my heart is a glorious machine;

Some observations:

i. My father is kind of adorable. Also, his music taste is made of win. (My father's taste in music is primarily responsible for my taste in music, though we listen to quite a lot of entirely different things. My adoration of all kinds of alt folk and traditional folk music is all his doing, though. I grew up singing along to his Steeleye Span tapes.) He's cleaning out his office and blaring the Strawbs' Hero & Heroine, and I have no idea why I have never stolen this album from him before. RECTIFY POSTHASTE. (Aww, now he's playing Once!) 

ii. I'm beginning to worry that the Evangeline story is only a really good excuse to hunt down a lot of alt. traditional folk. However, it does mean that the mixtape I will perfect and post at the end of the month will be really fantastic and full of artists nobody's ever heard of, yay! (Also, freak folk/neofolk/New Weird America is my favourite. thing. ever. We were made to be together, we were!)

iii. Speaking of which? I FOUND MY VAMPIRE BALLAD. After I watched Wings of Desire and alas, did not have the soundtrack at all, I started playing the only Nick Cave I possess on repeat, which is a duet with PJ Harvey I got off audiography ages and ages ago -- the old traditional ballad "Henry Lee" (lyrics), and eee, is it ever fantastically applicable to vampire seduction, except that she only stabs him, she doesn't eat him. Oh well, the version in my altverse could easily be slightly different. Anyway, it is fabulously atmospheric and I heart it to bits. ...I seem to have this problem with loving murder ballads too much, c.f. my wild love for "Little Sadie" in all its cheerfully psychotic glory.

iv. Apparently I am quite ridiculously A SAP. Like, I have had "Full of Grace" stuck in my head today? And I get all flaily and sniffle and yell "ANGELLLLL!" at inappropriate moments? IT IS BAD, I AM TELLING YOU. (Since when did I ship Buffy/Angel this much, anyway?) Also I have this absurd need to write fanfiction. OH HELP.

v. Twilight calendars attract the weirdest people. Seriously. I have had much weirder not-customers since we started displaying them prominently. Several times elderly women have picked them up dubiously and just sort of looked at them, like, "the undead? is that what the kids are into these days?". Also there were Real Live Twihards in handmade Team Edward t-shirts wandering around my kiosk today, at the most caffeine-raging stage of thirteen, and I was beginning to plan out emergency escape routes in my head ("if they make a rush for the front display, I can duck behind the register -- I think it's bulletproof? -- and these keys can totally be turned into a weapon if things get really dire!").

Annnnd the people at FYE keep moving Edward around, and he glowering sinus-infectionly at me all shift today, aieeeeeee. I'm beginning to construct a theory that sparklepires contract some kind of Death Flu which presents itself with symptoms very much like vampirism, except with more sneezing and, um...glitter? That bit's hard to fit it. Then again, it's hard to fit into the original context.

I'm hoping someone will, like, knock over a bunch of CDs, and Edward will be all "THESE ARE NO LONGER ALPHABETISED. AND ALSO YOU CRACKED THE COVER OF THIS JOSHUA RADIN, YOU CRETIN. PICK IT UP." and have to climb out of the poster to go fix them and THEN HE WILL STOP WATCHING ME ALL DAY? 

So yeah: life = job job job job nano job sleep. I am staying up late tonight to write. ...Except so far it has mostly been catching up on the two days of LJ that I missed, good heavens. Tomorrow I plan to: touch up my hair, take some books back to the university library up the hill, SLEEP, bake a cake (what? I really want cake), mayyybe pick up a bottle of Vampire Red Manic Panic at Sally's because they were closed when I got out of work today, NaNo, and possibly attempt to clean the pit which is my bedroom, which I have been putting off in favour of NaNo for weeks now. Argh.

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. With regards to the urgent question posed by the last post: I'm currently torn between litalicious's suggestion of Nox and lady_moriel's Grey(e) (I'm dithering over the extra e; my addition). Aaand I found this really spiffing name site which someone ought to remind me to link to later, because I'm feeling a bit poorly and need to go to bed anyway.

Um. Mostly I have been rather horrid lately, which explains the general not-posting, but today I have succeeded in watching Monty Python and Doctor Who, so...that equals lots of yay. British television is a splendid momentary cure-all for a bad day (or a bad few weeks, really; I tend to try not to go emotastic on you lot, but my Xanga is absolutely dismal).

Still haven't written anything except a line here and there heavily scratched out. Will resist urge to wax morose on this, or on any other segment of life in which I am feeling rather as though I am failing spectacularly.

Drat it. This was not supposed to be an emo post. I could have a go at cancelling that out with a description of the somewhat entertaining dream I had last night, which involved David Tennant being my best friend (???) and having long hair. Actually, the long-hair bit was part of the bit where the Doctor was marrying Rose (?!?! yeah, I have no idea what that was about, and there isn't any subconscious shippy bit of my brain to draw it from), except somebody stabbed him, and...then it gets really foggy and sort of melds into the other dream, which was really scary and involved a lot of bloodshed and an interesting lack of complete barminess. (There was this king, see? And he was a really unpleasant bloke, going round killing people, and there was this woman, who I really didn't like, even when I was playing her part of the dream, and her husband was a guard or something, and the king was decimating the whole palace, and it was rather gruesome, and I was terrified, and...I seem to remember something about being outside, and a cake. Never mind what I said earlier about 'lack of barminess'. It was a lot scarier than it sounds. Really.)

Now that I have thoroughly succeeded in distressing and/or perplexing you...

I. So, lady_moriel and I were on the phone until twelve-thirty last night, which was basically The Best Thing Ever, except I woke my mum up because I was shut up in my closet for no good reason. (It's kind of cosy in there. Besides, Remus lives there. With his random piles of Time and various newspapers and books he keeps nicking off my shelves, and our vintage Life magazines from the seventies and eighties, and a lot of sandwiches.) Also, we made up the Best ScarletWoman!Ginny Fic Ever, which involves Antarctica and Random Hot Scientists and transfigured penguins and Dead Unimportant People and Molly's Amazing Clock of Eerie Accuracy. (CLOCK: [hand points to SHAGGING RANDOM STRANGER]. MOLLY: Must--go--to--Antarctica!) Also, Sirius uses netspeak specifically to irritate Remus (until he gets bored with typing funnily and finds something else), and we both read the Pony Pals when we were young and were probably vaguely ashamed of it even then. Heeee. AND! We are going to picket for Werewolf Rights!!(P.S.: Il Divo was on instead of Monty Python. AAAACK. *woe* I NEED MY FIX NOW.)

II. I am such a girl. Even without meaning to be, which is, I think, almost worse. Case in point: Saturday, my boots, blouse, and nail varnish all matched. (The varnish, which I found in my closet, is part of my semi-annual attempt to Not Bite Nails. Instead, I peel the stuff off with my teeth.) ERU SAVE ME. (I got really killer red boots for four bucks on Friday, though. The heels sink into the ground when I walk, which feels springy and weird and sort of awesome in a bizarre kind of way. And I got a purple floor-length skirt and something that looks kind of like an English riding jacket.)

III. I'm writing Eagle of the Ninth fanfiction. This is kind of scaring me (not least because I have the utmost reverence for Rosemary Sutcliffe). Is anyone else cool enough to even know what I'm talking about? :D Also, I had to do Wikipedia research for a passing mention in a vignette, wherein I discovered I got something wrong. Ack, historical fanfiction.

IV. L.M. Montgomery is pretty much the literary equivalent of mint and chocolate right now. *fangirls* Yes, I'm on a kick. Even though the first and third Emily books vanished mysteriously from the library two years ago. *cries* Also, I think I might be a Dean Priest fangirl. This is REALLY TERRIFYING.

V. Because I was talking to lady_moriel basically all night and watched a movie with the family last night, my internet usage has been disgustingly patchy. Am still working on comments & things.

VI. DO NOT SCOLD ME ABOUT THE TIME.

VII: It's Christmastime! I am so absolutely enchanted by this; I must dedicate an entry to it soon.

VIII: I STILL HAVE A PRIDE & PREJUDICE MOODTHEME. *squee*

VIIII: Shut up, I am going to bed. Also, I have a sinking feeling that I am getting the Roman numerals wrong.