rionaleonhart: final fantasy x-2: the sun is rising, yuna looks to the future. (hope is all we have)


(I drew this on a napkin and photographed it in poor lighting, so I'm afraid it looks a bit blurry.)


Yuffie, a friend I must have known for close to nineteen years, got married on Saturday! I was overcome with love for my friends when we were dancing to 'Stacy's Mom' after the ceremony, which is nice but does, bizarrely, mean that 'Stacy's Mom' now has deep emotional associations for me.

(I have to respect anyone who's willing to put that song on their wedding playlist. I personally added 'Cotton-Eye Joe' to the playlist, but sadly I had to leave before it came on, so I didn't get to see how people reacted. Still, there's reward in just knowing that you caused 'Cotton-Eye Joe' to happen somehow, somewhere.)

I was the ringbearer, which is apparently a role traditionally given to a nine-year-old boy or an owl (or a hobbit, I suppose). I am none of those things, but I managed not to attack the best man, so I acquitted myself better than some notorious ringbearers.

Rei's father, who I hope is ashamed of himself, made the following contribution to the guestbook:

There was a young lady named Yuffie
Who never was pompous or stuffy.
She got off with Chris
And it's all come to this
And I think that I've wrote quite enoughie.


Overheard during the wedding meal: 'How many times in your life have you thought, "I wish I could shit my pants and get away with it"? The problem is that you can't shit your pants any more without people getting upset about it. Society.'

It was a good day!


We were all asked to create something for the wedding, if we could, so I painted a photograph Yuffie had taken:




('I've really fucked up the left-hand margin,' I said in alarm to Ginger while I was working on this. Ginger's response was 'Fuck up the right-hand margin as well and it'll look intentional.')

It's just as well I started painting, really. If they'd asked me this time last year, I'd have been forced to write wedding-day fanfiction.
rionaleonhart: final fantasy vii remake: aerith looks up, with a smile. (looking ahead)
THE CAT STEPPED ON MY KEYBOARD AND LOST MY ENTRY DRAFT. That draft had been accumulating bits and pieces of potential entries for a very long time. It looks like I'm blogging with a blank slate now. I hope I didn't lose anything interesting.

I do remember that I'd recorded Housemate C shouting 'I'm not a fucking frog salesman! Why don't you fuck off?' at Rei in there, but I cannot for the life of me remember the context.


THE BOOKENING TITLE #7: The Next Together, Lauren James.

"Kate, what on earth happened?" Flo exclaimed. "We let you into the loft and the next we know you're a fugitive from the law, hiding in Scotland, and your boyfriend has been arrested for terrorist offenses!"

Kate scratched her head, embarrassed. "Yeah. It's been a hectic few days."

"Your parents are furious. They didn't even know you had a boyfriend."



This is a book about a couple who are endlessly reincarnated in different situations throughout time. It holds the distinction of being the only book I've ever read that contains both Comic Sans and the (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻┻ flipping-a-table emoticon.

This was great fun. I settled comfortably into it almost immediately, because I recognised the writing impulse that had led to the concept: it's the same reason people write fanfiction. You find some characters, you like their dynamic, and then you start to wonder what that dynamic would be like if the circumstances were different. What if they were a lady and a servant having a scandalous relationship in the eighteenth century? What if he's a nineteenth-century war journalist and she crossdresses to become his manservant? What if they're twenty-first-century scientists uncovering a government conspiracy? All scenarios this book explores!

If the author hasn't written fanfiction at some point, I will eat an entire sock.

There are a few things I wish this book had done. Firstly: if you set up multiple scandalous relationships, it's a tragic waste if nobody finds out and is scandalised by them. I kept waiting for someone to go, 'Hold on, Matthew: why are you kissing your apparently male assistant here in the nineteenth century?' and it never happened! Secondly, I'm fairly certain it's illegal to go 'well, I suppose we're going to have to break someone out of prison' and then not let your readers see how the prison break was carried out, although perhaps that'll be addressed in the sequel. And I always want love to blossom before the crossdressing is exposed in crossdressing romance stories, so I'm sad that Blackadder's 'Bells' is still the only crossdressing romance story that hasn't let me down on that front.

But, missed opportunities aside, I enjoyed this a lot. The humour and the sense of mystery carried things along very quickly, and I liked the way we uncovered one of the timelines solely through notes and documents. I got the sense that the author was having an absolute blast writing this, which made me smile.

There's also my favourite moment in the entire book. Matt and Kate are university students and have only met relatively recently. They don't know about their reincarnations. They're just starting to wake up, having fallen asleep during research. Matt, still half-asleep and affected by vague memories of his past lives, absently kisses Kate's neck. She has no idea how to react. They're not in a relationship, they've never kissed on the mouth, and he kisses her neck as if they've been together for years. It's exactly the sort of weirdness that delights me.
rionaleonhart: final fantasy xiii: lightning pays intense attention to you. (speak carefully)
Here are some things I have seen whilst walking through Brighton:

- a vast convoy of people on bicycles being held up by police whilst an exasperated man bellowed 'MOVE TO THE LEFT OR YOU'LL BE HIT BY A CAR AND NOBODY WILL GIVE TWO SHITS' through a megaphone.
- a man covered in live pigeons.
- a man tightrope-walking between the trunks of two trees.
- a very tall man saying 'As far as I'm concerned, Harry Potter is no longer in my life' into his mobile phone.
- a man with what I assume was his significant other's name tattooed on the back of his shaved head, which I think is quite clever placement; if you break up, all you have to do is grow your hair out.
- a man, in tears, saying 'But the thing is I never tell anyone anything' and then, in response to his female companion's 'You can tell me': 'I can't! I literally can't.' There was nobody else around (it was one in the morning and snowing), so, as it would have been too obvious had I stopped to listen, I kept walking. There's a story I'll never know the ending to.
- literally hundreds of nude cyclists. I had to stop at the side of the road and wait for about five minutes for them all to go past so I could cross. This happened twice in one day.

I'm not going to be living in Brighton for much longer, but I don't think I'm going to forget it. (Then again, perhaps I'm wrong; I'm definitely forgetting things I could have included here, after all. The first five of these were all from one walk.)


I've just stumbled across a page in my notebook filled with bad Final Fantasy XIII crossover AU ideas I'd forgotten about.

Final Fantasy XIII/The Mentalist: Patrick Jane is a fal'Cie and accidentally makes Lisbon and her team into l'Cie with the Focus of catching Red John. He is horrified when he realises what he's done.

Final Fantasy XIII/My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: Twilight Sparkle is a l'Cie, having become one after venturing into the Evergreen Forest on a fact-finding mission. OR MAYBE THEY ALL BECOME L'CIE IN EPISODE TWO. Pony l'Cie have their cutie marks fade away over time; if you don't complete your Focus before it completely disappears, that's it. If they're all l'Cie, it's a story of SIX PONIES AGAINST THE WORLD; if only Twilight Sparkle is a l'Cie, it's a heartwarming tale of eventually being accepted by your friends despite being feared by society in general. And then you turn into a monster. No, hang on...

Final Fantasy XIII/Glee: Kurt is a McKinley l'Cie with the Focus of winning Nationals. MCKINLEY L'CIE ARE FEARED BY ALL OF DALTON.


Finally: [livejournal.com profile] th_esaurus has drawn Charles and Erik with their Pokémon! So adorable. I want to see it reblogged all over Tumblr.

(She protested that Magneton was too obvious. I maintain that it is exactly obvious enough. If a Steel-Electric Pokémon is composed largely of magnets and has 'Magneto' in its name, I'm fairly certain that not giving it to Erik Lehnsherr is illegal.)
rionaleonhart: top gear: the start button on a bugatti veyron. (going down tonight)
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?
rionaleonhart: final fantasy x-2: the sun is rising, yuna looks to the future. (highway to hell)
During Asylum, I dreamt that I was walking through a corridor when a man tapped me on the shoulder, drew me aside to a painting whilst saying, 'Hey, look at this,' and then punched me in the gut and tried to kidnap me. The worst part is that I fell for it twice: it was at different points in the dream, quite far apart, but on both occasions it was the same corridor and the same painting and the same man.

Fortunately, this was not something that actually happened at Asylum.

Here are some things that happened instead.


ExpandAsylum report! In which Gabriel Tigerman is adorable, Richard Speight Jr is Young Bobby, and Misha Collins is a madman. )


Entirely unrelatedly, my brother just asked my father whether he would prefer a tap that dispensed milk or one that gave out liquid gold. (The sensible answer, it turns out, is 'milk', because you really don't want to see that liquid gold bill.)
rionaleonhart: final fantasy x-2: the sun is rising, yuna looks to the future. (oh hey)
Here is a [livejournal.com profile] danegen fanvid that is entirely about what massive dorks Jensen and Jared are. By the end of it, I'd been grinning so much my face hurt.


More Final Fantasy VIII! I don't even know how many times I've played through it - five? six? - but this was the first time I realised that what you see on the Timber screen before the presidential broadcast starts is a message.

BRING ME BACK THERE
I AM ALIVE HERE
I WILL NEVER LET YOU FORGET ABOUT ME


afsjghsahfagsh ADEL YOU ARE SO FREAKING CREEPY.

Also, I love that the random nameless Galbadian soldiers have personalities. They may be your enemies, but the one on the train just wants to propose to his girlfriend. Awww.


Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who are celebrating it today! Over here in England, we call it 'Thursday'. Here is a seasonal snippet I overheard whilst walking around campus a couple of weeks ago:

Girl: ...and then they killed them! But first they got them together for a big feast, and they said 'we'll all be friends...'
Guy, amused: Oh, really? Oh, is that what Thanksgiving is about?

But we've got a day to celebrate a terrorist's fiery death, so we can't really judge. At least Thanksgiving is marked by gratitude, rather than, er, burning of effigies.

And, as gratitude is a good thing whatever country you're in: you guys are the best. ♥!