A Study in Contradictions

ALWAYS TOO LATE.

(Lal uses self-deprecation. It's super effective?)

So I'm just getting over being mysteriously ill for the last few days, which meant among other things that I didn't get to go to a ceilidh and I didn't get to eat the chocolate and apple cake that I made. I am no longer nauseuous all of the time and I'm wearing actual clothes so hurrah for small victories? I am still stupidly knackered to the point where I have long stretches where I don't have the energy to read which never happens.

Anyway, with that cheery introduction, hello there new friends! I'm laliandra, usually shorted to Lal and then lengthened again to Lalface, Lallio, Lalafly, Lallipop, Laleth etcetcetc. If you would like fic please head thisaway, for some 140 character conversations go here and should you desire pretty things made by other people with lengthy and ridiculous tags this should fulfil all your needs. Oh tumblr, so strange, so compelling.

And hello old friends, hopefully y'all knew that already. I STILL LOVE YOU. Come, make in jokes with me in the comments.

My default icon is actually the text version of a tee-shirt slogan I came up with for a competition for sarahtales to design a tee shirt for one of the characters in her The Demon's Lexicon series, so now Mae owns one and so can you!

I like tags, baking, talking about fictional people, talking about dead people, talking about languages, talking about fiction languages, talking about dead languages, callbacks/repeated motifs, and being a hypocrite about run on sentences. I really like it when people throw things to/at one another. So The Social Network is pretty much like porn to me.

I have cunningly distracted people from noticing that I put this in every fic I've ever written, possibly with shiny airships and, er, banter.

I am currently flitting about reading in all kinds of fandoms, mostly because I am super easy to incept into something new. Just give me links and I'm probably yours for life.

Anyway, let's all get to know each other and be frans!

Apparently I'm writing this now, also.

But think, Rory, what did you say to me earlier?
Rory: Er. The mole man guy is giving me the creeps.
Doctor: Well, yes, that, think it's the fingerless gloves. Always suspicious indoors. But, yes, no, the other thing. About not being scared because of all the things you've seen, you've done.
Rory: *frowns* Yes?

I have no idea who to blame for this, but if anyone mentions #IblameLal just ignore them.

Oh man, I am so tired at the moment, and my best girl from school is here, and so I'm totally relying on Past!Lal having achieved things to put any substance at all into this post.

Luckily Past!Lal hasn't been too bad. At least she took some pictures to pretty up the place. And my friends continue to have opinions worth chronicling. Which is handy.

So! I went down to my boyfriend's parents house for a massive family party. After much preparation (during which Nat and I had the most middle-class argument ever. It was about bunting.) many friends of the family and neighbours and extended family descended on the house.

Every second conversation I had, summed up.

Me: Yes, I'm Nat's girlfriend.

Party Guest: OH! When are you getting married.

Me: *thinks* fuck RIGHT off I am TWENTY FOUR YEARS OLD.

Me: *actually says* You should ask (boyfriend's older brother) and (girlfriend)! *forced laugh*

I also met a girl who sat down by me and declared "I love this cake. I would marry this cake. I would make love to this cake." So apparently my willingness to discuss frosting sex is something even strangers can sense. Pictures! Party balloons, party tent, party dress and shoes.


Me: *posts (different) picture of self in dress to Twitter*
Twitter: CONGRATS ON THE BOOBS!
Me: *is very unsurprised*
Then on the following Monday I met my wonderful marmfish loves hanelissar, playwithfyr, hanelissarand altogetherisifor a day of geeky frolics in London Town. We had the best time. We went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at the IMAX in exciting 3D, picnicked outside of Foyles and left TDL bookmarks about the place.

And then we went to see the preview screening of Let's Kill Hitler! SO MUCH EXCITEMENT, OMG.I managed to take one, very faily picture on my phone but oh, wow, you guys, I was SO CLOSE to the front it was AMAZING.


You can read my recounting of this marvellous event at my tumblr. And if you want to talk about the episode, I can finally do that! YESSS. Not spoiling people has been really hard.

Still very conflicted about Steven Moffat. For those of you playing along at home!

The very next day, having got the bus back from London, which takes 6 hours and meant I fell into bed at 6am, I had a hanelissar to stay. She was good to me in my times of sleep deprivation, and we only wept on each other about our Big Bangs a very little bit. A forest for my pines etcetc. Also there was baking, as per. We made all manner of chocolate chip cookies. Pony cookies! Ship cookies!

For his birthday Nat got tickets to Sunday at Leeds Festival, hurrah. It. Was. Awesome. I mean, it was cold. But awesome. I got to see the National live, which I've wanted to do for an age, and I got to see my best friend Lil be in charge of lighting a whole stage, and go stand with her in the technical area which makes you feel all fancy. She is a fabulous lady doing fabulous things in a completely male dominated industry and I couldn't be prouder.

And at the end of the night we saw Pulp and it was the perfect festival experience, thousands upon thousands of people dancing and singing and yelling lyrics into the night.

LEEDS! MUD! SUNSETS! MUSIC!

In the morning I discovered that I'd sent Moog an email at 2am. I do not remember typing this email, but my inbox suggests otherwise. In it, among other, crazier things (and by that I mean all caps versions of the ridiculous AUs that we are not writing, oh no, that would be ridiculous, what, why are you looking at us like that), I continued a conversation that had started a week or so ago on Twitter.
playwithfyr

I'm like, well, I don't have anything much to say to LJ, and yet I want to update. Huh. And then I remembered that, this being my journal and all, I can do as I wish!

Here is a random list of lists of things!

1." In Things I spend Too Much Time On The Internet Doing"

I have google analytics and I find it compulsively fascinating. Did y'all know that if you have a paid LJ account you can set up google analytics on it? Because I didn't until my corner of Inception fandom all seemed to discover it at once. It's SO COOL, OH MY GOD. There is stuff I'm not surprised by (that the entry that gets most hits is Say I'm The Only Bee In Your Bonnet, for example) but there is a lot of stuff I have discovered.

a) That the disparity between the number of people who read a fic and the number of people who comment is even bigger than I thought. I mean, I'm awful at commenting so I can't talk. It's so cool knowing that lots of people are reading my stories, though. I extend my blanket affection to you, lurkers, seeing as I can't thank you in a comment reply. Just to give you an idea of what I mean, SITOBIYB, which I wrote FOUR MONTHS AGO, HOLY CRAP, still got 89 pageviews last week. No comments! 

Which is sort of related to 

b) How much traffic I owe bookshop and pyrimidine . Reccing really works, you guys. Also <3DELCIOUS<3

c) Live search is terrible. I mean, I already had my suspicions about this but really. One of the things that you can do with google analytics is see what search terms people used to get to your journal. Oh, the hilarity! But yes, all the people wo stumble here searching for things completely unrelated to my journal or things that have been mentioned once (Rhys Ifans, anyone?) have all come from Live Search. I mean, one person landed up here after just searching the word "meme". I MEAN WHAT. I don't even know how many pages you'd have to go through on google before you got to me from that. My keyword searches are not anywhere near as terrible and amazing as cherrybina 's though ("rimming the pink sock" is a personal favourite) but they do amuse me. Also, one person searched for "laliandra" but clicked straight away from this journal. As far as I can tell, I made this name up and I'm the only one out here. So. What were they looking for?

d) I can spend about ten minutes looking at the really in depth statistics before I get really freaked out about how GOOGLE SEES ALL. O_O.

2. In "Delightful Things My Friends From The Internet Have Brought Me This Week" 

Twitter Hashtag of the Week - #fishpile - referring to the mass tackle glompingsnugglehug affection of the marmalade_fish . There is always a #fishpile going on. The mood and location may change, but the pile is perpetual. Mass second place to mcollinknight and her Darren Criss tags of WIN.

Text Message of the Week -  "Do you know where the Charlie Brooker RPF is?" That was the whole thing! Best. Ever.

Unintentional IM Typo of The Week - shiningartifact for "hunky-dorky" . I plan to use this ALL THE TIME. So adorable! 

Best Email Subject Line - "lol porn"

3. In "Things My Dad brought me because he is going to Sout Africa indefinitely"

a) His old laptop which is about a hundred times faster than mine and I am very fond of already. It is the same make as my beloved but o so broken Precious, so I already know my way around and it means I can have all my things in one place \o/ The only issue is that the "h" key sometimes doesn't work so I see a lot of "te"s in my future. 

b) Food that my Granny and Great Aunt won't eat because they are diabetic: 2 boxes of chocolates, 2 boxes of biscuits, half a packet of mini eggs, a candy cane, a sherbet lollipop. 

c) A selection of bead necklaces and scarves from Granny because I once asked her if she had any in the charity shop that she works in and now she appears to hoard every one that they get. I am okay with this, especially because I've got a fabulous multicoloured ribbon and bead necklace and a bottle green pashmina, among other things. There are a couple that I am not so fond of so if anyone is after a thin scarf or bright string of beads, let me know.

d) My old collection of paper dolls. I'm not really sure what to do with them but they are so pretty, OMG. PAPER DOLLS FOREVER.

4. In "Seriously people, JFGI" 

YOU GUYS, PODFIC IS AMAZING. IF YOU WANT TO FIND SOME, GOOGLE THE WORD "PODFIC", CLICK ON THE ~FIRST LINK, PROFIT. If you want recs, ask! Otherwise *points upwards*

5. In "Things I Didn't Expect To Write This Week"
1000 words of comment fic about beaches and people expressing affection by throwing things at each other. Well. I possibly should have seen the last one coming. 

473 words of the fic I've been writing for the last year-and-a-bit.

So, there we are! How are you guys? Well? How are tricks? Tricky?

So.

2010.

I was trying to sum it up the other day for Kara, actually, and what I ended up saying was this. The highs were very high, but the lows were really, really low. And in between them there were vast periods that felt like an exercise in survival. If I can just make to the end of the month, make it to the weekend, through this one time. So, yeah. I moved in with my boyfriend and I lost my job. I started writing again in a fandom I love and I was so poor I walked for an hour across town with half of my possessions because I couldn't afford the bus. I got to spend a movie montage perfect week with my best friend and I had to sit helpless on the other side of world while someone I loved was hurting.

I enjoyed all of your company for 2010, and I love you all so much. I have really great memories of 2010 thanks to you, and I hope we get to make many, many more.

In the spirit of the thing, here are some memes! That I totally stole from mcollinknight (sorry about the sprinkles!)

First sentences of 2010:

January: Happy 2010! I had a most excellent New Year's Eve. It involved homemade hats and glitter glue, chocolate fondue, champagne cocktails from the roaring twenties, Nat making friends with a baby, much Inappropriateness and Innuendo("Is Ivy's flange warm?") and The Hat Game, Scattergories and The Humming Game.
February: I went to South Africa and as promised, bring back tales of Adventure. And I even managed not to cause any kind of international crisis (aren't you proud of me mathsnerd ?), though not through lack of trying...
March:  I have been distracted by work (which, that's a whoe other post) and going to the ballet (<3) and not being able to shake this damn cough (When you sound like Satine at the end of Moulin Rouge, it's never a good sign) and doing edits and then Word losing 13 pages of them (*shakes fist*). Huh, actually, when I put it all down, it's been more than a bit of a week. But life goes on, and so must this meme.
April: So! I am 23. It feels much as 22, only less symmetrical.
May: Hey you guys! Not dead, or time travelling. Just faily.
June: So I have been woefully sick for the last few days. It has been most unpleasant and I have been living in a cave of pillows and listening to this weekend's cricket commentary and tennis. The sound of other people excelling at sport is soothing to me!
July: Still not dead!
August: So, I have this temping job and it's kind of soul crushingly, brain atrophyingly dull
September: Currently, I spend a deal of time sitting on trains marvelling at the weather and so, as I told twitter, I want to write all the sunshine filled stories in the world. Colline instructed me to write and I can't really say no to her charming Canadian vowels.
October: I keep thinking about making a real, honest to God post. I am also thinking about some sort of Intro/Masterlist post thing because, hi new people! I'm still trying to work out what people need to know about me. Suggestions?
November: Oh, god, I haven't posted in forever and a day. Or, like, three weeks but whatever. The internet moves at the speed of light and all.
December: This weekend Nat and I went to that there Londontown to catch up with old friends aplenty. There was a concerning few days midweek when the snow got so bad that I got sent home from work and sat in the car with a co-worker (my favourite co-worker and not just because she agreed to drive me most of the way home) and we couldn't see anything beyond the front of the car bonnet. Which was a little alarming, to say the least!

LET ME JUST SAY, I AM UNSURPRISED THAT MANY OF MY ENTRIES START WITH AN APOLOGY.
( 2 more memes under the cut! )

30. One wish for '11?: Success, Batman and shininess for all

(I have just read back through this entry and. Er. Yeah. Literally the only explanation I can think of is that I have somehow got high from all the raisins I have eaten and I didn't think that was actually possible...)

S'up?

I had a lot of things I meant to do today, the main one being to go into town and get stuff to make myself a top for the samba show I am doing on Thursday (I thought it was next Thursday! This was not the case!) but, er, I did not. I mostly sat under a blanket, eaten raisins, had a really dorky conversation with my Dad in which I referred to myself as a redshirt, and read a shedload of Hyperbole and a Half.

I blame two things for this.

1. THE SNOW HAS ARRIVED. \o/! I flove snow. A lot. But I live in among scary hills (which is to say, my street is flat but ALL the streets around us are steep, and so terrifying inclines of ice and dooooom right now. This makes me less than inclined to leave the house and risk life and limb. Also I can't find my wellies and I have one (1) pair of flat shoes that don't have holes in them. And those are ballet flats with all the grip of a, I don't even know, a gloss photograph. Or that time that my housemate Belle polished our laminate floor with wax furniture polish, turning our front room into a slip n slide.

2. One of the things I need to buy is a sports bra. WOE. I hatehatehate buying underwear. Okay, sometimes buying pants is fun because they are pretty and sometimes you find ones that say I <3 Dragons. But bras are a nightmare. They are expensive and the sizing thing seems to be complete arbitrary and you have to take all your clothes off to try them on. Ugh. Also (as I know I have mentioned before and I am sure that regular readers are thinking, oh god, Lal is talking about her boobs again) I have Cleavage with a Capital C. Or, as a friend of Nat's once said, a balcony that you could do Shakespeare off. This means that it is nearly impossible to buy cheap and cheerful bras. Also the sports bra has to be some sort of miracle of modern engineering.

Anyway. One of the things I meant to do was make a post about Christmas cards/packages.

DO YOU WANT MAIL? SAY YES! I love sending out cards and random things to people.

I know I have addresses for some of you, if I have several you need to tell me which one you would like it sent to.

But everyone else, comment on this post with yours. If you don't want to share it with the world wide web then comment anonymously (just sign yourself out of LJ) and that will be screened for your protection and privacy!

Also, if you would like any specific kind of card (Christmassy, Hanukkah-y, Leeds-y, Fandom-y, Hogswatch-y, Sorry we killed Jesus-y) then tell me that too!

I'm sure I can get testimonials from people who have already given me their home deets that I have done nothing worse with it than sending them random flyers that I think are amusing.

OH, I have moved house since last year so if you have an old address (number 13) you will need to ask me for the new one (16)

Okay, I am going to go make sausage and bean casserole and watch my dancing show. And maybe write dancing fic as I do it. So far I have an appallingly soppy ending and some scenes where everyone mocks each other and Eames is deeply inappropriate. Hands up all those who are massively unsurprised by this...

YAY POST! AND ONE THING GETTING DONE! \o/!

Hey you guys!

Not dead, or time travelling. Just faily.

So, other stuff forthcoming. But, whatever, I just want to catch up with everyone, say hi, hang out, you know the kind of thing.

This last weekend I spent with my three ex housemates. I hate just calling them my friends because I lived with them for a long time - with Belle for the best part of 4 years, actually -  and it feels inadequate to use such a catch all word as "friends" that I use for people who have not nursed me through tonsillitis, seen me naked, sung along to whole of the Sound of Music, talked me through my dissertation and know who the Invisible Friends are. You can find out more about them in a rambly thing I wrote about moving out of my last house.

Anyway, they all live in London now. Wren lives on a canal boat that her boyfriend rebuilt from practically nothing, which is kind of hilarious and bohemian, and very cool. She has just got a job at Hampton Court Palace. Belle is tutoring after finishing an intern-ship at UNICEF, and wants to be an English teacher, and Sal is going to do voluntary work overseas. I don't see them as much as I'd like.

It was a very cool weekend. I got there on Friday, by coach. I seem to have perfected the art of not making people want to sit next to me on the bus, which is a life skill and probably also a troubling reflection on my ability to look like a crazy person.

We managed to get free beers in a Cuban bar, which was a better reflection on all of us, and had pizza and concerned our fellow diners by appearing to talk in code and making very loud excited noises about everything, especially the puddings. We also talked about my ongoing unemployment.

Belle *very serious*: Have you considered a life of crime?
Me: Um...
Belle: My boss at UNICEF asked me that!
Wren: You do have a very deceptive face. Just promise you won't go into terrorism.
Me: I was thinking something more along the lines of international jewel thief.
Wren: I'm sure it's a very glamorous life and not at all dangerous.
Me: Exactly. Now I know what to put on my Career Objectives.

Me and Wren were staying in the spare room in Belle's house, and even though we were both really tired, in the best tradition of the sleepover, we stayed up really late talking about nonsense.

Wren: Who is that guy who sings 'Summer of '69'?
Me: Bon Jovi? Oh, no, Bryan Adams. I get them confused.
Wren: Oh yes. I get him confused with Phil Collins.
Me: But they aren't anything alike! One has bad hair and is Canadian and the other is the fat drummer from Genesis. It's not like you are getting him confused with Ryan Adams.
Wren: There is also Ryan Adams? Who is he?

And so then I sung a lot of songs by people who were Big In The 90s. I'm still not sure if Wren knows who Ryan Adams, but my version of 'Baby, When You're Gone' was pretty good for 1.30am, if I say so myself.

On Saturday, over breakfast and Earl Grey tea, we looked at election maps and tried to work out what the hell had happened in our national election. The answer, No one Knows! Which is... confusing. Frankly. But it was interesting to see all the speculation, and also to mock the Conservatives. It's always a fun game, but tempered greatly by the thought of David Cameron representing our nation to the world. So. Upsetting.

We went to Covent Garden for lunch, which was awesome as usual. On the way there all my friends were very harsh about tourists on the Tube and I tutted at them and reminded them of their hick roots. Although, it is annoying when people stop suddenly in the middle of the corridor because they are lost. God, I'm such a hypocrite. While waiting for Sal and her boyfriend in the café we managed to accidentally steal a chair from Noted Comedian Frank Skinner.

Then we went to The British Library. It was AMAZING. Their Treasures of the Library exhibition is incredible! I saw the original copy of Jane Eyre. JANE EYRE in Charlotte Bronte's own hand. And Jane Austen's early writing and the first draft of Tess of the D'Ubervilles with crossings out and rewrites. It was so cool. We had so much fun. I love my geeky friends and our massive amounts of dorky glee.  

Then we went back and made lasagne and Wren filled me in on about a year of Home and Away. It's a seriously ridiculous Australian soap opera that we used to watch together. It mostly consisted of finding out which of the characters had slept with which others, who had died and who had been allowed to live Summer Bay and have a normal life.

Wren: And so she got cancer and died and now her brother has come back oh and do you remember Martha well her boyfriend was thought to be dead only he wasn't and she has only just found out...
Me: Did she have to go stare pensively at the sea?
Wren: For like, a whole episode. She just watched the sea and cried.
Me: I love Home And Away.
Belle's Boyfriend (who has never seen a single episode in his life): What about Bob?
Wren: What?
Me: Oh, he's dead.
*about a minute later*
BB: What about Dave?
Me: Oh, he's dead.
BB: How sad.
Me: Yeah. He drowned looking pensively at the sea.

On Sunday we went to Brick Lane market and people watched and clothes watched, which is like people watching only with more emphasis on their outfits. We had coffee and tea about once an hour because it was so cold. I also lusted after a lot of really gorgeous steampunk jewellery, including some lovely pocketwatch pendants.

All in all it was most delightful! On the bus back I curled up with some podfic (<3) and then wrote some fic. It was probably for the that no one came to sit next to me. I find it hard to write with someone looking over my shoulder.

Since being back I have caught up on my best new show (Over The Rainbow! My love knows no bounds!) and started on Kaz's best show. She sent me all of Season 2 of Supernatural on DVD. I was warned about the shows extremely poor attitude to women (someone once described it as "the show that will not suffer a bitch to live") so I went in with very low expectation. However, NO ONE WARNED ME THAT IS TERRIFYING. Holy hell. I watched some episodes alone and at night and this was a very, very bad plan. I scare easily and dislike horror movies. AHH.

Well, that is what I have been up to? How about y'all? I have missed you! Have you done or seen anything cool? Are you okay? Is there anything you want to ask me?

LET'S CATCH UP.

Happy 2010!

I had a most excellent New Year's Eve. It involved homemade hats and glitter glue, chocolate fondue, champagne cocktails from the roaring twenties, Nat making friends with a baby, much Inappropriateness and Innuendo("Is Ivy's flange warm?") and The Hat Game, Scattergories and The Humming Game.

\o/

I also kept people still living in the past apprised of the situation re: zombie uprisings and robots. Still no hoverboots. I'll keep you posted!

Anyway, today being the first, I can reveal my Yuletide story! And also talk a lot about the phenomenon known as Yuletide madness. Oh! And explain my present to my December ladies (pigrescuer  , jorajo  , miabee023  )

I wrote Tipping The Balance, a fic for The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. If you would like to go read and then come back, my ramblings below might make some sense... You can comment here or on the Archive of Our Own!

( The story of my Yuletide story, or how I stopped worrying and learnt to love my inner Neil Gaiman voice... )

And now I get to share Yuletide with everyone. Yuletide is amazing. There are thousands of fics, and I have hardly begun reading but seriously. There is fic for the unexpected and the delightful. I suggest that you go read novembersmith  's recs, and then go to her author page and read everything there, because she was a crazy, wonderful person and wrote FOUR fics and I assure you, they are all AMAZING.

Plus, she deserves some extra love, because without her, I would never have got so very much Yuletide Treasure - a wonderful story of my own, some unbelievably nice comments, the proud, real ficcer feeling of having a AO3 account and the joy of seeing so many people just being so happy and geekishly delighted by things that they love. <3

Whatever you celebrate, I celebrate you!

I am here with my boyfriend and family, ful of pie and wine and Good Cheer.

I hope all your Christmas Wishes come true, darling flistees, and that you get everything you deserve. Christmas is the time for sentimentalism, so WTH. A very Merry Everything to y'all. You rock.

Also, by this time tomorrow Yuletide fics will be up. I'll be tallking more about that soon, I am sure.

But for now, I suggest checking out everything. Yes, I mean it. There are going to be some awesome fics!

Should you wish to go hunting for mine, here is a list of what I signed up for:

Offered: Amelie (any)
Chicago (2002) (any)
Danielle Bennett and Jaida Jones - Havemercy-Shadow Magic series (any)
Eddie Izzard - Stand-Up Routines (any)
Emma (2009 tv) (any)
Enid Blyton - The Adventure series (any)
Enid Blyton - The Famous Five series (any)
Enid Blyton - The Magic Faraway Tree series (any)
Enid Blyton - The Malory Towers series (any)
FlashForward (any)
Ginn Hale - Wicked Gentlemen (any)
Gordon Dahlquist - Glass Books of the Dream Eaters (any)
Green Wing (any)
James Herriot - All Creatures Great And Small (any)
Justine Larbalestier - Liar (any)
Mack the Knife (song) (any)
Moulin Rouge (any)
My Fair Lady (any)
Mythology - Norse (any)
Neil Gaiman - The Graveyard Book (any)
Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (album) (any)
Noel Streatfeild - Ballet Shoes (any)
RPF - American Idol S8 (any)
Rocky Horror Picture Show (any) (any)
Sarah Rees Brennan - The Demons Lexicon (any)
Sarah Rees Brennan - Undead Is Very Hot Right Now (any)
Scott Lynch - The Gentleman Bastard Sequence (any)
Shakespeare - A Midsummer Nights Dream (any)
Shakespeare - The Tempest (any)
Strictly Ballroom (any)
Terry Pratchett - Nation (any)
The Sound of Music (movie) (any)
xkcd (any)

And I may have left you a clue in this post. I say nothing. I am as ninja.

*blows kisses*

So, let's talk writing...

I signed up for yuletide . \o/ It's after Bonfire Night, we can talk about Christmassy things now, right?

For those who don't know, yuletide is a fic exchange, but for small fandoms. Which I like the idea of, because some of my very favourite fandoms are, well, bijou? Cosy? Anyway, I have offered myself to write all manner of exciting things and if it all goes horribly wrong I shall be blaming novembersmith who, in the grandest traditions of the marmfish, will probably blame me...

Anyone else doing yuletide this year? Or any other kind of fic exchange? Any tips for a total newbie? I am super excited about it. I want my prompt now!

So, I am really going to have to try to finish That Damn Steampunk AU. Currently I am stalled a little, and mildly concerned that it is slightly chatchatflirtporridgechatEPICAIRSHIPBATTLEchat. Oh well. Could be worse.

It also has no name, and I can't call it SPAU for all time. It's a little like SPEW, for a start! Um, help?

It does have a kick awesome summery, though, if I say so myself. "In which Captain Kristopher loves his airship but needs a hobby and Prince Adam is unbalancing. Featuring sky pirates, political machinations, unexpected weaponry and Much Ado About Cogs"

And finally, NaNoWriMo people, how goes it? I am so proud of you all, and expect great things! I will be over here cheerleading like crazy.

Like this *\o/*

<3 Lal

ps. all y'all who had thoughts about blogging, I am in awe of your depth of thought. My flist wins at life.

So my poor kaiserkuchen is writing her thesis and needs something to cheer her up, and we all seemed to be in agreement after my last post that Winter Fashion is great, so I thought I would make a post about it! I am by no means any sort of fashion expert or Style Icon, but, hey, I like clothes, and I love to talk about them and most of all ILKAZ.

It is no secret that I love Autumn, I love the colours and the smells and Halloween (yay dressing up!) and Bonfire Night (yay fireworks!)

And it is even less of a secret how much I like getting out my winter clothes.

Let's talk coats, the most important aspect of your Winter Wardrobe!

I have a bottle green wool coat that I've had for 3 years now and still adore. It came from Topshop so it's still in pretty good nick.

I like that it's not black, and the collar and the buckles are great details. But there are so many pretty coats about this season. And there are lots of nice coats for guys, too. There is nothing more stylish than a man in a good coat... There are lots of cool military ones for both sexes, and lots of nice retro ones too, which I like because I am a retro kind of girl (only not the wanky 'oh it's VINTAGE" scenester type. I hope!)...

I especially like all the very old fashioned styled ones with nipped in waists.

Like this, or this cute blue one

Or the cool detailed, slightly Steampunkish ones like these

Or (Modcloth ftw) combine two great Autumn things into one with a plaid coat,


OMG SO PRETTY.

Wouldn't the grey one look so cool with some brightly coloured tights and a matching knitted hat? Red perhaps...

Speaking of coloured tights, I have a whole drawer of them (Verity tells me some people think this is weird. Go figure!) in all the colours of the rainbow. Pretty much. Apart from orange. I will not lie to you lovely people, Autumnal as it may be as a colour, I do not much like orange... Tangentally, what would be the American equivalent of Autumnal? Fallish? Fallen? Fell?

I love my tights, though, because they make non winter outfits (ie skirts) into something suitable for the Frozen Wasteland that is Leeds, November - February. I love my city, you guys, but goddamn it gets cold and windy. And I own a lot of black (what?!) and tights are a good way to brighten or add interest to an outfit. Plus, I wear much shorter things with thick wool tights than I would ever DREAM of without...

My current hearts desire is some cute grey wool tights, which are sassy and cute, but not cutesy. I am picky!

Like these, look how they just hint at being sexy without being, like, suspenders or anything like that. Plus, soft and warm!


My other two items on my Winterware Wishlist are a proper wool beret and some new gloves.

Now, I love all things French, and I love hats, so I should really get on and buy myself a beret already, am I right? People who know me in RL would certainly agree, because I go all ♥_♥ whenever I see one in a shop. I want a proper felt one, perhaps this adorable berry coloured one from H&M (my favourite shop in the world. About half my clothes come from there, and about 3/4s of the ones I wear regularly. Affordable and so cool!)

I would also love some new glove mitten (glitten?) things. I do have some kick awesome gloves that Nat calls my 'emo kid gloves' because they are elbow length, black and white striped gloves with black buttons down the side. But I used to have glovittens, and they were great because you can have fingerless gloves for doing fiddly things like getting your change out and texting, but still have warm fingers when you put the mitten bits back over.

Accessorize has the best selection of these kinds of gloves (they call them capped gloves but I like my smoosh words better) that I've seen. Like these, aren't they adorable?


They also have super sexy leather gloves, and normal ones with bows. Oh, Monsoon and Accesorise, why must you be so shiny, and yet so expensive...

I also wanted to talk about boots. Yay boots! Also, arg boots. Shopping for boots is like shopping for jeans (did I mention I'm picky) because you are going to be wearing them a lot and they have to fit just right. It took me about 2 years (no, really) to find the perfect pair and I plan to wear them forever. They are brown and have just enough heel. I also have some white material boots that I like to refer to as my steampunk boots and have absolutely no idea what to wear with. I'm working on it, never fear.

In conclusion, here is a what Autumn!Lal looks like, in coat and tights and boots. Do you love boots and coloured tights too? Talk fashion to me, darlings, I'm all ears under my snuggly hat.

(I'm all contradictions too, because I feel like I should make my next entry about something really deep/ungirly. I am so weird, y'all.)

( Coat love! )

Things to ignore in this picture, my face, the mess of cables on the floor, how yellow the walls look, my face, the fact that I am wearing red and green and look over Christmassy.