It is Derren Brown's birthday today! Should I do something to celebrate? I have already sent him a ukulele, edited a Jigglypuff into his picture and thrown him into the TARDIS, so I don't really know what else I can possibly do. Once you are the Doctor's companion with a Jigglypuff and a ukulele, what more can you want?

Actually, yesterday, I watched the Derren Brown interview on Inside Your Mind (which was, by the way, amazing. Nine-year-old Derren setting fire to his friend's dad's boat! Derren generally being dorky and hopeless and adorable!) and, in response to Derren's wonderful story of his rubbishness at basketball ('IT WAS LIKE BEING BACK AT SCHOOL, EXCEPT INSTEAD OF THE TEACHER YELLING AT YOU IT WAS ALI G'), sent the following e-mail to moogle62:

Of course, this means that there needs to be terrible AU crossover fic in which teenage Derren Brown goes to Tree Hill high school and is the worst basketball player in the world and has sex with Lucas.

So I suppose there is something I could write to celebrate Derren Brown's birthday.

But I won't. Because it would be appalling.

What I will do, instead, is say that one of the things I really love about Derren - aside from, you know, the dorkishness and the adorability and the bizarrely attractive eeeeeeeeevil - is the way his work says 'look at this, this is what the human mind is capable of' (his explanation of how he remembers which cards have come up when playing Blackjack with four decks is a good example of this, and something on which he expands in his book). Human beings are so much more able and fascinating than I had ever realised before.

So happy birthday, Derren Brown. Keep making the world a more interesting place.


Progress on the Derren-and-the-Doctor fic: it is now fifteen thousand words long! Making it longer than any work of fiction I have ever completed. It's not a solo effort, admittedly, but that is still quite a number of words, and I am rather amused by the fact that what looks very like it will become the longest piece of writing on which I have ever worked is also quite possibly the most ridiculous.

(Writing fanfiction involving the Winchesters from Derren's point of view, incidentally, is really difficult. I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO MAKE SAM AND DEAN INTERACT WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT DEAN OR SAM.)

Happy birthday to the_funmonkey, painted_blind and my beloved brother, Joseph! (He's seventeen. Only five more years before his psychic powers manifest!)

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a dangerous game for a ficwriter to play. Luigi and Peach showed up as combatants when I had characters set on random, and immediately my mind was overtaken with horrible badwrong thoughts of a Luigi-Mario-Peach love triangle. I am only saved from writing a million and three crossovers by the fact that I don't know enough of the characters.

I love Peach. She is an appallingly bad fighter, but look at how cute and happy she is!

Here is a highly scientific Doctor Who poll. To be perfectly honest, I have been secretly 'shipping Mickey/Jackie since the first series.


Poll #1220969 IT MAKES SENSE
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 69

Mickey/Jackie?

If no (or even if yes), who else should Mickey be paired with?

All right, who else?

Write a tiny Mickey Smith/someone-of-your-choice fic. ('Tiny' modifies 'fic', not 'Mickey Smith', but Mickey may be tiny if you so wish.)

(EDIT: Blast, I should have included Ricky. And Martha, and Donna, and Sarah Jane Smith. BASICALLY I AM RUBBISH AT POLLMAKING.)

Happy birthday, wanttobeatree! The plan was just that I'd write a tiny drabblish thing and leave it in a comment to you with birthday wishes, but it became a little longer than I was expecting. Whoops. I hope you enjoy it, anyway.

(Also whoops-worthy: it's fairly obvious that I forgot entirely about the what-happens-if-you-try-to-get-out-of-the-deal clause. I suppose this is slightly AU, then. Erm.)



Title: Of Unconventional Dealbreaking
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R for language.
Word Count: 2,200ish
Summary: Dean, much to his annoyance, gets turned into a unicorn.
Warnings: Spoilers for 'All Hell Breaks Loose Part Two'.
Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me.

(EDIT: saaski_moql has, to my infinite joy, recorded a podfic! It's MP3 format, 9.5 MB, a little over ten minutes long, hosted on megaupload. You can talk to her about it over here. (And cybel has turned the file into a podbook, M4B format, 5 MB, which you can find here.))


( Of Unconventional Dealbreaking )

It was nomelon's birthday yesterday (happy birthday! sorry it's late!), and therefore today's fanwork theme is 'TEENY TINY SAM WINCHESTER AND/OR JARED PADALECKI'. Because you can never have enough! I say 'fanwork' rather than 'photomanip' because you are not confined to merely posting photomanips in the comments (although obviously it would be great if you did); fic or fanart or, I don't know, DRAMATIC SONGS are also welcome! Nobody is going to be fussy when it comes to miniaturised Sam Winchester.





( And two more. IT'S NOT AN UNHEALTHY OBSESSION, WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT )

You may miniaturise other characters instead but why would you want to?. And, er, putting them on Dean's shoulder is not compulsory, in case you were wondering. Of course, if you feel particularly compelled to put tiny characters from completely unrelated series on Dean Winchester's shoulders for some reason, you may.

I'd rather hoped to have more of this written by now, but I seem to have become slightly stuck on the actual heist, alas. Still, have In Which Our Heroes Meet, the first instalment of The Adventures of Balthier, Fran and Captain Jack Harkness: Time-Travelling Sky Pirates of Ivalice. Dedicated to emmarrrrr and squeemu, two powerful reasons for why the thirty-first of July is an awesome, awesome day.

More of this will be written when I am struck by inspiration. It is a completely open universe; please feel free to write about the Time-Travelling Sky Pirates of Ivalice if you want to. I NEED THESE THREE TO HAVE SO MANY GLORIOUS ADVENTURES TOGETHER.

Set prior to the events of Final Fantasy XII and at some unspecified time after Series Three of the new Doctor Who. This section vaguely alludes to a spoiler of which you will already be aware if you've watched any episode of Torchwood or any of the last three episodes of the third series of Doctor Who.


( Time-Travelling Sky Pirates of Ivalice: In Which Our Heroes Meet )

We fly home this evening! I have to say, I'm going to miss being in a country in which ordering lemonade means that you're going to get something with actual lemon in it. (I am not, however, going to miss the overabundance of corn syrup in everything. What on Earth, America? I didn't even know it was possible to make fudge sweeter!)

I have really enjoyed this holiday! I've developed a very good opinion of the people of California; the people we've encountered (with the exception of the angry man on the street who started yelling at me for no apparent reason) have generally seemed to be polite and intelligent (sorry, Jeremy Clarkson). I got to meet livii and deviousli, who were awesome! I am, however, missing the cats and the similarly awesome people in England, so it'll be nice to get home. General good wishes for the plane journey would be appreciated.

(We saw Jennifer Saunders and Adrian Edmondson in a bookshop. I hovered indecisively and then ran away. LOOK, I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE ETIQUETTE FOR APPROACHING FAMOUS PEOPLE IS. Apart from meeting the Top Gear boys, in which case the etiquette is going to be I AM GIVING YOU A HUG WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT.)

More importantly: happy birthday to squeemu and emmarrrrr! I am writing Jack/Fran/Balthier for the two of you; it probably won't be finished by the end of the day, but give me a kick if it's not up within the week.