Trabia Garden

There is a Female Characters Drabble-a-thon going on at the moment! If you're like me and feel that you don't write about female characters nearly often enough, here's your chance to redress the balance. (Sadly, there are almost no videogame prompts.)

Also, a rather fun meme. Stolen from eva_kasumi:

- Arrange the characters in your icons in alphabetical order.
- Pair the first character up with the second, the third up with the fourth and so on.
- Write a mini-ficlet about every pairing.
- Profit!

The results of my attempt at this are under the cut in varying degrees of cop-outness. It starts with Albus Dumbledore/Allison Cameron and goes downhill from there.

( Perhaps I shouldn't have included the Pokémon. )

_afterism has just been visiting! After a rather slow start, during which I swore at my computer a lot (it had inexplicably deleted my word processor of choice! ...which, er, appears to have inexplicably returned suddenly. I LOVE YOU, VIRGIL, AND I AM SORRY THAT I SHOUTED AT YOU SO MUCH TODAY) and we had many, many awkward silences (I've met nineteen people from Livejournal now, and I never get any better at it), we settled down to watch the Doctor Who movie; the Eighth Doctor's first and final appearance on-screen.

It was amazing.

I mean, it was dreadful. Much of the acting was dreadful; the plot was dreadful; it was ridiculously melodramatic. But the Eighth Doctor was absolutely charming and adorable and captured my heart in a way the Tenth Doctor hasn't even touched it, and oh, I wish he had been around for longer. How I wish.

YES, MY TWO FAVOURITE DOCTORS ARE EIGHT AND NINE. THE TWO WHO HAVE HAD LESS SCREENTIME COMBINED THAN ANY OTHER DOCTOR. FANTASTIC. (Although, to be fair, Ten and One are the only other Doctors I've seen a significant amount of. Maybe I would develop a passionate and unusual love for Six if I saw him in action.)

I might have been able to get past the physical appearance, but I cannot hear Paul McGann's voice without thinking of Withnail and I. This was not helped by my sudden realisation half-way through that the Master, with his hair slicked back and his green eyes of insanity covered, sort of bore a passing resemblance to Withnail.

Due in quite a large part to _afterism's comments during and after the film, I now feel a horrible compulsion to write the following things:

- Withnail meeting the Eighth Doctor and being really confused. (The Eighth Doctor would probably mistake Withnail for the Master at first. After all the confusion has been cleared up (although Withnail will probably still occasionally insist 'Of course you're him! You don't have a name either!', entirely disregarding the Doctor's protests that not bothering to learn someone's name does not necessarily mean that they don't have one), the two of them will somehow end up travelling together. Withnail would be the worst companion ever.)
- The Eighth Doctor being attacked by puppies. Possibly zombie puppies.
- Possibly zombie Labradoodle puppies.
- Withnail, the newly-regenerated Eighth Doctor and Zombie Piers Morgan hanging out in a morgue. For 'hanging', you should probably read 'freaking'. (I think this is because of her comment during the morgue scene: "I'd never be able to work in a morgue. I'd be too afraid of zombies." Not sure how Withnail got in there, though.)

('Eighth' is a really strange word.)

Did I mention how hilariously over-the-top the film was? I was laughing helplessly at every single dramatic scene. Particular favourites were the Doctor falling to his knees and howling at his reflection, and the first time the Doctor and the Master met in their respective new bodies, when the shot dramatically switched from one to the other just enough times to be absolutely ridiculous. (I was glad to see that the homoerotic subtext between the Master and the Doctor was still going strong back in 1996.)

Also, why on Earth would you have something in your TARDIS that could only be activated by human eyes, allowed anyone nearby to see what you were seeing and destroyed the Universe if left open for too long? When is that going to be of any use at all?

Also also, after watching that, I have to wonder why the fandom threw A Bit Of A Fit at every implication that the Doctor may not be completely asexual in the new series. Because, y'know...

(EDIT: Oh, and: "She kiss as good as me?" "As well as you." I LOVE YOU, MASTER.)

When it seems as if the phrase might fit their speech patterns, it is incredibly difficult to remember not to have characters say 'How on Earth?' or 'Where on Earth?' when they are not, in fact, from Earth. Argh.

This is apparently going to be an entry of Laments About Writing. Hurrah!

- Getting the tenses clear is bloody confusing when characters have travelled into the past and are talking about their present.

- The Captain Jack Harkness in Torchwood is far too different from the Captain Jack Harkness in Doctor Who for me to feel entirely comfortable when writing the character. I don't know how to reconcile the two characterisations.

- Fran is far too quiet and also incredibly difficult to write for. She just sort of fades into the background while the other two take over the story and make it into the Balthier and Harkness Show. This is entirely unfair, because Fran is awesome and should really have a larger part than she's getting.

- In fact, although I feel fairly all right when it comes to Balthier, I find myself completely at sea when it comes to characterising any of the other characters from Final Fantasy XII. This is an enormous shame, as I had sort of hoped to be able to have the Balthier/Fran/Jack team encounter them occasionally.

- Why can't I work out how Withnail and Jeremy Clarkson would interact? They obviously need to meet (in order to put the fear of God into their long-haired friends, if for no other reason), but I have no idea what would happen. I really want to write this crossover, but I can only actually come up with the tiniest of snippets:


He reaches over, appropriates Jeremy's scotch and downs it, apparently entirely ignorant of the fact that this is a fairly large violation of the rules of etiquette.

"James and whatsisname seem to be getting on well, don't they?" Jeremy observes. "What is his name, anyway?"

"How the fuck am I supposed to know?" Withnail asks, irritably.


- I wish I'd stop accumulating Inappropriate Real-Person Threesomes. Clarkson/Hammond/May (Top Gear) is - well, it's completely insane, of course, but on its own it's all right. Then, of course, I had to fall for Morgan/Holden/Cowell (Britain's Got Talent (the shame!)), and now I find myself thinking about Alex/Jess/Paul (The Real Hustle). This latest is probably at least partially due to the fact that, when they're talking about the psychic scam, there's a point at which it looks as if Alex's hand is on Paul's leg; I realised after looking more closely that it was actually Paul's hand, but by then it was too late. I think that the lesson here is that I really, really need to stop watching non-fiction programmes with any sort of trio at the core. (This may not strictly be a lament about writing (unless I ever actually write Alex/Jess/Paul, which would be an awful thing to do and please don't let me do it), but that does not stop it from being true.)

Back home! I must say, I'm already missing how clean everywhere in California (well, apart from Los Angeles) was; in London, there's litter everywhere you look. Life would be so much more pleasant if there were city-sized vacuum cleaners. Except not really, because people would probably use them to steal cars.

Still, you guys must have been sending out some seriously good vibes for the flight back, because the entire family got a free seat upgrade, and it's difficult to be terrified of flying when you have that much leg room. They also had Withnail and I amongst the on-flight films. Continuing my Grand Tradition of Having The Worst Taste In Men Ever Ever Ever, I was rather startled to find myself beginning to think of Withnail as frighteningly, frighteningly attractive.

I MUST NEVER BE ALLOWED TO HAVE A BOYFRIEND.

That aside: on our last day in California, we went to Disneyland.

It was glorious.

Seriously, it was the silliest, most ridiculously twee place in the world and I absolutely adored it. I thought I probably wasn't going to enjoy it much, but then we got there and Disney music was coming over the speakers and I was lost. I hadn't realised that I loved Disney quite as much as I apparently do, but I wandered everywhere with a slightly unhinged grin on my face and pointed out Cruella de Ville with far too much enthusiasm and very nearly wept at the parade. My inner child is very, very happy right now. (Apparently, on my father's last visit to Disneyland, thirty years ago, he was completely stoned. I cannot even begin to imagine how bizarre an experience that must have been.)

To anyone who, upon reading that post title, yelped and clamped their hands in vain over their ears as music they thought they had forgotten flooded back and took up permanent residence in their minds: I'm not sorry.

You know, it can't be normal to invariably, after playing a videogame or seeing a few episodes of something new or watching a film, sit down and think 'I wonder how the characters would cope with Silent Hill?' Withnail would probably be too drunk and complaining too much about the cold and the fog to even notice the monsters, anyway, and his companion's* 'Pyramid Head' would have to be, well, Withnail. I'm not entirely sure that it would work.

(Of course, my next thought was to wonder how well it would cross over with Top Gear. They do seem to have similar luck in holidaying, but perhaps not.)

On an almost entirely unrelated note: is it odd for me to find Jeremy Clarkson acting hurt and under attack on Have I Got News for You - 'I'm sweating, uncomfortable... of course, that's mostly because you're saying I'm fat and killing the planet' - as ridiculously adorable as I do?


* Er, yes, I do know his name, but I sort of like pretending he doesn't have one. I DON'T KNOW.