girlofprey

They have HYENA BABIES at Yorkshire Wildlife Park! I didn't even know they had hyenas. Colchester Zoo made a big deal about how they were the only zoo in England with spotted hyenas, but maybe they are new additions? Anyway. IT'S SO CLOSE TO ME. And extremely rare to have hyenas breeding in European zoos apparently, but here we are. I'm not really looking to go there anytime soon, but maybe next year when things are maybe a bit safer, and it's my birthday, and the babies are cute pre-adolescents.

I don't really want to go cleaning mold off my books, but it's largely the only job left to me in my bedroom. And I do want to rearrange the books up there. I also, while going through the drawers under my bed, found a huge amount of old notebooks and journals, and I'm not really sure what to do with them either. Some I'm definitely keeping, like my leaver's book from college, but with the others, I feel bad throwing them away when they're part of my history. But also I never look at them, don't have a huge amount of reason to check back on things I was doing and feeling 7 years ago, and also a lot of them have lists of slash pairings, fic ideas and kink lists - because that has been a huge part of my life for so long. And while I'm not ashamed of that and think it has value, it's not like I'll be looking to pass these notebooks onto my descendants, or wanting my parents to read them if something should happen to me. So they're just sitting in a drawer under my bed, taking up space. While I decide if I want to do anything with them at all. Really they should go in the loft I guess, but I'm not very good at the loft, and don't feel like giving my dad an extra job. So under the bed they'll stay, for now.

I've also been going through some CDs, hoping to get rid of some and make some room. It's annoying when you find one song on a CD that you really like, but not enough to really keep the whole CD, or be excited to put the whole album on for ever. But you still want to keep hold of the song. I'm relying on Youtube to keep me in touch with that music now. But also I've discovered some new songs I really love. Here is a selection of songs I've found groovy recently:

Obstacle 1 - Interpol


Don't Go Back to Dalston - Razorlight


Pet Semetary - The Ramones


Cish Cash - Basement Jaxx feat. Siouxie Sioux


I need more Basement Jaxx in my life. They're probably one of my favourite bands, but I never think about them that way.

End of the year, so it's the Slashies 2019.

Slashies 2019

Well. Fandom has been thin on the ground for me for the past few years, but there has still been some stuff I enjoyed. New stuff! Old stuff that was new to me, and actual new stuff that was new to the world. So that was nice. But there are a few pairings and characters you might see more than once below. But without further ado! Let the award-giving commence.

Best Enemy Pairing:

1. ( Steve Harrington/Billy Hargrove, Stranger Things )



2. ( Deacon St John/O'Brian, Days Gone )



3. ( Rabbit/Tanner, Year of the Rabbit )



4. ( Napoleon/Laurence, Temeraire series )



5. ( David/Michael, The Lost Boys )

( And the winner is... )

Best Buddy Pairing:

1. ( Deacon St John/Boozer, Days Gone )



2. ( Laurence/Granby, Temeraire series )



3. ( Laurence/Tharkay, Temeraire series )



4. ( Crush/Djinn, DC Teen Titans )

( And the winner is... )

Best incest pairing: (NB: None of these pairings have actual genuine incest in them. I did my best.)

1. ( Ryan/Ali, Coronation Street )



2. ( Dutch/Arthur, Red Dead Redemption 2 )

( And the winner is... )

Best hatesex:

1. ( Evan/Cameron, Holby City )

( And the winner is... )

Best Pairing: ( And the winner is... )


Most Beautiful Man:

1. Steve Harrington from Stranger Things - it seems I can't put pictures in a post anymore, so here's a link. askjfhsajkdfh



2. Billy Hargrove from Stranger Things. asdkjsadkj



3. Will Laurence from the Temeraire series. I CAN'T EXPLAIN. ( Spoilers )



4. Deacon St John. Not enough people loved Days Gone. Even some of those that did didn't love Deacon St John. HE WAS AMAZING. Sam Witwer did an amazing performance, and Deacon was heartbreaking and beautiful and funny. One of my favourite characters of the year, genuinely.

And the winner is: Steve Harrington. HIS FACE. HIS SELF. ALL OF HIM AND HIS SOUL.


Most Beautiful Woman:

1. Crush from DC Teen Titans.



2. Maya from Borderlands. My baby Maya.



3. Lisa Jackson from Days Gone. Not beautiful in sexy way, but amazing, genuinely my second favourite character in the game.



4. Laura Bailey. Watched some more Critical Role at the beginning of this year, and ye ye! And she's in my favourite outfit of hers in that picture. I am genuinely floored by her and her existence whenever I see her. She also happened to do the voice of the entry above. Love.



5. Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones. I know I didn't watch her properly or read the books, and I know that's not allowed. But everything I was ever really interested in in Game of Thrones was Cersei Lannister, and her general doneness with sexism. And her craziness. Earlier this year, when everyone was going on about Game of Thrones, which I didn't care about, and how bad it was, which I didn't care about, I knew I could always google something about Cersei Lannister and feel better. What's she doing now? Oh, she's obsessed with elephants. Perfect.



6. Vera Stanhope from Vera. I always forget about Vera because she's on at the beginning of the year. But she's on in January again soon, and so I remembered. She's genuinely one of my favourite things on TV at the moment, Vera is the only show I still regularly watch. She is amazing.



7. Flora Wilson from Year of the Rabbit. Easily one of the best parts of Year of the Rabbit. The best Victorian assassin you've ever seen.



8. Nadja from BBC What We Do in the Shadows. Oh Nadja. The best one.

And the winner is: Maya. My baby Maya.


Lifetime Achievement Award: John/Jim from the Hitcher (1985). One of my first enemyslash/psycho pairings, and one I still think about and look up fic for sometimes, to this day. Rutger Hauer died this year, but before that he gave us some pretty good films. Stay gay, boys.

So, there are Hank/Connor shippers out there. There are also anti-Hank/Connor shippers out there.

I'm starting to think it's just a hobby for some people.

Looking for fandom on Tumblr is like looking for wildflowers in a field of nettles.

I am at jekesta's, and I have a cold, and it's awful. Jen has given me all the drugs, and that's helping, but still, ugh. I sort of blame my place of work for making me work in freezing conditions for a bit, and Jen thinks that would make me a weak, Victorian-like woman who would just die of the cold, but I think she is wrong and I am great. Sarah and slemslempike are also here, and they are great, and we did the Slashies, and there isn't as much slash in the world/our lives as there should be, but we remembered some and that was lovely, and many awards were given out, hurray! Also Rita is here and she loves me and that is great. I have to go now because they are back, but that's pretty good, and also happy new year!

It's hard to find time for porn, video games, and all the other practical things in my life I kind of need to do. Also writing. And soaps. I'm falling very behind on soaps at the moment. We stopped watching them during the holiday, and then there were the Olympics, and now this. I'm meant to be doing a soap podcast again in a few weeks, too.

On the plus, I did find a really incredible fic for a fandom I have no interest in getting involved in - which is sometimes the best combination you can manage, since you're not spending all your time thinking 'this isn't the fic I really wanted, though', or 'I don't think [character X] would have phrased it exactly like that. Essentially, I was looking through a kink tag, found a new fandom and pairing with a dynamic I enjoyed through that kink tag, decided to read all the fic for that pairing, and then found a really good fic that was actually a turn-on and restored my faith in slash fic of the moment. Also there is genuine video online of that (RPF) pairing, where one of them is spoon-feeding the other one pudding for the pleasure of the audience. So that was nice.

I was hoping after that video from the weekend that the tags for my pairing from the Let's Players would be flooded with serial killer!AUs (with fluff), and carrying fic. Sadly that hasn't happened yet. But maybe it's in the works.

Yesterday I finally got around to applying for benefits again. It turned out my last ESA payment was on the 20th of last month, not the 15th, so I couldn't have applied before this weekend anyway. But it was probably some of the least fun I've ever had. First off, it told me I couldn't have Jobseeker's Allowance, I qualified for Universal Credit because of my postcode. Then - having taken me to the Universal Credit page - it said I could make a full claim if my postcode started with a certain set of numbers and letters. It didn't, so it said I could make a partial claim if I lived in 'one of the below areas', and gave me a list. I didn't live in any of them. But the form had said I qualified for Universal Credit, so I started an application anyway. And it turned out I did. Way to make applying for benefits accessible and easy to understand, Conservatives. Anyway, then I actually got to fill out the form - woo! - and it involved needing to know my parents' exact dates of birth and whether they received any benefits at all, and then exactly how much money I had in total. My online banking decided to break at that exact moment, so I ended up having to guess from recent bank statements. They didn't really say how specific I had to be, but whatever. But finally I actually submitted the form - and it gave me some details about what would happen from then on. Which was really nice, but mostly what I learned was that I'll be getting paid £100 less than I did on ESA, and I probably won't receive any payment until October 5th at the earliest.

After I submitted the form, the page took me directly to the government's job-seeking page. I already had an account on there, so I signed in and had a look. I spent a few minutes wading through jobs it suggested for me in Rotherham and Manchester, and then tried a different searchword and almost immediately got offered a zero-hours contract.

Then today I got some ice-cream, and tried to play a free trial of a game I got offered, which ended up taking 3 hours to download. Still. Joy.

I am still working on my Dragon Age fic. I really want Zevran to be involved, and I have an idea for how he could be, but I don't think I could make it believable with other characters involved in the fic. I would also like Morrigan and Wynne involved. And I thought maybe Leliana, but she would literally just talk all the time about how great it was my character was part of the Chantry now, and not understand when my character wanted to have her own beliefs in private, and when Loghain found out there was a literal Orlesian spy in the court he'd probably just kill everyone. So, there's that.

Nobody writes good Uncharted fic. They just write filthy het.

And tomorrow I have to go to Wakefield, because dad took us having our boiler replaced last week - and having to empty out our boiler room/cupboard - as an opportunity to go through all the stuff in the boiler room/cupboard, and he found my solid deodorant from Lush and decided it was probably an old piece of soap nobody wanted, so he threw it away. Naturally he didn't ask if it was an old piece of soap, or if nobody wanted it. So now I have to go replace it. He's going to pay for it though.

Infamous fandom did not take the extended break for incest I hoped it would. I don't know how fandoms exist without angsty first-time fic.

( Coronation Street )

Apparently the Avengers cast are falling apart on their UK tour, and it's kind of awful, but kind of hilarious.

But what I didn't know is that in Mass Effect 2, in the 'extra' level I am playing, if you survive all the waves of enemies, you get to hear Harbinger - a sentient ship that wants to wipe out or absorb all intelligent life in the galaxy - just WHISPERING SWEET NOTHINGS into Shepard's ear as you fight. "There's no need to fight, surrender and be spared". "Struggle if you must. Your mind will be mine". There has never been a gayer ship than Harbinger, and it has never been gayer for anyone than it is for Shepard.