Thank you very much for the virtual lemur, kind anonymous person!


I've never really watched Big Brother, but I thought I'd check out the 'first twenty-four hours in the house' episode last night, as this is apparently to be the final series, and I was bored, and, all right, I have no self-respect. (I'm not a football fan, and apparently at this time of year one's televisual options are limited to the World Cup and Big Bloody Brother. Sigh.)

On the whole, though, the housemates seem to be decent, likeable people! Is that supposed to happen? Has cultural osmosis been lying to me all these years? I'm not planning to watch the entire thing (someone please intervene if I don't stop), but it exceeded my expectations, faith-in-humanity-wise.

(Although Ben Poshvoice and John James Australiadude unsettlingly resemble both each other and slimy Conservative MP for Richmond Park Zac Goldsmith. They kept sitting next to each other. I ended up thinking of them as the 'Goldsmith Twins'.)

Is there a Big Brother fandom with fic? I DON'T WANT TO JOIN IT; I'M JUST WONDERING. Because it's just occurred to me that Dead Set is a concept that could be applied to every series of Big Brother: 'how do this year's housemates cope when there's a zombie outbreak in the outside world?'

I'm not going to write it. I'm just saying.

Oh, my goodness, why am I making an entry about Big Brother? This is appalling.


Speaking of disreputable media: I have stumbled across a dramatic reading of a notorious work of Legend of Zelda fanfiction. To be more accurate: I have stumbled across a DRAMATIC reading of a notorious work of Legend of Zelda fanfiction.

Now, I feel a bit bad about linking to this. There are two types of really bad fanfiction: there's the fanfiction that's obviously been deliberately written to be as bad as possible, which is fine to poke fun at because then everyone's having a laugh, author included. But then there's the bad fanfiction that's obviously heartfelt: in this case, a lengthy, poorly-written but completely earnest work of Mary Sue fantasy. I often find these weirdly endearing, and, whilst I might laugh at them in private, I try not to mock them too publicly, because it could be very embarrassing for the author if she ever found my comments. Also, they're often by fairly new or young fanfiction writers, and it would be a shame to discourage them; I imagine most of us cringe slightly when we look back at our early writing.

This was written about eight years ago, though, I believe, so perhaps the author will have some distance from it now, and in any case once your fic has reached such a level of notoriety that people are doing DRAMATIC readings of it I suppose a link to the reading can't make things much worse.

Also, the reading is hilarious. Navi in particular makes me crack up every time she speaks.

Here is the playlist! You don't need to be especially familiar with the Legend of Zelda to enjoy it; I've never owned a Zelda game. I want this reader and BRIAN BLESSED to work on a joint project.