look on my works ye mighty, and despair

Two pretty things, with pictures:

I got my Tezuka figure; after buying Yukimura in Japan and drooling over -- but not being able to find for sale -- the Tezuka anywhere, this was probably inevitable at some point. And then he was suddenly on sale for half price on AmiAmi. I kind of felt it was fate. He's gorgeous; his face sculpt is so pretty.

( pictures )

And also Pez made me a super gorgeous long drapey wool jacket; it is beautiful and has pockets and I love it.

( pictures )

The Tenipuri community did a fic/art/etc giftswap on Tumblr (and a physical swap too, separately).

As mentioned before, I wrote a Yanagi/Niou fic, sort of lighthearted and floofy and heavily skewed to the biases I share with the recipient: La Mode Recto Verso -- my giftee seems delighted with it, so hooray! Contains Niou and Renji as bookstore workers and Yukimura in a dress and snarky Sanada and also Mizuki, and I think that's all the warning I can give really.

I actually received two gifts back from this swap, due to some mixup. I got a lovely two-piece artwork of Niou and Yagyuu (which my tumblr layout kind of messes up, I've just realised, but uh if you have 'view' at the top then click that to view it in dashboard mode), and also The Investment, a Yanagi/Niou AU fic about gambling and card-counting to cheat the system and a growing understanding and trust between two sneaky bastards. When I described it to Pez she laughed and said '[your gifter] understands you, huh', and that's about right: it's basically all my YanaNiou desires at once, including a thing I didn't specify but which I really did want: characters I love being triumphant and joyful in victory, mmmm.

For the physical gift exchange I got a very blingy and tenifashion-y jewelery set and a cute picture of Niou! I sent my giftee a few things from Japan plus a fluffy Golden Pair fic -- her favourite pairing -- which is going to remain in handwritten form only. Pez will actually disown me if I publish GP fic I think, for a start. But Eiji was surprisingly easy to write.

In addition, I both sent and received a bunch of cards to tennis people this year, and as a result have a stack of Niou-centric art gifts that are *delightful*. Some D1, some YanaNiou, some just Niou, and all of it absolutely lovely. I need to find somewhere to put these!

Yesterday for business reasons we spent a chunk of the evening chatting with local politicians -- the local MP, the Mayor and Mayoress, town councillors, plus other local pillar-of-the-community types -- and try to explain to them what we do for a living. It turns out everyone knows what conventions are, and everyone finds wigs/costumes sort of fascinating as a thing. Yay?

Meanwhile it is my birthday! So far today I've had cards, kisses, lots of good wishes, and also someone took the time to tell me that Masa's recent (and awful) permed hairstyle on a tv show was actually a really convincing wig and he in fact still has sane hair. So that's a nice birthday thing for me, hooray.

We have work first, but then the plan is dinner with friends in London, a moderately fancy hotel for the night, then tomorrow is pootling around London contentedly, maybe buying me a pair of new sneakers (it's that time of the year again), and then Pez and I are going to see 1984 -- one of my favourite books, so I'm very excited to see this adaption.

Hooray for getting old!

We got back from NYC yesterday, having left on Thursday evening (mm red-eye flights).

The week has gone by in sort of a blur: there's been a lot of food, a lot of shopping, and a decent amount of socialising. We bought boots and underwear and makeup and books and clothes. We wandered around Manhattan neighbourhoods a lot: Greenwich Village, Chinatown, the Upper East Side, Midtown, Tribeca, Times Square. We went to the Met and Chelsea Market and Grand Central Station and Macy's. We spent ages in Saks Fifth Avenue making happy noises at the tailoring and fabrics and cuts for the super-high-end clothing. We browsed artisan jewellery and knick-knacks in The Market in Greenwich. We wandered along the High Line in the sunshine. Our feet ached regularly, and we sought cool places out of the heat and light to rest. We went to Petco and played with the kitties. We sat in Central Park a couple of times and wrote fic in our notebooks. We met up with friends for dinner and drinks and hanging-out.

We ate a lot -- it was the thing Pez most wanted to do on holiday, and NYC has a lot of good food. A lot of our dinners were Japanese (easier to find and cheaper than the equivalent in London) so that made me very happy. I drank a lot of plum wine, which also made me very happy. I also got to eat a lobster for the first time ever (conclusion: that is an unavoidably messy meal), and we had excellent milkshakes and italian food and pastries and ice cream and pancakes. We were often too full for more food, but the food was so tasty we tried to eat more nevertheless.

I will note that people in New York are pro-actively helpful to tourists these days, in a way I don't remember from previous visits. We could barely get out a map without someone offering to give us directions, it was eerie. Since I basically lose all ability to navigate while in Manhattan, it was also very useful.

Also I have wonderful friends, seriously. I didn't get to spend enough time with any of them, but that's okay, there'll be future visits and future visits by them to the UK. There'd better be: not one person we hung out with let us pay for so much as a drink, so I need to start repaying this level of generosity.

Well, that was a very busy and wonderful weekend.

Before the weekend, I was feeling reasonably knackered and antisocial, and therefore sort of expected to be Doing My Best To Get Through Kita all weekend. I also was having serious 'I look awful in everything' feelings about my costumes.

But Kita was amazing. Wonderful people -- we caught up with lots of old friends, and also made lots of new ones (for once! it feels like I haven't done that at conventions for a while). Wonderful costumes around the place -- we saw Rose of Versailles cosplay, good grief, and Rikkai cosplays who we fangirled over enthusiastically, and the AMAZING Grunt cosplay by a friend of ours, and a ton of others that we either admired from a distance or made happy little noises about.

Things I'm going to remember:

( Read more... )

Basically, I had a wonderful time and came out of the con suffused with happy feelings about people generally. And I want to make so many costumes (that will wear off, I know, but it's nice to have the sensation of enthusiasm for a while). I am exhausted now, however. Pez and I are going to be taking it Very Easy (outside of work) for a little while, I think.

On Thursday night we went to 'Robin and Brian's Christmas Compendium of Reason', a variety show about science hosted by Robin Ince (and to a lesser extent by Brian Cox).

It was wonderful. Talks about particular topics by various scientists/experts, songs, comedy routines, demonstrations. Ben Goldacre talking about pharmaceutical companies at an absurdly fast speed. Marcus du Sautoy talking about prime numbers. Billy Bragg singing about the space program. Rufus Hound talking about christmas. Festival of the Spoken Nerd performing a piece about, well, nerdiness (with fire and ukeleles and an overhead projector!). Richard Vranch and Pippa the Ripper explaining electrons with hula-hoops. Brian Cox explaining the latest discoveries in cosmology and astronomy. And, amazingly, Cmd Chris Hadfield singing Space Oddity live onstage. Demonstrations of how to set things on fire with Van der Graff generators and how to make mercury pulse like a heartbeat.

It was wonderful. Informative, clever, funny, everything you'd want it to be. I hope it's televised; it was magnificent.

It did give me a sensation I get more and more often as I get older: everyone is faking being a grown-up. These are experts, people who make their living by talking about their subjects, and in a lot of cases I could see the nerves, the flailing, the barely-held-together competence. Ben Goldacre actually admitted that he'd gotten overexcited and overcaffeinated earlier and had punched himself in the face, god. Rufus Hound showed up with his backing track still caching while he was streaming it off the internet.

It's massively reassuring to me, I have to say. Even massively competent professional people I admire are bundles of nerves and adrenalin and fall on their faces regularly. Hooray!

Today I went to see the doctor about my leg. (I had to take my jeans off and was offered a chaperone, which is a new procedure to me, but which led to this conversation: Me: 'it's okay, I'm pretty sure I could take you, if it came to that.' Him: 'that is... not the usual response I get to that question.') His diagnosis: sciatic nerve stuff, as predicted by all and sundry based on the symptoms. He was a bit concerned that my knee's had the focus of the discomfort more than anywhere else, and said that he thinks my knee is perfectly fine but if it suddenly gives way on me in the next few weeks, he's very sorry for being wrong.

So, painkillers and stretches and heat and massage, pretty much as expected.

And then I got back from town to find that Pez had bought me this book of wonder:



It has really, really gorgeous photographs and is absurdly hard to get hold of. I know, because I complained about this to Pez ages ago and then gave up on ever finding it. I am astounded and touched and delighted. So Pez wins all the wife points for the foreseeable duration, seriously. Eee.

Pez has suggested I build it a shrine. I think possibly my glee is noticeable.

A good time was had! I cosplayed 4 different things and didn't bother getting any photos in two of those outfits, whoops. The Crystal Chronicles shoot was fun, and Pez and I got a few pictures as Ib and Garry too. The other two (Neil (from To The Moon) and Niou) are both pretty easy costumes to throw on and do mini-shoots with locally some time, though, so I'm not particularly bothered -- and Niou was pretty ideal for running around in to help people at Cosplay HQ, it turned out. I think I spent most of the con in Cosplay HQ; it was a good place to hang out and see most people.

My literature panel went well: people seemed to enjoy me waffling on about books, even when it turned into ten minutes of 'no more questions? I will TALK ABOUT GENJI MORE THEN MUAHAHA'. I actually got some pretty tough questions, about how various historical events impacted trends in Japanese literature and about how much impact westernisation has made on modern Japanese literature and if I preferred the sort of themes in J-lit to western literary themes and so on. I did get asked about the most triggering-for-imposter-syndrome question I could have gotten asked ('what's your background in japanese literature? why did you decide to run this panel?') but that was clearly just curiosity and not a result of me fucking up horribly, and nobody seemed to care that the answer was just 'I like books!'. The person who asked it came up to ask me to write some articles for them about J-lit at the end, which was flattering. We'll see if that goes anywhere interesting.

The wig panel also went well; Pez turned up a little late due to judging responsibilities taking longer than expected, but I held the fort alone for that ten minutes and then we kind of sailed through the rest and covered pretty much everything we wanted to. Sometimes my advice was just 'don't do that' and sometimes it was 'go find some tutorials on youtube' and quite a lot of the time it was 'sew bits of wigs together for everything'.

At the closing ceremony, we sprang our little surprise on kahochan; he got pulled on stage in front of everyone to make a 'final speech' as chairman of Aya. As he took the microphone, a bunch of us ran on stage to wrestle him into a kigurumi of Pchan from Ranma. Mostly this meant that everyone else in the group lifted him up horizontally in the air and Rob and I shoved the thing onto him. He seemed really happy about this; I looked up at one point in the leg-wrangling to see Pete's cheerily grinning face as several people held his legs splayed open either side of me, and that's an image that's going to HAUNT ME FOR YEARS THANKS sigh.

Sunday evening was mostly spent hanging out with friends and winding down, with some horrifying interludes of Jodie barking hypothetical sexual commands at Gemma as the rest of us backed away in fear. And then there was dancing and late-night lingering around socially outside, and then this morning we did more of that as everyone tried to put off leaving until the last moment. D'aww. Adieu, Aya. You were awesome.

We have booked our flights to Japan! Flying out on Christmas Eve, in fact. We'll be in Tokyo for a week (so we'll be there during Comiket) and then the plan is to also visit Kyoto and probably Hiroshima - because I'd like to go to Miyajima - for a few days each before spending the last couple of days back in Tokyo. I also want to do a daytrip to Kamakura - for the literature nerdism - and also probably to Yokohama, since I keep setting fics there and it would be nice to actually see the place. We are flying with JAL, because their luggage allowance is double that of the other airlines with reasonable prices, and we're going to need it.

I'm (predictably) very excited! And should stop slacking off on my Japanese vocab and kanji practise now, whoops. It's been too hot to think recently!

Today (-ish) we packed! Each checked suitcase could be 23 kg at most, and by dint of careful weighing and repacking they both weighed 22.8kg. Eeesh. And then we had other stuff in carry-on. Cutting it close with the weight limits, really.

For lunch we went to the Jumbo Floating Restaurant in Aberdeen to have dim sum with Pez's parents and sister (and dropped by their flat again to borrow a small carry-on case for the stuff that couldn't go in the cases, whee). The Floating Restaurant is a HK landmark, and it turns out it is very pretty inside and not very expensive and has reasonably good food too. We had a pleasant meal looking out over the harbour, then poked around the boats (they have live catch tanks at the back, for instance) before Pez and I headed back into Central for one last poke around. Actually we were really, really exhausted by that point, so mostly we just sat in a cafe in Pacific Place and poked at the free wireless a bit. Once our coffee kicked in, we hauled ourselves over to Wan Chai to have one last-ditch attempt at finding more music I wanted (nope) and just generally to admire the shiny goods. I found a hooded waistcoat that I couldn't resist in a store nearby. CANNOT STOP SHOPPING.

We swung back to get our stuff from Pez's parents' flat, then went to Hong Kong station for the Airport Express. The airlines have a system where you can check your luggage in there instead of at the airport; we did that, then had fabulous food nearby for our last meal in Hong Kong: Pez had pork ramen and I had a sashimi bowl, and both of us made involuntary happy noises for a while before we finally headed to the airport. Border control and security waved us through without doing much checking (no inspection of liquids, only the most cursory glance at ID, really they just don't have paranoia there). HK airport is spacious and airy and filled with seats, cafes and very expensive designer stores. They also have free wifi, charging points and show cartoons on the TVs. It was awesome.

The flight was turbulent but fine, then the journey back was mostly unremarkable except that I cannot read baggage claim numbers correctly (sigh). We got back home at about 10am (after landing at about 5:30am), then popped out for lunch and groceries. Tomorrow we collect our kitty, and on Wednesday we get the supplementary kitty. Various post-trip thoughts later, after sleep and unpacking and so on. Right now I go to flop.

Today we... woke up at 11:30am. Ooops. I think we both fixed our jetlag a bit too well.

We went to Causeway Bay to look for clothes. ( short version: yay )

Actually I genuinely adore the general approach to t-shirt design here. Throw all the things at the shirt! Random words in random languages, glitter, sparkles, brand images, buttons, cartoon characters, badges, shapes, other fabric, anything you can think of, then see what sticks. Sometimes it's a hideous mess, but surprisingly often you end up with gorgeous striking patterns and designs. The ones with ipsum-lorem-ish junkwords elegantly and NEARLY MEANINGFULLY laid out made my eyes cross a bit as my brain tried desperately to make sense of them, mind you.

We also had a really good lunch at Crystal Jade (noodles with eel! pork steamed buns!) but by the evening we were still so full that we just bought some bread at a bakery on the way home. It was also delicious, hooray. The hotel staff had carefully laid out slippers by the bed for us when we got back (I think they were worried we'd overlooked the slippers in the wardrobe) and had also put a squeaky seahorse bathtoy in our bathroom. Still loving this hotel.

Breakfast with Pezfamily tomorrow morning, then touristy things, that's the plan. No more shopping! In the evening it's the Glay concert. Should be awesome!

I'm a big fan of crowd-funding -- I've funded a few albums by bands I love that way, and a few projects around the web, and essentially it seems like a nice way to get stuff made that people genuinely want.

Right now there are two projects I'm backing via Kickstarter, and you should go look in case they seem as awesome to you as they do to me.

The first is Alas Vegas, by jameswallis. ALAS VEGAS is an RPG miniseries about amnesia, sin, horror and gambling, and looks like it'll be high on my list of 'I need people to play RPGs with' complaint reasons. Tarot themes! Cocktail recipes! Alternate campaigns using the same rules! Plus James is an excellent RPG and game designer; go look up the kickstarter page to see what I mean.

The second is Pretty Good Number One, by mamster. The description on the website is 'An American family spends a month in a 260-square-foot Tokyo apartment in this humorous food and travel memoir,' but this is probably insufficient to convey why you should care unless you know how good Matthew's writing is. Matthew knows food, he knows how to tell stories, and he's a funny guy, and I suspect this book is going to be amazing.

Go! See! Fund fabulous things that you want to see in the world!

I rewatched the making of Spinning Box. Ah, those boys. ♥ I do wish they'd gotten the music tracks licensed properly so they could have the whole show recorded. Some of the dance sequences look like they must have been beautiful when staged properly.

(Slowly, slowly I learn to be able to understand bits of the narration and their conversations, omg. And watching people learn dance moves is always fascinating.)

This has been a very busy Christmas holidays!

We finally got ourselves together and went down to visit the fine folks of Casa del Cosplay. It had been ages since we'd last been there--probably a couple of months--but we finally got to meet their household snake (who is gorgeous) and also finally harassed kahochan into finishing The Last Remnant.

Then kedi_kedi came up to visit us! There was much hot doujinshi on doujinshi action and fangirling and happiness, but the most awesome thing was her amazing wedding gift picture(s) for us--we still need to hang it/them up, but we know exactly where it's/they're going. Beautiful. ♥

Then there was Christmas! Pez got some musical instruments, some baking things and books from me, and I got *fabulous* whisky and books from her. We roasted a duck, broke out the mulled wine, Pez made yule log and we had a really cosy Christmas together. May it be the first of many as a married couple.

On Thursday we had a wig photoshoot for Coscraft (with lovely people modelling the wigs for us and taking the photos) which finished at about 3am or so--it was in a hotel, so we crashed there and came back yesterday. Our photographer and models are all Dangan Ronpa fans (not via us!) and so now we have cosplay group plans for DR. Muahaha.

Today we had a visit from Pez's sister and family; Pez's nephew is obsessed by Lego, Dragons and Kung-fu Panda. There were cupcakes. It was good. Tomorrow we are going to London to visit the Cosplay hotel bunch again (and not returning until after New Year). There will be chinese-style hotpot, and silliness, and much alcohol.

Hope everyone else had a great Christmas!

Neil Hannon (of The Divine Comedy) did a concert yesterday for his 42nd birthday, at the Royal Festival Hall. The venue handed out festive party hats and party horns (the type that unfurls and refurls when you blow it). Hearing dozens of people testing their horns in the huge hall before the gig was weird--they make an oddly mournful sound. The noise was actually quite annoying ('it sounded like a good idea at the time') after a while, but that's what happens when you give people abusable props, I guess.

The support was, alas, not much my thing except for the performance of Meeting Mr Miandad (with vocals and piano from Lewis of the Duckworth Lewis Method, oh ho so incognito).

The setlist for the concert was pretty awesome, not that I can remember everything that was played because I never can, and not that this list is in the right order - but it included Assume The Perpendicular, Perfect Lovesong, Complete Banker, Love What You Do (with guest vocals by a surprisingly excellent Tom Chaplin of Keane), Indie Disco (with customary out-of-time clapping), The Lost Art of Conversation, Certainty of Chance (with guest vocals by a surprisingly skinny Alison Moyet), Bang Goes The Knighthood, Songs of Love (where the horns were utilised to play the instrumental line, which sounded DREADFUL but hilarious), the entire tracklist of Promenade with a string quartet, A Lady of a Certain Age, Charmed Life, National Express, Die a Virgin, Our Mutual Friend. I think the only thing I would have especially loved to hear in addition is In Pursuit of Happiness, but I'm so giddy over hearing all of Promenade that I can live without it.

And he got a giant glowing 42 to have onstage, and his daughter brought him a cake later on too. It was all very lovely.

(I've never yet seen Neil Hannon get through a gig remembering all the words to all his songs. Thankfully I find this endearing, even when he mangles songs I love.)

It was a great way to celebrate a birthday, and I'm glad I got to be there! Here's hoping he manages to stick around for another 20 years of music-making.

We got married! It was amazing and wonderful and Pez looked beautiful and I am so goddamned blessed to have such wonderful friends and family. More words when I am more coherent!

Murray won the men's tennis singles olympics final! Poor Roger, but wow, that was amazing.

Andy Murray appears to have been injected with happy drugs as a result of winning. He's all bouncy and grinny and he smacked Tim Henman playfully on the ass as he walked past. It's endearing but unexpected!

Pez's birthday weekend: a success!

On Saturday we went into London early and had lunch with Pez's sister and her family. We tried out the newish mozzarella restaurant in Canary Wharf on a whim; delicious (and the flavours gave me strong flashbacks to Florence in ways that Italian food here doesn't usually) though a little overpriced to eat at very often. Next time, though, I definitely want to try the smoked mozzarella.

We'd arranged to meet friends in Pinner for the afternoon to have cake at a place that had glowing reviews online. The cake place (Indulge Dessert Lounge) was absolutely wonderful; I'd pre-reserved a bunch of space, so we took over most of the cafe and ate much in the way of dessert and there was tea and hot chocolate and it was basically non-stop tastiness. Without prompting, the staff bought out a birthday ice-cream-with-candle for Pez about halfway through, bless 'em (and were perfectly happy with us hogging the place for about two hours), and I don't think I was the only person who left a generous tip there. Totally recommended, and indeed totally worth trekking out to zone 5 for.

For dinner we went to Stingray Cafe in Tufnell Park, chosen because it got good reviews for gluten-free options and vegetarian options (eolo, it was actually right next door to the Ethiopian place we went to when you were last over). They set out a table for twenty people, which turned out to be just right (and filled most of the top floor). The pizzas were enormous and tasty and everything was pretty cheap too. Pez got sung to again (this time, I *did* organise the cake+candle!) and seemed to manage to find time to chat a bit to everyone there. Everyone seemed to have a good time, really, and it was lovely to see disparate groups of friends chatting happily. It started snowing while we were in the restaurant; by the time most people left, the snow was pretty deep and the train delays/cancellations had begun to be an issue. Thankfully most people seemed to escape the worst of the delays; we only had to get back to Docklands, so we were okay.

Back at Pez's sister's place afterwards, there was yet more cake (a delicious apple tart, which had SECRET CUSTARD UNDER THE APPLES) before bed, and then the next morning we got to breakfast on more of that apple tart before heading home via a brief Uniqlo shopping spree.

Pez is happy, and still looks like a teenager dammit, so I think all is well with the world over here. Today she is making prop commissions; I will work on my Fakir costume later (perhaps after some reading). The world is still snow-covered outside; I might work from home tomorrow rather than trying to travel in if things don't start thawing a bit more. The world seems to be a decent place, really.

I keep not updating, but that is because I don't have that much to post about. Life continues ambling along, really.

Let's see. I read Ready Player One (which was interesting in a densely-packed-with-stuff-I-recognise way) and Snuff (which I enjoyed for the most part but, uh, Sybil Ramkin was awesome enough, surely? This felt like it pushed her too far into capable-wife-of-omnipotence territory.)

We watched Princess Tutu! This time, all the way to the end (last time I stalled mid-season 2). Wow, that was some fabulous crack they were smoking there and I think we broke through about five sets of fourth walls. Pez wants Mytho's prince outfit. I want Fakir's VOLUMINOUS hair. There may have to be cosplay.

And yesterday Pez bought the end-of-day-leftover soda bread loaf from a sandwich shop in town and it is delicious. I think this may have to happen again.

LJ won't let me comment at all. Or post, so this is via a client. Sigh.

In other news, it is my birthday!

We spent most of the weekend with friends in Ascot, in a large and art-filled house that also had a large pool, some chickens and some pygmy goats. And much alcohol. And a trampoline. And Albie, a cat consisting of 90% fluff and 10% UTTER LAZINESS. So adorable.

We had barbecues in the sunshine and our friend Anais made us up into zombies yesterday and it was generally very laid-back and fun. And Pez made me a wonderful birthday cake. I got to sprawl on a sofa with tequila while watching all the pretty young people swim around in their costumes, which felt indulgently bond-villain-esque somehow. And I was informed repeatedly that I didn't look my age at all--despite being the oldest person there--which gave me the unnerving sensation of what it must feel like to be one of those wealthy old dames who get flattered by gold-digging young suitors, except I have no money so HA HA wait I can't tell who comes out winning in that one. Probably I do.

Today we came back (which, uh, took most of the day) and then we hastened into the town centre so we could get to the shops. And delicious fooding ensued.

Anyway, that was a pretty good birthday! I have emails from people to answer but they are buried under about a hundred facebook notifications so it may take me a while. And tomorrow we go to see The Divine Comedy play a concert in Greenwich. And Wednesday we go see Gackt in concert. BUSY TIMES.