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.

Ah, Sleepy Hollow. Forsooth, you were the first thing I ever wrote proper fanfiction for, and bloody shite long it was too. I wonder where it is....No point watching until the end, that's when the serious corsetage starts.

*drools*

Ah, Miranda Richardson. Marry me, please.

Taken from minerva_fan:

I will not stand for this

Everyone Feels This Pain
Show your support

Today would have been quite reasonable were it not for the migraine sinking its steel teeth into my head.

Oh, who am I kidding?

Mum's operation tomorrow. Panicking like fuck. I've slept badly for the past week or so, now I've progressed to not sleeping at all, other than about an hour last night. The post from this morning was made by a far cheerier and glass-half-full person than I am now.

Roll on the start of term when the university counselling services open, says I.

Christ, Holden Caulfield needs a damn good bitchslap. It's difficult to read a book when you keep drifting off into homicidal fantasies featuring the narrator. This is, peversely, the only day I've had since I got back without at least one parent being around, either interrupting revision with a list of chores, or asking if I think I'm working hard enough.

More than slightly emotional last night about Mum's impending operation, but I dealt with it by curling up in the dark under my covers and blasting The Phantom of the Opera as sung by Lesley Garrett and some other guy on the discman until I fell asleep. No matter what she sings, that woman can never quite disguise her Yorkshire accent. Gotta love it. I got a ticket to see her in concert for my 15th birthday, and all I remember when I was getting my program signed was her jealousy that I was wearing more glitter than she was.

My Director of Studies is going to make sure that the exam review board people take into account all this family crap when it comes to deciding my grade. Which is pretty fucking scary. My philosophy up till now has been that if I have to acknowledge that it's all actually happening in the first place, then at least if I pretend that there's no reason for it to affect my work it'll all be OK. Totally ignoring the fact that it really, really isn't.

Maybe it's just the encroaching PMT, coupled with stress over Mum going into the hospital tomorrow, but...

damn you, human race, for being so. fucking. annoying.

Hence my not calling yuki_onna - things have been a little crazy at this end, love. Sorry. *hugs*

I've taken to getting terribly territorial whenever the unwashed masses mentions blogging. Such as the Observer today, who actually went and observed a woman updating her blog. Because this is all terribly interesting stuff, of course. Because we all sit in silk dressing gowns, sipping chilled Moet & Chandon and multitasking as we do it. Actually, besideserato probably does. I'd guess yuki_onna too, except I've actually seen her update. The reality, at least in my case, is a cup of tea if I'm lucky and replying to the odd (and they usually are odd) text message.

Anyway, I'll leave the witty rehashing of the left-wing press for suedejesus, since he's better at it than I am.

Mum's due to go into hospital tomorrow if there's a bed, she's firmly convinced that there won't be and she can spend my last week with me. I'm in favour of this plan, because I can't take the bitch attacks that my sister schedules for mum's hospital visits.

I finally emailed my Director of Studies, explaining the whole situation, after I had a minor meltdown and yuki_onna wrote it for me. She's clever with the words and stuff.

( stupid Wicked memelet )

If anyone wants me, I'll be curled up either in front of my laptop or reading Catcher in the Rye with a cup of too-milky tea, playing Springsteen and Nick Cave on a loop.

In honour of the glum mood I appear to be in, the desktop picture is now a very depressed-looking Beverly Crusher.

I don't believe in an interventionist god,
but I know darling, that you do.
If I did I would kneel down and ask
Not to interfere when it comes to you.

Goodnight.

I have a swankified new phone. Shame I can't actually work it.

stolen shamelessly from cedara


Furnulum pani nolo.
"I don't want a toaster."
Generally, things (like this quiz) tend to tick you
off. You have contemplated doing grievous
bodily harm to door-to-door salesmen.


Which Weird Latin Phrase Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

So today I go hiking with Dad. Every year, we go to Haworth, where the Bronte sisters lived, and go walking across the moors like good little literary tourists. Generally, we end up in the pub, I have progressed from orange juice to *gasp* half pints of Stella Artois in the years we have been making the above pilgramage. But not today. Oh, no. Today was different. Today we got chased down a hill by a sheep. I think it wanted our chocolate, but it was eyeballing me in a menacing manner and the fuck was I taking any chances. Advised by Dad to 'walk away slowly', I ran like hell.

If this were an April Fool it would be a lot less shameful than the fact that I got scared by a sheep.

On another note: Tonight's Murder City - how much do I want to have sex with Amanda Donohoe? Lots! And then I will steal her suits, for they are tres fabulous. Oh, to be a high-flying, hard-bitten detective inspector with killer cheekbones, a fabulous car and a wardrobe to die for.

The sex scene in The Watermelon Woman....so the hottest thing I have ever seen.

Rest of the film's pretty good too. *g*