt shaped scar on his forehead!

This has led me to ponder what Pokémon other Harry Potter characters would be. Ron could be a Psyduck: mostly a bit useless (sorry, Ron; you know I love you), but with occasional moments of awesome. (EDIT: Or perhaps Ron is a Buizel?) Dumbledore is an Alakazam. What about other characters?

Snape could be an Absol, actually. Absol is a Dark-type Pokémon that appears before people when a natural disaster is approaching, in order to warn them. However, because an Absol sighting is always followed by some sort of disaster, Absol came to be blamed for causing disaster. The parallels with Snape are not exact, but there are a few familiar echoes.

Thoughts on what Pokémon Harry Potter characters would be? (Or any other Harry Potter/Pokémon crossover thoughts/manips/ficsnippets?)

I received a fabulously creepy letter from Allegedly Derren Brown today! He expressed his deep disappointment at my failure to participate in Enigma, wished me a happy birthday and concluded with the following paragraph:

Many plans have been made and, without giving everything away, I and several of your friends would be very glad to see you at the side of the boating lake in Regent's Park at, shall we say, six o'clock tomorrow morning. You may want to bring a swimming costume. Everyone's looking forward to watching seeing you.

The postmark on the envelope is for the seventeenth of July, so I have probably missed the Regent's Park incident. I have a feeling that this may be for the best. (And I have no idea who is responsible for this letter (well, obviously Derren Brown is responsible for it, but I get the feeling that he had some help), but it amused me immensely, so thank you!)


SPEAKING OF DERREN BROWN AND CREEPINESS, I was looking through one of my notebooks last night and came across this snippet, which I do not remember in the slightest:


"You see," Derren says, "beyond a certain point, intense pain becomes almost indistinguishable from intense pleasure." He shrugs as best he can against the restraints. "Or at least that's how I experience it."

"And you would so love to think you were unique," the Master says. "No, I don't think you're alone. I, on the other hand, prefer to inflict."


What - what were you writing, Riona?

(Another inexplicable snippet in here: "Oh, dear," Derren says. "I appear to have dropped my Death Note." And then there's a bit of Derren using alchemy to control Edward Elric's mind. Is there any fandom into which Derren Brown cannot be thrown?)


Finally, I was going to wait until I'd completely sorted out my university accommodation for next year before I posted this, but sorting out housing is a miserable business and I've decided I'd like a distraction. So!

Because, whilst there are many wonderful women in my fandoms, I do not write nearly enough about them:

Give me a prompt, and I'll write you a ficsnippet. Your prompt must include at least one female character.

I'm a little nervous about doing this, because it is almost certainly going to result in my attempting to write for characters I have never written before, but I have to start somewhere. Request away!

I am in London for the weekend, because I forgot an important and expensive textbook (and also crockery and cutlery and pots and pans and all things kitchen-related, but let us not talk about my incompetence. SOMETIMES I FORGET THAT I NEED TO EAT), and therefore: Internet! Hello! I have missed you all!

At the moment, I am living in a rather nice maisonette with a Law undergraduate, a Neuroscience PhD student and a small black cat named Beatrice. I bake brownies. We watch One Tree Hill. I am a little fandom-starved, living amongst normal people and without Internet access, and as the surroundings are unfamiliar I am constantly walking into them, but I'm pretty happy at the moment.

(I have received a letter from Gary of Pokémon and a card from Oz and James, which have helped with the fandomlessness enormously. Thank you so much to the lovely people who were kind enough to forward them to me!)


Oh, Fox, I'm away for a few days and you cancel Prison Break? I didn't have Internet access! My lack of updates about it isn't because I don't lovehate it any more! What sort of mad network bases its decisions on a single Livejournal, anyway?

Actually, it's probably for the best. Prison Break should really have ended after the first season. But then there would have been no Mahone, and Mahone is, of course, amazing, so I'm glad it wasn't cut off at a sensible point. I just hope they can give it a reasonably good ending. Haven't seen any of the fourth season yet, so I don't know what the odds of that are.

(Speaking of Mahone: the night after th_esaurus informed me of Prison Break's cancellation, I dreamt that I ruined William Fichtner's marriage. I SWEAR I DIDN'T HAVE SEX WITH HIM, MRS FICHTNER, I THOUGHT WE WERE JUST FRIENDS, I DIDN'T KNOW HE WAS CREEPILY AND UNHEALTHILY IN LOVE WITH ME. The night before, I dreamt that the Top Gear trio travelled back in time to Victorian London. Perhaps my unconscious mind is trying to make up for the lack of fandom in my waking hours.)


The things that come up when I restore the saved Livejournal draft are occasionally rather alarming. This time, I had written that I would not be uninterested in reading Tom/Jerry. Yes, that Tom and Jerry. What, self? What?

So here's what happens: I click on 'Update Journal'. The 'restore draft?' dialogue box comes up. I click 'OK'. What appears is this:

MAKE AN ENTRY IN SOME WAY RELATED TO AEROPLANES JUST SO YOU CAN TITLE IT 'I ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR PLANE'

IT'LL BE AWESOME

...oh, self.

This entry is probably not going to be about aeroplanes. It is, in fact, going to be about fanfiction.net, which I am visiting for the first time in... a couple of years, I believe. But I am going to title it 'I Acknowledge Your Plane' anyway. Because I can.


...why does fanfiction.net have a Final Fantasy XIII section? The game doesn't even come out in Japan until some unspecified time next year. Why is there fanfiction for it already?

I am actually really really excited about Final Fantasy XIII, despite knowing very little about it and despite having no idea how long I'll have to wait for it to reach these shores, because it is a Final Fantasy game and my inner Final Fantasy fangirl is blazing so brightly right now. Also, the main girl looks freaking awesome. And the girl with pigtails is gorgeous. I, er, don't have a console for it, but I can worry about that when it comes out.


...WAIT. WAIT.

FANFICTION.NET HAS A SECTION FOR THE LOGICAL JOURNEY OF THE ZOOMBINIS.

THERE ARE TWO STORIES IN IT.

ONE IS SEVENTY-EIGHT THOUSAND WORDS LONG.

THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING I HAVE EVER DISCOVERED. HELLO MY CHILDHOOD.


...I - I can't stop reading it. I went to this site to look for Final Fantasy VIII fanfiction, and I ended up trapped in an epic novelisation of a kids' logic game.

How did this happen?

(As one of the first summaries I saw upon entering the Final Fantasy VIII section was 'What happens whe Selphie gets her way and Zell is dressed like a pig and who has to kiss the pig? Slight yaoi', perhaps my being distracted by Zoombinis was for the best.)

I just discovered the following in one of my notebooks, presumably scribbled down after we heard that Jensen and Jared had moved in together but before it was confirmed that Jensen moved into Jared's place, rather than the other way around:

Jared and Jensen are clearly living together because Jared went to take refuge at Jensen's whilst Chad was pregnantly loafing around his place and somehow Jared never got around to leaving.

I really want this to be true. But Jensen moved into Jared's place! Alas! So I'm going to revise my personal canon to say that a pregnant Chad Michael Murray proved too much for Jared to handle, and so Jensen moved in to help keep Jared sane. At the expense of his own sanity, of course, because it's not like Jensen wants to be around a pregnant dude.

Also in my personal Jensen-and-Jared canon is the following extract, from a fic that may never be written:

They've only been living in the same house for four days, and already Jensen has learned things about Jared he doesn't think he ever needed to know. Like how Jared, after stumbling home late at night, will immediately go to sleep on the nearest available surface, with no regard whatsoever for whether there is a Jensen there or not. Like how Jared takes showers at two in the morning, sings appallingly, and somehow uses up three full-size bath towels getting himself dry.

One morning, Jensen wakes up and goes to have breakfast, only to discover that Jared has become bored with having all the cereal boxes in one cupboard and rearranged all their food alphabetically during the night. Twizzlers and tomatoes nestle together. It makes no goddamn sense, but apparently that's not enough of an excuse when Jared catches Jensen trying to sneak the canned goods back into the 'A to E' cupboard.

Come! Tell me about the way you imagine the Ackles-and-Padalecki household! Or just glee about the fact that we can actually say 'Ackles-and-Padalecki household'; that works too.