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I was watching Amatsuki episode 5 today. And there was this one character where they were all "You look like a lady, but you sound like a guy. What's going on?"

And so the character in question goes, "Well this should answer your question":

And they were all like: "Smooth as the bonnet of a Porsche."

See? Not hard at all. Why can't Tieria do this and put us all out of our misery? I've never had such an urge to get a glimpse under a character's trousers before. Am I really going to have to wait till the end of the second series to find out? :(

Also, there's a new Tieria fanart in the gallery (not of his genitalia or lack thereof, I might add), go check it out.

Today I am full of woe.

Because I have to:

a) revise
- How am I supposed to write for an hour on three of these topics? I can probably do 5 minutes, but an hour? Hopefully more revision will make things crystal clear. I wish I had more revision time; suddenly 3 days doesn't sound like enough.

b) dissertation
- I'm meeting the people that I'll be doing my dissertation with for the first time tomorrow morning. I am panicking now, because I have no idea what I am doing for this dissertation. What on Earth do I say to these people? Hopefully I'll understand more after the meeting. Hopefully.

And I was speaking to Steve on the phone earlier, and complaining about all my woe, and he suggests
"Have you tried getting over it?"
Best advice I could get really. I shall indeed try to "get over it". Wish me luck!

But the good part about today is that I found what must undoubtedly be the best Gundam00 fanart site in existence: here. The fanart is mostly Graham and Billy, and some Lockon, and I'm not really interested in fanart of Graham and Billy, but you know, I don't actually care, because the artwork on this site is so good and so well done that I love all of it, no matter the character. Seriously. Beautiful beautiful artwork. I have no words. I actually have no words. I am in awe...

...

And on that lovely note, I'm off to bed. Goodnight.

Well, I haven't really had a post in which I've gotten all excited over CLAMP instead of Giant Space Robots (shh, Code Geass doesn't count) in a long time.

Let me talk about Tsubasa chapters 189 and 190, oh, and how about recent xxxHolic too, for good measure.

Spoilers ahoy!

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Hello. I've finished my coursework, so I've time to make that epic post that I've been wanting to make for ages. So.

Item A
Good Lord, this is a big shout out to James. He's in Tanzania of all places! I've been reading his blog and I can't quite believe it. It sounds like a telly show or something. Not that James is likely to read this, but, you know, I wish him all the best all the same :D

Item B
Alright then, lets talk about this work experience that I did. I spent two weeks in the archive of a large banking company. Their office was in the city! How exciting is that? I took the tube everyday, with all the suited, corporate, big city workers. I liked that. Well, pretending to be a city worker that is, not taking the tube. Don't get me wrong, I still think the tube is fun to a ridiculous degree, but it is considerably less fun if it is 8:30am, packed full of stressed people, and my stomach is very full from a big breakfast. Bonus points if the train has to wait in the middle of a tunnel for 5 minutes, and I'm usually the opposite of claustrophobic, but when that happens, something inside me just starts shouting "I want to get off! I want to get off! Why am I here? Why are all these people in my goddamn FACE?" Good times. Good times.
Um, so my job was to catalogue two small collections. It was fun. No really! You might not think that banking records are the most interesting, but when they date back to 1816, and are written in old flowy handwriting? Oh God. This is why I love 'doing' archives. I love touching the old books and imagining them being created. Ahaha. I even came across some photos of company directors from the 1920s, and one of them was wearing a monocle! A monocle! Brilliant. Yes, being a student and sitting around at home all day is nice, but actually going and getting my hands dirty with some old stuff is betterer.

Item C: aka stuff what I am watching right now

Right, before I get onto the whole anime business. I have to talk about another show, that being:

Peep Show
The new series has just started and it is amazing brilliant. I am loving it. It is the fifth series, and it is still just as hilarious as the previous 4 series. What's going on? Why hasn't the comedy started waning yet? Anyway, that's a good thing. And this show is funny; it is definitely one of my favourite comedy shows ever. Oh yes, it makes me cringe and feel bad too, but in a good way. For fun times, here's the very first part of the very first episode of the very first series. Crikey.

Alrighty. So it's new anime season time (has been for a few weeks in fact). Let me give you a rundown of what I'm watching. (Not sure why I feel compelled to do this, but I do.)

iiiin alpahbetical order, here we go.

Amatsuki
About some boy who gets trapped in the past, and I have no idea what's going on. Why am I watching this one? Probably because it's not awful. Hopefully it'll turn out to be interesting.

Code Geass R2
Needs no explanation. I went crazy over the first series of Code Geass last year. I find myself being slightly less crazy over the second series, but only because I'm still pining over Gundam00, which I have to say, was better. But, Code Geass is still fun and exciting and full of plot twists and turns. I'm betting it's going to get even better when we get to the season finale. Will Lelouch eventually become his father without realising it? I HOPE SO.
I wonder if I'm going to get the 'got to draw Lelouch' drawing bug again. Only time will tell.

Itazura na Kiss
This is my corny corny shoujo of the season. Girl falls in love with the smartest boy at school. Boy hates girl. But girl's family has to move in with boy's family. Hijinks ensue. Don't look at me like that. I like a bit of shoujo every now and again. This show isn't amazing, but it's cute. Clearly they are going to be all rabu-rabu by the end.

Kurenai
I'm still kind of worried that this show is going to turn into something I don't want it to. One of the main characters is a very forthright young girl of 7 or so, and I am worried that she is fanservice. No bad loli fanservice has appeared yet though, and the story is interesting, and the animation is nice. Hopefully it'll stay that way.

Toshokan Sensou
The subtitle for this show is Library War. No really! I am not kidding you! It's set in a time when certain books in Japan have been made illegal, so libraries have started up their own armies to try to protect the books. The concept makes me laugh, but it's actually quite a good show. The only problem is is that it makes me shout things at the screen, such as "How on Earth did a library ever get that much money?" and "What about the archives! They're much more important! Won't anyone thing of the archives?". And then I try to imagine archive wars and it makes me laugh.

Vampire Knight
This is my other cheesy shoujo of this season. It is about a school of vampires; that should tell you enough. It's kind of corny, but also kind of really good. I can't get enough of it. I am kind of ashamed to get so caught up in it, but each time her adopted brother gets urges to bite her neck, I am ON THE EDGE OF MY SEAT. I shouldn't be admitting to this.

xxxHolic Kei
So the first series of the xxxHolic anime was a little poor (not Tsubasa Chronicle level poor, of course, but still poor). This season seems to be slightly better made, but it's not amazing. Maybe I don't have the interest because, having read the manga, I know what's going to happen already? I don't know. I'm watching this one out of loyalty.

And a special mention goes out to Ghost Hound, which I just finished watching, and is a fantastic series all round. Really. I don't have enough words to describe how good it was. Everyone should watch this.

Another special mention to Tsubasa RC chapter 189 which made me say OMG. In a big way. I might expand on this more in another post if I get time.

And that brings us on to:

Item D

Because, really, I can't sit down and solidly write coursework. I really can't. So sometime in the past couple of days, I drew a little fanart of Allelujah (not Tieria, I know, but still Gundam00. I am quite possibly addicted to this show.)

What I really really wanted to do was to draw Allelujah's cheekbones. I don't know why I think it, but in my head he has nice cheekbones. I'm not quite sure that I succeeded, but this was just a quick little procrastination sketch.

And did you know that if you do a google image search for Tieria fanart, nearly all my Tieria fanarts come up almost at the top of the page? I don't quite know how I feel about that. Perhaps a little embarrassed?
Hahaha, and looking at my blog's referral stats, most people that find this blog through search engines are searching for some combination of Tieria or Lockon/Tieria. Golly. But then, one of the referring searches was for 'dissertation proposal on tap dancing' so, um?

Good Lord, why haven't I posted here in ages?

Sorry for the absence. To make a long story short:
- I was on work experience for 2 weeks (in a bank archive; how exciting). Having to do 9 to 5 again exhausts me it seems.
- I finished the work experience to find a load of coursework and dissertation and an exam!!! Waiting for me.

So, um, I don't have much time at the moment. Hopefully once my deadline passes on Wednesday I'll have a little more time to post everything I want to post (which is mostly going to be a run-down of everything I'm watching at the moment).

I will leave you with this, which has made my week:
Out of all the animations of the Gundam00 characters dancing (and, shockingly, there are a lot) this one of Setsuna and Tieria is by far the cutest. I love how they give up dancing in the middle and just start having a barney. Also, I have been playing the music on repeat constantly for about 48 hours, which leads to some strange things, let me tell you; I HAVE EVEN STARTED SINGING ALONG.

And I've just time for another Gundam00 mention (because I still can't leave Gundam00 alone, even though it stopped airing weeks ago):
There is new Yun Kouga artwork of the meisters! and all their outfits are all so much better than the ones they wear in the show (even if Tieria is still dressing like a man-lady, but, well, he is a man-lady, so that's expected). And and and! it's got Lockon/Tieria vibes (Oh God, Tieria is smiling). I don't know what to do with myself.

That's it for now; more later, when I've done this flipping coursework.

The Plan: Get this coursework finished by the end of the day.

Probability of Successful Plan Completion: Small to none.

Additional Information: I have been working almost all afternoon. I even forbade myself from going on the internet, but I had to give that up when I started substituting internet-procrastination with eating m&m's like there's no tomorrow. Bah. I'm not allowed to draw anything until I've got this finished, so I am frustrated as well as stressed. If only the records of the armed forces wasn't such a dry topic. I'm still considering the coursework rickroll, if only to make it more interesting. Oh well, back to it I go.

p.s. I found out that I can do the dissertation topic I want (web 2.0, hooray, how exciting) so at least my dissertation proposal was successful \o/

(I'm sure I'll get bored of this at some point, but at the moment I can't leave it alone.)

So you know that youtube video of the rickmob that I posted? The one with the funky remix? Well, it turns out that you can download the remix from here. I am loving it at the moment. I say: download it, play it loud, and rickroll the neighbours!!!

And I'm extremely tempted to rickroll my tutors now. In this coursework I've got to hand in next week, instead of writing about the British Armed Forces, I think I might just print of the lyrics to Never Gonna Give You Up, and a big picture of Rick Astley's face, and hand it in like that.
Ohgod. This is one of those times when upon the point of thinking 'This would be hilarious' I need to force myself NOT TO GO THROUGH WITH IT. Seriously, whenever I think 'This would be hilarious' it never ends well. Oh, but can't you just imagine their faces when they try to mark it!

Oh man. I want them to play this song at my funeral.

Oh guess what: I drew more Tieria. I think I am actually a broken record. If only I had this much enthusiasm for my coursework...
Anyway, click for big:

Each time I draw Tieria he seems to be getting girlier and girlier. When I started fanarting him, I was all: 'manly, he's got to be manly, I've got to make him look like a man'. And now I'm all: 'girly Tieria is so cute!!! Let's give him bigger hips!!!' I don't know what's happening to me.

In other news, I just read DOGS chapter 28, which was jolly awesome. And I'd almost forgotten how much I loved the artwork IT IS SO GOOD.

OK, shopping tiem now, then cleaning bathroom tiem. Coursework comes later.

Do you remember I said that a load of people were going to rickroll Liverpool Street Station yesterday? Well, they did it. If you're looking for a better video, because the one on the bbc is pretty rubbish: this is the only one with good audio that I could find, and this montage captures the event quite nicely. It looks like it was pretty fun; I'm almost sad that I was too lazy to go along.
Oh, and I love the quote in the BBC article from the policewoman:
"We monitored the incident. There were no problems, no arrests. They did what they had to do and then left."
Hahaha. Sounds like someone didn't like getting rickrolled!

The whole thing amuses me no end. The power of an internet meme to bring so many people together for such a strange purpose is both exciting and utterly terrifying. God I love the internet.

In short Gundam00 news, because I have to talk about it, even if the show is over for the moment. It seems that there is plenty of information circulating about Tieria at the moment.

Interesting point I: He wears glasses to protect his eyes, which he needs to access Veda.
Well, that makes sense I suppose. Tieria's glasses always confused me a lot, because, as I became more and more sure that he'd been engineered in some way, I couldn't understand why they would engineer him with bad eyesight. So, the question now is: was he genetically engineered, or built from technological components? Hmm. But there's no way that I believe he was born and raised in the normal way.

Leading on from that:
Interesting point II: He has a birthday, which is in December, and a blood type (which I forget).
So, he does have blood in there at least. I get the feeling that, despite all the computery hints, he must be mostly human in his make-up. After all, Lockon kept insisting that he was human like the rest of them, and Lockon seemed to know. And birthday: is that the day he was born, or just switched on? Haha. No clues on an age though. I like to think that his age is much younger than we would think. He doesn't seem settled like a person that has had time to grow up and learn about the world and about people. I'm thinking he's around 4 years old or something. Am I crazy?

Interesting point III: He has gained weight (2kg) during the series.
I have no idea what this means. Someone mentioned that maybe he has grown breasts? OMG. I'm not sure I like the sound of that. I mean, I don't mind if Tieria turns out to be female, but there's no way he's allowed to have bigger boobs than me. Don't make me jealous T-chan!

Hmmm...at the moment I seem to be spending about 85% of the time thinking about Gundam00 and 0.5% of the time doing my coursework. (The other 14.5% is taken up with eating and dancing to The Twelves' remixes. Not at the same time, I might add.)

Anyway let's talk about Tsubasa chapter 187. Not really spoilers (it's the splash page) but I'll hide it anyway.

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Hiya! I done it! Here's the next Clematis page. It's not too well done (and pen teething problems omg), but in the end, I just had to get something up. I feel awful for having let it languish for two months.

Anyway, onto different matters:
A week ago I had never heard of a 'rickroll' before. And then I managed to get rickrolled 3 times in the past 7 days. Goddammit. If you don't know what a rickroll is, then this helpful video will explain everything.

And apparently there's a plan for a group of people to rickroll Liverpool Street Station on Friday. I'd go, because I'd love to see that, but I'm lazy, so I'll see if someone videos and uploads it instead.

I'd love it if the BBC started rickrolling people. How brilliant would that be? Can you imagine it?
Next, here on BBC3, we've got another episode of Four Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. And if you turn over to BBC4 now, there's a documentary on the life and work of John Milton.
So you turn over to BBC4 expecting a documentary about one of the great english poets, and what do you get? Rick Astley on repeat for 45 minutes. The bastards! It would be epic.

So this week there have been good things and bad things.

The bad things:
- I have managed to get myself the most painful mouth ulcer ever. It hurts when I open my mouth. It hurts when I move my tongue. It hurts when I swallow. It hurts when I DO NOTHING. Pain Pain Pain. I hope it goes away soon. Bonjela is my best friend.
- I've been going to the library every day. It's good, because it means I'm doing my next piece of coursework, but it is draining, and I have less time to sit around doing nothing.

The good things:
- Steve reminded me about The Twelves. Their remixes are very nice in a cheery bleepy way. Have a listen if you can.
- And today I found Tieria Search. So much Tieria fanart at my fingertips! \o/

And then I watched the first episode of the second series of Code Geass. I'm not entirely sure if the first episode of a series counts as spoilers, but I'll treat it as such anyway:

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Alright. In non robot news.

I seemed to spend my weekend procrastinating from drawing. It seems I can't help myself. I'm in the throes of going to the library every day at the moment, but as soon as I get a free minute I'll finish that Clematis page I swear.

But I was procrastinating on good things! I was flicking through Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell when I was at my parents house last week (because it was there). Inspired, I went on a search for information, and found that two of Susanna Clarke's short stories have been adapted for BBC radio 4, and that you can listen to them at the Friends of English Magic. I recommend having a listen to them; they stand alone easily, so there's no nead to have read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell first to enjoy them. I do love Susanna Clarke's stories. What I really love about them is not the fantasy aspects, but the historical aspects; she's has clearly done a lot of research for her writing, and it really shows!

I have also been procrastinating on VideoJug (thanks to Steve for pointing me in its direction). At first glance, it appears to be a website full of helpful how to videos. And most of them are helpful, but some of them are very funny (while being helpful too). My favourites include, How to Speak Geek, How to Give a Great Man to Man Hug, and How to Fight a Duel.

Then I watched Gundam00 episode 25 (the final episode of the first series). Let me talk to you about SPOILERS:

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Rargh! I just wrote this all out, and then accidentally deleted it. Let me try to go through it again.

So, I've been back from home for a few days, but I'm only just posting now because I am lazy. Don't worry, the Clematis page is coming, it's halfway done, but it's taking me a little while because I haven't drawn it in a while and I'm suddenly rusty.

I watched lots of TV over Easter, mostly about Jesus dying, surprisingly. Then I watched The Long Good Friday, which is about cockney gangsters and Bob Hoskins and not about Jesus at all.

I also managed to watch an old episode of Police Squad and rekindle my love for it. If you don't know, Police Squad was a comedy series that formed the basis of the Naked Gun films. It is hilarious. I strongly urge you to go check it out on YouTube.

Then I watched a documentary about the Mighty Boosh, and came to the realisation that Rich Fulcher is my favourite. You really can't tell if he's a comic genius or crazy like a scary man. He makes me laugh so hard. And he dances like a legend.

And while I wasn't watching TV I managed to reformat my computer to make it all shiny and clean and nice and to stop it crashing on me all the time. My happy computer makes me happy, and it's got a jolly lovely new wallpaper of everyone's favourite Tieria-chan, as drawn by Yun Kouga herself, from this website.

And of course I watched Gundam00 episode 24:

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Here, have a fanart (click for big):

I like to think that Lockon is the most stable of the meisters, because he has someone to fight for, someone to protect. (Well, you could argue that Allelujah has Hallelujah, but it's not really the same.) Not that Lockon is a complete picture of mental stability himself, but he his better at pretending it than the others.

Hmm...I wish we knew what Lyle (I'm assuming that's his name, and what kind of a strange name is that anyway?) is like. I get the feeling that he wouldn't be pleased with Lockon if he knew what he was doing, and I don't think an 'I was doing it all for you' would cut it.

In non Lockon news; I'm going to see my parents for Easter, so I'll see you all in a week or so, hopefully with a new page of Clematis, and a belly full of chocolate.

I just watched Gundam00 episode 23. SPOILERS SPOILERS ahead.

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So I gave my presentation yesterday. I didn't give it until the afternoon, and throughout the morning I was watching everyone else's and getting progressively more and more terrified and more and more sweaty. I had this feeling that my nerves would really show in my voice, and I hadn't even bothered to make my presentation interesting in any way, so it would be really dry.

But then I got up there and started with the line:
'So I considered giving this presentation as an interpretive dance, but then I figured that powerpoint was probably better.'
And everything just fell into place. I remembered what to say, and I made eye contact with the room, and I got quite a few laughs that I hadn't even expected at all.
Oh man, there is nothing better than the feeling of everyone's attention focused on you, and making a room full of people laugh is the best thing ever. I love giving presentations!
And when I was done my friend asked my how it went, and I said that I wanted to go again, and she said 'yeah, I wanted a second chance too, because I felt mine wasn't good enough', and I was like, 'No, I want to go again because that was really fun!'

Hahaha. I'm such an attention whore. (It does terrify me though.)

And now I've a really boring piece of coursework to do for Tuesday, and it's about management, and it's not a presentation at all, and I don't want to do it.

I did some token work today, so then I rewarded myself with cardigan-chan.

It's a little wonky I know. But what I was trying to get at with this picture, was to try to make him look as much like a girl as possible. I'm very much doubting now that Tieria is actually a girl, because apparently the director has stated that he is male (but I don't know the direct quote, or where it was from, so it's all just hearsay really). Anyway, whether Tieria has man bits or not, what we do know is that he looks like a girl, because he's confused at least two male members of the cast.

Whatever he is, Tieria doesn't seem to identify with any gender at all. Well, he doesn't really identify with a species either, come to that. I wonder what he is: android? Genetically modified human? Genetically modified human with computers in his head? I don't knoooow.

All I do know is that he should smile more, and that I should really look my drawings over before I go ahead and colour them.