my heart is a glorious machine;

Heavens, it's been nearly a week since last I posted! For shame! But really, I've been rather shockingly busy, in, yes, the offline world, what with writing a Hire Me letter and composing my first proper resume ever (it's very short and not terribly impressive, but the fonts are lovely!) for the job at the local paper, and then accidentally spending the night at the Meholicks', which has become such a tradition -- with the Nielsons, too, when they still lived here -- that I really ought to put together an emergency survival kit consisting largely of pyjamas and spare underthings and leave it in a convenient corner. You see, burningstarsxe was coming home from three months in Maine, and when she arrived at last, there was such a riot of conversation and general jubileeing that I kept not leaving, and then it was eleven thirty at night... The next day was Friday, which was also Season Premiere of Dollhouse Day, so Sarah and Hannah came back in the evening, and we had a drawer of inappropriate starches (a real drawer, too), only someone neglected to tell me that none of the normal channels work anymore. We have bloomin' satellite, so this really oughtn't be a problem, but apparently it is. So here we are, panicking, staring at the grey screen, frantically eating cookies and squeaking... oh, it was dreadful. Eventually we gave up, took the drawer upstairs, and cosied up on my bed to show Hannah the Supernatural pilot, while I refreshed downloady sites to no avail. (A link finally surfaced about ten minutes after their father collected them, of course.)

Saturday was spent at Hershey Park, to which we acquired free passes from buying certain products at Martin's. Dad took Heidi and Timmy and I in the shiny new car, while Mum stayed home with Leandra (who would be no fun at an amusement park, as she would climb everything and be impossible to keep track of and she'd probably try to jump into a roller coaster or kidnap a duck or something). Ah, new car, how marvellously you glide along! And how exquisite it is finally to listen to CDs in the car again, instead of ancient tapes! (Okay, that often meant that we listened to a lot of Steeleye Span, but after two years it begins to be tiring when road trip music always consists solely of the surviving remnants of what Dad listened to twenty-five years ago. A lot of it is modern jazz, which I'm not especially keen on, and even Dad isn't that interested in anymore, and some of the singer-songwriter stuff is too eightiesified, and there isn't any of Dad's awesome psych folk stuff from the seventies besides Steeleye Span.)

Anyway, I'm not the largest fan of amusement parks in general, especially when I think about them too much ("this would be a really rubbish way to die, in the service of something so frivolous", I occasionally think on roller coasters or even swing rides, where a line might suddenly break; and then I think about how ridiculously much money goes into building these town-sized clusters of sheer entertainment, when people are, well, yes, starving in India and being murdered in the Sudan, and I am well aware that this sort of thing makes me the epicest of wet blankets), but I enjoyed myself rather -- they had an excellent carousel that actually went around quite fast, and tearing down an old wooden roller coaster is fantastic, and those spinning swing rides I adore because they're exhilarating and relaxing at the same time. Also there's something peculiarly sordid and fascinating about amusement parks and fairgrounds and circuses, something I can't quite put my finger on -- something about the colours and the sticky-sweet smell and the odd music and the mechanisms and the peculiar names of things and the way so many things seem strangely frozen in time. I do so want to put Mr Caruthers and Evy onto a carousel or something. (I have also always wanted an old carousel horse, a real one, on a golden pole, to keep in my bedroom and try to know the stories of it.)

And then it began to rain. Bah. It was cold and wet and we braved it for several hours, but then they started closing the roller coasters because they weren't safe anymore, and the rain wasn't letting up at all, and we were soaked and shivering and finally toured the Hershey not-factory -- mostly it was an array of Yay Capitalism Buy Our Overpriced Stuff, but it was very interesting to learn all of the different processes involved in making a simple chocolate bar, and when we finally wrenched the siblings away from the piles and piles of obscenely expensive mass-produced chocolates we decided to just go home. Ah, warm car warm car warm car.

Sunday I woke to rain, and when one is under the covers and indoors, grey rainy wet days are cosy and wonderful. Alack, I had to get up for church, and was rather cross, but at least it was chilly enough that I could wear my little black and grey double-buttoned schoolmistress dress, and people left quickly, and at home again there was magnificent chili for dinner, the first of the season, and then I ran off to finally watch Dollhouse with Sarah and Hannah at their house, and there was much conversation, merry and thinky and both, and I do so like people (and having Sarah back). Also Mr Joss Whedon is rather a meany-pants, but I expect you knew that. (Also JAMIE BAMBER IN HIS REAL ACCENT IS SO GORGEOUS AND WIBBLE-INDUCING AND ALSO CONFUSING. WHY DID YOU HIDE THIS BEAUTIFUL ACCENT FROM ME FOR SO MANY SEASONS OF BSG, MR BAMBER? WHY? THIS IS CRIMINAL. And, oh yes, there was also Alexis Denisof with his real accent, which is, alas, American, but his voice is still quite splendid and I am afraid that Sarah and Hannah and I could not possibly be prevailed upon to tell you a word of what he said in his little speech, as we simpered like very silly girls all the way through it.) 

Today, there was leftover chili and rain and coffee and a little autumn-coloured cat in the morning, and a library run in my new favourite purple sweater and my elegant pashmina scarf flowing around me in the brisk belligerent wind, and I am really quite enjoying it all. Except for these silly advertisements all over my LJ and being reduced to fifteen usericons. Pah!

Of all the things I thought research might accomplish, forcing me to write a sequel to the ever-present Novel that isn't even half-finished yet was not really something that crossed my mind.

Ah well, I'm a young writer yet. Eventually I'll learn there are Things To Watch Out For.

So: I've been reading as much about the Edwardians and the Great War as I can manage to find in the house -- I'll start to go spare if I can't pay off my library fines before much longer -- and the deeper I go, the more the blasted sequel talks to me. Okay, so "in the house" means "my siblings' history books" and "the internet", because for some reason I don't seem to have anything much on the First World War myself. Or the Edwardian era. A brief glance through the Book Closet brings me... uh... well, Barbara Hambly's duo of awesome and political-situation-foreshadowing Edwardian vampire novels (starring James Asher, motorbiking philologist ex-spy professor! and Lydia, his doctor wife of much win), and... Nicholas and Alexandra, okay, and the Emily of New Moon trilogy (Emily's diary entries are always dated 19--, which leads me to a bit of private fanon in which Emily's Quest ends just before the war begins, and there's all this stuff about Dean Priest in, like, Cairo or Japan or somewhere doing espionage, I don't know), and Peter Pan, a couple of my Ibbotsons -- A Countess Below Stairs is, rather plot-pointedly, right after both the Great War and the Russian Revolution, and A Company of Swans is London and the Amazon in, oh hey, 1912! -- um, is that it? Seriously? Argh.

Novels are excellent for research, too, especially novels written either during the era, or afterwards by people who were alive then -- one reason I love Eva Ibbotson's historicals so much: she has this really fresh perspective on the World Wars and writes about them so naturally, because she was there, and she sees them from both an English and an Austrian perspective, which is also neat -- because that gives you a better idea of how and what people were thinking and reacting to everything around them, instead of being told by a history book what was on everyone's minds. History books are well-meaning, and immensely live-in-able and helpful in most areas, but understanding how people thought and felt and reacted... you need to be in there. I'd like to write a historical novel that feels more like Eva Ibbotson's, in which she's just writing about what happened in her childhood, knowledge that comes naturally to her, so she's not shoehorning in Historical Perspectives or This Event or painstakingly describing everything you might not be quite familiar with (hint: people pick up on stuff fast, writers). I want to understand what it was like to wear those clothes and eat that food and read those newspapers. And then I can put in the vampires...

Anyway, I'm just reading a pretty basic World Wars history book -- I don't want to say textbook, cos the curriculumn my mother used for me and is now teaching my siblings with doesn't tend to hurl textbooks at you unless it's maths and there's nothing else for it. It's a book about history, and it's got a lot of pictures and things, but it's really well-done and readable and interesting. I mean, readable until something hits you straight in the stomach and you kind of have to put the book down for a while. Today I read about the Christmas Truce of 1914, and I kept thinking, blimey, these men didn't even want to be killing each other. Ugh. Screw this war.

Which is probably what Mr Caruthers would be saying, honestly, only with some rather choicer words learnt on the streets of London... Which brings me back to the bleeding sequel for a novel that's only three-quarters plotted and doesn't even have a real name yet, but here I am, thinking about Briony growing up in the war and bobbing her hair, and Camilla as a battlefield nurse, and how Mr Caruthers would be a staunch conscientious objector, but as the war got more and more desperate and the government got more and more pushy, he'd get dragged into espionage or something, given his Special Areas of Knowledge, and some other Exciting Novelly Stuff I should talk about soon. (I bet if I were a professional novelist I'd have a Do Not Talk About Your Blasted Novel So Much On Your LiveJournal Clause, because there are noooo secrets here, are there? Only I need someone to bounce all of this off. Actually, there is one secret. Just a little one. And I don't want to tell you about it because it's just a little weird brainquirk that is much, much more powerful in inference and in context.) And how Evangeline's Special Skills might get her pulled into the War, and how much things would be different with the addition of vampires and magic...

I was just trying to understand the political situation before the war, you know? Curses.

Ugh. SO, YOU GUYS, PRINCE CASPIAN IS THE MOST FABULOUS THING EVER AND I AM STILL GRINNING MANIACALLY EVEN THOUGH I COULDN'T STOP SMILING ALL THROUGH THE FILM ITSELF (EXCEPT FOR THE BITS WHEN I WAS CRYING, ALTHOUGH I WAS BEAMING THEN SOMETIMES TOO).

Anyway, today was the best day ever. (Today I was loud and we were all fangirly. Then we were kidnapped by the Meholick tribe, never to be seen again. It was the best day ever!) The girls and I have begun a writing club of sorts, dubbed the Quill and Ink Society, in order to improve and share our writing, and have a great deal of fun in the process. Our first meeting was today, and we handed in word prompts and then had two minutes to scribble a storybit inspired by the prompts. (Then we read them aloud. With much flourish.) Alessandra and I had already done this, which lead to her idea of making it a regular thing, with everyone -- amusingly, when I did my first one with Alessandra, most of my storybits ended up fairly wistful or gloomy (as most of my writing seems to be): today they were nearly all comical. I'm rather pleased with them, actually, and hope there's a story waiting to rise, because goodness knows I could use a short story or two under my belt!





Then we drove home and were really, really loud and fangirly all the way. And I did the dishes and would like to go scrounge up food now.

The temperature climbed to eighty degrees today. I threw open my bedroom windows, basked on the lawn a while, tried to beg errands off of people simply so I'd have someplace to bicycle (it didn't really work; everybody went and did their own errands, drat them) -- oh, it's lovely. I'm in a sleeveless dress and no stockings at all; I'd have run around barefoot more if my foot weren't still being a nuisance (er, there's a story there, but mostly it's that I maybe sprained my second toe about a week ago). The sun comes into the house again; the sunset lit up the whole front section. I read L.M. Montgomery, because springtime gives me a craving (I have a gloriously vivid small memory of last April, lying on the picnic table in the parking lot, playing Over the Rhine while I read Emily's Quest).

Wednesday and Thursday have been rather strangely wonderful. Wednesday was, I think, the first day the weather really was warm, though it'd been hinting for a while -- it was the first day I could keep the windows open all day, anyway. I read a lot -- I've been reading rather hungrily lately, possibly because suddenly I can again; I don't know why I couldn't before, or why I can now, but books! splendid marvellous books! only I split chocolate on one and feel v. guilty -- and had a sort of musical epiphany by accident. I haven't felt as though what I've done on the guitar all year has counted much as music, and I haven't really enjoyed it the way I ought, but Wednesday afternoon I was thinking about "The House Carpenter" and why it is I've never had a go at playing it. My brain said, "you don't know the chords and traditional folk songs aren't exactly easy to find chords for on the internet," and I said, "hang on, don't be a twit, you can figure this stuff out. You had a whole lesson about this, ninny. This is your favourite ballad in the whole world and you're going to blooming learn it." So I did. I figured out the chords, which ended up changing the melody a bit, and I played it, and it sounded good. What's more, it sounded mine. I have about twelve versions of this ballad, and this one maybe nicked a bit off different ones (the base of it is the Tim O'Brien version, but I found verses in some of the others that weren't in his, and I liked them enough to tack them on), but it sounded mine. What's more, I actually sort of sounded like I knew what I was doing. Alack, with passion comes -- well, injury, usually, if you're me. I played with altogether too much vigour, for I skinned my fingers and raised a nasty blood blister on my thumb. (I don't use a pick. Too clattery.) The blister I didn't even notice until after I'd finished my third run through the song, and I thought, hey, my thumb is stinging a little, I must have got another blister AGH WHAT IS THAT AM I DYING? It's been very irritating, but tonight I can type (using my thumb) without feeling more than a little odd. The band-aid helps.

Thursday I hobnobbed with Alessandra. We practised our piano-guitar duet of Sarah McLachlan's "Angel" -- which, well, I sound terrible just now, but we're working on it, and it's splendid fun playing music with other people -- and went downtown to pick up her suits from the tailor's. We also picked up chocolate, because Hockman's, well, it was just there. Later, Sarah came over, and she and Alessandra and Caroline and I walked to Meadows, where Alessandra treated us to ice cream, because she is awesome. We crowded into a booth and were very happily and very much teenage girls (albeit strangely geeky ones). And -- blimey. D'you know, I've never had this. This is the sort of silly normal-life sort of thing I've yearned after for years -- having friends, and doing things with them, whatever it is that people do together, which I've never been entirely clear on. Just to be part of something, to have a space.

Then there was "Once More, With Feeling"-age, and Sarah and I fangirled Spike a lot while Alessandra looked on in consternation. "It's the accent," said Sarah. "And the cheekbones," I put in. "I love Angel," said Alessandra stubbornly. A lot. (Not that I don't, see. It's just a bit different, wot wot.)


I finally had my first burst of real, proper excitement for Merlefest, which is, oh my, Thursday. YOU GUYS, SOLAS. And Dad and I were looking over the workshops, and gorblimey, have they got some good ones. (Also: am still holding out a desperate hope that Tim O'Brien and Karan Casey will do "Demon Lover" together at some point. I've never heard anyone do any incarnation of "The House Carpenter" at any of the festivals I've been to in the past, oh nine years. Now is the time! Of course mustn't get hopes up...) And I'm excited about silly things, like being in North Carolina where it will be very warm, and dancing in summer dresses, and eating hasty camping food between sets, and the long drive (we bought Dad a thing to plug into the tape player that attaches to a discman, so we can finally play something other than his old tapes -- the surviving ones mostly consist of Steeleye Span and Bob Dylan, both of which are fantastic (and hey, I could listen to All Around My Hat forever), but get sort of monotonous after eight hours).


Remind me eventually to do a televisioning-that's-happened-recently round-up post soon. :p

I really am going to do that Deathly Hallows response post, because there is actually a lot to talk about besides How It Broke My Heart And Why I Am Not Resigned, but I keep worrying I'm going to forget something ("I've only read the book twice!), and then the less silly bit of myself says very sternly, "Banui, it's a response, not a ruddy thesis paper" and so the two sides of me sort of bicker amicably for a while which makes it really difficult to actually, you know, concentrate on anything useful.

Anyway, 'tis the season for Great Thinky Meta Posts, now that the early frenzy is mostly over, and here is my first contribution, because I have been mulling this over for some time, and it's got a lot to do with my fic-verse, and I think if I start writing out my thoughts maybe some of it will come out clearly enough that I can start to write about it. I keep trying to write fic about Deathly Hallows, but I run up against this great block that says, "are you sure that this is how you want to portray this?" Like, guys, I haven't even really explored how and when Remus and Tonks actually fell in love, other than that it was sometime during OotP, and I'd like there to be something interesting involved, some sort of -- at least mild -- adventure, something other than mucking about in Grimmauld Place and keeping Sirius from going mad.


...I have apparently lost the ability to post about anything not related to Harry Potter now. This is a sign of dire things I am sure.

I'm a bit overdue on this one, but -- comment and I will name you 3 interests from your list, and 3 userpics, and you explain them in your own post, asking the same of your f-listers.


And today was a good day. I bicycled to my guitar lesson in spectacular weather, thereby getting some much-needed exercise (and sun!), and then I stopped by Rosie's Bookshop on my way home and was redeemed for That One Time when they had two copies of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and I didn't purchase either of them because there was a new copy on the shelf and it is now mine (!!!). (I will have to post about the book when I am finished re-reading because it is amazing and possibly the only book that comes close to being comparable to Tolkien in any substantial way.) I also found The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (!!!) and a new copy of Anne of the Island (mine has pages missing, and the book itself might actually have finally got itself lost, as it is not in my bedroom nor the box with M-authored books in the basement), and got a little sack of chocolates, and made cupcakes when I got home (cupcakes that were not sour).

I had something witty and brilliant and intelligent that I wanted to say, but I can't remember what it was. (I did make biscuits today--American ones with buttermilk that turned out a bit less fluffy than I think they ought to have but which will taste very good with a bit of sausage and cheese later--but that doesn't make for much of an anecdote as nothing went interestingly wrong. Things often go interestingly wrong when I am baking. I managed to burn a batch of brownies so magnificently once that even the little chocolate chips on top were scorched through, which was really tragic.)

Bartholomew-the-kitten, who is not actually a kitten anymore but an adolescent cat who has apparently discovered girls for the first time, ran off two days ago, not even coming back for dinner, which was a bit worrying as he is not the sort of cat to miss a good dinner, but he finally turned up at the door this morning, noisy and hungry. We think he was chasing the female felines of the neighbourhood. He has been very repentant and purry and cuddly today, but also very noisy. And he keeps crawling into laps when the laps are sitting at tables and the people the laps belong to are having a plate of turkey.

I totally didn't squee publically enough about "The Shakespeare Code", which may or may not have been the best Doctor Who episode ever, and also may or may not have been the best bit of television I've seen in a long time. (I think I might have even liked it better than "Girl in the Fireplace", which means a lot. NEIL GAIMAN LIKED THAT EPISODE.) I mean, it had Shakespearian London. Which was very pretty. The historical episodes are usually magnificently pretty. And it had Harry Potter references and the Doctor quoted Dylan Thomas, which had me wibbling like the fangirl I am. (By the by, that couplet--'do not go gentle into that good night / rage, rage agains the dying of the light'--is tremendously Doctorish, innit?) And Martha, who kept on being pretty awesome. Also, briefly, Ten in an Elizabethan collar, which was nothing short of wonderful. (Wonder if people ever got those caught on doors and things? I mean, I'm always catching my cape on doorknobs and railings because they are in direct alignment with the arm-holes, and often I am innocently going up the stairs when I am yanked back by my renegade cape which has got itself curled round the end of the railing.) I ran around in circles in my bedroom for a while after I finished watching and jumped over stuff for a while.

One of these days I am going to stun all of you with my brilliance and structure and presence of mind. Today is not that day.

So, um, mostly rotten day (I feel awful; like I'm sick, except not sick, and I've got this nasty sort of ghost of a headache that refuses to leave off, and also I really, really need a shower, but it is ruddy cold here), but on a whim, I went to look up Lost spoilers, because I have been feeling too dismal for quite a while since the hiatus began to be very interested in spoilers, but I was feeling rotten and needed something to cheer me up, so...anyway. According to SpoilerFix.com [and here there be rather minor spoilers, but you guessed that, right?], the first new episode will be a Juliet flashback, which is squee-worthy enough, because I ♥ Muffin (even if she might be sort-of-maybe evil, she is still fascinating and she snarked at Jack) and omg Otherville, and...yes. But then I scroll down a bit, and episode eight? IS A DESMOND FLASHBACK. I AM DEAD OF THE SQUEE. (And loooook, he's got an adorable scarf! Rather a lot like one which I wear very frequently. Sorry, that's an awful picture. Oh, Desmond, I love you and your polo shirts and your scarves and your Scottishness and your super powers, omg.) [/copious italics]

I need to dreg up my Desmond Lost icons again. And wear the scarf more often. It's also the Sirius Black scarf, you know.

I totally forgot how much I loved this show. *squee*

Someone attempt to convince me that having Remus using the penname "Thomas Sterns" or some variation thereof would be much too geeky (and obvious) to even be allowed. 

Oh, plague. And triple plague.