Trabia Garden

Before I get into the traditional talking too much about karaoke, I should mention that the annual Three-Sentence Ficathon is underway! Here's the current post, if you want to prompt or write anything.


Here is a very belated post about our karaoke-focused New Year's celebrations! Part of the reason this post was taking so long was because it's a pain to link to all the songs on YouTube, so I eventually abandoned the effort; I apologise for how spotty the linking is as a consequence.

It will surprise no one to learn that our household celebrated the turn of the year with karaoke on New Year's Eve. Here are the songs I performed!

- The Glee version of 'Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah', because New Year's Eve coincided with the seventh night of Hanukkah. A carefully calculated song choice; it's a Hanukkah song, so it was a way of saying 'happy Hanukkah!' to Rei, but it's a Glee song, so it was also a way of saying 'I want to affectionately inflict psychological damage upon you.' Rei responded by singing 'How Do You Spell Channukkahh' by the LeeVees.

- 'You and Me (But Mostly Me)', from The Book of Mormon. I modified the lyrics slightly to make this a solo, which frankly I think is in the spirit of the song. There was a lot of laughter at this one, and my housemates broke into applause at the end. 'Yes!' I declared, opening my arms to the sky. 'I deserve this!'

- At Rei's suggestion, the two of us duetted on 'Guy Love' from the Scrubs musical episode. Tem had not seen Scrubs and probably found the experience slightly puzzling.

- I was concerned that 'Dylan' by Emmy the Great might be too fast, but it turned out to be really fun to sing! This is a song I picked up from my time living with th_esaurus; she used to listen to it a lot.

- 'Last Surprise -Scramble-' from Persona 5 Strikers was also fast and fun! Everyone joined in on the too many 'oooooh's at the end.

- Rise Against songs are always both extremely intimidating and an absolute blast to sing, and 'Help Is On the Way' is no exception. I struggled with the 'RIGHT HERE' screams but had an earnest crack at them.

- Singing Gackt's 'Last Song' with Rei was a very nostalgic experience. I was nervous about singing in Japanese, but I think it went okay. It's amazing how the songs you listened to as a teenager stick with you, even if they're in a language you don't speak.

- Tem and I like to wait until everyone's let their guard down and then throw a duet from Death Note: The Musical into proceedings. On this occasion, the duet in question was 'The Way It Ends', so I got to play smug Light, one of my favourite Light Yagami modes (all of Light's modes are my favourite Light modes).

- I ran out of songs I was confident in, so I had to venture into my 'this is probably a bad idea' picks, which is how I ended up singing 'Big Enough' by Kirin J Callinan. There were incredible reactions from the room when the screaming cowboy kicked in. The fun thing about doing this song for karaoke is that, although it's a meme, only a very specific part of it is well known, so the audience may not suspect you're singing a meme song until you throw your head back and go AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH.

- Rei joined me for RichaadEB's metal cover of Touhou's 'Bad Apple', which is fortunate, because I don't think I would have been capable alone! That song really doesn't give you any breathing room.

- I enjoyed singing 'Body' by Marah! I'm always surprised by the vanishingly low viewcount on Marah's songs on YouTube; for a long time I struggled to find their songs on there at all. My brother listened to them a lot when we were teenagers, and I always assumed they were well known, but apparently not; he'd just got into an incredibly niche band, and landed me with a fondness for their songs as a consequence!

And a few others I don't have much commentary on: 'Burning in the Skies' by Linkin Park, 'This Old Sin' by Koethe, a repeat of the sea shanty version of 'Rockstar' by Nickelback.

My favourite performances by Rei included 'Don't Be a Lawyer' from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the unfortunately named 'JAP' by the perplexingly named abingdon boys school, 'Fight Club' by Fitzy, and a couple of Tom Lehrer songs: 'Smut' (with relish) and 'The Masochism Tango' (Rei and Tem briefly tangoed together during this one, although fortunately they didn't follow the song's instructions to the letter).

Rei also performed 'Mother Mary' by Tom Auton, and the lyrics made me suspicious. 'Is this on your Billcifer playlist?' I asked, and Rei hastily shushed me. (Billcifer is Rei's Lucifer-inspired Bill/Dipper Gravity Falls AU; it's here, and I can strongly recommend it if that sounds like your thing! It's been great to see Rei's enthusiasm for working on it.)

My favourite of Tem's performances included 'Gettin' Bi' from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, 'Hurricane' from Death Note: The Musical (always a delight; Tem always puts such passion into 'I AM THE GOD OF A BRAVE NEW WORLD'), 'Godless, Lawless & Non-Monogamous' by New Here, and 'Monochrome' by BABYMETAL (with me and Ginger singing backup vocals).

I'm noting my favourite performances down in part so I can look up the original songs at some point, for those I wasn't familiar with already. One of the fun aspects of karaoke is getting to discover cool new music! However, there's always the risk that I'll seek out the original and go '...actually, I prefer this song when my friends are singing it.'

Rei, Tem and I did a couple of songs as a trio towards the end: 'Wait for It' from Hamilton and 'Six Feet' by Patent Pending. I was afraid that the Hamilton song would be too ambitious, but I think it worked out!

Tem and Rei did a magnificent duet of Sarah and the Safe Word's 'Something Is Afoot on Old Man McGrady's River', and wrapped up with the occasion-appropriate 'This Year' by the Mountain Goats. A great way to see 2024 out!

Last night I dreamt I was a Taskmaster contestant. I went to the Taskmaster house on a day I wasn't filming, for some reason, and found Alex sitting outside it. 'Oh, I'm so sorry, am I interrupting filming?' I asked. Alex said, 'Well, yes, but only in a very small way.' We chatted for a short while, and then one of the other contestants emerged from another part of the garden and announced to Alex, with an air of accomplishment, 'I've killed them all.'

In fact, while I'm thinking about dreams, I'm going to drop some of my other dream notes into this entry, so they don't get lost if something happens to my phone.

This is mainly for my own benefit, of course; I realise that other people's dreams aren't that interesting to most people! You're welcome to read if you're curious, though. One of the dreams is a bit dubcon, so I'll include a warning before that one.


( Archiving a handful of dreams. )


Happy new year! Sorry for kicking it off with a post that's solely of interest to me.

Some more notes on our Glee rewatch! We've gone through the third season and are now in early season four. I originally stopped watching at some point in late season four, I believe, so we're approaching uncharted territory. (But not Uncharted territory. I bet Nate can't sing.)

I love the extreme intensity with which Blaine performs. He's always so into it!

I think Kurt and Blaine may be the only couple in Glee who actually communicate about the problems in their relationship and find ways to resolve them. It's really noticeable in contrast to the other relationship plotlines.

(Their relationship becomes much less functional in season four, which has an early episode where the writers evidently went 'you know, I'm bored of the canonical couples; let's break up ALL OF THEM.')

Season three isn't my favourite (that would be season two), but I do love how much of it is devoted to Rachel becoming friends with everyone. She's come so far!

Blaine having an intense duet of 'Somebody That I Used to Know' with his brother is even weirder than I remember it. If they had an affair, it would explain why Blaine never talks about his brother.

Slightly shipping Quinn and Artie after Quinn's accident in this rewatch, which I wasn't expecting! Artie helping and encouraging her as she gets to grips with the chair is very endearing.

I like that friends in Glee are prepared to say 'I love you' to each other. I love the Kurt-and-Rachel dynamic so much; it's probably my favourite relationship in Glee. I got slightly tearful when Kurt showed up to surprise her at the start of season four, when she was alone and upset in the big city. Rachel's friendship storylines are so much more enjoyable than her romantic ones.


Season four of Glee introduces a bunch of new characters and then only gives them plotlines with each other, which strikes me as an odd choice. Sam and Blaine, in season two, were more successful character introductions because they actually interacted with the characters we already knew and cared about, rather than the show going 'now, after that scene with characters you know and care about, let's switch to a load of strangers!'

I'm pretty interested in what makes a late character introduction work or not work. Obviously, in some cases, such as Doctor Who or Waterloo Road, a general cycling of characters is expected and new characters don't really feel like latecomers. In canons where the cast is mainly static and then they throw in a new significant character, though, what determines whether I'll go 'ooh, I like you' (e.g. Nathaniel Plimpton of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Blaine Anderson of Glee) or 'YOU'RE TOO LATE, THERE'S NO ROOM IN MY HEART' (e.g. Sam Drake of Uncharted, the new Glee kids of season four)?

I wonder whether it depends on how emotionally invested I am in the canon. I was having fun with Glee before Blaine showed up, but I wasn't really invested, so I could cheerfully embrace the new guy. The more I care about the existing characters, the more likely I am to resent new characters for taking screentime away from the ones I'm invested in.

I'd be interested in hearing about late-arrival characters that worked or didn't work for you!

If I've ever loved a canon, I'll probably revisit it at some point. I enjoy reminding myself of what appealed to me about it; I like finding out what new things appeal to me now. It's a lot of fun to reconnect with characters I once cared about.

I've been avoiding rewatching Glee. It was fun. I had a great time watching it; I had a great time writing fanfiction. But that show has accumulated a fair bit of real-world tragedy and horror around it, and I thought it might be hard to enjoy revisiting it in that light. (I think I'm probably fortunate in that I never had any emotional attachment to a particular character I can barely look at now. I feel it must be very difficult for the fans who really loved him.)

Still, Rei's girlfriend, who had not previously seen Glee, was in need of a stupid televisual distraction that she wasn't going to end up too emotionally invested in, and Glee seemed ideal.

I'm enjoying the rewatch a lot more than I expected. It's so stupid! I've got such a weakness for incredibly stupid television! And then we hit the performance of 'Keep Holding On' for Quinn, and I went 'oh, no, I'm having feelings about friendship', and Rei's girlfriend mocked me a lot. I thought I'd escaped my emotional investment!

Later, when 'Lean on Me' started:

Rei's Girlfriend: Oh, no.
Riona: What? Do you hate this song?
Rei's Girlfriend: I'm having feelings. About friendship.

She's absolutely furious with me for making her care about Glee.

I had completely forgotten that Glee spent the first half of the first season focusing intensely on Will and Emma's unresolved romantic tension, and they finally got together in episode thirteen, and then he cheated on her in episode fourteen. You could have given the relationship half a second to function, Glee! You don't actually need to cram PLOT!! into every available moment of screentime!

Ginger started watching with us about ten episodes in. We tried to explain the whole 'Will's wife is faking her pregnancy and planning to buy the baby from Will's pregnant student, who claims the father is her boyfriend when actually it's his best friend' plot. 'Holy shit, all that and we're only halfway through season one?'

What a stupid show. But I have fond memories of writing fanfiction for it, back when season two was airing, and I'm glad to find I'm still able to watch and enjoy it.

The third of four instalments walking through my fandom history! Apparently my accumulation of fandoms really sped up in my early twenties; I picked up all six of these fandoms within two years.


Waterloo Road

I wasn't introduced to this by a friend or family member, and I didn't see talk of it online and decide to check it out. I got into Waterloo Road by complete coincidence. I was twenty-two years old, on my own in my house in Brighton, with no Internet access. I idly turned on the television. There was some sort of school drama on; two schoolboys, Josh and Finn, were having an urgent conversation in an empty room. This feels oddly homoerotic, I thought, moments before one of them kissed the other.

I watched the rest of the episode for the fallout, then had to look up the television schedule to work out what it actually was that I'd watched. Waterloo Road? I'd never heard of it. But apparently it had been running for over eighty hour-long episodes, and you bet I was going to watch them all. I love stories about teenagers making bad decisions, and Waterloo Road was absolute gold on that front.

(Disastrously, I can feel myself being tempted to rewatch it as I write this.)

Waterloo Road had absolutely no LJ-based fandom; I could only find discussion on soap opera forums, where people did not engage with fandom in a way I was used to. It did have a bit of presence on fanfiction.net, but nobody seemed to be writing about Josh Stevenson, who was the character I really wanted to read about. I took it upon myself to rectify the lack.

My Waterloo Road/Hunger Games crossover attracted some really weird reviews. For example:

this story is very long eh eh

l reely like josh and his dad and jodi (Jodi does not appear in the fic; apparently this reviewer just felt like listing all their favourite Waterloo Road characters.)

i can come to your school

Favourite character: I loved Tom Clarkson, Sambuca Kelly and Tariq Siddiqui, but the subject matter of my fanfiction shows a clear bias towards the prickly, defensive, easily-exploited, struggling-with-his-sexuality Josh Stevenson.
Favourite pairing: Maybe Tom/Karen? I was extremely sad that Tom, who was constantly banging his way through the staff room, never got around to the headmistress. But my main relationship focus wasn't actually a romantic relationship; it was Josh's relationship with his father Tom.
Number of words written: 26,612.

Snippet: I was extremely sad that we never saw Josh meet the girls Tom took in after the death of their mother.

( Waterloo Road unfinished snippet. Josh meets Chlo. )


Glee

I started watching Glee when I was just about to turn twenty-two, but it comes after Waterloo Road in this list because I only started writing fanfiction for it six months later, when the show introduced Blaine. I 'shipped Kurt/Blaine ferociously and immediately.

Glee was an intimidatingly huge fandom. You couldn't be in Glee fandom as a whole; you chose one aspect to be interested in and hung out with other people who were interested in the same aspect. Kurt/Blaine was very much my corner.

The show was a bit of a disaster with inconsistent and occasionally oddly spiteful character writing, and the fandom was weirdly vicious and had intense 'shipwars (although at least it was when the main ammo for 'shipwars was 'CLEARLY THIS PAIRING IS THE MORE CANON AND INTERESTING' rather than 'YOU CAN'T 'SHIP THAT; IT'S MORALLY WRONG'). I still had fun watching and writing for it, though. But I don't know if I'll ever be able to watch it again; two of its stars died young, one after arrest for possession of horrific pornography, and it's hard to forget that and enjoy the show.

Favourite character: Honestly, it's hard to pick out a favourite character when the character writing was so inconsistent! In the first season, it was Quinn; she was a bully teetering on the edge of redemption in a way that interested me. In subsequent seasons, which increasingly forgot that Quinn existed, it was between Kurt and Rachel, and then settled as Santana.
Favourite pairing: Kurt/Blaine was the entire focus on my involvement in Glee. I 'shipped it from before Blaine was technically introduced; the 'Teenage Dream' performance was released as a preview and Kurt was just so charmingly smitten!
Number of words written: 20,061.

Snippet: Of course I attempted a Glee/Silent Hill crossover.

( Glee unfinished snippet. Kurt/Blaine, Glee/Silent Hill, 2010. )


X-Men: First Class

I watched this with th_esaurus at the age of twenty-two and enjoyed it a lot more than I was expecting. I very rarely get into films in a fannish way, and this is the only film fandom I have that passes the 'at least ten thousand words across at least three fics' test. I've actually never written for X-Men on its own; the three fics I've written for it were all crossovers (with Misfits, Silent Hill and Pokémon).

This film became a lot harder to rewatch after I realised that every scene ends with a terrible one-liner.

Favourite character: Charles Xavier. I think? It's entirely possible I tell myself Xavier is my favourite character just so I have a favourite character for every letter of the alphabet.
Favourite pairing: For X-Men: First Class, it's Charles/Erik. For X-Men in general, it's Rogue/Logan, which I still have to struggle not to write as 'Rogan/Logue'. Technically, I've never written either pairing, although I've come closer to writing Charles/Erik in the sense that I have actually written fanfiction about those characters.
Number of words written: 11,228.

Snippet: Oh, damn, I should have checked my old notebooks when I was at my parents' place over the weekend! I checked them for a couple of other fandoms, but I hadn't realised I don't have any unfinished X-Men fanfiction in electronic form. I think I had something where Charles had very unethically wiped Erik's memories to make sure they'd stay on the same side.


Uncharted

Jak and Daxter was one of the first videogame series I got fannishly into, so I was interested to check out what else Naughty Dog had done. One of my first purchases for the PS3 I received for my twenty-third birthday was an Uncharted/Uncharted 2 bundle. I was distressingly terrible at shooting and quickly gave up. But then Red Dead Redemption taught me to aim, and I came back to Uncharted after finishing it.

It's fortunate that I bought the first two games bundled. The first Uncharted never really clicked with me; I probably wouldn't have picked up the series again if I hadn't already owned the sequel. But I loved the second game.

Every main-series Uncharted game from the second onwards has a sequence where Nate is staggering around in a state of agony and/or delusion. Naughty Dog know what I like.

Favourite character: Elena Fisher! The first Uncharted character I fell in love with (I came to love Elena in the first game, Nate in the second and Sully in the third), and still my favourite. Smart, sharp-tongued, no-nonsense, well-fine-maybe-a-bit-of-nonsense. Kicked her kidnapper out of a helicopter once. My absolute favourite part of Uncharted 4 is the part where she mocks you while you play videogames. I would buy a full Elena Fisher Mocks Your Videogame Skills Simulator in a heartbeat.
Favourite pairing: Nate/Elena, absolutely no question. They've got such chemistry, they have fun together, and I love that we get to see Nate being vulnerable around her.
Number of words written: 16,195.

Snippet: I've never made any secret of my feelings about Sam Drake, who is the worst, but, weirdly, I do 'ship Sam/Sully. This snippet contains Uncharted 4 spoilers.

( Uncharted unfinished snippet. Sam/Sully, 2017. )


Dangan Ronpa

At the age of twenty-three, I was sitting outside a pub in Ealing with a group of friends, and one of those friends said he'd been reading a fan translation of a Japanese murder mystery game. One of the characters, he said, was me. He showed me some pictures of Touko Fukawa.

He later sent me the link to the fan translation. I swiftly realised he'd been rather uncharitable in comparing me to Fukawa, but by that point I was already hooked. Teenagers! Thrown into a horrible situation! Making horrible decisions! Being overwhelmed by guilt!

This is my third-most-written fandom in terms of wordcount, following Assassin's Creed and Top Gear. I have written Dangan Ronpa fanfiction every year for six years in a row, which is highly unusual. Typically, I'll have a burst of writing activity in one fandom and then move on to the next, but somehow I keep coming back to this series. I've written for the original Danganronpa, Danganronpa 2, Danganronpa: Another Episode, Danganronpa 3 and Danganronpa V3, but 2 is my favourite in the series and the one I've written the most for.

This was the first fandom (to my knowledge) in which I got plagiarised! I wrote a time loop fic that got startlingly popular, and someone put it up on their fanfiction.net account. It was swiftly taken down.

(My other experience with plagiarism: someone took my Doki Doki Literature Club fic Memory Error and put it up on their Pastebin account. I was very puzzled when I discovered this. Pastebin doesn't seem like a practical plagiarism website! It doesn't have any sort of commenting system! Surely you want a way for people to praise you for your stolen fanfiction? It's still up there; I wouldn't really know how to go about getting it taken down. Fanfiction websites have rules against plagiarism, but I don't imagine Pastebin does.)

Favourite character: It's moved around a lot, but I think I've settled on Hajime Hinata as my favourite Dangan Ronpa character. He's just a normal kid, insecure and sarcastic, heart in the right place, thrown into a terrible, terrible situation. He feels very real to me. And that makes him the perfect protagonist for Danganronpa 2, because most of the characters in that cast are incredibly over-the-top, and Hinata is a great way to make things feel grounded.
Favourite pairing: Ooh, maybe Naegi/Ikusaba? But Hinata/Komaeda is extremely fucked up and alarming in a way that appeals to me enormously. I 'ship Hinata with everyone, really, but particularly Komaeda, Koizumi and Kuzuryuu. To be honest, I also 'ship Komaeda with everyone. And Shuichi (but especially with Kaito). I also really like Kaede/Rantaro. Look, I 'ship everything in Dangan Ronpa.
Number of words written: 64,899.

Snippet: For a while I was hoping to write a series of Hinata/Komaeda fics based on classic fluffy fanfiction clichés, but I only managed 'huddling for warmth'. This was going to be 'Komaeda nurses Hinata back to health'.

( Danganronpa 2 unfinished snippet. Hinata/Komaeda 'hurt/comfort'. )


Community

Having heard good things about Community, I checked it out at the age of twenty-three. I thought from osmosis that the show was The Nerdy Adventures of Troy and Abed; I was confused to discover that there were a bunch of other central characters! I knew there was a Britta somewhere, but I had no idea that Jeff, Annie, Shirley or Pierce existed.

I still think the first season of Community is the best series of television I've ever watched, which is impressive, given that it includes a character (Pierce) I don't like at all. Apparently he was not enough to dislodge it from that lofty place in my esteem!

Favourite character: Jeff. Soft-hearted self-interested sarcastic arsehole in love with six people, one of whom is himself. I love him.
Favourite pairing: JEFF/ANNIE. It's a controversial pairing, but, holy crap, that chemistry. I also love Jeff/himself and Jeff/the entire study group.
Number of words written: 11,341.

Snippet: I think Community is in the rare position of being a fandom where I finished every fic I ever started! That usually happens with fandoms where I've only ever written one fic, with no intention of writing any more (Doki Doki Literature Club, Final Fantasy VI and Jiggy McCue, for example). But with Community I've written four complete fics and absolutely nothing beyond that.

I wasn't sure whether I'd ever give the fourth series of Glee a try. I couldn't muster up any enthusiasm for watching it; I just felt apathetic towards Glee as a whole. All my emotional investment had drained away.

Or so I thought, because today I watched 'The New Rachel' and realised I'd forgotten about the one Glee relationship that I'm still ridiculously invested in: Kurt and Rachel are my eternal platonic OTP. I just want them to be friends for ever. Ruining relationships is, of course, the favourite hobby of Glee writers, so I don't know how realistic this hope is, but as long as Kurt and Rachel have the most charming friendship ever I don't think I'll be able to break away from Glee.


Princess Tutu continues to be incredibly delightful and also surprisingly sad sometimes! I've seen up to episode 7. I love the hell out of Duck (I'm pleased to report I've got over the strangeness of actually calling her 'Duck' now, although I'm still convinced that her 'real' name, in the sense of the name by which she'd introduce herself if you met her in real life, must be Ente), and I'm deeply intrigued by the Fakir/Mytho/Rue relationship.

Episode 6, when Fakir was comforting Mytho on the bridge, made me begin to suspect that Fakir cared for Mytho as more than just a possession. Their dynamic is so interesting! (And also so unhealthy!)

Seriously, what is the nature of the relationship between Fakir and Mytho? Does Fakir genuinely believe he's doing what's best for Mytho? Does he care for Mytho as a person or does he have some other agenda? Is their relationship actually sexual or does it just feel that way? (Sometimes they're just hanging out and talking in their room and Mytho is naked on the bed for some reason???) Er, don't answer any of these questions; I'm just wondering aloud.

I was convinced from... more or less the moment we first saw Fakir that he was the mythical evil raven, but I'm starting to wonder whether perhaps I was wrong. Sorry if I misjudged you just because your hair looks a bit like a bird's tail, Fakir. You're still not a terrifically nice person, though.

Here is an odd thing I scribbled down in my notebook late last night:

If you asked Mytho to have sex with you he'd just say 'okay' because he'd have no reason to say no. Don't write fanfiction about this.

Me-from-last-night, if you don't want me to write terrible fanfiction you shouldn't write down your terrible ideas.

Back in 2010, I attempted a self-imposed challenge: alphabet ficsnippets (A to M, M to Z). The idea was that the first snippet concerned one character whose name began with A and one whose name began with B, the second a B and a C, the third a C and a D and so on. As I had so much fun with them, I thought I'd attempt another type of alphabet challenge: snippets for each letter of the alphabet, each concerning two characters whose names begin with that letter.

As my snippets seem to be a bit longer this time, I'm probably going to post these in more than two instalments. This entry contains six: A, L, M, O, P and X, because I don't have the discipline to write them in alphabetical order. Also, I cheat outrageously in the very first ficlet by never actually having one of the characters appear or indeed be mentioned.

Fandoms represented in here are Glee, Final Fantasy XIII, The Mentalist, Death Note, Mulan, Red Dead Redemption, Dangan Ronpa, Phineas and Ferb, Kingdom Hearts and X-Men: First Class. Enjoy!


( Same-letter alphabet ficsnippets: A, L, M, O, P, X. )


And that's all for the moment!

The fabulously-named Dangan Ronpa: Academy of Hope and High School Students of Despair, if you're curious, is a game about a group of students who have been trapped in a prestigious school; the only way to escape is to kill someone without anyone else finding out you did it. It's never been released in English, but it's being translated with screenshots over here; there are links to the entire story so far in the first post. If you're anything like me, you will become super high-school level attached to almost every character and then get really distressed both when murders are committed and when you realise who the murderer is. I read through the second chapter yesterday and ended up all teary.

(EDIT: Should probably mention that the Let's Play link leads to the Something Awful forums, which have a rather idiosyncratic profanity filter. For 'gently caress', read 'fuck'; for 'poo poo', read 'shit'. I think 'fucking' becomes 'loving' as well. Mondo Oowada's speech becomes very weird if you're not aware of this. (Mondo, incidentally, is my favourite and I love him.))

I actually started reading Dangan Ronpa because someone said that Touko Fukawa, the 'Super High-school Level Literary Girl', was me. This was, I have come to realise, rather an uncharitable thing to say.

I have a spare ticket for Would I Lie to You? tomorrow (Friday 16th March). Would anyone like it? If you are over sixteen and can make it to Uxbridge tube station by 5.45ish tomorrow afternoon, you are qualified. The recording itself starts at seven o'clock and will probably be finished around ten. Claimed!


So this entry won't lose all purpose once the ticket has been claimed, have some scattered lines from the records I keep of my dreams:

- Dreamt I was being haunted by a portrait of a mad author, who kept visiting minor misfortune upon me (e.g. leaky ceilings) because I never seemed to get around to reading her book.

- After the seminar, I approached [Charlie] Brooker, who by this point had turned into a tabby cat.

- Also an overweight German prince sat on my lap.

- I was dragged before Hitler. He castigated me for my lack of manners. I had to apologise. It was extremely nerve-wracking.

- Dreamt that Simon Baker played an older Kurt Hummel [of Glee]. And apparently Kurt and his older self hung out quite a bit? And apparently his older self slept in a coffin on the grounds of McKinley like a vampire?

- Dream in which Blaine Anderson [of Glee] was very friendly and charming and also possibly a hitman for a dystopian government? Narration from the dream: 'To get by in this world, you had to either work hard or kill people. Blaine Anderson had killed a lot of people.' (I'm actually strangely taken with this idea.)

Oh, my goodness, browntroutblues recorded a podfic of Behind the Curtain, my Glee Kurt/Blaine horror fic! And the recording is perfect. I'm absolutely thrilled. If you like the fic, please do listen and then tell her how great she is. (She is really great!)


In other news, I finished Portal 2 today, and I don't think the ending could have been any more satisfying had it offered me actual real-life cake. What a great game.


( Spoilers for the ending of Portal 2. )


I was actually stuck for ages in a late-game chamber because I had forgotten that I could go through portals. I was just thinking about portals in terms of sending other things through them. That's fine, self; who can be expected to remember that you can go through those things? It's only the entire premise of the game.

Regarding the most recent Glee episode, 'Pot o' Gold':


( Spoilers for 'Pot o' Gold'. )


Also, have some brief thoughts on episode 7.18 of Waterloo Road:

- Why do I find it so attractive when Michael Byrne furiously shoves teenagers against walls and gets up in their faces? It's a bit worrying.

- Josh actually got a line in the most recent episode! Amazing! I was starting to wonder whether he'd evaporated.

- Does Emily really think of Scout as a sister? Really? Are you sure? Because if so, wow, I seriously misjudged that relationship. I love surrogate sibling dynamics, but having one dropped suddenly on my head is a bit startling when I've spent so much time in the full belief that two characters are leading up to making out. I was honestly expecting Emily to kiss her in that scene.