A Study in Contradictions

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

Hello and welcome to the SPAU special bonus features!

First, art! I started writing this story a very long time ago, as evidenced by the fact that this was my Christmas present from brimtoast in 2009. It was a commission by celestialsoda (who seems sadly to have disappeared) of the opening scene and I love it beyond the telling of it. My reaction was the shriek MY BOYS over and over again. It's sort of giant, fyi.

( Giant Picture Behind Cut! )


I also have a playlist of sorts. I mean, I’ve been writing this for so long that I have burned through a lot of songs, whole albums in fact. But these are my best of the bunch (with apologies to altogetherisi because I realised after I’d made her a playlist that there were quite a few SPAU songs on it and thanks to miabee023  for sending me awesome mixtapes that make me seem way cooler than I am) and I hope you like them. All of the artists are amazing, you should buy all of their albums :D

Download You Can’t Divide The Sky

You can also find this story at the AO3 or you can download the amazing, totally gorgeous .pdf version that shiningartifact made. It is so pretty! #fontlove

Um, yes, and if there’s anything anyone wants to know, feel free to ask here. I feel like something of a narcissist but people said they had questions and I will happily talk about this ‘verse for all of time.

Recently several very different people have expressed Great Shock and something close to outrage at the fact that I do not have a twitter account.

Technically I do. I just wanted to make sure no one stole my name, and then ignored it.

SO. People of the internet. What is so good about this fancy 140 character phenomenon? Alternatively, is there any evidence that twitter is, in fact, the devil (oh ontd_ai , will I never tire of your in-jokes)?

I am ready to be swayed either way!

PS. Has anyone else noticed that the chorus of this



which is the theme from Andrew Lloyd Webber's catastrophe new musical Love Never Dies

is EXACTLY the as the chorus to this -



from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical The Beautiful Game.

I am annoyed and wish to share this with the internet.

Man, maybe I should get twitter.

So it turns out Finals are hard. Who knew?

I think all my fevered brain can cope with is a music meme!

1. Reply to this post and I'll assign you a letter.
2. List (and upload) 5 songs that begin with that letter.
3. Post them to your journal with these instructions.

The lovely scrtkpr gave me the letter 'I'. I've realised I pick songs because either they remind me of good times, plus they produce a really good scene for a movie in my head. I'm not alone right, other people make stories for songs, right? Right?!

1. I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You by Black Kids - This was a song that I danced to like an idiot in dingy indie clubs, yelling out the numbers with Lil. Plus the lyrics are sneakysmart and I love the cute synthy bass line. (in this scene our hero watches the girl of his dreams and knows she would be happier with him. Oh unrequited love.)

2. It Hurts to See You Dance So Well by The Pipettes - Hee! I just realised what a pair of songs these are. But anyway, I want to be a Pipette! They are all 60's girlband harmonies with funnier, feminist lyrics and they wear a lot of polka dots. (Girl realises that funny friend she always went dancing with was the one for her, but now he's moved on?)

3. Is It Any Wonder by The Shortwave Set - Not Keane. Though that is a good song too. I just really like this, all rains of piano and timpani thunder, with a dreamy vocal. I think I love this song because it creates more of an abstract mood, all pensive and sweet. And it reminds me of First Year of uni, all NBNW-ish cold rooms with thin walls and strange and strangely fun housemates.

4. In The City by The Jam - I was brought up on The Jam, my Dad is a huge fan. The Venn Diagram of my parents' musical tastes had a very small intersect, so I got a varied musical education, to put it mildly. And I like the spikiness of this. (OK, so clearly this is a stop motion type montage of friends going round a city centre, looking at the sights and messing around and generally laughing at each other.)

5. I See You, You See Me - I usually hate so much pure emotion in a song, but this so, so lovely. I think because it is fragile somehow, and kind of dark in places, and all at sea about love and yet saying that is okay. It's someone who doesn't really understand or usually believe in love, falling hopelessly. (this one has such a clear story. Really. I think that's probably why I am so fond of it. Shall we say it wraps up our dancing duo's story?)

Ok, so I'm only supposed to do five. But I have a shortlist of 21! So I'm adding a few bonuses

It's Not The End Of The World by Super Furry Animals - I have a bit of an on-off thing with the Super Furrys. I tend to forget about them and then have a song come on and go "wait! I love this song! Why don't I listen to them more?" I think this is actually a good example of all the things I like about them, gorgeous arrangements with sweeping strings and unashamed brass and random glingly things. And the fact that you can hear the Welsh accent so strongly. Lovely. (To me, this is a packing up and moving on kind of a song. Our heroine is sad to leave this room, this life behind, but she knows that she has to start a new chapter and move on. So she puts the last thing in the box and smiles.)

I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked by Ida Maria - This is a song of summer memories. It was just everywhere last year, in between my travels and watching festivals on the television in our new house in Leeds, sitting on the back step reading or watching the Olympics. It was a good summer. And the song is funny and cute and come on, that is a brilliant chorus. And Ida Maria is mad and unusual and I really like her voice. (Bad, bad friends with benefits, awkward knocking into things undressing and laughter filled flirting, all cut together)

I Only Want To Be With You by Dusty Springfield - Mum's music taste this time, and one of my all time great loves, Dusty Springfield is completely marvellous and I kind of worship her. Anyway, this is so sweet and happy! Which is a nice note to end on.

Hope alls well with all y'all! Want to play along?

Requests at the end, first, DELIGHT!

I am delighted, yet again, because my tee shirt came! You can buy them at Shop Marmalade!  It's much greener than it looks in the picture. It's uber soft as well, you know how tees shirts get after you've had them a little while, only this came like that.

Here is a picture of me being a total poser in it.
( Je suis poseur )

And also what I believe they call 'The Money Shot'
( isn't the lettering the CUTEST?! )

I have also found out that you can preorder my friends' band's album from Amazon! I find this remarkably exciting. They are unfairly talented and charming boys, who always have something smart to say. For example, regarding So Tomorrow, one of my favourites, they say

The song was written for a friend of ours who was so anxious about his future and his decisions that he couldn’t move forward at all. OSA have on occasions found themselves equally bewildered by the choices that they see before them. We live in a dual world where every small personal decision we make might have enormous consequences; eg. when OSA buy a cheap pair of trainers are we saving money so we can pay our rent, or are we supporting the abuse of a 14 year old in a sweat shop in the Phillipines? AAAAAAAAAAAAAggggggggggggg