girlofprey

HELLO! Happy Easter. It's a bit belated, but I'm still saying it in the spirit of the holiday. I hope you all got great eggs, or egg-equivalents.

This post could just be a list of my irritations lately. Number one on that list is the fact that my Hotmail account recently 'upgraded' me to Outlook, and a feature of my new inbox is apparently that it will only let me open emails sometimes. Sometimes if I right-click on an email first, that helps. Sometimes going to the page to create a new email, and then back again helps. Sometimes it just lets me open my emails. Sometimes NOTHING helps. I have sent Microsoft a bit of 'feedback' about this feature. They assured me that they can't get back to every complaint and situation personally. So I am probably on my own with it. To be honest though, all they could probably do is send me an email, which I couldn't open. So the annoyance continues.

I'm going to try not to let this post become just a list of irritations though.

My birthday on Wednesday went pretty well, all things considered. Mum and I got to Leeds, we had a pretty nice day walking around, seeing all the shops I haven't seen in a few months at least. I put my name down for that jewellery making course again. We had a nice lunch and I bought myself some things. Then that evening we went out for a meal at a local restaurant we haven't been to for years, which has improved quite a lot since we last went. I had a Bolognese pizza, which I assumed would be a pizza with like mince and tomato topping. It turned out to be a pizza smothered in Bolognese sauce, to the point where you couldn't see the cheese anymore. It was delicious though. The only hiccup came when my sister called, needing mum to immediately give her some money for - reasons. Mum hadn't mentioned, as usual, that we were even going out for a meal, so she had to reveal that while having the argument, and setting a (pretty short) amount of time we needed to be back from the meal by. But mum's car had also ended up having some sort of wheel problem that caused it to start glowing red on the five minute drive from our house to the restaurant, so in the end we decided to leave the car where it was, tell my sister we'd transfer some money when we got home rather than going up to her house, and walk home in the light snow. It was quite pleasant and my sister didn't particularly blow up at not having been invited anywhere with us. She might be coming for Easter dinner tomorrow though, so we'll see if she says anything then.

And since then the weather seems to have not been as bad. I'm putting that down to the glory of my birthday. No-one can prove differently.

The Mass Effect fandom is still proving unsatisfying. That's an irritation. It's like every pairing I'm genuinely interested in has either no or little fic with male Shepard, but at least some or quite a lot of fic with female Shepard. IT'S LIKE THEY TOOK THE FIC I WANTED AND PUT IT BEHIND A GLASS WINDOW. But it's fine. In more my frustrated moments I think uncharitable things about the situation - but I know it's more likely that, like I said, the people who would normally write slash are writing fem!Shepard. Or maybe the voice acting of fem!Shepard is just a lot better and more suggestive or something than male Shepard. I would write mal!Shepard, but that make him sound evil. ManShep. I think that's the preferred fan name. Some people though, they write about their pairings and say their OTP is "femShepard/whoever". It's not even like it's "Shepard/whoever, but my Shepard is femShepard". IT'S LIKE THEY LITERALLY THINK A PAIRING IS MORE SHIPPY WHEN ONE OF THE PAIRING IS FEMALE RATHER THAN MALE. Even though the character is supposed to be essentially the same whether you play them male or female. Even though other characters treat you pretty much the same, as far as I know, whether you're male or female. Even though the game is set in a fictional future where gender is supposed to matter less. Or is vague enough that you can decide how much gender matters. It's fine though. It's fine.

Also, there are obviously quite a lot of men in the fandom, even on the kinkmeme. It's hard to tell when everyone's anonymous, and I really don't want to get into a mindset of "that's a male sort of prompt" or "no woman would want THAT". But there was a least one prompt where someone insisted that Shepard's love interest should be female no matter what, because reading about guys might be great for 'you ladies', but wasn't for them. Also there seems to be a lot of prompts about "[one of the villains] takes all of the female members of the crew hostage and uses mind control to turn them into willing sex slaves". In that way that doesn't sound like they're interested in said female crew members' perspectives on the events/ Also, any prompt for femslash that includes the phrase 'explore each other's bodies' I automatically assume is from a straight guy, and I also decide to never read it. And it's fine and all, and gender equality and safe open spaces on the internet. But. Blagh.

Also the other day I read an analysis of Labyrinth, probably one of my favourite films, that claimed it was obviously a manual for creating a slave through mind control (Warning: that article has some probably EXTREMELY triggering material in it, also a bunch of moving gifs in the background that are probably an epilepsy risk). Which disturbed me quite a bit for a few days, partly because it's always weird when someone puts a much darker spin on a kid's films you like, and partly because mind-controlling someone through traumatising them is both horrific, and you know, a thing people actually pretty much do. But I went back to the person's Tumblr a few days later, actually to see if they were male or female since there was something off-putting about the tone of the article (they're female), and...it became clear exactly HOW MUCH they believed in the Illuminati, and 'a shadowy malevolent organisation controlling popular media'. So yeah. That kind of put it into perspective. Not that I don't think there's a shadowy malevolent organisation controlling popular media. I just think they're called 'cunts'.

Also, today cakesy mentioned Love Shack by the B52s on Twitter, and it reminded me yet again of another Love Shack song that I've been trying to track down for years, but seems to be extremely elusive, even to Google. By sheer force of will and googling every lyric I could remember, I found this page, which has the exact lyrics of the song I am thinking of. That is the song. But it claims it's by 'X', which may not be a real band, and if it is Youtube and Amazon haven't heard of it. All that comes up in the B52s. My long and possibly fruitless quest continues.

But on the other hand, I have jellybeans. Which always makes me happier. And I have an Easter egg. And some of the fic in the Mass Effect fandom is great. And a bunch of the old Nick Cave CDs I used to own or at least have access to and finally got around to buying this week have arrived so I HAVE THEM. And the sun was out for at least a couple of hours today. OH, and I was flipping through channels today and randomly found a new series of Moonshiners! I love Moonshiners. I don't know why, but it always seems to make me smile. Today I found out where the phrase 'bootlegging' comes from. I wish they would put it on primetime once a week, or bring it out on DVD so I could watch it at my leisure, instead of all in a clump on a documentary channel when I'm not really ready for it or I know my dad will want the TV after an hour or so. But still, Moonshiners! J'adore it. So it's not all been bad.

I went into Wakefield today, after an appointment with my employment coach woman, and I found an item that's almost as amazing as the swordgun - the knuckleduster-bag. I tried one, and the rings genuinely do make it easier to hold the bag, and also, to punch someone in the face. One day, my friends, I plan to amass a whole arsenal of these. I will be so multi-functional it hurts. Someone else.

Anyway. I am still around, I've just been distracted by appointments and things, and catching up on TV. I've caught up with Scott and Bailey and Horrible Histories and sort of with the Apprentice, but not really much else. Thanks to 4 On Demand, I'm all caught up with Hollyoaks though. And I kind of want to punch Barry M in the face. Sadly, that isn't possible. But still. I'm sure no-one on my flist cares about Hollyoaks, but even so - welovehollyoaks.com posited a while back that a new female character Liberty was actually a robot, and it always seemed pretty plausible, but I have to say after last week, I don't think it's even in doubt. Also, if she's a killing machine, it makes her friendship with (unknown to her) teenage murderess Theresa even more understandable. Anyway. I'm going to stop talking about Hollyoaks now.

I've also been pretty distracted lately by getting into X-Men: First Class a little bit. I'm not exactly proud of this. And I've also managed to fall into the trap I usually do of shipping a little-known pairing and getting into a bunch of kink memes. However, I've decided to be a grown-up about it this time instead of whining about it. But. Hmph.

Today I was planning to go to the cinema while I was in Wakefield, and I was pretty much planning to go see X-Men First Class again. I had a bit of a dilemma about it, because on the one hand I wouldn't mind watching it to get some characterisations a bit more sorted in my head and watch Kevin Bacon again, but on the other hand I don't really want to give any more money to a really quite racist and quite sexist film. But in the end I decided to cave. But I was foiled anyway, because it doesn't seem to be on anymore. Making way for the new blockbusters, like Transformers and Green Lantern and stuff. I've managed to find some other times it's on at a local cinema though, so I'll probably go see it again then. I also want to go see Bad Teacher, which stars Cameron Diaz, and which at first look I assumed would be about a guy being a bad teacher and trying to get with Cameron Diaz, or him trying to get with Cameron Diaz who's a bad teacher. But apparently no, it's about Cameron Diaz, being a bad teacher and kind of a loser. In shades! And!! I then found out that her co-star is Lucy Punch! <3<3<3 So. I'm up for that at some point. Just not really today, especially when the next showing was an hour after I got to the cinema. I also kind of want to see The Green Lantern, partly because my dad is really into the Green Lantern and wanted to go see it with me before he started hearing all the bad reviews for it, so I got kind of psyched up to want to go see it, and partly because having heard all the bad reviews for it, I kind of want to see if it really is that bad. I've heard some reports to the contrary. But anyway. I don't really want to go see it enough to go immediately, or (again) wait an hour until it was on after I got to the cinema, or pay 3D prices to go see it. But possibly. At some point.

If anyone's interested, the pairing I like (or am interested in) from X-Men First Class is Charles/Shaw. Which is a tricky one because [sort of spoilers], and [other spoilers], and on the kink meme, even the fics that get written about Charles/Shaw tend to either start with Charles/Erik, end with Charles/Erik, or be a mere plotpoint in a larger Charles/Erik story. But I don't care. Mostly I've been having a lot of Charles/Shaw plotbunnies along the lines of a Labyrinth AU, and they make me quite happy. Even though most of them I tend to get for situations after the events of the plot/film (of Labyrinth), which feels like a new length to go to for one of my little pairings, even for me. Still. I quite like them anyway. Also, Shaw just works incredibly well as the Goblin King, and that's just a fact. Fact.

It's been a few days, internet, and you are still failing to provide me with Isner/Mahut slash. Bad form. I do have high hopes for some from people I found discussing Isner/Mahut slash using the Livejournal comments and entries search thing, though. Although by high, I mean 'miniscule'.

I've not been very communicative for the last few days. That's possibly because I've had a sort of busy week. I was at college on Tuesday and Wednesday, I know I didn't mention. I signed up to have some free college training with the Jobcentre, while I was off work and it was still available, and I have to go have a two day induction this week. Mostly this meant getting to a really odd community centre somewhere outside of Wakefield for a half day course on what the college is like, filling in induction forms, and finding out what kind of learner I am (visual, mainly, which I sort of already assumed, and it was only a self-assessment), and then a half day course on customer service, which mostly involved discussing customer service, and how you can do it well or badly, or how some people do it well or badly.

Then the next day I went to the actual college in Wakefield (and still had a hard time finding out where I needed to be), and had an almost-full day's course on First Aid in the Workplace, for which I now have a three-year certificate. I say almost-full day because we were meant to be staying until 4 o'clock, but we got let out at about half past 2 because a bunch of the lads wanted to go early for the England game, and another I think had a Jobcentre appointment at 2.30. But I think we still fit in everything we needed to, and it was actually quite good. I'd had a bit of first aid training at school, but they didn't teach us how to do chest compressions because apparently it was really easy, if you didn't know what you were doing, to accidentally break a rib and drive it into a vital organ, possibly the heart. But according to the woman who taught us on Wednesday, either that's been proved to be not true, or the law has sort of changed because apparently you'll almost certainly break a rib doing chest compressions anyway, and it's sort of assumed that if someone isn't breathing or has no pulse they'll need chest compressions enough to risk possibly breaking a rib and puncturing something anyway. I don't know. But we learned how to do them, and how to do mouth-to-mouth, and what should be in a first aid kit, and the different types of shock, and different causes of fainting. And I got used as someone to have the recovery position demonstrated on me, which I thought might happen since I was the only girl there, apart from the tutor woman. But maybe it had nothing do with that. Anyway, we went through and did it, and it was really quite good, and I have a First Aid in the Workplace certificate now, hurrah! And they're going to contact me shortly, possibly, about doing the actual work-related course I signed up for. I think.

After that, on Thursday my mum and I had my youngest nephew, and on Friday I had to get my mum a birthday present and my mum and I had my oldest nephew. Then on Saturday it was my mum's birthday, and I slept in, and then we went to Chiquito's for a meal, then today I slept in and then we went to a local pub for our Sunday dinner. And now I am posting. And in between all that, I was running up to my room on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8 o'clock or half 8 to listen to Adam and Joe at Glastonbury, which was grand. So, yes. I've been busy this week.

But I watched TV as well, a bit, last week. Including Emmerdale. OH MY GOD OH MY GOD NATHAN HAS THE WORST MOTHER EVER OH MY GOD. ( Emmerdale )

Also, you know what Simpsons pairing I love? Sideshow Bob/Bart. I have terrible pairings, I know. Although frankly, when there is a scene between two characters which involves one trying to kill the other and then finding that they 'can't do it', and then singing about how they've 'grown accustomed to his face', I'm not sure that it's completely my fault. I love Sideshow Bob/Bart.

Also I love Logan/Aaron from Veronica Mars. I really truly love it. I wrote a tiny bit of fic the other week based on a prompt from a prompt community, and thought up a bunch of AUs, including a sort of Labyrinth AU, mainly because I've been listening to the Labyrinth soundtrack quite a lot recently, and the idea of Aaron coming back from the dead as a kind of Goblin King figure and making Logan run around a maze to try to get back a child or person he'd accidentally wished away, all while trying to sort of convince/seduce Logan into staying with him in supernatural-land forever, was REALLY QUITE PLEASING TO ME. And I have awful pairings, I know. But awful GREAT pairings.