Please, have a cake. 

I'm laliandra , mostly shortened to Lal. I'm prone to rambling, spontaneous singing, sarcasm and absent-mindedness. I wish I could carry the whole of XKCD round with me to sum up my life. I would kind of like to be a con woman or a Blue Peter presenter when I grow up.

I have a livejournal account that I live at, a Twitter account (now locked but feel free to add me) that I mostly use to flail at people and an AO3 account that I love.

I write fanfiction and my Master List is under the cut. I feel so accomplished, you have no idea. This is literally the most organised thing in my entire life.

Um, my feeling about friending is, essentially, YAY FRIENDS \o/

Please, do friend me, and then leave me a comment so I know who you are and so we can get to know each other. This is the place to ask any questions that you might have or say hi or point out any terrible typos or bad Americanisms or general fails I have made in my fics. Seriously, it takes a village, you're welcome to join mine.

( MASTER LIST! )

More About The Author :D

Due a nomadic childhood I have a weird nowhere accent that confuses people. Once upon a time I was a student of French and History and I still love to talk languages (moods! Loan words! translation loss!) and how the people of the past are not the Other but just us, then. I recommend books both personally and professionally and inhabit a tiny London flat with my tiny girlfriend and a large stuffed octopus.
bookdeyada_clubmarmalade_fish

I love a lot of fandoms and a lot of things that I am not actively fanish about but would love to ramble and squee with you about!

So, yes, anything you want to know, just ask! Here are some suggestions which I have shamelessly stolen from other posts. Top Fives! Random Facts about one of my Fics (like DVD extras only ramblier)! The Inside The Actor's Studio Quiz! Or anything you like.

 Hey guys!

I have about 4 posts that I want to make queued up in my head, so here we go! This one has the vague theme of "I made a thing! Would you like it?"

First of all, I took part in podklb's amazing Awesome Lady Podfic Anthology project for the halfamoon  fest, which celebrates fabulous ladies. A whole bunch of awesome podficcers read ficlets from the Awesome Ladies Ficathon. 

You can download the anthology as a podbook here (right-click and save), and there are alternate ways to download at the master post (for example, you can browse by fandom and DL individual files).

It was a really great project to be a part of, I had a lot of fun recording my two ficlets and I've listened to the whole thing all the way through once and plan to re-listen approximately five billionty times. There are over 70 ficlets read by many really amazing ladies, and I know I'm going to enjoy it so much. Even the fandoms that I don't know, I have loved the ficlets for.

Anyway, podklb is a superstar for organising and collating it, and all the readers did a bang up job, so y'all should DOWNLOAD, LISTEN, COMMENT, PROFIT \o/

I recorded two ficlets, one from the Awesome Ladies Ficathon and one from the Real Woman Fest. I've never recorded anything properly before and it was difficult and strange and great. You can download and listen to them if all you want is to hear my Mysterious Cadences but I really recommend the whole project :D

Also, yes, I am aware of the horrible background buzz. I tried, god knows how I tried to get rid of it, but essentially Audacity hates me and my face. Woe. 

I'd love to know what you thought of them!

It All Makes Sense In The End
Fandom: Dr Who 
Original Ficlet by chaletian  

I love Amy Pond. Like, infinite amounts of love for her. And Eleven. And Rory. So, this was super fun for me, and I got to do an Eleven ramble and OH AMY, YOU ARE THE MOST SASSY AND WISE AND FABULOUS.

After All These Years.
Fandom: Kate Winslet RPF
Original Ficlet by gretazreta 

So podklb was like, I would die of happiness if someone recorded this and I aim to kill please. This fic is lovely and lyrical and so, so smart, and Kate's actress POV is perfect and it makes her and Leo make so much sense to me. 

Aaaaaand for nearly a year the lovely brimtoast and I have been running this little thing called bookdeyada_club (which used to be at a journal but we've made into a comm). It's an extremely cool fandom centric bookclub. Which is to say, we all come from fandom so when we talk books we use internet language and talk Fake Boyfriend tropes and sometimes I say ridiculous things like I think fanfic is our fairytales and people agree and there is unadulterated squee. It's a really friendly, smart, comfortable place and I love it a lot.

We read a book every month. Members nominate a book and then we have a comm wide vote to pick. Nominations for our next book open on Monday!

And seeing as we've moved to a proper community and we're getting older and wiser, we are having a membership drive of sorts! So if this is something you think you'd like please join us (watch me try and fail to sound creepy. Join usssss). Or help us pimp our lovely club with these amaaaaaaaaazing banners that the super talented miabee023 made for us :D


Other than that, how are all y'all? Any questions? Let's talk *chinhands* 

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.

So, I suspect that y'all suspect me of having achieving great and marvellous things in my absence from your flists.

This is sadly not the case.

Sorry.

My boyfriend Nat has been working away, many miles away for the last month, only home at the weekends. So I've been Home Alone. I meant to get a lot of stuff done, mostly writing and maybe some recording. But mainly what I did was mope around the house, watching a lot of crap TV and eating biscuits. Sulkily.

I also went to work. Work sucks, I know, right? It's reached a stage with my co-workers which feels very Assimilate or Die. Like, I have next to nothing in common with any of them, and they are not interested in most of the things I am passionate about and. I can either keep myslef to myself and listen to the music that I like and podfic. Or I can feign an interest in things I really don't care about (can I fake it about fake tan?) and stop myself making sarcastic comments (I swear, I don't mean it badly, it's my sense of humour)  and using complicated words (which Karen [who thought that euthanasia was a country] accused me of doing to take the piss). Stop being the proper version of myself. I don't know. I think I've got so used to being with people like, well, like you guys. Who send me tweets supporting my choice to grin like an idiot while I rewatch clips of Glee on the train and who use words like, "proselytize" and who blame me and &hearts me and squee about sexy revelations with me and just GET ME. 

ANYWAY. Enough of my angstface/FANDOMADORATION. Seriously though. You guys. <3.

Let us focus on what I actually have achieved...

I made my Master List/ Introduction Post! VICTORY IS MINE AND IT COMES IN DELICIOUSLY LISTY FORM. It took me an upsettingly long time because livejournal hates my face and also my attempts at html. Oh, so very much html. So, new friends, old friends, lurkers, please feel free to go comment and ask anything you would like to (I have included suggestions but have no doubt you'll think of something much more awesome) or just marvel at the amount of of RPF I seem to have ended up writing \o?

I read Who Fears Death for bookdeyada and it was amazing and set in Africa and full of fabulous female characters and non Western mythology and, ugh, I loved it so much. I love it when you get to the end of a good book and you just feel this really bone deep feeling of satisfaction, you know? Shoe joy is all glitter shiny and instant but book joy is real fulfilment.

I recorded myself playing television theme tunes on the kazoo and singing show tunes for various people, thus proving that I probably shouldn't be left on my own for long periods of time.

I broke my laptop charger dancing to My Chemical Romance but now have a new, shiny one that actually works properly and not just in one special position which takes forever to find. My precious laptop, I have missed you so! *pets, gently* 

I signed up for Muskrat Jamboree which is a very very awesome fandom convention. In America. So, yeah. I AM GOING TO AMERICA and I am going to stay with brimtoast in New York and meet shiningartifact and novembersmith and swiiftly in Boston and we are going to a FANDOM CONVENTION and OMG I AM SO EXCITED CAN YOU TELL?!?! So, if you are in the New York or Boston area around the end of March/start of April we should totally meet up and have coffee or something. I plan on riding the A train and charming people with my accent!

I have been around on other parts of the internet, even though I have been a terrible poster. I have been on twitter, like, all the fricking time. I live on Twitter. How did I survive work without Twitter? I have a service that allows me to use Twitter like a text message, where I just write out the message and send it to a number, which I find extremely cool. I get to text people all over the  world for free! So I was discussing the Glee version of Teenage Dream as sung by AVPM's Darren Criss with kaiserkuchen  and she made an excellent point and so I replied

Yes, yes eye fucking, exactly \O/

You may notice the distinct lack of an @ at the beginning of that tweet (incidentally have I mentioned that I hate almost all the words associated with Twitter? Tweeting *shudders*) so of course it or rather Yes, yes eye fucking, exactly \O/
 showed up on EVERYONE's feed. There was some confusion, but mostly in a "Oh, Lal, what is it this time?" kind of way. Which I appreciated. I feel it is a fairly accurate summary of my feelings on the subject anyway. It is extra amusing to me because just a few days I had been telling Kaz that it is basically my greatest fear that one day I will accidentally text Twitter instead of my boyfriend... I mean, going on what most of our conversations are like it will be something about the weather or poorly spelled shop signs but YOU NEVER KNOW. 

I wrote a teeny tiny sequel to my Inception subway!AU fic, (AKA the fic of nothing but crosswords and snarkary, or My Subconscious Loves You, brimtoast) for bookshop 's fluff meme. I am well, well aware that this is NOT what I am supposed to be writing, but anyway, I did. This is because I am powerless to resist the lure of being ordered to write something delightful and schmoopy and because the fluff meme is like a big fuzzy blanket that I can wrap myself in after a particularly crappy day and because I wanted to do something nice for many reasons but mainly, as I said to C,  because sometimes people in fandom are dicks. There is a little more further down the thread, by the way, so scroll down if you feel your sugar levels can take it...

I also went dancing a lot, which remains awesome. We are doing a samba routine at a Carnaval club night in December and my friend is trying to persuade us all to wear bikinis. I will be on Team More Than Bikinis, Oh Please, For The Love Of God, but I suspect my team will not win. Possibly we need a snappier name. 

And you guys? How have you been? Didja miss me?! 

Things I have not been doing: Posting

Things I have been doing: Rewrites. Rewrites of rewrites. Seeing Adam Lambert (!!!). Making a flux capacitor. Being rained on.

So, this is me apologising for the lack of me, and then leaving again. :)?

Also, this is to say

YOU SHOULD ALL CHECK OUT THE BOOKDEYADA DISCUSSION IF YOU HAVE READ THE HUNGER GAMES BY SUSANNE COLLINS.


bookdeyada is a super awesome bookclub where people say smart things about books and also we are fannish and delighted and seriously, people are SO SMART.

Go! Go! Go!

Yes, I am just here to tease and pimp. What can I say, the innocent face is deceptive...

So, I am home for a weeks holiday on the Isle of Man. It's fairly lovely, I went to a wind orchestra concert and out for teas and lunches and such. I'm staying with my Granny and my Great Aunt, who are both, in the grand tradition of my family, crazy-awesome. Also their cat Alfie who is the least subtle cat in all the world. He likes to drape himself across my lap and demand stomach skritching. It's pretty good.

Anyway, I have been supposed to post about this for ages but my internet access here is limited and I have been distracted by trying to write make out scenes (ARGHARD). But I digress from the matter at hand, which is that I have exciting news!

So, books are great, right? And talking about books is great, and the internet is great and fandom, fandom is fantastic. Well, the lovely brimtoast and a couple of other equally lovely people (and myself) decided that the only way to make these things even better would be to combine them all.

So, we present bookdeyada , a fandom book club! And you should all come play with us! We are going to read abook a month and I loooooooove talking books with y'all and it's going to be SO MUCH FUN.

And yes it is called bookdeyada mainly for my own amusement (and hopefully the amusement of others).

You can go now and nominate a book for April. So, you should totally do that, or just wait for a decision and then join in the discussion. You don't need to be all Literary Criticism about it, you can just read the book and go EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! with other people. Just, book clubs are so much fun, but it isn't possible for everyone to get to a real life one . And in this book club you can compare characters to Remus from the Shoebox project or talk about slash and canon vs fanon and shipping, because it's a fandom book club. How cool is that?! I am excited! I don't know if the exclamation marks made this clear enough!

GO! THE POWER OF LAL COMPELS YOU! ADD US A FRIEND! NOMINATE A BOOK! READ THE SUPER COOL INTRO!

Or you can ask me questions first. But I recommend doing BOTH. Then come tell me all about how you have joined and how awesome it is going to be!

bookdeyada , bookdeyada , bookdeyada , bookdeyada !

I am going to try and be organised today!

First OoB: IT'S JUNE. Which means it's Book Day, aka the release day of The Demon's Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan (sarahtales ).

Do not walk, run and go and purchase this book! DO IT! Ahem. Seriously though, it's the best book I've read all year, and I have read many books, many of them excellent. I can't think of a single reason why not. Also, the fandom is kickass, and you get to be a marmalade_fish .

I fail at summerising, so here is the book in 20 words, according to Miss Rees Brennan " Fencing. Fighting wolves with bike chains. Torture. Demons. Magicians. Ravens. Books. Families. Rooftop chases. Lies. More lies. Love." If you need more convincing I will explain why any one of these things is impossibly awesome.

Second OoB: My brain twin mcollinknight has returned to us from Kenya! So I am Order of Businessing in her honour. She built a school, people, I have no words for how sparkling she is.

Third OoB: SUMMER. HOTHOT SUMMER. I am so happy that it is hot and sunny. I love Leeds in the summer, because of the park.

( It was sunny a second before )

Everyone goes and plays and sunbathes and meets up and barbeques. It's brilliant. What did I do in the park? Well firstly i wore a very large straw hat. But I also had a range of fun activities
( I love my notebook! )
Eating ice lollies, reading the paper/doing the crossword, reading The Demon's Lexicon, again, and writing Jenn's birthday story.

Which brings me to my Forth OoB: Namely, it may seem like I haven't been writing a lot but, um, I've been hiding it away! I've been doing bits and dabs of writing for a cute AU, which kind of borders on RPS, and I didn't know if all y'all would be okay with that. But, well, I'm enjoying it, and I like what I've written more than anything I've done in a long time, and so if you would like to read it, I am going to unlock it/link. There is kissing in the rain, the throwing of inanimate objects and boys being hopeless! But also, it uses real life politicians and pundits, so if you feel uncomfortable with that, cool, I'll warn, and I really, really don't mind if you don't read it.

OoB Five: Mission 101! Holy crapola, this is late...

I have

• made Thai Green curry from scratch.
• made Eccles cakes, which are a northern tradition, and very yummy, pastry and dried fruit affairs. I love making pastry!
• Completed The Guardian crossword, in ten mintues flat! 4/10
• Begun an address book.
• Ginone for drinks with people from French and a photo exhibition with Melinda.

I didn't drink champagne on Mum's birthday. I was busy and poor and in the middle of exams. I might make that a different goal, IDK.

So I'm feeling very summery in a dress I got for free, with the summer stretching out before me, full of potential. I'm pretty damn happy right about now.

[Error: unknown template qotd]I know this is late but I went to watch The Official Secrets Act play instead of posting this. I feel it was a fair trade off!

So I have made a few new friends (if by 'made' you mean 'was friended by because I am a terrible wuss and fail at friending', and I do), so I thought this would be an opportune moment to fill you all in, and sneak in some extra stuff for those already in the know. Also, to me this seems like a question that could mean two things.

HI! Lets get to know each other better!

I go by the name of Lal round here, and sometimes IRL too. (Hi people-who-already-knew-that. I can't think of anything extra to put here, apart from that sometimes I am also the Maven of Cupcakes, which was news to me too!)

I study French and History -more on that here- at the University of Leeds. I should really be doing scary Final Year work instead of doing this. (and I am drowning in books and post-it notes.)

I live in a house at the end of a terrace with 3 other girls, Belle, Wren and Sal. They are charming and fabulous and put up with my absent-mindedness with great forebearance. (Also, sometimes we all sit around the table with tea and biscuits and talk about Narnia for hours on end.)

I have some too good to be true friends, but mostly they are a bit odd. I have a boyfriend called Nat, who has a grown up job and who lives to mock me. I have a slightly crazy family (you know, the type who people meet and go "Ah, I see, this explains a lot"), who are mostly in the Isle of Man or South Africa. Which are 2 of the places I grew up. (my crazyawesome Granny sent me a book about emoticons and an Aero bar today)

In regards to this journal, I have a Mission101, which I try and update every month, and I like to talk about books, languages, random things that happen to me, music and anything that takes my fancy. My most used tag is crazy conversations. I don't update everyday, but often. I often make bad jokes and literary references. Sometimes there are pictures of cake. (I think I am quite good at commenting and the like, no?)

Recently I won an Advanced Reader's Copy of Sarah Rees Brennan's- sarahtales - book. I love her blog and her writing and fangirl her madly. (And it came today!!!! With a really sweet message! I am throughly gripped and delighted already.) So you'd need to know that I will probably mention her too.

My fandoms are wide and varied, I write fanfiction occasionally, and I run a Sekrit Book Club, but mostly I lurk in corners and am generally delighted by people's creativity, involvement, silliness, insight and ability to bring the lulz. (that means you guys!)


If there's anything you would like to know, feel free to ask. Suggestions here.

The question is weird though, because to me it initially sounded like, if someone you already knew read this journal, what would they need to know?

Well, they would need to know that I have probably given them a pseudonym. That I love my lj, but no, I don't tell RL friends about it. This is mostly because it contains Things That I Have Written, which I neurotically cannot show to people face to face. I wouldn't have to tell them that I am weird, because that, they already know...

The line between RL and online stuff is a strange one, essentially. I might need to think more and post more later. What do you think? I would write more but I need to finish my ARC!

Many Things!

Bloody hell, you guys, organising the Sekrit Book Club is both fraught and fabulous. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sorry, the First Rule of Sekrit Book Club is, Don't Talk About Sekrit Book Club. If you do, come on, join in!

Tangentally, the last time sarahtales  put up a cookie from her book I mentioned that it made me think of Alan teaching Nick with butter knives, which led disorderedmess  to draw this. Cute, n'est pas? Even though it kind of shouldn't be.

The cutest thing, however, has to be the companion for Princess Micie that cellophane_ria  drew especially for me!  Meet Miss Malin Mouse. She is just ADORABLE. I haven't had anything drawn for me in, well, ever. Many hearts and kudos for her <3.

Also, everyone in the world should go and read Wicked Gentlemen, by Ginn Hale. I have about half of a Review and Reasoning post done, so if you need more reasons you should have them soon. But trust me, its excellent.

I loved it, and wanted more of it, and so I wrote some fic for it, well, more of a drabble really. The book has an amazing style to it, which means that I am torn between feeling proud and worrying that it is horribly overdone and off the mark. I have never been so torn by something I've written! So please, for the sake of my sanity, tell me about it.

Its partly for Nat, who put up with me being the horrible stereotype of a writer and getting up at 2am to write some of this down. I am that cliché. I once wrote a scene on a napkin.


Title: Impact
Fandom: Wicked Gentlemen
Pairing: Belimai/Harper
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 440
A/N: For the disconnected, and for our tiny but talented fandom. Set in between "Crooked Teeth" and "Liar".


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