Get to know me questions

I'm bored and found this on tumblr so thought I'd do it here.  Cross channel memes, yeah.

1. If someone wanted to really understand you, what would they read, watch, and listen to?

Read - the Discworld books, particularly the witch and watch ones.  Supergirl: Many Happy Returns.  Elizabeth McCracken's An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination.  Alternatively, they could read this blog and New readers...start here!.

Watch - the Buffy telly show.  Listen to - 90s britpop, metal and punk albums, with a dash of Shampoo, 5ive and Steps.

2. Have you ever found a writer who thinks just like you?  if so, who?

No, but some of Terry Pratchett's creations make total utter sense to me - Granny Weatherwax and Vimes in particular.

3. List your fandoms and one character from each that you identify with.

Discworld - Granny Weatherwax

DC comics - Linda Danvers Supergirl

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Tara

4. Do you like your name?  is there another name you think would fit you better?

I like my online name, I think it suits me just right.

5. Do you think of yourself as a human being or a human doing? do you identify yourself by the things you do?

Wanky question.  Human being.  I identify myself by the things I am.

6. Are you religious/spiritual?

Not any more.

7. Do you care about your ethnicity?

I'm white.  No I don't care about it, I don;t need to care about it, I live in the UK and being white affords me the privilege to not have to care about it.

8.   What musical artists have you felt most connected to over your lifetime? 

Manic Street Preachers and the Wildhearts.

9. Are you artist?

I can do some origami and some crafty stuff.  I can put together costumes, following tutorials, but I don't think that makes me an artist.

10. Do you have a creed?

No

11. Describe your ideal day.

12. Dog person or cat person?

Kitties all the way.

13. inside or outdoors?

Both.  The home comforts of indoors with the freedom to go outdoors whenever I like.

14. Are you a musician?

Hell no.

15.  Five most influential books over your lifetime.

The Discworld series.  All 30 plus of them.

16. If  you’d grown up in a different environment, do you think you’d have turned out the same?

Nope.

17. Would you say your tumblr is a fair representation of the “real you”?

Nope, my tumblr is just comic stuff that makes me happy.  My blog isn't all me either, it's what I choose to write about and put on here, but that's not all I am.

18. What's your patronus?

I found this definition of a patronus: The Patronus Charm is difficult, and many witches and wizards are unable to produce a full, corporeal Patronus, a guardian which generally takes the shape of the animal with whom they share the deepest affinity.

I have no idea what my patronus would be.  Something that likes pretty things but doesn't really exist, I guess.

19. Which Harry Potter house would you be in? or are you a muggle?
Hufflepuff - values hard work, patience, loyalty and fair play.

20. Would you rather be in Middle Earth, Narnia, Hogwarts, or somewhere else?
Of the list, Narnia.  Elsewhere, the Discworld.  I would like a world with narrativium.

21. Do you love easily?
No.

22. List the top five things you spend the most time doing, in order.
Checking for movements.
Thinking about my babies.
Thinking about my partner.
Thinking about my next set of appointments.
Thinking about my physical state.

23. How often would you want to see your family every year?
Discounting my partner and kids, I can happily see family just every few months, with a bit of contact over phone, email or skype between that.

24.  Have you ever felt like you had a “mind-meld” with someone?
Don't be ridiculous.

25. Could you live as a hermit?
With adequate maternity care, yes.  So perhaps I mean no.

26.  How would you describe your gender/sexuality?
Gender - female, but had my life gone a different way I can see how I would have become more masculine identified, but never male identified.
Sexuality - bisexual.

27. Do you feel like your outside appearance is a fair representation of the “real you”?
Well, I'm very visibly pregnant now so I look like a mother, so yeah, I guess?

28. On a scale from 1 to 10, how hard is it for someone to get under your skin?
Very, very easily.  I'm a moody bastard.

29. Three songs that you connect with right now.
I am not connecting with any songs right now.

30. Pick one of your favourite quotes.

"...And that's what your holy men discuss, is it?" [asked Granny Weatherwax.]"Not usually. There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment on the nature of sin. for example." [answered Mightily Oats.]"And what do they think? Against it, are they?""It's not as simple as that. It's not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.""Nope.""Pardon?""There's no grays, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That's what sin is.""It's a lot more complicated than that--""No. It ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts.""Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes--""But they starts with thinking about people as things..."--from Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett.

Linky time

Look, here's a great post of the vast majority of skirt, bag, dress, shoe etc styles:
http://fullofwhoa.tumblr.com/post/107079509098/dixiejos-right-here-is-it-everything-you-ever
There's a few styles missing, but the vast majority are there.  It looks useful for when I want to start making clothes.

Alternate universe Harry Potter where Aunt Petunia takes him in and loves him:
http://katzenfabrik.tumblr.com/post/106896187643/ink-splotch-what-if-when-petunia-dursley-found
It's beautiful and gut wrenching and well worth reading.

A North Korean defector's view on The Interview:
http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/23066/1/i-watched-the-interview-with-a-north-korean-defector
Really interesting.

A really, really good dahl recipe:
http://georginahayden.com/my-go-to-south-indian-dal-recipe/
Seriously good.  Seriously seriously good.  The recipes on this woman's site are great - always tasty and simply to do (at least I've chosen the simple to do ones - I leave the complicated ones!)

Visit to the Harry Potter Studios!

So, a week or so ago the lovely Sunnysweetpea arranged for a group of 10 bloggers to visit the Harry Potter Studios in glamorous* Watford, England.

* Note for non-UK and Northern readers: Watford is not glamorous, it's a dump.  I grew up near there. Even at 7 years of age I knew it was a dump.  Thankfully, the HP studios are not actually in Watford proper.

Sunnysweetpea is a lifestyle blogger, and the other bloggers on the trip were also lifestyle bloggers.  I tell you, it's a side of the internet I'd never imagined existed!  I mean, these ladies run blogs that are overwhelmingly upbeat, pretty to look at, more or less devoid of in-fighting, bitching and self entitlement and on the whole positive and pleasant places to visit.  They take so much care over their blogs.  They craft their posts.  Imagine!  I've clearly spent too long in the comics blogosphere.

Don't worry though, I still brought the comics to the show:

Lantern/Potter mash up FTW. I'm quite enjoying the hand on hip pose I'm striking here.. although I have no idea what inspired it.

Entry tickets for over 16s are £30 each - it's quite expensive, and not something I would usually be able to justify spending, especially with the cost of travel to and from and site.  However, Warner Brothers kindly gave us all free tickets, because we are all bloggers and it's good marketing for them.  They don't appear to do any adverts for the studios, just press releases when it opened and now they rely on word of mouth.  It's a pretty good promotional system.

When we arrived we discovered we also had a goody bag each.  Marvellous!  A goody bag!  What did we get in it?  These delicious things:

Ominous frog:

See him stare you down. *glowers*

I've not eaten him yet.  The peppermint frogs are pretty nice though.

These goody bags must cost near enough £75 in shop.  Too expensive for me to buy, but for Warner Brothers, 10 bloggers is circa £750 for the goody bags, plus £300 entry fees.  Now I say that's darn cheap advertising.  And hey it worked, because I'm impressed!

So is my boyfriend, apparently.  You'll need the sound on for that one.

So, what do you see at the studios?  Well, you start with a short film where the 3 main actors tell you a bit about the filming and how much they enjoyed it and the crew were all one big happy family.  To be fair, it did look genuine although I was surprised by the apparent awkwardness of the Radcliffe/Watson/Grint in doing this presenting thing.

Then you go into the banqueting hall.  It's beautiful.  The walls and ceiling are made of plaster but the floor is genuine stone - they chose stone so it would last the 10 years required for filming.  The wall decorations and the costumes hanging up are beautiful - you really feel transported to Hogwarts!

After the banqueting hall you visit a huge room that is filled to the brim with displays to admire.  Credit to the designers - it never felt crowded, or like a warehouse.  It felt welcoming with set pieces to draw you in and information panels about the creation of the sets.  We saw the Gryffindor dormitory, Dumbledore's office, the potions lab, the Weasley cottage!  The Weasley cottage may well have been my favourite thing.  So homely, so welcoming, so full of love.  Professor Umbridge's office was also there, and if you ever needed convincing that pink is the colour of the devil, there you have it.  So pink.  So, so, so pink.

  

This isn't Umbridge's office, this is from quite early on in the exhibition and I think is from one of the earlier films.  It's beautiful.

We went at the end of half term which meant that we were there on the last day of the Animal actors visits.  We got to see Crookshanks and Mrs Norris (I think - she's a the giant tabby yeah?), Fang (big drooly dog, not my thing), and some pretty cool insects and reptiles.  The tailless whip scorpion was great.  The big hairy spider a bit creepy but mostly interesting.  The hedgehog alike creature was not a reptile or insect, but was with them because it was exotic.  And uber cute.  Then there was the bloody great snake.

I'm pretty certain it was a yellow python, a-la:

Pretty colours? Yes.  Unassailably freaky? Hell yes.  I don't like snakes.

So, to move away from that horror, I went and looked at the rest of the exhibition:

I honestly don't know what this is but I'm including it because the photo amuses me.

Magic is might:

 

Nothing like a bit of soviet inspired imagery to brighten your day:

 

After this section we went outside and had some butterbeer.  As you do.  I would recommend you don't. It's gross.  Seriously foul.  Incredibly sweet and utterly rank.  They even had a barrel you could pour your drink into if you couldn't cope with it, which most people were doing, it is that horrible.  I did buy a n official butterbeer tumbler, which was worth it, but the drink itself is revolting.

This photo was taken by Jenny of Sunny Sweet Pea and she owns the copyright.

My reaction to the butterbeer has been immortalised by Jenny on film:

Go to the 3 minute 50 mark for the butterbeer.  Also go to the 3 minute mark to see me being awkward in front of a mirror.  C'est terrible.

At this point we also saw the Knight Bus, Privet Drive and Hedwig!  Yes the ACTUAL Hedwig. Or at least, one of the owls that played him.  This particular owl was a right grumpy sod.

After the outside bit we headed back indoors, past the chess pieces...

... to the animatronic stuff.

A favourite was the mandrake:

A non-favourite was a giant Hagrid head.  I know they had reasons for making it, but c'mon, a giant Robbie Coltrane head?  It was as big as my torso!

I loved the giant Aragog:

Then it was on to Diagon Alley:

I love this photo and scene so much!  Simple yet magical.  Mushrooms are just cool.

After Diagon Alley we went into Ollivander's.  It was filled with wand cases, all labelled with the names of the actors and workers involved in the films.  Most of my pictures came out terribly, but I'm reasonably happy with this one:

I like the colours and the blurriness of the people.

Lastly we went into the shop, which was full of good stuff but on the whole pretty expensive.  Good quality stuff - the clothes were really nice designed and attractive and made out of good quality material.  They looked like high street designer clothes - think Superdry and Bench.  They also sold cushions:

 I *really* like the cushions.  However, the vests were about £18, the hoodies about £40.  The scarfs were about £20.  A wand or a Hedwig cost in the realm of £25.  This means that with the entrance fee of £30 for over 16s/£22.50 for 5-15 year olds that a trip to the Potter studios is a pretty expensive day out.  That said, the cafe was what I would call normally priced.  The food available was a range of basic salads, sandwiches, jacket potatoes and I believe some other hot foods .  The jacket potato and cheese that I had was about 5 or 6 quid.

Now, was it worth the entry fee?  Yes, I think so.  It is expensive and it's not something I would have been able to afford to go were I paying for it, so I'm very grateful for the free pass, but then again I don't think it's aimed at me.  I'm shortly going to become a one income household and I'm pretty sure Warner Brothers are going for the affluent middle class families/20 somethings with disposable income audience.  Neither of which I belong to.  This is fine - I'm not someone who thinks that everyone should have a right to visit these places.  It costs what it costs and they are clearly doing very well out of it.  It was a great day!  The visitor flow was handled really well so it never felt busy and overcrowded (and I cannot deal with crowds).  There were places to sit down if you needed a rest.  The staff were friendly and courteous.  If you like Harry Potter and have some spare cash then go!  You'll love it.

My fellow visitors pictures and reports of the trip can be found here:

The tea Drinking English Rose
Thursday afternoons part one and part two

Hazel's World of Joy
Stripes and Snapshots
Sunny Sweet Pea

At the time of posting this these guys haven't posted reports yet, so these are links to the home page of their blog:
Sophie in the Sticks
The Cup and Saucer
Thoroughly English (who has a heartfelt post up on the sale of medical data currently being proposed in the UK.  I recommend you read it.)

Do go look at their posts, they all have wonderful pictures and a really lovely turn of phrase.

Thanks to Warner Brother for providing us with the complimentary tickets, and thanks to Jenny for organising it all!

EDITED 14/03/2014 to add in this group picture that Alice of The Cup and Saucer blog has posted:

I think it's a cute picture of us all.  Just ignore my rubbish trainers that really don't go with the dress - I'm all about the comfort these days (ooh my back, ooh my knees etc etc ;)

Make Mine Milk

Uhh, so I saw this on a bus recently -

I've seen stranger marketing ploys.  But, Hal Jordan advertsiing milk?   I'm convinced he's thinking something rude.

There's also a Ron Weasley advert:

I certainly would have associated Ron more with milk, than Hal..his face seems to fit better.  I can believe that Ron drinks milk.  I only believe that Hal drinks milk if it's laced with whiskey or rum.

I wonder if the GL one will have a bigger effect on milk or the film?

Here, have some Lols

They're not groundbreaking or anythign but they made chuckle.

Harry Potter thoughts

Prompted by seeing the movie last week, I have been re-reading the Harry Potter books, from Goblet of Fire onwards. I don’t own the first and second ones because I don’t think they’re very good, and I know the Prisoner of Azkaban really well, hence why starting from book number 4.

On this re-read I’ve noticed something about JK Rowling’s writing style, namely that she doesn’t waste anything. Every single sentence and event in the book, even those seemingly innocent of meaning or throwaway, is important. All will move the story along, tell you more about the characters and their relationships or lay the groundwork for a later event or revelation. It’s a very tight method of writing and I would guess that if I’d picked up on this on the first read I’d have been able to guess some of the outcomes and plot developments.

For example, in the Goblet of Fire there are several mentions of a beetle in the vicinity of key conversations. This beetle later turns out to be Rita Skeeter eavesdropping on folks.
In the Order of the Phoenix there is mention of Kreacher nicking bits and pieces from Black house and hoarding them. Among these trophies is a locket (or ring? Can’t remember which right now), I’m pretty sure this turns out to be a Horcrux in book #7.
In the Half Blood Prince there is mention of Tonks being very depressed and her morphing abilities not working. Later on Dumbledore explains to Harry that an emotional upheaval or unreciprocated love can cause a witch or wizard to lose their abilities temporarily. Later on we find out that Tonks is in love with Lupin who feels that it isn’t fair for her to get involved with a werewolf.

This makes for a very thorough and very controlled method of writing, but I think loses some of world building aspects that make long running series such a delight. For example, if Rita Skeeter wasn’t an animagus there wouldn’t have been mention beetles at any point during the books. If the locket (or ring) wasn’t a Horcrux we wouldn’t have known what Kreacher was hoarding, or we may not have been told he was hoarding anything. If Tonks wasn’t into Lupin we wouldn’t know about the effects of a broken heart on magic users.

I think this is a shame, for we don't get to see the wider picture of the wizarding world. Granted, we do get a pretty comprehensive look, but bear with me - Beetles wouldn’t exist. Bezoars wouldn’t have been introduced in the potions lesson in the Half Blood Prince if Harry hadn’t needed to cure Ron in Slughorn’s study. Don’t get me wrong, I like the way everything links in, I love the way Rowling builds up on previous events and features, but I wish there was more.

What other effects does a wizard or witch’s emotional state have on magic? Are there any other animals in Hogwarts that aren’t really people or aren’t used in Care of Magical Creatures lessons or to help the heroes escape? What other important heirlooms did Sirius (or any of the other families) have? What else are we missing from this world?

I guess this is a minor criticism in the grand scheme of things, there are other problems in her writing which bother me more, (the heterocentricity of it all, the disdain of muggle life), but right now it’s the most pressing of them.

What do other fans think? Am I picking and choosing examples to suit my argument? Am I talking bollocks? What do you all think of her writing style? Answers on an electronic postcard please.

DC figures are lame

OK that's a lie they're not all lame. Only the ones I want are lame. I went to the big smoke yesterday to meet with friends, see some art and do some comic related shopping. We got down to London especially early so we could go to Forbidden Planet and I could buy some toys. Big fail.

We got the tube to Tottenham Court Road, turned onto Charing Cross Road and noticed a shop called Orbital comics. This was the awesome - lots of 80s to the present stuff for 50p, a manga selection my ever picky boyfriend was impressed with, to the point of going back later and purchasing 2 books, and this awesome Nightwing figure:

Which I'm now kicking myself about not getting. I'd just spent 12 quid on comics and thought I'd see what Forbidden Planet had to offer.

We got to Forbidden Planet and the DC selection was rubbish. The 12 inch batgirl dolls looked liked men. the material for the costumes all sucked, and the Women of the dc universe ones were rubbish. The expressions were all wrong or they were naked (hello Big Barda). The Zatanna and Donna Troy Wonder Girl ones were good, but not 50 quid of good. Anything of Power Girl and Wonder Woman had the expressions all weird.

I looked at the Marvel section, specifically the Marvel zombies, and they were awesome! Zombie spidey and Mary Jane? Check. Zombie Spidey about to beat someone to death with his own leg? Check. Zombie Cl America? Yep! Even the Harry Potter ones were better!

So I bought bundles of comics for a quid each. I'll wait for the next wave of mini mates to come out instead. And buy the Nightwing one.

Sort it out DC.


Wow. That was a boring post.