My sister e-mailed me yesterday to inform me that my mother has died. It wasn't a huge surprise, as she was 94, and as she lived in Australia I hadn't seen her since she visited in 2005, so I had expected that it wouldn't really affect me too much. I was wrong. I was a wreck yesterday and I'm only just beginning to pull myself together.
I'm still alive, and still writing, although rarely posting on LiveJournal these days. Glastonbury has inspired me to write a piece of whimsy, not really fanfic as such, which isn't suitable for posting anywhere else but I thought it a shame not to share it. A true 100-word drabble.
After eighteen years, I have returned to perhaps the most insane of all my Buffyverse stories – and, considering that my other stories including Dojo Hard and I Am the Walrus, that’s pretty insane. It dates from before I adopted my present custom of using US English for fics based on US shows, games, and movies, and UK English only for British shows and books, and so US readers will just have to put up with the British spellings. I doubt if anyone will remember the story so far, after such a long time; you’ll have to re-read from the beginning. Here, one more time, is the ludicrous summary: AU, everybody's human, no vampires. Buffy is the Prime Minister of Iceland. Spike is a Jivaro head-hunter in the Brazilian rain-forest. Can they get together?
I'm not going to do a 'Your girls took a hell of a beating' post because they didn't. It was a knife-edge affair and victory was by the narrowest of margins - but it went England's way and football has come home at last.
Gustavus Adolphus, Greta Thunberg, Greta Garbo, Ingmar Bergman, Stieg Larsson, Benny, Bjorn, Agnetha and Anni-Frid, Mats Wilander, Stefan Edberg, Alfred Nobel, Avicii, Zlatan Ibrahimović, Bjorn Borg, Dolph Lundgren, Jenny Lind, Alexander Skarsgård, Per Gessle, Marie Fredriksson (RIP, sadly missed), Carl XVI Gustaf, Magdalena Andersson... can you hear me Magdalena Andersson? Your girls took a hell of a beating! Your girls took a hell of a beating!
Henrik Ibsen, Morten Harket, Edvard Munch, Edvard Grieg, Trygve Lie, Ole Gunnar Solskjær, Kjetil Aamodt, Sonja Henie, Trude Mostue, Sigrid, Fridtjof Nansen, Roald Amundsen, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Crown Prince Haakon, Jonas Gahr Støre… Can you hear me Jonas Gahr Støre? Your girls took a hell of a beating! Your girls took a hell of a beating!
Here is a Ukranian symphonic metal song from 2015 which is very apt right now.
The lyrics are:
Million days and nights before When only tarpans ruled this world Our nomad fathers took it in their hands
Warm from coddling sun by day Cooled by sea breezing by nights It is loved so hard that our heart just lights
No one can take our land from us, it is our home And no one can decide for us, leave us all alone We will hold arms to death until the last of us stands still We will destroy and crush all foes, we’ll shout 'Alga!' and kill!
Violet lilacs fill the woods, Meadows full of grass and fruits Mountain peaks of limestone pierce the blue-blue sky
Stormy waves crash on the rocks, Grapes entwine the antic scree How can one not love this land of sun and sea?
How dare you godless bastards step on my land? How dare you touch my daughters and sons? This will be your last steps unless you turn, Put your two-headed eagle in your ass and run!
Henrik Ibsen, Morten Harket, Edvard Munch, Edvard Grieg, Trygve Lie, Ole Gunnar Solskjær, Kjetil Aamodt, Sonja Henie, Trude Mostue, Fridtjof Nansen, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Erna Solberg… Can you hear me Erna Solberg? Your girls took a hell of a beating! Your girls took a hell of a beating!
...fanfic writers who describe characters as 'viscous killers' or who refer to someone smiling a 'viscous smile' would be thrown into a swimming pool filled with treacle.
And those who refer to 'lightening bolts' would be pumped full of helium.
Did anyone else watch 'Blue Planet 2', see the 'Bobbit' metre-long carnivorous worm, and think "Even that would be a better mother than Molly Weasley"? The episode was full of creatures more intelligent than Arthur Weasley, too, and I don't just mean the cuttlefish and the octopus; even the microscopic algae inside the coral polyps would have superior intelligence and a greater understanding of Muggle technology.
jubilant