Just for rageprufrock...


"So this is your dirty little secret," Arthur said from the doorway.

Merlin, still dressed in sweaty scrubs from a day at the hospital, groaned and covered his face with his hands. "Ok, ok, you've caught me."

Arthur landed next to Merlin on the sofa with a thump. "Just tell me... what's the appeal?"

"Oh, come on," Merlin gestured violently at the screen. "The baby badgers are seriously cute."

Three days later, Merlin caught Arthur on the Springwatch website checking up on the progress of the sett.

This entry was originally posted at http://zoetrope.dreamwidth.org/143944.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

In the past 6 days rageprufrock and I have:

drunk
4 bottles of wine
3 bottles of beer
3 gin and tonics
2.2 bottles of champagne
2 pints of cider
1 pint of guinness
been eaten by the hedgerows once
lost one parking ticket
Eaten in 8 restaurants
spent 27 hours in the car
visited 12 towns and cities
visited 3 castles
wandered around 2 cliff-faces
fallen over on rocks a lot
tripped up narrow castle staircases several times
lied to surveyors for the National Trust
secreted 1,300 (approx) insects about our persons after time spent frolicking amongst wildflowers
gotten lost countless times

In conclusion:

( have some morally dubious Merlin slave AU )

rageprufrock and I were on our way to Bath. Eventually, we did get there. When we arrived, we duly drank a bottle of champagne, and ate Jammy Dodgers. We're just that classy.

Hear ye, hear ye!

So, following my recent poll, there will be a fannish meet-up while the delicious rageprufrock is in town.

In Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese
Saturday 23rd May
From 6pm
for drinks and maybe some food and stuff.


In case you've never been there, it's a bit of a warren inside, so we'll aim to be in the deepest (and oldest) part of the pub, but if we're not there, have a wander round. We'll be in one of the rooms! Most people should know me, I think, but if you've never met us, I'll be wearing a rose in my hair. Hopefully. If I remember! So look out for that!

Can't wait to see you all! xxxx

ETA - ooh, meant to say, please do pass this on if you think someone hasn't seen it - the more the merrier!

So the marvelous, wonderful and enthralling rageprufrock is coming to London! We're thinking of organising a fannish meet-up for one of the nights - if you'd like to join us, please fill out the poll below! It will be in the evening on one of the following dates:

Poll #1385154 Fannish fun
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

I am available on:

Where shall we meet? Merlin-related suggestions most welcome!

I'm sitting at my desk. It's lunch time. The office is empty, but I'd already eaten the contents of the local sweetshop before 11am, so I've nothing to do. Hence, here is a photo.

( workspace. boredom. )

...So if we analyse this section-by-section I think we can see that my workspace is roughly 16% work. What percentage is yours?

Meanwhile, I'm getting excited about Red Nose Day for the first time in years! Mostly because I'm hoping the Merlin peeps will do something for it.

I was so convinced I'd be able to resist the lure of Merlin. Oh, how wrong I was.

Of course, it's all rageprufrock's fault, with her dastardly awesome epic Drastically Redefining Protocol. Which I love. With the fire of a thousand very hot suns. So, with her kind permission, I made a trailer.






Drastically Redefining Protocol Trailer
Length: 1:13
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Summary: Modern!AU. In which Prince Arthur meets Merlin and all hell promptly breaks loose.
Spoilers: Hmm, not really.
File size: 27 MB
With massive thanks to rageprufrock for the love, and lim for all the help. ♥

Download from Sendspace | Watch at Imeem

ETA - I did not get my act together to sign up for 14valentines this year, which is an epic fail on my part. So, technically this isn't part of that worthy endeavour, but it is in spirit. Go check out the community!

Right now, there is a window to my right, and through it I can see the Albert Bridge. The sun is starting to set, and the lights on the bridge have come on.

I've got two hours and twenty-one minutes left of work (and counting). In that time I'll switch between Shake and Safari.

I'm also going through the Yuletide Merlin entries on my iPhone.

Work!crush is gorgeous as ever. I'm going to French Girl's on Friday for dinner, to see her new place. She's trying to get me to move in, but I'm not sure yet. Had raspberry Martinis in the Oxo Tower Bar on Saturday night. A round of three drinks cost £30. I love London by the river, best of all.

When I leave work I'll catch the bus to the station, and then sit on the floor of the train home (there are never any seats), fighting my OCD all the way. I'm winning so far today.

Okay, okay, I give in. I'm on the Merlin bandwagon. I can't resist the onslaught.

So.

Can anyone furnish me with some links to or images of Merlin/Colin Arthur/Bradley? I can find bugger all and it's getting a little frustrating as I itch to make stuff...

happy new year, my darlings.

/drunk

Started the year SG:A obsessed, ended it with a very DC Xmas. Hope you're all happy. Remind me to tell you about the guy who opened two bottles of champagne over me at the party I'm currently attending.

I hope the new year brings the best for you all.

Xxxx

Conversations I have not had with workCrush:

1.
Crush: Hey, Z, can you come over to the main table? We're going to have a quick meeting.
Me: I love you.

2.
Crush: I think you just need to saturate the colours a bit-- and put a couple of greenscreen--
Me: I love you.

3.
Crush: I think those prawns were off. I feel really sick.
Me: I love you.

It's been a close thing, though.




Yesterday, my Grandmother and I went to visit my 90 year old Great Aunt.

"I've got something for you," she said, handing me an old photograph. "It was taken by my friend Muriel."

"Oh, yes," my Grandmother said. "I met her once!"

My Auntie Cecily looked delighted. "Muriel Dearlove?" she beamed. "She looked like a boy?"

"That's right," my Grandmother nodded. "She came down to visit us in Surrey once, and her car broke down."

"Motorbike," Aunt Cecily corrected, still beaming.

This would have been in about 1950, I think. I'm completely infatuated by the idea of this woman. Muriel Dearlove, boyish photographer, riding around the country on her motorbike. A hot, female James Dean.

Later, in the car:

"What was that about her friend Muriel... what was it? Dearlove?"

"Yes, that's right," Gran said. "She never married."

"What a surprise," I laughed. "She looked like a boy and rode a motorbike. You don't think she might have been... you know... a lesbian?!"

"Well, yes, I did wonder."

Here's the second in a series of Bring Your Own Plot matte paintings that I've decided to do... I'm teaching myself how to matte paint at the same time, so bear with me *g*

Title: Witchelm
Tease:



( Click here for full version )

What I want to know is:

1. Why aren't there more stories in which John and Rodney break the bed?
2. Why, after I woke up in the night to go to the toilet, knocked over a shelf on the way there and broke the phone that was resting on it, when turning on the light to try and assess the damage, did the lights have to fuse?
3. Why, when I heard an obscure song playing in the taxi last night, did I assume that the driver had exactly the same taste as me, rather than realising I'd left my iPod on in my bag?
4. Why aren't there more Regency AUs?
5. Why does it turn me on when workCrush says anything even vaguely geeky? i.e. 'We're using a terrabyte of space on the server'?

This is the story of how being head over heels for someone at work can lead directly to being hungover, in Camden, typing on a French keyboard.

Woke up in Camden this morning with my liquid eyeliner halfway down my face. Went out with French Girl last night, started out in Soho, in Trash Palace and the Candy Bar, then on to World's End in Camden (which of these things is not the same?)

This is all because after work on Friday my colleagues invited me to the pub (shock! horror!) and I sat there as they all discussed the amazing and wonderful things they were doing this weekend with their husbands, wives and lovers. I realised what a total saddo loner I am, and panicked for a while.

So I was proactive: I phoned French Girl.

"I am watching Battlestar Galactica!" she exclaimed down the phone: "I am so in love with Starbuck! She is so butch!" (don't forget to imagine the French accent. It makes it all that little bit more interesting.)

"Let's go out drinking!" I pleaded.

"I will take you to gay bars in Soho," she said: pleased, I think, that I was finally coming out from under my duvet. Her text message the next day read: We re gonna have some fun :)x

And it was fun, though it all went a little crazy around the time we got to Camden. We walked into this old-man-style pub and it was like one of those anarchic scenes in a St. Trinian's movie - hundreds of people just... rioting, basically. I immediately felt about 100 years old and grouchy. French Girl got straight up on one of the rickety tables and started dancing. I hoped the table wouldn't collapse.

Luckily, because I'd slept all day at home, I didn't fall asleep on the bar. We left at about two and made it back to her place, which continued the tradition of the evening: there being NO toilet roll in the whole of Camden.

French Girl has woken up now. She started talking about BSG immediately:

"Shit name, Starbuck, though. It makes me think of the coffee and I prefer Caffe Nero."

♥

So, I've been thinking of making a series of SG:A matte paintings, sort of story snippets in image form, or BYOP (Bring Your Own Plot!). This might end up being a series, as I hope, but might just be this one, depending on whether inspiration strikes again, I suppose. And how crazy work gets.

So, tentatively, this is the first in a series of BYOP!images.

Title: Drowned Valley
Tease:



( Full version )

A clue in the crossword I'm doing right now is: "Imaginative penetration".

I assume we're looking for an answer more sophisticated than 'the backwards cowgirl'?

Wanna be scared? This beats Blair Witch, The Shining, and Knocked Up for sheer terror value.

I just made my first proper page edit on Fanlore. *bites nails*. But it was exciting! I can see how it could become completely addictive.

Meanwhile, OTW has made an awesome series here about vidding - the hows, whys and wherefores. Really great stuff, it made my afternoon pass much more quickly yesterday (yes, I should have been working. Shut up.) It was a little scary though, in a weird way. I feel a little like an amateur, messing around with the toys of the professionals. They all have, like, whiteboards! And special vidding drives! And I just prat around, really *g*

So, in my recent foray into crack-land, I made a somewhat interesting discovery. That the pilot for Stargate: Atlantis is almost the exact plot of The Wizard of Oz. There are two main differences: that John takes (most of) his friends with him - although they are all virtual strangers, so I'm not sure this one counts anyway - and that John stays in Oz Pegasus at the end of the episode. Crucial, of course, for a TV series. I'm sure Dorothy would have stayed in Oz, if she'd had a 22 episode commitment.

Meanwhile, we have a run-in with the Wicked Witch, whom John inadvertently angers, and this culminates in he and his friends being held in the witch's castle, John having to defeat her in order to save the day. In this telling, I would say that the Wizard of Oz is arguably Atlantis itself, a mysterious and somewhat dangerous being. As well, Atlantis looks almost identical to the Emerald City in the original movie. Just... bluer.

Rodney is of course the Cowardly Lion. Ford, in an unkind reading, could be seen as the Scarecrow (especially in later episodes - prime/not prime being a good example). But who needs a heart? Teyla? The metaphor being her necklace/the ties to the loves of her past and family culminating in her and John finding an emotional connection?

Anyway, er, this amused me muchly. And that's all really!

Here's a little bit of fun for you. My love letter to SG:A fandom:



Title: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain
Length: 2:19
Pairing: Gen! Or... "there is no way that a Shep vid to a song made famous by JUDY GARLAND is GEN, but thank you for playing! BWAH." Ces.
Summary: Over the rainbow.
Spoilers: Through season five aired eps.
File size: 46.5 MB

WATCH ON MY WEBSITE

DOWNLOAD FROM SENDSPACE

WATCH ON YOUTUBE



Hope you enjoy! :)

I'm kind of over this whole being-a-grownup, working-for-a-living thing.

The place I'm working keeps extending my contract which, on the one hand, yay money. On the other hand, I've been looking forward to lazy unemployment for a while now.

I've got three (3!) vid ideas that I want to work on - one of which I have a rough cut of - but I can't do that until I can get away from London and back to my home town where my beautiful computer lives. So all these fun projects are on the back burners for a while, and every time I start counting down to when I'll be able to work on them, the date is pushed back once more.

All this is probably not helped by the fact that, while the place I'm working is perfectly pleasant, no one really goes out of their way to be friendly, so I'm fairly isolated. I sit in this little section of the office on my own, and no one greets me in the morning or invites me out for lunch. And my mental health hasn't been great recently, which is not helped by this enforced isolation. I spend most of my time bugging people via email!

On the other hand, it's awesome being in London and getting to see Juicy and DMJ all the time, and my lovely iPhone now means that I'm no longer feeling stranded without internet at my dad's house.

Also, podfic is my refuge at the moment. It occurred to me today, as I was buying my breakfast, that it feels delightfully subversive to be handing over my £1.20 while listening to a pretty hard-core sex scene. I had to fight from blushing, but I was still pleased. My own personal rebellion. Yay for fandom, slash, and podfic, say I.

I'm more than ready for it to be Christmas already, please, any time now, okay?

Things I've been enjoying recently:

Newsweek's 'Inside the Election 2008' article. Long and fascinating. Good way to kill time at a boring job!

We Feel Fine: An exploration of human emotion, in six movements (but less pretentious than it sounds!)

The Telegraph have a crazy signs section, some of which I think are fake, but many of which are completely hilarious. This is my current fave:

I was up at three am here in the UK, watching the final votes come in from the West Coast, and eventually tearing up during his speech. What an incredible victory. Congratulations.