Trabia Garden

picture by th_esaurus

It is my thousandth entry and also my twenty-second birthday, and it has been so lovely! Friends came over, and we ate cake and sat in a tree and sang spontaneous mashups of Lady Gaga's 'Poker Face' and Rasputina's 'The New Zero' to ukulele accompaniment, not necessarily all at the same time.

Here is the double-dactyl poem that my brother Joseph wrote in his card to me:

Higgledy Piggledy
Harriet Evans was
Ageing a year with Ju-
ly getting late.
Matters of age see her
Unaspirational:
Well in her Twenties but
Thinking she's eight.
I think it sums things up rather nicely.

Thank you so much for your contributions to the happiness post yesterday, and I hope you enjoyed the things other people posted! It certainly brightened my evening. I have to give special mention to this ASL rendition of 'Party in the USA'; wanttobeatree linked to it, and it is the most ridiculously delightful thing I have seen in months. I grin all the way through it. His smile! ♥!

I am also extremely fond of th_esaurus' heartbreaking Brooker/Mitchell tale. And dracothelizard came up with the idea of Charlie Brooker being turned into a unicorn, which is just lovely. He would hate it so much! So much! I am genuinely considering writing fanfiction about the adventures of David Mitchell and Charlie the Angriest Unicorn, although I would have to take care not to make it too similar to my Supernatural unicorn-transformation fic. Sullen unicorns are such fun.

I am not entirely certain of what adventures Mitchell and unicorn!Brooker would have, but I am sure they will work something out.

(Dr Cox would also be rather fun as a unicorn, especially given JD's unicorn obsession.)

I'm still fretting over various university-related things, and today I received a gas bill that made me squawk in horror and run to turn off the hot water, but you guys really do make everything better. I cannot express how grateful I am to you, just for being there and being awesome. Soppy though it may sound, I really do love my flist.

(Seriously, do watch that ASL video if you need a smile. Best thing I've seen in ages.)


Today, I played two Charlie Brooker clips to my Discourse in Public Life seminar group. The tutor loved them. I need to fandom up my university courses more often.

Now, as those of you who have read the Twilight saga and some who haven't may know, New Moon, after Edward leaves Bella, contains a series of blank pages apparently intended to reflect the blankness of Bella's soul and the emptiness of her life in his absence.

reipan observed that this was a dreadful waste of paper, and so she created blankmonths. The idea: You, The Reader decide what Bella did during those months of blankness, write it into your copy of New Moon and scan in the pages to show to us. (You may instead type them if you do not have a scanner, if you'd prefer not to deface the book, or if you do not own a copy of New Moon but wish to get involved anyway.) Please feel free to be as silly as you'd like.


Now, Pokémon Gold!

The Pokémon games are not renowned for their sparkling dialogue, but there are a few moments of genius. As I had somehow managed to give both my Togepi and my Spinarak the name 'Rikar' (rather perplexing, especially as I had been under the impression that I was making it up on the spot on both occasions), I took the Togepi to the Name Rater in Goldenrod City. I renamed him 'Rene', and then it occurred to me to see whether the name selection screen had an 'é' so he could be 'René'; not implausible, I thought, given the accent in 'Pokémon'. It did not, however, and I exited without changing the name.

'All right!' the Name Rater announced. 'This Pokémon is now named RENE. It might look the same as before, but this new name is much better! Well done!'

I was very amused.

(Also, there is a reluctant Rocket Grunt who says, 'Oh, a kid? I don't really like this, but eliminate you I must...' when he confronts you. I love him and I want to write fanfiction. (And I thought at first that it was because he had some moral objection to attacking children, but after you defeat him it turns out that he is afraid of kids after running into your rival. Hee.)

Why - why do Team Rocket react to your breaking into their base by challenging you to a fair Pokémon battle? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to have their Pokémon attack you?)


Here is a Top Gear story I am not allowed to write: Porsche 911s, Hyundai Accents and various other cars are found destroyed across the country. The public and media begin to refer to the mysterious car-killer as Cara, because I am a terrible person. One day, James and Richard are alarmed to find a corpse on their track and ask Jeremy about it. Eventually, it turns out that Jeremy has a Death Note. As it only works on humans, he has the Stig transform cars he hates into humans, kills them with the Death Note and then has the Stig change them back. Sometimes the Stig doesn't have time before the body is discovered.

This is a terrible idea on many, many levels, and so this snippet is all you're getting of it:

"Shouldn't the Stig be getting this lecture?" Jeremy demands.

"The Stig has no conception of human morality," James says. "I like to think you've at least heard of it. You're deliberately bringing new human life into the world for the sole purpose of snuffing it out. Doesn't that strike you as even a little bit wrong?"

"James," Jeremy says, staring at him. "It's a Hyundai Accent."

There is a pause.

"It is a Hyundai Accent," James concedes.

When I was talking about perhaps attempting Metal Gear Solid 2 a couple of weeks ago, firefly99 said that entering the Metal Gear Solid series with the second instalment would be a terrible mistake. The exchange went something like this:

rionaleonhart: Perhaps I should play Metal Gear Solid 2.
firefly99: You have to play Metal Gear Solid first.
rionaleonhart: Really? I don't know; I've already got a copy of the second game, and I thought I'd just see wheth
firefly99: I'VE BOUGHT IT FOR YOU
rionaleonhart: ...what?

And she had!

(I do not deserve the LJ friends I have, seriously.)


So, Metal Gear Solid. I have been playing for about an hour, and here is what I have learnt:

I am not good at this game.

I am, in fact, upsettingly, humiliatingly bad at this game, and by 'humiliatingly bad' I mean 'four Game Overs in less than an hour of gameplay on Easy Mode' bad. Between this and Shadow of the Colossus, I am beginning to wonder whether firefly99 is not just being ridiculously lovely and is instead plotting to destroy my self-confidence by introducing me to games at which she knows I will be completely rubbish.

(It was ridiculously lovely of her, though, and I shall persevere!)

Possibly part of my problem is the fact that I'm refusing to kill any of the guards. (I initially typed this as 'refusing to kiss any of the guards'. Whilst admittedly I haven't been kissing any of the guards, this is more due to gameplay restrictions (or at least I don't think the game allows one to kiss the guards) than any conscious refusal, and I don't think refusing to kiss the guards would really be a problem, as kissing a guard would probably precipitate one's discovery. Oh, unless Solid Snake is in fact a Jynx and his kiss sends people to sleep, in which case it would be an excellent infiltration strategy. But I would be surprised to learn that he is a Jynx.

Perhaps 'knockout lipstick' is an item one can acquire in the Metal Gear Solid games? If not, perhaps it should be.)

ALL RIGHT, BIT OF A DIGRESSION THERE. Possibly part of my problem is the fact that I'm refusing to kill any of the guards. I do not quite know why; they do not hesitate to kill me. It is probably Iji's fault. WAY TO MAKE ME INTO A VIDEOGAME PACIFIST, IJI. THANKS. NOW I CAN'T PLAY ANYTHING BUT TETRIS.

Dear University of Sussex,

You have been ranked the second-best place to study linguistics in the country! Congratulations! Do you:

a) axe the Linguistics department, or
b) not be stupid?

Take your time. This is not a trick question.


( Cut for anger. )


Anyway! I do not like my entries to be entirely full of misery, so now it is time for something happy! AND I HAPPEN TO HAVE JUST THE THING.

A couple of days ago, I received a notice that someone had sent me a letter with insufficient postage, and so I had to pick it up from the handling office. (This, as it turned out, was a good thing, because otherwise it would probably have been crammed through the letterbox and damaged.) In excited anticipation, because man do I love getting post, I set off.

Now, you may have noticed that I am ever-so-slightly prone to exaggeration, and in particular to use of the term 'best thing ever'. Here is the problem with this: when something actually is the best thing ever, how does one express it?

The first sheet I drew out of the envelope was a drawing of Derren Brown in Silent Hill, holding a ukulele.


( Beneath the cut are scans of Derren Brown meeting the Doctor, the Master, Silent Hill, High School Musical and ukuleles. They are all wonderful. )


In conclusion: sos_your_face is amazing.

GUESS WHO IS GOING TO BE AT DERREN BROWN'S LIVE SHOW AT THE ADELPHI ON THE TWENTY-SIXTH OF JUNE?

...yes, all right, Derren Brown. BUT ALSO ME.

And also also sacred_sarcasm, reipan, hippyjolteon, sos_your_face, _afterism and cryforthemoon.

THIS IS GOING TO BE SO AWESOME, YOU GUYS. Unless Derren attacks us with needles and feeds us broken glass and throws us into a pond filled with zombies, which may slightly detract from the awesome. BUT IT'S GOING TO BE PRETTY AWESOME ANYWAY.


Now I am going to talk about Avatar!

I've been putting off watching Avatar for a while, waiting for the alarmingly obsessive phase in which I actually get angry with things for not having Derren Brown in them to pass so that I could appreciate it properly. Now that I have reached the slightly more sane stage in which, whilst I certainly would not object to Derren Brown showing up in the world of Avatar (which nation would he come from? would he introduce 'mindbending' as a new type of bending skill?), I can forgive him for not being present, I can go back to watching Derrenless things. Today, I watched 'The Painted Lady' and 'Sokka's Master'.

And, oh, I love Avatar so very much. It is so beautiful! And the characters are wonderful! And the use of bending is so creative!

(I really like the way that the humans in Team Avatar refer to Appa and Momo as their friends, rather than, say, their pets. Barriers of species are no barrier to friendship!)


'I will never turn my back on people who need me!' 'Well, you need me, and I will never turn my back on you.' KATARA AND SOKKA. ♥

I have heard that people 'ship Katara/Sokka, which... really isn't something I can understand. Their relationship seems so healthy! My mind actually shies away from considering it, because I cannot comprehend how it would work. Are any of you Katara/Sokka fans? If so, would you like to explain it to me? (This isn't a hostile 'YOUR PAIRING IS WRONG'; I am genuinely curious. I'm not even demanding good reasons. I 'ship Sam Winchester/Toshiko Sato based purely on the fact that all the people they love die, after all.)

I'd totally be up for some wrong wrong wrong wrong Azula/Zuko, though.


Something that just occurred to me: I would really like to see Katara and Sokka travelling with the Doctor. (Has the Doctor ever travelled with a pair of siblings? Because that would be delightful.) PERHAPS AANG IS THE DOCTOR. He regenerates! Sort of! He has a love of discovery and accumulates companions! APPA IS CLEARLY THE TARDIS.

The night before last, I dreamt that I came across a YouTube video of Derren Brown playing Kid Harpoon's 'The Milkmaid' on the ukulele I sent him. Rarely have I been more disappointed to realise I was only dreaming.


In other news, I am finally writing again! I haven't really written anything for about half a year, but it turns out that all I needed to kick the ficwriting part of my brain back into action was a) moogle62, who is amazing, and b) the idea of Derren Brown as the Doctor's companion, travelling through time and space and occasionally falling in love with Pokémon.

I am not even a little bit kidding.

This concept, of course, set me looking for pictures of the Tenth Doctor so I could manip Derren Brown into them, to satisfy my need for such things, and then I realised that there was no need because David Tennant had already appeared on Trick or Treat. INCESTUOUS BRITISH TELEVISION, I LOVE YOU.

Unfortunately from an 'acquiring convincing pictures of Tennant and Brown as Doctor and companion' perspective, which is the only perspective that really matters, it is very clear that Derren has the power most of the time when he's with Tennant. This is not quite the case in his relationship with the Doctor. (Sorry, Derren.)

Here, however, are a couple of suitably Doctor-and-companion-ish screencaps from Trick or Treat, courtesy of tick_caps:




There have been a series of mysterious disappearances in the place in which Derren has accidentally caused the TARDIS to crash-land! Can the Doctor and Derren solve the mystery? Well, they're certainly going to try.



The investigation is a long and wearying one, but they cannot give up!

You cannot yet read moogle62 and rionaleonhart's Time-Travelling Cross-Fandom Adventures of Derren Brown and the Doctor, I'm afraid, but if you are interested in massive multifandom crossovers I would like to politely nudge you in the direction of draegonhawke's amazing Damaged People. It can be found at damageverse, and the list of sections is here. I should warn you that it is a work in progress, and also that all the time travel and suchlike makes putting the sections in any sort of order a bit tricky (there is a sort of suggested reading order here), but it is so, so brilliant, seriously. The summary is as follows:

A massively multifandom accidental epic following Sam Tyler (Life On Mars) and Jack Harkness (Doctor Who and Torchwood) on their misadventures, as they explore the galaxy, almost destroy some worlds, and barely save others.

I am fairly certain that at least some of you will be tempted by this.

I just stumbled across the following conversations with sazzlette and wanttobeatree and laughed until I wept. The first is a long build-up to a beautifully appalling punchline; the second just makes me crack up every time I read it.


( The first conversation. You may not want to read this if you have not yet seen the first episode of the fourth season of Supernatural. )


And the second, which is entirely devoid of Supernatural references, spoilery or otherwise:

wanttobeatree: I very almost spat a mouthful of soup out to lol at you
sazzlette: ahaha ir ead that as soap
sazzlette: i was like LOL YOU'RE EATING SOAP WHAT
rionaleonhart: I once ate soap.
wanttobeatree: ... for
wanttobeatree: a reason?
rionaleonhart: It was shaped like an apple and smelt like an apple.
wanttobeatree: sauidfkdlgfosdap
wanttobeatree: omg
wanttobeatree: you are shit
rionaleonhart: I wanted to see whether they had covered all the senses.
wanttobeatree: I once tried to eat a stone
rionaleonhart: I BET YOU HAD LESS EXCUSE
wanttobeatree: a friend had this bowlful of them and he told me they were that magical stone-looking candy
wanttobeatree: but no
wanttobeatree: it was just a bowl of stones

I have been watching a little Avatar: The Last Airbender (or Avatar: The Legend of Aang, as it is inexplicably called here in the UK) lately, and Sokka is a bit great, isn't he? And I'm very impressed by the complexity of the antagonists; that's not something you see often in what is essentially a children's cartoon. Of course, the problem is that Prison Break is my love of the moment, and so when I'm watching Avatar I'm wondering how the characters would get along in Fox River, and that's just not going to end well for anyone. Sokka and Sucre could actually get along wonderfully well (just imagine it!), but I really don't want to let T-Bag anywhere near Katara. (Katara/Scofield: wrong, or so right? ...yes, all right, it's wrong. BUT I AM WEIRDLY INTRIGUED BY THE THOUGHT ANYWAY.)


Speaking of giant mechanical spiders: yesterday, I received a box from America containing a bag of Pokémon figurines (hee!) and a letter.

The letter is one hundred and forty sides of A4 long.

I swear that's got to break some sort of record.

It has apparently been in the writing for about nine months and tells the story, illustrated with stick-figures throughout, of how I became trapped in the world of Final Fantasy XI, had adventures with twilit_wanderer's character, briefly encountered the Top Gear trio, got attacked by goblins, nursed unwell chocobos back to health, got knocked out by a winged lion and captured by the undead and eventually escaped.

Seriously, I'm not sure I can ever use the postal service again, because twilit_wanderer just won it. I am completely stunned. Thank you so much; this must have taken you years. Not - not literally, obviously, but still. Years.

(Actually, what this has left me with is the great desire to write mile-long letters detailing the recipients' adventures in the world of Pokémon or something. Or maybe Avatar, when I've watched more and got a feel for the world. Or another Final Fantasy. YOU KNOW IT WOULD BE AWESOME.)

TODAY'S PHOTOMANIP CHALLENGE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY th_esaurus' PERSUASIVE SKILLS AND nomelon'S INEXPLICABLE OBSESSION WITH SHRINKING JARED PADALECKI.


Mysteriously, the light falls on Dean and on his miniaturised brother in entirely different ways. I am sure there is a plausible supernatural reason for this.

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to make someone or something inexplicably tiny. (Inexplicably gigantic works, too.) As always, the manip doesn't have to be good; the point is to have fun. Go!