Today was a much more chilled out day for me, particularly as I didnt get there till about 10.30am and left around 2.00-ish. All I had today was to pick up my photos from yesterday, get one done with Christopher Lloyd today and get Pete Postlethwaite's autograph for elulla...oh and I wanted to go to Jason Mewes' talk. I got it all done apart from Pete's autograph as I had to leave before he got anywhere near my number :( Sorry hon.

So basically, I hung around, browsed the stalls again, bought a box of Supernatural Connections trading cards (got Megalyn whatserface's autograph redemption card (Cassie) and Nicki Aycox's pieceworks card) and hung around some more. Christopher Lloyd was as lovely as I'd hoped and I got another huggy pic. I'm getting good at getting those. I know the man is 70 (someone told me he was 80 but I just checked) but he's looking fantastic. My pics with David Anders and John Hurt from yesterday came out really well too (see below).

Jason's talk was a-mewes-ing (ha ha aren't I funny?). He swore a lot, which should have been expected, and yet some people brought young children into the talk. If you know anything at all about Jason, you should know that what he has to say is not for the ears of young 'uns. He talked about how his ideal role would be some psychopath that rapes 10 year old boys and someone asked about his latest film where he plays a pornstar or something and he talked about trying to make his own porn with his girlfriend. He was also pretty open about his past drug problems, said he'd been on heroin and crack (and coke I think as well). It was a really good talk, much better than David's yesterday, and it seemed to go really fast, while David's seemed to drag on.

So, here are my photoshoot pics



( and some pics of Jason from his talk )

Day 1 of LFCC and I'm shattered. My feet are suffering badly, mostly because there was nowhere to blooming sit down (unless you went to the restaurant which cost me £7 for a flipping baked potato!!!!).

The atmosphere was a bit...meh...not sure why, maybe because it's a huge hall and everything's really spread out. I was mostly on my own since most of my friends decided not to bother this year, although I did spend some time with kayim and siluria and hung out with mummybitch, even though she was working.

I got some Aliens autographs for elulla who's away, and got John Hurt to sign an Oxford Murders pic for me. I'd wanted him to sign the behind-the-scenes pic which showed the back of him and then all of us in the lecture theatre from the filming, but my printer ran out of ink last night and my local Tesco didnt have the ink I needed :(

I got photoshoots done with Charles Dance (who said "ello darlin'" lol), John Hurt, David Anders and Jason Mewes. If you dont know who Jason is...he's Jay from Jay and Silent Bob...the one who used to have the really long hair. Well he used to have a drug problem and he got clean and cut off the hair and all of a sudden he's this scorching hot man...and I mean scorching, seriously!!!!! He was wearing this vest top and had his amazing tats on show. I wanted to lick them, phwoar!!! I loved my photo with him so much I got him to sign it later on in the day. I'd love to get another photo with him tomorrow but it's right at the end of the day and my plan is to go to his talk at lunchtime tomorrow and then leave soon after. Otherwise it's another incredibly long (and boring) day.

Last thing was the Heroes talk (which we had to pay for, all the others were free). It was supposed to be David Anders and Sendhil Ramamurthy, but Sendhil had to cancel so it was just David on his own. And bless him, he struggled. It was a frankly crap talk, not worth the £15 they charge, but we did get a couple of goodies so it wasn't all bad. I was ticket number 1 for his talk so I had the first seat behind the Gold Pass people, so got some reasonably decent pics of him which I'll post below.

On to the pics...

My photoshoot pics


( David's talk pics )

ETA: bugger, just found out the trains aren't running from where I live tomorrow due to engineering works. Looks like I'll have to drive to another station. Damn :(

More writing. I have broken 20k words. Only another 40k to go and this sucker will be finished! I will stop talking about it eventually.

I find this hella amusing. One of my tutors at college has a b&w version, which she graciously allowed me to copy. Thank god I know my superheroes (and their sense of humour) so I could find the colour version (for anyone who doesn't know, that there is Deadpool).

I have a strange obsession with Lars von Trier, and I don't know why. It's strange in that it includes my never watching any film he's ever made (I've seen some, but that was Mike's fault*). It's not that I go out of my way to avoid watching them (I've wanted to watch The Kingdom** ever since we got forced to watch some of it at uni. I just haven't got around to buying it). Eh, you probably didn't need to know any of that (which could be said of this entire post, I guess).

On a semi-related note to the above, I want to learn to speak Danish at some point in my life. It will probably be of zero use, as I might never get to Denmark. But it stems from having a half-Danish best friend as a child, and never being able to understand any of the Danish-language books in the house (that was the first time I ever saw Asterix in another language. I can't remember if it was one I had read, but I vividly remember being bewildered by it. I didn't even know you could get Asterix in other languages then***).

~*~

*One of them was part of Dancer in the Dark. I would like to wipe that one from my brain, plz, as there was singing, and I think we all know how I feel about musicals...

**We will not talk about Steven King's remake of it. Ever.

***Bear in mind that I was approx. nine years old at the time, and didn't know then that Asterix was originally French.

Watchmen trailer has hit the internet

It looks beautiful and I love that song they chose. But...it has always been my not-so-secret dream to make the Watchmen movie. Not long after I read the book for the third or fourth time I got a new folder and started making storyboards in it. I secretly hoped that the film would stay lost in development until I was old enough to learn to direct and shift myself to Hollywood. Still, now I technically am old enough to learn to direct, and I haven't yet. Sigh.

Please at least make it good, production team. Don't change the ending like I heard you were going to. That'd just be stupid.

In other news...have all you lot got The Dark Knight already? I'm sure we don't get it for another few days! :o

I did about 2000 words of writing today on the story for dreximgirl. I'm really not quite sure how, but I did. I'm not sure about the numbers, but it was under 17k when I started writing, and is now over 19k.

Like I say, longest thing I've ever written, that actually makes some sort of coherence.

And it's all I've done all day (apart from running a couple of errands for mum and Jackie). It just trotted along, and came out well. And I'd like to say more, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone (and I have the vaguest hope of it being published one day, but I really, really doubt it).

Also, where has all the time gone today? I swear yesterday didn't go this fast!

Eh, whatever. I'm off to see what else I can write about now.

There has been writing today!

Both fic, and original stuff. The fic was Hellblazer, and the original was the story I am writing for dreximgirl. I dunno why, but I got the sudden urge to look at it, and then the sudden urge to add bits to it, as I barely did any last year (I've been writing it for the last four years o_O ), and any changes I made since last Sept have been lost :( (not that I think I made any).

Of all my original stories (barring the variations on a theme and a couple of others), I think it's the story I've writing the longest. And it's the one where I know what happens pretty much for all of it (which I can't say of the other stories, especially not, for example, the vampire story, or the sci-fi story that I pretty much gave up on *shifty look*). I also think it's possibly the longest thing I've written and am still writing. Which is good.

Anyway, I think I'm gonna go back and do some more on it now, 'cause the writing bug bit me really badly today *g*.

Author: Suzal
Format: Ongoing story
Genre: SciFi/SteamPunk/Adventure
Rating: 12a
Warnings: none
Length: 926
Summary: A top hat with a side pocket...

Part 1: It always happens when it's raining...


Part 3: Coming Soon...

Hellboy. Made of awesome... and kittens and the pretty emo!boy FBI agent. *flaps*

WOOOOO!! Don't need to be in college til 11 tomorrow. WOOP. Though I do need to get my EMA all signed off. le sigh. Only one and a half days left! *does celebrationary dance* Then on Friday afternoon I'm going into Wolvo to buy myself a new swimming costume and whatever else takes my fancy in Primark. Then it's the Sex!Comedy!Music night at the Mitre in Stourbridge and Fans of Faye are playing so I'm going. Yay. But oh money. *sigh* Anyway... had some inspiration, and this time I have plot ideas too. But yeah. PROLOGUE!

Author: Suzal
Format: Ongoing story
Genre: SciFi/SteamPunk/Adventure
Rating: 12a
Warnings: none
Length: 574
Summary: It always happens when it's raining...

 
Part 2: A top hat with a side pocket...

Damn, I was thinking earlier I should go looking up pretty boys on the interwebs again and, having discovered a couple of new ones (Ju Jin Mo and Julian Kang) and a not-so-new one (Vic Zhou) via poc_daily (on IJ), I'm thinking that the universe is thinking the same thing. (Also I randomly clicked on an icon post for FFVII icons, only to discover there were also icons of Tomohisa Yamashita and Kazuya Kamenashi. I may have saved a couple... *shifty eyes*).

I need a pretty boy icon, really.

Um.

Yeah.

So aside from deciding that, I played some more Tactics Advance, and managed to complete another mission (apparently there's no let up from them, that's the way the game goes, and you get occasional cut-scenes - like the one I had today where Montblanc describes about clan wars. All I've done today is fight other clans. I am SICK of it! I may have to go off on a mission to make myself feel better tomorrow).

I also finished off the Squeenix icons, and there are 414 of the bastards. Multiple posts, I think, since I don't really have any permanent space to put a .zip file up for download. Unfortunately, you can't play guess my fave character with these ones (well, you can. The most of one single character are of Zack) since I seem have more of Ashe for FFXII than anyone else, and she's not my fave character in XII (in case you couldn't guess, ;) ).

One day, when I can be arsed to get them up online I will start posting. One day...

...there have been some guest cancellations that you might not know about
- Sendhil Ramamurthy *sob*
- Gregory Nicotero
- J LaRose
- Yasmin Page

new guests are:
- Bill Oddie *tweet*
- Christian Cooke from Dr Who
- Georgia Moffat from Dr Who
- Vic Tablian from Raiders of the Lost Ark

also, if you're going to LFCC you can get a discounted ticket to the Dr Who exhibition also at Earls Court, more info here

I think I'd like to start a blog to write about films I've seen. I watch a lot, as I've got the time, and since I've had a Facebook thingy, have posted verdicts of all the films I see. Living in London also gives me the opportunity to go to the London Film Festival, the NFT (which I don't do often enough), and I've been lucky enough to attend interviews with such luminaries as Gael Garcia Bernal, Steve Buscemi and Tim Burton. I'd like to write more about that. Anyone got advice as to a good blogging site? Vox? Blogspot? Recommendations?

Further along those lines, emmzzi was lovely enough to wait out in the rain with me prior to our attendance at the world premiere of Stone of Destiny at the Edinburgh Film Festival a few weekends ago. Here are some of the photos I took, both outside and inside the cinema; there are loads more in my Scrapbook, but they're almost entirely of one person...
( Robert Carlyle and others... )

~ I have grapes. I have Maltesers. The Maltesers are nicer.

~ The songs that have been stuck in my head today: You Are The Music In Me from High School Musical 2, Treat Me Right by New Kids on the Block - the first album baby! - and the song from Beauty & The Beast that Belle and The Beast sing when they start to realise that they fancy each other. There's a line in the Beauty & the Beast song, "New and a bit alarming", that my sister and I used to find hilarious, it was something to do with the way Belle said 'alarming'. There wasn't much to do in the town we grew up in.

Quote of the day
The Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. ~- William Gibson.

A-freaking-men to that.

hahaha im at work. they've forgotten to block the net on the new PCs! not for long tho im sure. but yay for now.

very excited for ibiza right now. excited like woah. I seriously cannot wait for the sun and the lying around reading and the food and the drink.

Finished harry potter 4 again, gonna re-read 5 and 6 on holiday then I've re read them all. I wish I'd counted how many times I've read each one, it'd be interesting to know. I bet 3 is the highest and then 5. I do love Sirius. Currently reading Oscar Wilde's Complete Short Fiction. I love it so far.

Ah shit phone call! Bye!!!

I've possibly eaten more sugar today than I should have. I blame that fancy shop on the Albert Docks where they had sweets I hadn't eaten in over a decade (they also had sherbert, but I am putting off eating that for a while, because it's sherbert, and it's AWESOME. It needs to be savoured. Or something. Or possibly I just need to wait until I haven't eaten as much sugar).

I digress.

We went on a college trip to Liverpool today, to go to the Tate, to see the Klimt exhibition. It was awesome. I always like seeing works of art by artists I admire "in the flesh", so to speak. There was the Beethoven Frieze, which was huge and incredible (and it has an incredible amount of empty space! If we did something like at college, they'd beat us with sticks!)

Anyway, it was good, and I got to see the Albert Docks again (I like docks. Don't ask me why, I'm not entirely sure).

~*~

I've been reading a partial translation of the FFVII/Advent Children Omega Ultimania, and I learnt things such as: Cid's t-shirt was hard to animate to look like cloth, and Yazoo's hair was a pain in the arse to animate. *giggles* Sometimes I'm glad I didn't go into animation after all.

I also learnt that Cloud, at the beginning of FFVII is definitely suffering from multiple personality disorder (which I find interesting, since I was going to write a fic along those lines. I have made motions in that direction, but I make no promises). I also thought maybe the voice Cloud hears in his head is Zack's (a common thought, apparently) - it's not, it's Cloud's original personality trying to reassert itself.

Well, damn.

On that note, I think I answered my own question about ( Zack and the end of Crisis Core, etc. )

Of course, had I played Crisis Core, I might have gleaned this information from that. I just dunno anymore. ¬_¬

~*~

Great progress with the Cloud and Zack pic. Hurrah!

Played some more FFVII - didn't know you could use old-style memory cards with the PS2. I'm learning something new every day! Heh. I accidentally saved over my save file where I had Cloud in drag, so I can't go and do the optional bit I never see anyway (where you go to the Honeybee and...basically get harassed by all the men in there).

OK, I think this is all a little tl;dr, so I'll end it here.

You know those old women that talk to you while you on public transport even if you are reading a book or have headphones on and very clearly don't want to have a conversation with anyone? The ones that continue to talk to you even when you only answer them with, "hmmmm" before you try go back to your book or turn the volume on your Ipod up. I'm turning into one of them.

On Friday I sat down on a seat on the bus next to a girl who was very clearly In A Strop and didn't want to admit that anyone else in the world existed, never mind talk to them. She had her arms and her legs crossed and we looking out of the window with a fixed determination and a raised chin. I plopped down next to her with a dripping umbrella in one hand and a knitting magazine in the other and the first thing I wanted to do was say: "Oh hai! U r having a bad dayz, y/n?" in a loud, cheerful voice.

I didn't, but I was really tempted.

I think the older I get, the filters in my brain that tell me that doing that kind of thing would be annoying are going to wear out and I'll be sat chatting away to people with their MP3s on full blast.

I expect to be completely batty by the time I'm 45.


And speaking of knitting magazines, there's a pattern for a throw in this months Let's Knit that is done on size 20 circular needles. I want to do it because it will be a good, low maintenance wedding present for my uncle (you never can have enough throws) and because I want some size 20 circular needles. Knitting with them will be like wrestling with an octopus!


Three words that I always spell wrong: originally, definitely, and maintenance. Bad things happen with the vowels.

On the Crisis Core front (I still haven't played it because a) I don't have a PSP and b) it isn't actually out here yet, despite my seeing an ad for it once and once only):
- Genesis is still making me itch (and not in a good way).
- I don't like Angeal. Although I do like it when he saves Zack, and Zack says about the sword being important. Angeal replies that Zack's life is more important than the sword, but only by a little bit. Hee!
- Did I mention Genesis annoys me?
- And not only that, but, but, they totally changed what happens in Nibelheim! NOOOOOO!

One question I do have ( spoilery for one Cloud's flashbacks and the end of Crisis Core )

All that said, have a photo of my current work in progress:

( Cloud Strife )

And also two screen caps proving that Cloud's hair does indeed look like a chocobo (as Tifa points out in FFVII if you choose to raid the chocobo nest):

( Cloud! Your hair looks like the back of a chocobo! )

~*~

I played some FFVII today, coincidentally (or not :q ). The PS1 is still doing hard resets in inappropriate places, so I really think it's on the way out :( (I have had it four years now, and it was second-hand when I got it, so I guess it's to be expected). So I stuck the first disc in the PS2, and it took forever to load, but eventually it did, and no hard resets, so I was pleased. I'm up to Cloud and Aeris in Wall Market, so the next thing to do is cross-dressing fun for Cloud *g*. One of these days I will draw Cloud in a dress, I swear (although I still gotta do Basch first *ahem*).

Yeah. I'll go away and eat nik-naks and look at fanart now...

stolen from kayim

- Go to musicoutfitters.com
- Enter the year you graduated from high school in the search function and get the list of 100 most popular songs of that year.
- Bold the songs you like, strike through the ones you hate and underline your favorites. Do nothing to the ones you don't remember/care about.

What?

Just...what?

All right, it's official. Zack has THE STUPIDEST HAIR TO DRAW. EVER.

I thought it was Cloud, but damn, no. Cloud's hair was a friggin' cakewalk compared to Zack's.

Let me explain: at some point I had an idea for Crisis Core related fanart, and I liked the idea, but I thought, "Eh, what's the point, I haven't even played the game." But then yesterday, I thought, "Stuff it, I'll do it. I have a billionty screen caps saved and whatnot*."

So I started sketching - the original idea was to have them back to back, and I figured that Cloud is about a head shorter than Zack, because he's five seven, and Zack is six one. I got Cloud nailed pretty easily. Granted, the hardest part was his hair, but that's Tetsuya Nomura's fault. That said, it was so much easier with references to work from (rather than my mental image, which has all the spikes in the wrong place for some reason). I would show you proof, but that I forgot to transfer the photo over from my phone. D'oh!

But no! NO! Cloud does NOT have the hardest hair to draw! ZACK DOES!

You would think it would be easy, all that black mass of, well, spikes, right? Wrong. Misplace one spike, and it throws the whole thing off. Give him too much hair, and he looks like his head is an odd shape (part of my problem, it turned out later, was that his head was the wrong shape. Whaddaya know?). So in wanting to preserve the awesomeness that was a successful version of Cloud, I photocopied and traced onto a new piece of paper (I'd also drawn and rubbed out so much that it was looking really bad), and started Zack's head anew this afternoon. I think I might be getting somewhere now his head is the right shape ¬_¬

I almost turned the copy over and traced Cloud's head when I was desperate. But that's only 'cause I knew about the whole Zack-Cloud head swap thing *g*.

~*~

I had a social life last night! Twas the end of year party, and I went out to socialise with my college mates. And much fun was had! (And I wasn't drinking!). There were many mind-boggling moments, and Stephen and his girlfriend managed to go through just about every single dance style in the space of half an hour (sitting down, too!).

However, I think three days of being sociable and everything took it out of me, 'cause by midnight I was getting to the stage where I was feeling a bit miserable and wanting to cry for no apparent reason (it used to happen quite a lot. Now, not so much). But I don't regret any of it. If I had to go and relive the last three days, and do it all again, I would (although I'd like the Cloud and Zack pic to remain intact, as I don't think I could be arsed to start that again from the beginning).

~*~

*No, honestly, my brain dialogue really does go like this.