girlofprey

I LOVE OGLAF.

Also, there are about 5 million films I want to see on at the moment. At last count, Judge Dredd, Lawless, The Sweeney, When The Lights Went Out, Killing Them Softly and Savages, although maybe not Savages, because apparently it's directed by Oliver Stone, and I'm not terribly in the mood for a lot of blood and gore. Unless I am thinking am Sam Peckinpah. But anyway, the fact remains that I don't have time to see them all. I'd still quite like to see Ted, but I think that's gone from cinemas now. Which is nice, because this week it was only on at Xscape at about twenty to nine at night, and Xscape is kind of a bitch to get back from late at night. And maybe the only thing worse than it being impossible to do something, is for it to be possible but massively massively inconvenient.

Also in film-related news, I accidentally saw most of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo last night. The remake in English, but still set in Sweden. I say accidentally, because I came down to have tea, and my dad put it on, and by the time I was finished with tea I wanted to see how it ended. I didn't realise it was about 3 hours long. Anyway. ( Spoilers and mention of rape )

In videogame news, I am quite happily get along with Fallout 3, Overlord and Bioshock. All of which are great. The only 'issue' is that since playing Fallout 3, I'm kind of assuming my characters are female in all other games as well. Or at least in those two games. I don't know, I'm just used to playing as a female character, and characterising my characters as female. I MAY NEVER GO BACK. In Overlord, they call you a man a lot, but you're wearing quite a lot of armour, and you never speak, and your main weapon is your minions who you direct to attack other people. So you could literally be anyone under there. And Bioshock is in the first person, all you can see of your character is your hands, and you have no name so far and you never speak, so it's pretty easy to assume you're a woman there as well. And if people keep calling you 'son' and 'mister' and sort of hitting on you if they're a woman while implying you're a man, WHAT OF IT? Everyone's crazy in Rapture. What would they know?

I'm really enjoying Overlord, also. It's probably actually better than Dungeon Keeper, but I still miss Dungeon Keeper. I think that's the one downside videogames and videogame fandoms have compared to books and films and stuff - when you feel nostalgic over a book you used to love as a kid, you can read it again, but that's not always the case with vidoegames. Or at least PC games. I know there's issues with films and VHS and stuff, but they seem pretty happy to bring out quite a lot of things on VHS back out again on DVD, and with games not so much. IDK, maybe I'm just not trying hard enough. Although talking about nostalgia is sort of making me want to play Morrowind and Ghost Master again. Sigh.

Hello. I've been meaning to post for the past, um, few weeks. But I've been keeping myself on a pretty steady diet of Skyrim, Saints Row 2, rewatching about half of Season 2 of Oz for Peter Schibetta reasons (who I love MORE THAN EVER), and watching American Dad, for humour and intergenerational het incest reasons. THE BEST REASONS THERE ARE. Also, I managed to get onto the jewellery making course in Leeds for a second term, and I've been going to see my employment coach again. Christmas is truly over. Even if all the sales aren't. So I haven't really had a lot of time to do other things.

Some nice things that have happened to me lately:

• My new nephew came home from the hospital on Monday, yay!



• On Saturday in the post I got both a slightly gloomy, but lovely, card from jekesta containing beautiful stickers (thank you jekesta), AND a letter saying I'd won a premium bond, for the amount of £25, including a cheque for it. It was a good day for post.



• I got back on my jewellery making course. I was lucky to do so, really, in a slightly sad way, because I was only on the waiting list, and they didn't call me the morning of the first lesson like they did last term. But I called them and they said yeah, come in, so I went in and enrolled and went to the class. And then the tutor took the register and realised one person - who had also been on the course last term - wasn't on the register, and there were 13 people in the class when the maximum was usually 12. The woman who wasn't on the register said she hadn't signed any forms or spoken to the people running things upstairs, she'd just come back to the class. She and the tutor went upstairs to talk to the people in the office, and then the tutor came back down and said the woman had had to go home, because there wasn't a place for her. So assuming she wasn't on the waiting list like me, I probably ended up with her place. Which I did feel slightly bad about. But not entirely, because assuming I don't win my appeal - which I don't think I will - by the time the next term comes round, I might well have less money to spend on courses, and no concessions, so it would cost £50 instead of £5. So mostly I'm just relieved about it.



• My Oglaf book came in the post today, hurrah!

Some bad things that have happened to me lately:

• Yesterday at my jewellery course, I managed to cut my thumb with tin snips, which if you know anything about tin snips is pretty hard to do, but I managed it. I also burnt my fingers quite a lot while trying to polish things, scraped my elbow on part of my desk, and get hit by a tiny drop of boiling water while someone was quenching another piece. It really was not my day yesterday.



• I got a call from the Tribunals service today (and yesterday). It turned out it wasn't about anything much, though, but still. A reminder that it is coming :(

Hmm. In other news, Skyrim's wicked. The only problem I'm having with it is that there are so many quests, SO MANY quests, and you don't have to take them all, but I always worry that turning them down WILL mean you don't get to still do them, or that I'll forget that people are offering them and miss out on them. But now I have probably about fifty 'to do', and it's sort of stretching my own suspension of belief that people would not be upset that I took a few months to basically take something to another town for them. So I'm trying to work my way through them at the moment. And basically running into and getting more along the way. But still. It's pretty good.

Further adventures in gender included a quest where I had the choice between taking the side of a woman in hiding or the side of the men hunting her for supposed crimes, and taking her side led to the men accusing me of being fooled by a 'pretty face'. However, ( Minor spoilers for Skyrim, maybe ). So maybe Skyrim/Tamriel really IS meant to be a world where it's perfectly okay and accepted to be gay. In which case, well done, I guess, Bethesda.

Adventures with gender in Saints Row 2 have been slightly more confusing. By and large it's fairly straightforward or not mentioned. But there's an activity you can do in the game called "ho-ing". Which, as far as I can tell, is where you gain respect by going to strip clubs and "pleasing" - strippers, I guess - after which your sexual prowess is known throughout the land, or whatever. I went and did it as part of another job though, and you don't actually get to see any of the act, but you hear voices, and my character was definitely in there with a man. So. I don't really know whether I earned or spent money after that activity. Was it a male ho? Was it just some random guy and we were using a strip club as basically a motel, without paying any of the actual people who worked there? Which is kind of insulting if you think about it. Apparently you can earn money as a pimp by ho-ing, but I don't know how or if I did. But it sounded like a good time was had by all, at any rate. So fine.

Saints Row 2 is getting a bit tricky at the moment in that it's got to that sort of middling part of games, where you're quite good at it, but not super-good at it, so I'm feeling a bit cocky perhaps but the challenges are getting slightly harder and I can't just breeze through them like I could the earlier stuff. Which is a little bit aggravating. But I'm still really enjoying it. Especially now that I've figured out I can steal helicopters if I want to. Even if I can't quite fly them yet. Still.

I haven't really been watching any TV or anything lately. Although I did have dream the other night about hanging out with my awesome nana, before realising, in the dream, that she was actually Rita from Coronation Street. Which led to a weird dream about an alternative Coronation Street, where David Platt had a cat he walked on a leash, and Karen was still hanging around. Good times. Anyway, other than that, nothing really. Other than Oz and American Dad. YOU ARE FREE TO TALK TO ME ABOUT PETER SCHIBETTA OR HAYLEY SMITH IF YOU WISH. I love you guys. x

Here's what's been happening in my life:

• I watched Sleepy Hollow again. It is kind of rubbish, but Johnny Depp is very good.



• I went to see X-Men: First Class again. It is still kind of rubbish.



• I went to Santander! (I know it doesn't have any punctuation in it, but that's just how I want to say the word whenever I think of it) to try to get my banking details sorted out so I can pay mum back for the expensive necklace I bought in Prague. Also so I have access to my banking details. While I was there I checked my balance and turned out to have slightly more money than I thought I did. Hurrah!



• The Riverside Festival in Nottingham is happening in about a month, and despite having a bit more money than I thought I did, I am still uncertain about whether I'm going. K and I talked about going together when I was in London in February, but I haven't heard from her since. And it feels a bit odd to contact her about it when I don't actually know if I can afford to go. Hmph.



• I've started my appeal process. I finally got the form filled in over the weekend, went in to the Jobcentre on Monday to check I was doing it right, got some slightly confusing advice (the man told me to call and notify the office on the letter, and when I called they weren't bothered about that). But I sent it off that day, and got a call today saying the appeal process was in the works, and in the meantime they'd be paying me. Now I just need to get a doctor's note again though. Hmph.



• I watched Coronation Street tonight, and David has weird hair again and made a joke about his wife doing things to him that 'weren't consensual'. I love him. He didn't become INCANDENSCENT like the Sky programme description promised he would, but still.



• I've been sending a few 38 degrees emails to my local MP, Yvette Cooper, and now she's emailing ME asking me to fill in questionnaires and petitions. Booooo.



• I discovered a new webcomic to follow, Band Vs Band. It's got some quite lovely art, and a lot of slash. And how. Honey/Turpentine forever.



• I finished Folklore, a game I have been playing for a few months! And a thing I thought was going to happen sort of happened, but not really in the way I was expecting it. It was pretty sad though. Also I ended up sort of shipping Ellen/Keats. Who knew?

I think that's about it. Mostly my life in the last week has involved appointments, form filling in, and checking the X-Men kink memes. A prompt of mine got filled! That was pretty nice. It wasn't for a pairing, but still. It's still only vaguely alleviating the kink meme experience for me though. And finding other anonymous Charles/Shaw fans. I still keep checking though. No-one is less proud of me for doing this than me.

Also, I found some old/newer episodes of Will and Grace on some channel on Sky somewhere. Oh Karen! And Will a bit. And Jack sort of. And whenever Karen and Will get to have scenes together. And y'know, Grace. It's kind of weird seeing some of the jokes they used to do on there, but kind of lovely all the same. Oh Karen! That's mostly my reaction.

Also I love Mitzeee and Brendan Brady and Jacqui from Hollyoaks. And Carmel is pretty this week! That is all.

Hello. I went to jekesta's for the weekend to watch Eurovision with her and cakesy. Which was lovely. I was rooting for Iceland and Moldova and possibly Ireland, but Azerbaijan stormed through. Somehow. Also we watched MANY OTHER THINGS. I can now proudly say I have watched all of the paintball episodes of Community, and the latest Parks and Recreation (I am a fool to not keep up with it), and roughly half of Crusoe. Neither Crusoe nor Friday are kings of Narnia (probably). But that doesn't mean it would have been weird for them to make themselves crowns.

Also jekesta watched Vera with me, which was lovely of her. Now she too knows how lovely Vera and Joe are, and how slightly incompetent at being police they sometimes are. Also I saw some of Summer Holiday for the first time, and was only squicked out by some of it, and while cakesy was there we saw one of the weirdest episodes of Columbo ever. Apparently if you date the main witness of a murder you commit, you can nearly get away with pretty much anything. Also, sharks help solve crime. Fact. Um. Sort of.

Anyway. We also watched So You Think You Can Dance (oh, Rithy), and Doctor Who. Well.

( Spoilers for The Doctor's Wife )

Anyway. I'm back now. I got the Settle-Carlisle line back to Leeds, which sadly now appears to be the Leeds-Carlisle line. It was still lovely though. There were all sheep and lambs in the fields, often getting spooked by the train running past. I quite love the train journeys to and from Lancaster.

In other news, money. After accidentally leaving a gap in my sick notes and not hearing anything from the Department for Work and Pensions about it, I wasn't sure how much I had last week. So I checked just before going to Lancaster, tomake sure I had enough for train tickets and food and stuff, and they had totally paid me, and I had £300. I'm pretty sure I have quite a lot less than that now though. After going straight out to New Look to buy some clothes I'd been wanting but didn't think I could afford, and then some random bits of jewellery from Topshop, and then some t-shirts when Threadless reprinted some designs I'd wanted. But I'm hoping to keep it a bit more under control from now on, and I should be getting paid again on Thursday anyway. Yay.

In other news, next week isn't looking like it's going to be a fun week for me. I was thinking last week that it was going to be tough, because I had a doctor's appointment that week, then my first new counselling session, then my disability assessment, then my confidence course. But then I remembered that no, my doctor's appointment was this Friday, so it wasn't so bad. Then this morning I got a letter from my doctor, saying that sadly my doctor's appointment on Friday would have to cancelled, so could I call up to arrange another. I called up and the earliest they can see me is next Monday. So it is pretty much going to be like I thought it was going to be. Hmph.

Also, re: this week's Oglaf: askdfjklasdfhjkasdfnhj what?

The only things I have to say at the moment seem to be about TV I have and haven't been watching. I haven't been watching much of the snooker. I don't think I really have the patience and/or stamina to watch an entire snooker match, or even session sometimes. I'm trying to build myself up, but I'm not there yet I think. Also, I didn't watch the Royal Wedding. I was thinking about it, but I got up on Wednesday to watch the snooker, and I got up on Thursday to go to my course in Wakefield, and I knew I'd be getting up on Saturday to listen to Adam and Joe, and I was really tired, so I decided to just sleep instead. I did see the dress later on though. I quite liked it, although I don't think it was very exciting. If it was me, I'd probably have had a massive train, made of gold. And possibly some chainmail. It's possibly for the good of the country that I wasn't either marrying Prince William or designing that wedding dress.

The TV I have been watching: On Thursday, Long Lost Families. Is anyone else watching this? It's a sort of reality programme about Davina McCall and Nicky someone reuniting long lost relatives, usually people who have been split up through adoption and have been searching for people for years with no luck. So it's a fairly emotional/manipulative set-up to begin with, but on Thursday I was properly bawling my eyes out. The first week was pretty sad, but this week we were following two people, and one of them was a man searching for his real father who he never knew. The man's mum and his dad had been teenagers when he was conceived, and they hadn't got married or anything. And the man didn't know why his dad hadn't stuck around and helped raise him or be part of his life, and the dad's family had a bad reputation, and the man's family had always told him his father was a bad man. But when they found his dad - who was currently working as a carer for people with autism - he'd said that basically when the man's mum had gotten pregnant, her mum came round to the house and shouted at him about it, and then told him to stay away from her daughter, and stay away from the family, and everyone he knew had told him to just forget about it and pretend he never had a son. The only time he ever saw his son was just before he was six months old, when he saw his ex-girlfriend pushing him up the high street in a pushchair, for two minutes. And then he'd left town, and never wanted to find his son because he'd never been a dad to him, so he didn't think he had any right to try to be part of his life. It was so sad.

And the other person was a woman who'd given her son up for adoption to try to save her marriage. She'd been married, also as a teenager, and had a young son by a man, and then she and her husband split up, and not long after they split up she had an affair with a black guy. A few weeks after that she found out she was pregnant, and when she told the black guy he didn't want to know. Not long after that, she ended up giving her marriage another go, and there was a chance the baby was her husband's, and she really hoped it was, because they'd already talked about having the baby put up for adoption if it wasn't his. But then she gave birth, and the doctor told her the baby was mixed race, so obviously not. And she begged her husband to just try taking the baby home and raising him like he was his, and they tried for three months, but eventually the husband just said he couldn't do it. So she gave the baby up for adoption, but she'd talked to the couple who were adopting him so they knew she didn't want to, and she gave them a letter to give to her son saying she'd always want to be part of his life, and she'd be there for him if he wanted her to be. But he hadn't gotten in touch in 30 years, so she just wanted to find him to make sure he was well, and had had a good life, and to ask him not to hate her. They found the son, and it turned out he was really well, and he'd been looking for her since he was 14 or 15. It's just REALLY HARD to find people, sometimes. So that didn't help with the not crying thing. It is quite a manipulative show in some ways, they have this thing where the people give the producers of the show letters to give to each other before they meet, and they end up reading them out on camera, as though that's a THING THEY WOULD TOTALLY DO, and they wouldn't want to READ THEM PRIVATELY OR ANYTHING. But it is quite lovely a lot of the time as well, if you like quite tear-jerking stuff.

ALSO, I watched So You Think You Can Dance again this week. It's really weird this year, I think, because in almost all the couples the girls seem to be better than the boys. Or better at performing, as well as dancing, at least. Apart from Matt, and possibly Luke this week, I can't think of one boy who stands out when they dance with their female partners. And I know they want to keep their boy/girl couples, but it just seems really sad that they'll be getting rid of a girl every week, when they could get rid of two not-great boys. Although it's weird as well, because people are getting used to their partnerships now and starting to get on well together, so it's a little sad to see couples split up as well. I'm really glad that ( Spoiler ). The dances are often really good though - a bit odd sometimes, but usually good -it's just that they are often one-person shows at the minute. Which is quite sad.

And that's it sort of. Except that I watched Vera tonight. I quite liked it, I liked Brenda Blethyn and Vera, and I like her DI and her relationship with him. And yay, Gina McKee! But some of it seemed a bit farfetched, or unexplained. Which is a bit of a shame. Hopefully it will improve a bit next week.

In non-TV news, I got a letter from Yvette Cooper, because I sent her an email from 36 Degrees about the NHS. She and other labour ministers are against changes to the NHS, for the record. And I love Dawn. And I love Charlotte. And I love Priti (ETA: I have now fixed this link so it's the right one). And I hate the people in the comments who hate Priti. FUCK THEM. FUCK THEM ENTIRELY.

Oh, also, I have been playing Folklore again, and I have pretty much finished four realms with Keats, so I have only one more to go before I can hopefully move on with Ellen again, yay! I got stuck again, at the same point I pretty much got stuck with Ellen I think, so I did the same thing as I did with Ellen, went back to the realms I'd already finished and tried to make my creatures stronger. And then I managed to finish realm 4, and nearly chapter 4. Keats still annoys me a bit, but less so now, and even less so if the story goes the way I think it will. Rah.

So. Tomorrow I'm planning on playing more Folklore, watching at least some of the World Championship snooker final, and also trying to fill in my Incapacity claim questionnaire that needs to be back in to the people who sent it to me by May 6th. Possibly forgoing either the snooker or the Folklore to try to get that questionnaire finished. Chances are.

Things I have gotten from town today:

• A sick note for 4 weeks from my doctor.



• A biscuit jar shaped like a teashop.

It does occur to me that, lovely as that biscuit jar is, if I'm really going to try to be sensible about money, at some point I'm probably going to have to stop being ludicrous about what I spend it on.

( Talk about benefits and money )

In other news, I did watch quite a bit of Comic Relief on Friday night. I actually watched the finale of Let's Dance last Saturday, and kept meaning to post about it, but never remembered to. Essentially, I've not been that into the Mighty Boosh lately and was never a big Howard/Vince or Julian/Noel shipper, but it still made me incredibly happy when Julian turned up dressed as Heathcliff after Noel's dance. And I was ridiculously attracted to Russell Kane, but that's something I've just had to get used to with Let's Dance over the years. Oh, and I was quite happy that the two who won it won it. They were really good. WHO KNEW JOHN BARTON COULD TAPDANCE? He has skills beside being a sex symbol, though sadly still not parenting.

With regards to actual Comic Relief, I didn't watch the first few hours, and the bits I enjoyed the most were probably some of the much later ones, namely Newport State Of Mind, and the Axis of Awesome's massive four-chord-songs-song. And I quite loved Ron and "the albino kid" offering to go to Africa together. Is it just me, or are all the sketches with Smithy mostly funny because of the lines/reactions of everyone BUT Smithy in them? But maybe he's the lynchpin that holds it all together. Or maybe I just don't like James Cordon. Hmm. Whatever. But anyway. I was looking forward to Uptown Downstairs Abbey, but there weren't that many lines that actually made me laugh in the end. Mostly the one by Olivia Coleman. Also, is the footman really evil in the show? That seems like an unfortunate stereotype. But anyway, I quite enjoyed it on the whole. And I was wondering if the disaster in Japan might mean people didn't donate as much this year, but apparently it was their most successful night ever. So that was nice too.

Other than that, I have mostly been playing Morrowind (again), getting furious that Morrowind doesn't have the EXACT FEATURES I WANT IT TO, and getting into a bunch of new webcomics. I don't know what happened. I was on the No Rest For The Wicked site, mooching around and hoping vainly for a sudden update, and ended up on the links page, and looking into a bunch of webcomics on there. And I saw a link to another webcomic on the page of a webcomic I read pretty regularly, and I ended up reading that. And then those webcomics kept mentioning or referencing OTHER webcomics, which I ended up looking into. And then I had about 5 or 6 new ones I was reading. They are, and you can pretty much take these as recs:

( Webcomic recs )

In other news, blah. I don't have any money. Oh, also I went to an alternative comics fair, the 2nd Leeds Alternative Comics Fair, on Saturday, where the writer of Bad Machinery was going to be, and, um, bought a bunch of Scary Go Round and Bad Machinery stuff. But that was totally worth it. Also on the same day, I found out where the Leeds Cathedral was, which I may have seen before, but this time knowing what it was. And I found out about the Craft Centre in Leeds, which apparently I'd not found out about ever before. That was also pretty great. I got home at the end of the day though, and found out my parents, who'd had my two nephews for the day, had slightly done me by taking them to Cannonhall Farm for the day, a place I have been interested in going to for some weeks. Growl. Next time, they have promised. It's always next time.

( Talk about my birthday next week, and the possibility of asking for a Playstation 3 )

And that's pretty much all my news, I think. Most of it, anyway. I have to pick a film to do a pairing picspam of this week, and I don't know which one to pick. I'd like to choose one that doesn't have a really messed up pairing in it, but I'm no longer convinced I have many of those. Also I'd probably end up feeling like I had to do three, for the rest of the 'run' until my next non-visual pairing/something else post. I don't know. Mostly I'd liked to post this week's at some time before midnight. That's my main aim for the next one.

So, my week has once again been incredibly busy-seeming, without me actually seeming to get anything done. Monday was basically recovering from Halloween/the weekend, Tuesday I was getting ready for the CBT group and Jobcentre appointment/interview I had pretty close to one another (read: I filled in some forms and washed my hair), and it was also the day I came on my period. Thursday I woke up with massive stomach cramps, and then my mum brought my youngest nephew over as usual, and then let me know that she was working a night shift that night, so she wouldn't be back after taking him home. Then yesterday I got up and remembered, as I'd only done occasionally throughout the week, that not only was it Bonfire Night, it was also my dad's birthday. So I rushed out to town to get him a card before the shops shut and just managed to meet up with my mother to get a lift home with her and my oldest nephew. When we got back my dad was there, so we gave him his cards and we agreed that he could take my nephew and me to my nephew's karate lesson while mum put some shopping away, then we came back, my nephew got changed, and we all went round to my sister's to go to a bonfire near her house. Eventually we got back and watched the soaps and The Event until pretty late into the night. Then today I basically slept in, got up, had lunch, checked the internet, ordered pizza with my mum because in all the rushing around yesterday she didn't really get a chance to buy any food for the weekend, watched Strictly, watched Casualty, watched most of the Armstrong and Miller show, and am now here. Tomorrow we're going out for Sunday lunch, and then having my sister and two nephews and my grandma over for cake and sparklers for dad's birthday. Yay.

The bonfire was good, aside from my taking my two nephews on the teacups ride at the little fair they had and managing to bash my youngest nephew's lip, twice, moving him around the ride. But in between those two time, he seemed to be enjoying himself. Um. Anyway. It's quite a big do, at a pub, so the fireworks display is usually good, and the fire - when we could get to it - was pretty big. However, the flying burning debris and embers from the fire told us we were probably a bit too close to it, so we went back a bit again. But the kids had a good time (I think), and we had a good time, so it was pretty good all round.

Anyway. In the mean time, these are the things that have happened to me:

• I went to the second week of my CBT therapy group, as I said. We had to/were asked to do a questionnaire thing in the first meeting, to bring to the second, to see if we really had OCD. When we got there, in the second meeting, the women leading it said that a score of over 40 on that questionnaire was generally taken as you having OCD. It turned out I'd added mine up wrong, but when I did it right, it turned out I had a score of 90. So I'd say I probably have it. Yeah.



• It turned out that the way to get me to buy almost anything lately is to sell it on the internet and claim it is the "Last Chance" to buy it. In the past two weeks I have bought a print you can no longer see on the website from Scary Go Round and this t-shirt based on that principle. Basically all Jon Burgerman needs to do is declare it is my last chance to buy everything on his website, and I am financially screwed.



• Although on the bright side, I ordered that t-shirt apparently from Canada, and I placed the order on 26th October and it arrived last Wednesday. Beating any order I ever made from Threadless by about three weeks. Score one for Canada, my friends.



• I want to buy a new winter coat. I'm thinking of this one from New Look. But there's quite a lot of things I've been thinking about buying or doing lately, and I have only a finite amount of money, so it's going under advisement.



• I found two new webcomics I like: No Rest For The Wicked, which is based on fairytales, and is GREAT, I LOVE IT. I love Red, and I love November, and I even kind of love Perrault. Oh God. And the other is Snowflakes, which I don't like as much as some of the others I read, and which is a bit weird once you find out that the orphanage is meant to be set in some mountains in the Andes and yet pretty much all of the characters are white, but which has kind of sucked me in nonetheless. I LOVE PRITI. OH MY GOD. I LOVE HER. I get the feeling from the comments and stuff that a lot of people love Wray (who is also quite great) the best. They are idiots. PRITI IS CLEARLY BEST.



• Also, Irregular Choice apparently hate me. Every year it seems to be the same. It's not enough that I've already fallen in love with a number of pairs of shoes that I couldn't afford and have now sold out. They have to now put out these. And these. And these. And these. And these. And these. Do they hate me? I'VE DONE NOTHING TO THEM!



• I continue to be floored by how pretty a lot of the women on Hollyoaks are nowadays, and how amazingly they dress. Oh my god.



• Nathan Wylde is leaving Emmerdale sometime in the next few weeks, and it sounds like it goes pretty badly for him before he leaves. Even worse, or at least as well as, being kidnapped for a few days and then tortured by his sister, which he recently was. And he is going to be kind of a dick, apparently, and is probably going to be tricked into something he doesn't want. It mostly all I am thinking about these days. That and porn. I am trying to decide what they won't do to him. ( Sort of spoiler )
  . But what else will they do to him? They can't utterly destroy him or how could he ever come back? I can't picture anything worse happening to him and him not having a complete emotional breakdown and going into catatonic shock, perhaps. Unless that is what they're doing, and should he ever return that will be when he sort of comes out of it, to WREAK HIS VENGEANCE UPON THE WORLD. Sometimes I wish Emmerdale was that sort of show. I have been comforting myself lately by imagining him being completely destroyed and losing everything before leaving Emmerdale, and then turning up again a few years later as a super-rich super-businessman, and being all "By the way everyone, I've bought up all the land in town and am going to turn it into a strip mine! Ciao, fuckers." OR, I wish it was the kind of show where eventually SOMETHING/SOMEONE MUCH WORSE would come along and threaten the town, and they would be all "God. They are the terrible. To beat them, we are going to need the worst human being, and best liar, we know" "..." All together: "Nathan!" And then they go and track him down, and maybe he's come good, or maybe he just still hates them, and they have to convince him to come back and help them somehow, and they kind of fall in love with how great he is. With Declan sort of leading the charge both times, obviously. Probably it won't be anything like that. Probably it will just be AWFUL. Oh God.

And now, having had both Halloween and Bonfire Night, we are basically into the Christmas season. Somehow. Great.

Also, anyone who does not read Queen of Wands really should, omg, 111...yes. Also Two Lumps. Go now.