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Dear Yuletide writer


....watch this space. There will be a proper post here soon. Thank you!

Dear Yuletide Writer,

This letter has been edited! I forgot to include The Scarlet Pimpernel because I am an idiot!

Hi! You're probably staring at my requested fandoms and going 'Wow, that girl watches a lot of costume drama'. This is true. Partly it's the hawt sexual repression, partly it's the clothes. That episode of DQ:MW where Jane Seymour is clad only in a corset and bloomers at one point? Sort of killed me.

I like smut, but I am also happy with non-smut - and, in fact, gen fic. I like unresolved sexual tension and that moment when it finally gets resolved.

I like angst, unconventional pairings and messed-up relationships. I also seem to like female protagonists who aren't really girls' girls, so any slightly awkward female bonding scenes are always appreciated.

I like gutsy, self-righteous women, the kind of woman who'd be called an activist if she was around now. Basically, I like shows based on their female protagonist more likely than not. Pre/post-series fic is awesome, as is solo fic (not that kind....but that's OK, too!) that focuses on their careers rather than their romantic pairings.

So here is a guide to my personal fanon, which you may use or reject at will.

( DQ:MW )

( Bramwell )

( Dorothy L Sayers, Peter Wimsey Mysteries )

( The Scarlet Pimpernel )

Then again, if you have a better idea - write it! If it's fic about any of those women, I will like it. If, for whatever reason, you're not comfortable writing any of the main female characters I've suggested and would rather boyslash it - Sully/Cloud Dancing, Marsham/Robert or Marsham/O'Neill, Lord Peter/Bunter and Percy/Chauvelin or Percy/Armand will do.

Thanks again,

ladyvivien

xoxo

Hi everyone on Mama Kaite's livejournal! This is Franklin, reporting on my Adventure today. It is very hot outside. Mama Kaite and Mama Lola left the window open for me and Orlando so we could get some fresh air and new bugs to chase. I tried to catch a bug, but it was too far away and I pushed the window open and fell out. This was very scary because the ground was a long way away and all of a sudden I was Outside. Outside has lots of bugs, but no Mamas and no Orlando so I didn't like it very much. I shouted and shouted and shouted, but my Mamas were...at the place they go when they are not at home loving me. So they didn't hear me, but eventually a big man came into the garden and picked me up, which I didn't like for once. But when he took me into his house, there was Mama Kaite! So I stopped crying and gave her a big kiss and we went home.

And that was the story of how I had an Adventure.

Love, Franklin xxxxx

PS - I like fish and treats.

The Presumed Consent Organ Donation bill didn't go through. Three-line whip, the Government's stance was anti, it never had much of a chance. I'm not surprised, but I am upset. Not as upset as I was a day or so ago when I heard about it, but still. It could have made a difference. A huge difference, to so many people's lives and most of the population don't really get it. Freedom of choice be damned, I honestly want to shake anyone who refuses to get a donor card until their teeth rattle. Maybe I should want to apologise for that, but I don't. I can't accept that there is any reason valid enough for not wanting to help another human being - multiple human beings - after your death.

Comments disabled because...well. If you want to disagree with me, go ahead, but I don't have to listen to it.

“There is the urge to procrastinate, to escape from the rigid cage of study routine I have made for myself. It lures me by a multitude of enchanting distractions; it beckons in the form of magazines, gay colourful stories and pictures; it seeks to simulate hunger, calling me to lose myself in the rationalization of continuous and nervous eating; it comes over the telephone…It whispers: “How easy, to give up: excuses, you have good excuses.”

- Sylvia Plath


mmm…gay colourful stories. Why don’t I have any?

*hint hint*

And now for your feature presentation:

There’s something weirdly reassuring about cinema chains – the actual cinemas themselves, I mean. The anonymous, homogenous, could-be-in-any-cinema-anywhere ones. I think I spent most of my adolescence in cinemas like these, eating buttery popcorn and nachos covered in goopy cheese substitute. And then, of course, I spent most of my time there dreaming about being in a tiny independent cinema, the kind where smoking is not only permitted but de rigeur.

Just got an email from my father, saying 'Go and get a real job, don't follow me down the chalkface'.

Note: My father is a lecturer. There are worse jobs to be had. But I surmise he is having a bad day at work. Poor Daddy.

Am stealing the ten-episode-Angel-marathon and twisting it to fit my own devices.

Ergo, ( My Ten Episode TNG Marathon: )

Just bought Books For The Dissertation. Pretty, shiny things they are, too. The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination by Ursula K LeGuin, and The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World by Thomas M Disch who is apparently terribly important as these things go.

"For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing that they like", to quote Miss Jean Brodie.

I considered another one but it

a) didn't seem serious enough and

b) had an essay (I presume on K/S fic, I didn't dare look) entitled 'Spock in Manacles'. I'm not saying that I object to chaining up the Federation's finest per se, but Vulcans. No. ewewewewewewewewew.

Back to Edinburgh tomorrow, at some as-yet-undecided time. I expect I'll get the midday train, if I wake up early enough. I'm mostly happy to go back, I'd be lying if I said there was no trepidation whatsoever. Home feels very...home-like, right now. The fact that I may not see The Stupid Blonde Thing (otherwise known as our gorgeous yet ancient golden retriever, Penny) again is cutting me up inside, but we think it's matter of months if not weeks. There's been a marked decline from how she was when I was home last, only three weeks ago. She's been making the most of it, snuggling up to me and widening big chocolate brown eyes every time I pass. I think she's going blind though, and her arthritis is worse. She must be 13 now, but she still hasn't cottoned on to the fact that she's not a puppy anymore. Damn. I'm going to absolutely lose it when she goes.

My mother's errant brother came over this evening, he's perfectly lovely even though I'm only just getting to know him. Rumour has it that his no ex-wife banned us from seeing him over something Mum said at my christening. My cousin swears she kept trying to run him over when they lived close by. We saw a little more of him after my grandmother's funeral, but he never really came back into the fold. He didn't send a card after either of Mum's transplants, from what I've heard...Either way, we now have a semi-new uncle in our lives and very nice he appears to be too. He, Mum and Dad all bonded over growing up in incredibly poor Northern families that began to sound like the Monty Python Three Yorkshiremen sketch. I sat there feeling terribly middle-class and ashamed.

Amusingly, my sister's boyfriend has been raving about me since her birthday lunch yesterday. She's started to get a little put out *snerk*. We bonded over Ryan Adams, the fact that Jesse Malin is ugly but compelling at the same time and essay deadlines. He's obviously devoted to her, they're the sweetest thing ever. I'm dreading the inevitable break-up. They should just live happily ever after and have adorable children with her hair and his taste in music.