Oh, fuck. A few minutes ago, I tweeted the following about Kushiel's Mercy:
I may have slogged miserably through the last 400p of this book, but I do very much enjoy it when Imriel imitates Gallus Tadius. ♥

And then I put it down and picked up Corambis because I wanted to reread the bit about Mildmay having been there for the walk into the city, and nearly fucking burst into tears of relief at the beautiful, wonderful, gorgeous fucking prose and characters I love and--

This is why I can't have nice things. ♥

So: Just about to start streaming: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/produdfctititty

Today: Felix Harrowgate, of Doctrine of Labyrinths.

[EDIT] I think we can all safely say that my painting method is based entirely on, "Oh, right, I should do that thi-- oh, right, and tha-- but this is more important right no-- but then again--"

Today I cleaned and organised myself approximate due dates for writing AtM by the end of the year, and tried to avoid James and Chris, both of whom are ill. I have a headache but hopefully this is lack of proper sleep more than illness. And by 'hopefully' I mean 'if it knows what's good for it'.

Also realised today that, man, I told Sarah Monette I was painting Felix and I only got as far as his eyes. I SHOULD FIX THAT. :| It isn't like the drive to capture her characters doesn't basically burn my skin off whenever I think about it. Should have been an illustrator. |D; Have not the technical skill, or the patience for art theory. Woe.

Tomorrow I will:
- get up in the morning (YES THIS IS A GOAL)
- line Auberon for really reals this time
- fix Skeff's legs sdhfas
- line Aundin
- scene the first section of AtM again properly
- start manning up to remove the plot snake before your mother kneecaps you
- paint moar Felix (does he or does he not have Jeremy Brett's nose, and can you use references to your advantage?)
- do not reread Mélusine. No, seriously, you don't have time for this no matter how much you-- okay, okay, TEN PAGES.

Really should not write lists to myself when I am meant to be crawling into bed! It makes me sound crazy. Oh well, you knew that anyway!

[EDIT] ( Melusine spoilers. )

I have spent the entire afternoon, having finished HBP, wanting nothing but to fling myself into either Sherlock Holmes or Felix Harrowgate, and settling on the middle ground of Jeremy Brett's nose. Yes, I am quite mad. And how are you this day?

I want to draw Felix but the computer is over there, and sketches seem pointless when I'm painting (sad but true).

Perhaps I'll just start from the beginning of The Adventures and go from there.

Yes, even though I've not read the new Hobb book yet. Sigh.

[EDIT] Um. And that random letter string in the subject was meant to be "with". :|

Dear Fingers,

WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT.

ajksdfasdfksdhfajsdasdfjsf

NO LOVE
AT ALL
RAVE

---

Just tweeted Sarah Monette to see if she'd mind telling me what I'd got wrong when I paint Felix and Mildmay and asjdkfhdustfajmwdsgf WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO ME, FINGERS, YOU KNOW YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO TYPE THINGS WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT THEM LIKE THAT.

Was excellent! I mean, things could have been better, i.e. Miss Tina could not have been feeling so awful all the time, but I had a ball. XD And slept! Which was a nice change!

My plane was delayed by an hour and a half on Friday night, so by the time I got to the hotel I was ready to drop. Took my bags up, met Tina on the street, cuddled briefly, and then collapsed the fuck into bed. XD I was really. really. tired. And plane trips are never kind to my head - the changes in pressure always make me feel hideous.

BUT!

Saturday was excellent. Er, despite poor Tina not having slept at all. |D; We are constantly at opposite ends of the awesome spectrum, I swear. Anyway! We went for breakfast, and food shopping, and then we went to Minotaur, which is always a mistake. $160 later, I was the proud owner of both Death comics, a new Amano artbook, a full set of FF7 weapons including DEATH PENALTY AND CONFORMER DESU YO, and Gankutsuou v2. I am still so excited about the Conformer. :'D Eeeeee.

Then we sat around drawing and gaming for a while, and then we went to Avenue Q, which, omg. So much fun. XD So many little touches I didn't realise were coming. Nicky was FREAKING AWESOME, just sayin' - he and Trekkie Monster are the only two-person puppets, y'see, and he was just so amazingly expressive because of it. XDDD It was really fun - and a nice little intimate theatre, too, which I appreciated. ^^ Things got changed a little in terms of lyrics and in-jokes from the Broadway version, but Christmas Eve was amazing, and I bought a real copy of the sound track, which makes me happy. ^^

Then back to the apartment for further lazing (and feeling awful, on Tina's part, the poor thing T_T) and then out for Wicked! Which, lacking the original wizard, and being bizarrely fast — I assume to compensate for an understudy's lungs or people with flu or something — was not quite as awesome as it was the first time I saw it. (Which is to say, I was still crying in songs that needed no crying to. XDDD It is very sad at random moments when you know the whole story already, okay!) Glinda was, er, rather frazzled, actually. SPEEDING through everything. It was rather bizarre. Still great, though, and Elphaba's understudy does a fantastic job. Speaking of which, teacupscientist, the cast list was( as follows. ) Also, I got another flask! :D My life is complete.

Crashed and burned pretty soon after we got back, though there was some drawing because we were both so gleeful after Wicked, and then this morning... hmm, we pretty much packed up and rocked out into the streets and markets of Melbourne, to eat and draw and make merry until I had to get to the airport. We went to the art gallery, or an art gallery, anyway, since Melbourne probably has like 19324763 of them, and I had poffertjes for second-breakfast. :D I miss poffertjes. <3 Also I bought earrings made of WATCH INNARDS. THEY HAVE GEARS THAT TURN AND EVERYTHING. Tol is still geeking the fuck out in the back of my head. Also, a keychain and a pendant. (I spent so. much. money. omfg. *cry*)

Tina's dad picked us up from town and we made it in absolute record time, and the flight back was kind of hideous, and I miss Tina already. T_T SHE IS LITTLER THAN ME, YOU GUYS. LITTLER AND ADORABLE. I DID NOT REALISE THIS OVER SKYPE, DHFDJFD. She is not that much littler than me but littler ENOUGH, OKAY TINA, STOP GLARING AT ME LIKE THAT.

Anyway, now I have to wash clothes and hang clothes and somehow go to sleep in time to not be a zombie at work tomorrow and oh, god, I have to get buses on a public holiday. T_T;;; Can I just work from home...?

Also, this Corambis Q&A just about made me piss myself laughing. I mean, can you imagine Mildmay using those exclamation marks? CAN YOU? PFFFHASHDASJHDAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA. Reminds me of this.

I really, really mean it when I say TGIF. |D; This morning was hideous and unproductive; this afternoon I went and hid in a conference room with Crowley, a cuppa, and a bar of chocolate, and I am not joking when I tell you I was a hundred times more productive there: the morning's pagecount was 0.25; the afternoon's was 22. Do not ask me how this happened, but fuck, I am glad to be home.

Chatted with Dad all the way here, and then sat down to draw with Gina. She showed me all of her stuff, and man, I kind of want to start a proper archive of it. >_>; She has a few that are REALLY INSANELY DETAILED for a kid her age - like, full-on backgrounds and everything - and, well, colour me impressed.

I taught her to make paper dolls tonight, and I fear I will regret it tomorrow. XD; Ah, well. At least we determined early that cutting out the dolls really, really hurts me. Fucking hands.

Also, Sarah Monette linked some really good reviews of the Doctrine of Labyrinths series (up on TOR.com, but linked from truepenny@LJ - I've been typing in XML all day, you can fuck off with your hrefs) and now I am kind of desperate to reread the bloody things, and gah. Mentioned it on Twitter this morning, but the entire DoL series is not an appropriate reward to myself for finishing a different novel. XD I keep reading something else, then floating gleefully back to DoL... I'm starting to think it's a disease.

[EDIT] Except now I've read the Corambis review, and man, it's not a country 'over the mountains'. Mildmay REALLY, REALLY SUMMARISED that journey. XD Like, really. It's practically fucking CHINA. [/EDIT]

Oh, and in case I forgot to mention - I probably did - I am produdfctititty at Twitter. (Oh, look, I could be bothered after all.) Just to make life really difficult for those of you unused to typing my catchphrase. ;D

[EDIT] OH GOD I CANNOT EVEN SCREAM IT WITHOUT SPOILING PEOPLE ( BUT )

*bawls*

Finished Scion and am taking Legacy with me to Dad's for the weekend, so in all likelihood you will not see much of me.

Started flipping through Corambis while I waited for my alarm to go off (because even though I went to bed about an hour and a half later than I should have, I also woke up way early) and... oh, Felix.

Felix: We, ah, have other books.
Mildmay: We do?
Felix: There are bookstores. >>;
Mildmay: :| What have you done.
Felix: I only bought three! >>;;;

Oh, oh, Felix. There were so many scenes like this that just made me so. stupidly. happy. because it was normal interaction and it wasn't going horribly, horribly wrong. And I discovered yesterday that, fuck, I really do miss Gideon, and that I had a strong mental picture of him after all.

He's like a scholarly Josip.

And fuck if that didn't stab me in the eye halfway down George St yesterday.

Just woke up from like a thirty second dream snippet about Felix and Mildmay battling three ravens who could mentally project ifrit in some kind of sideshow! Felix saw and was all, "It's just mental projection, look, it's like this" and mentally projected KICKING ASS AND TAKING NAMES.

Then he passed out from imagining too hard.

IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME. JDFHDFJ. WHY DO THESE DREAMS ONLY HAPPEN IN THE PERIOD OF DOZING BETWEEN WAKING UP AND THE ALARM GOING OFF?

I was dreaming in prose-and-pictures, too, so I still have some random sentences in my head. :'D Oh man. Let's do that more often, brain, okay?

( Spoilers about stuff in Corambis, and post-Corambis, straight from the author's mouth, that made me SQUEAL LIKE AN IDIOT. )

We're taking the kids rock-climbing today, so I probably won't be around for most of it. The good news is that they extended the deadline on SSBB to Monday, so I might actually be able to write something for it if my hands hold out. :D

...and if I can stop myself from rereading Corambis at the speed of light to prepare for writing something about the above spoiler! *glee*

SPOILERS FOR CORAMBIS.

Sad truth? The answer to this first question at the Monette Q&A made me cry this morning.

So apparently when I said to myself, I'll just lie down for a couple of hours, the light will wake me around nine-thirty anyway, uhhh, 'a couple' translated to 'six'. I still woke up a lot, but my body wasn't having none of that getting-up crap. XD

The Elbow concert really was amazing. They played everything I could have asked them to play, except maybe 'Coming Second', and god, the power of their music with full backing when I was about six feet from the band and three feet from their amplifiers? AWESOME.

My non-spoilery thoughts on Corambis are that it was beautifully emotionally charged, a good round-off for the series, and I feel just... achingly, weepingly happy about where the series ended up, but this book didn't actually feel as if its plot was that imperative. Which is not to say that I was not stressed for large portions of the book. XD I was swearing and pacing the footpath outside the Tivoli last night because I met kessira just after I hit a REALLY BAD PATCH and kept thinking things to death and swearing back and forth over things I couldn't quite remember. And I still think I need to read it about five more times, although possibly not straight away, because I will do my book-spiral thing and that is bad. Um. I had a point. ...oh, yes: that if the plot had been at its usual level of imperative for a larger portion of the book, I probably would have started actually pulling at my hair and gnawing at my fingers.

Which I have been known to do, but is not necessarily healthy. >>; The level of distraught Fool's Fate put me at is not a good one to maintain.

Spoiler-post to come. Possibly after I've read it again. Because, honestly, this is going to take me some mulling-over. But Felix has a quote in, like, the end of the second-to-last chapter that just sums up his entire unique existence, and I just had to bury my face in the book and weep with laughter. Because it's so true. Only Felix. XD

[EDIT] Oh, and I'll probably be away from the net for the day while I rearrange my room to my satisfaction.

- shower
- breakfast
- make television
- figure out where things are going EXACTLY WHERE THEY ARE. XD
- pack away things that need packing away
- wait for your mother's kind assistance and do not go trying to move bookcases on your own, you idiot, because pretending like you're not a crip is a bad move, in case you never learned a thing from Mildmay >>; *whistles innocently*
- draw stuff
- figure out what it is you need to be looking for in town tomorrow
- stop talking like Mildmay sometime this decad. oh wait.
- hang washing
- make bed
- clean bathroom
- take down rubbish

Elbow was AMAZING and BEAUTIFUL and as you may have expected made me CRY and now I am going to do my utmost to stay up all night and finish Corambis, because it, too, is beautiful, amazing, and making me cry.

[EDIT] ( And a nonspoilery paragraph or four from Corambis because I couldn't NOT share the fucking thing. )

[EDIT] And then it was four-thirty in the morning and I was ten pages away from the end of the book ( and this scene happened and I nearly yelped aloud. )

And since it's twenty to five, it hardly seems worth going to sleep NOW... *ponders* I think I'll start figuring out where to put shit in my room.

I HAVE THE BOOK.

THEY ARE REALLY LUCKY I PAUSED TO DON A SHIRT ON MY WAY OUT OF THE HOUSE TO GET IT.

SO MUCH FOR GETTING STUFF DONE TODAY 8DDD

Only half an hour earlier than my normal Saturday shift, which doesn't really count since we were open an hour longer anyway, but... I am home! Apparently my carpet has been devoured by moths! My mother has cleaned my room again and I don't really approve of this, but whatever! I have work tomorrow and Monday but I'm off Tue-Thu now so, uh, I am going to sleep. And hermit. Yes.

Also, wild Corambis appeared! I hope Pulp Fiction calls soon.

Of course, James's plot to keep playing the XBox while mum was at the football has been foiled, and his response to this is, "Well, I'm calling Dad, then, and I'm not coming back."

Awesome.

*facemash*

[EDIT] And I'm pretty sure mum just kicked James out of the house. :|

[EDIT] He's not kicked out yet, but he's banned from the computer and all games. So he's going to harass me to change the passwords and let him play all night. And if he harasses me, mum is going to take him back to John's tomorrow.

And the theme of the day is: Make Laura and Megan Cry! I did not actually cry. Meg may have. Many things went wrong with one customer which caused me to swear imaginatively for most of the day. Also there is a really big sale tomorrow so all the time I did not spend swearing, I spent sign-writing.

And I dropped in my Red Hat paperwork.

And I want to write but I'm too shitted off to do anything productive, and also I'm tired but not sleepy.

Here is the paragraph Mildmay wrote last night when I was not paying attention:

I know it's stupid, but I really thought things would go back to normal once we hit a real town again - if Felix had ever had passing acquaintance with normal to begin with, which some folks might take leave to doubt. He whipped out that smile the minute we hit Viatha, the cult set to work, and I thought, here we go, and tried to look like I didn't mind being ignored for the next decad or so.

But Felix didn't seem fixed on having me ignored. He was paying me too much attention, almost, and even as I was thinking it was stupid and fucking dangerous besides, as far north as we were, it was about as easy to sit on how nice it was, being listened to and looked at like a real person, as it would've been to sit on a five-arm cactus.

And I don't know where that came from or even that it's in a decent Mildmay voice, but, uh, I just. I really don't know. All I've been thinking about for the past few days is the possibility of canon reading lessons.

I think I just had a dream where I was Seeker and Felix was the Merlin. Except for part of it I was Felix and he thought he was doing the rescuing, too. But it was Felix with short hair, and... I don't know. There was some kind of power transference thing when some guy tried to take one of us away and then we swapped bodies and I think Zazu was one of my familiars.

I was Felix at that point, though, because my wolf familiar turned into a fox, and I also had a swan, and I was chatting with the Zazu familiar while the fox and the swan chased down the bad guy.

.......... *realises how apt a representation of Gideon Zazu is, and that Mehitabel was a swan-daughter for half of Mirador* So I might have been thinking about these books too much. I think my brain just gave Felix Summons.

Of course, I cannot move my right arm, let alone my right hand, but I think I just slept on it funny.

[EDIT] Oh, and last night just as I was drifting off I started hearing Mildmay in the back of my head and he wouldn't shut up, so I wrote down what he was saying and now I have the opening paragraph to a fic which is going to end in Felix/Mildmay. That's... never happened quite like that before.

[EDIT] XD And Josh just called to ask if I could bring Royal Assassin to work.

Re. Corambis, Chapter Two:
oh my god. oh my god. oh my god. oh my god! oh my god.

No, seriously. Oh my fucking, fucking god.

*expressive hand motions*

Oh my god.

I CAN HAS:
1) bachelor of creative industries (creative writing) with distinction; and
2) corambis, chapter two; and
3) one gigantic motherfucker of a headache.

[EDIT] Oh, and an orientation to Red Hat from April 6-8. Of course. XD I sincerely hope we get out early and I can read this goddamn book, seriously.