Association Meme, including details of my France trip
Association Meme: Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.
thistlerose gave me these:
1. Pern (obviously!)
2. Buffy/Angel
3. France (because I want to hear more about it!)
4. Lessa/F'lar in particular
5. Alaska
Pern:
You may have noticed by now that I tend to obsession over books (or, on occasion, TV shows). Dragonriders of Pern is my current obsession. I first read the series in 7th grade, if I recall correctly. I'd just finished Patricia Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles, and I asked the librarian for recommendations of other books with 'friendly dragons', and she pointed me to the Harper Hall trilogy. So I read those, and I liked them, and then I read the whole rest of the series - in hideously incorrect order. It never became a full-blown obsession because I was still too obsessed with Harry Potter, and then a few months later I discovered Lord of the Rings, but I did spend a few months trying to draw dragons and wrote an utterly terrible (if you ever want to feel good about your writing abilities, read something you wrote in middle school) supposedly "original" story that was actually an extremely thinly-veiled ripoff (and which I might post here someday, because if you can't laugh at your Old Shames, what can you do?). And then last October or so I picked up Dragonflight - one of the two books I still had my copy of all these years later - and I ended up getting hooked all over again, and rereading the entire series, and writing fanfic, and making fanmixes, and considering making fanart, and all that stuff. Now I have copies of something like twelve of the books, and I'm familiar enough with them all to play canon fairy. Dragonflight is my particular favorite; I've lost track of how many times I've read it, and now I'm reading it again in French.
I'm definitely not without criticism for the books - McCaffrey's characterization is a little too black and white, and sometimes inconsistent, There are definitely some Mary Sues (Brekke and Jaxom in particular come to mind). There's a lot of talk about how the Weyrs are supposedly so liberated, but none of the good characters really bear that out - although part of this seems to be due to an excess of faith in the Power of True Love, which I can't complain too much about because I'm a sucker for it. The whole thing about blue and green riders and homosexuality is just plain messed up (tent pegs, anyone?), rather offensive, and I see a number of major logical flaws in it. And I'm seriously disdainful of Todd-canon. In fact, I'm only barely touching on these issues because most of them could provoke a full rant. But despite that, I think it's a damn good series in general. Some of the characters are quite compelling, McCaffrey does an amazing job of keeping straight an extremely large cast, the worldbuilding is great (which is one of my main interests), and the dragons are just plain awesome.
Buffy/Angel:
My previous OTP, probably most evident right now in my icons. As said earlier, I'm a sucker for 'true love', and I just think they're an adorable couple. Random semi-related facts, because I can't think of anything especially coherent to say: I have an extreme tendency to talk in Buffy-Speak. I like writing vulnerable!Buffy. The first - and second and third multi-chapter fic I actually finishes was for B/A. "Normal" age gaps in couples kind of squick me, but I have no problem with Really Seven Hundred Years Old situations. BtVS gave me a fascination with vampires (though most other stories I've looked at have annoyed me for their vampires not being BtVS vampires). Also, David Boreanaz is just too sexy.
France:
Mum and I went to France for nine days, for no occasion except that we got a really good deal on tickets, plus I've been taking French for four years and my parents have been promising travel practically all my life.
We arrived in Paris on a Sunday afternoon, dead-tired losing half a day and not sleeping very well on the plane, proceeded to wander around for a few hours - went to the Viaduc des Arts, which was kind of disappointing since it was closed for Monday-ness, but the park on top was really pretty even in winter, then we tried to head towards the Place de la Bastille and wandered spectacularly off-course - then got on a fast train to Avignon, which was even less cofortable to try to sleep on than the plane. Arrived at our hotel in Avignon, took a nap which ended up being way longer than intended, and had a terrible time finding a restaraunt still open afterwards.
Had a leisurely and decadent breakfast of hot chocolate and pastries at a cafe (actually, they're generally called not Cafe but Salon de The), including about an hour just sitting and reading. Went to the Palais des Papes - v. impressive. Bright, sunny day, so sat out for a while in the large Place outside the Palais. Went to see the Pont St. Benezet, very pretty old arched stone bridge. Mum talked me into dancing on it and singing "Sur le pont d'Avignon" - although apparently, the song is wrong historically people actually danced under the bridge, not on it. Wandered around side-streets for a while near the University, getting dinner at a street Sandwicherie (they're actually called that, I kid you not), and even though we didn't find the English-language bookstore that was supposedly our destination until after it had closed, that wasn't really the point.
Had a more reasonable but still quite luxurious breakfast at a different cafe. Took a bus to Pont du Gard. By that time it was raining quite miserably. The Roman aqueduct was quite impressive enough to be worth the short hike in the rain to see it, especially as you walk across on a bridge pressed right up against it, and I got an awesome photo. Tried to catch a bus to Nimes, but the bus signage was bad and we were confused and missed it, and that's when probably the biggest "adventure" of our trip occurred. As Mum tells it, "We've had two beautiful sunny days, but today it rained all day and we got soaked and missed our bus (because we were standing at the wrong bus stop - in the rain) and then someone pulled up into the bus stop in his car (to use his cell phone) and I asked him if he was going to Nimes and he said no, but then said yes he could take us, so I thought maybe he was a French serial killer (because why would he change his plans just to take us?) but by then it was too late, but he turned out to be a really nice guy (and his car was warm and dry) and he took us 20 KM out of his way to drop us off at the train station in Nime, and he wouldn't take any money for petrol. He said he had just heard of Alaska recently for the first time when Barack Obama was elected - something about our governor -- as best I could understand, he didn't speak English." Found a hotel in Nimes, unpacked to dry stuff off, and found a really neat little hole-in-the-wall creperie (where they had the kitchen in the the front of the restaurant so you can watch them make the crepes) for dinner. I had a smoked salmon crepe - I ate a lot of seafood on the trip, because it was nearly impossible to find vegetarian dishes in France. Mum accidentally got something like 1/3 of a bottle of wine with her meal, and got - as she repeatedly mentioned - a little bit drunk, and we ended up having a long conversation about sex in fiction and female vs. male arousal. Slightly bizarre experience there...
Went to see the Les Arenes des Nimes in the morning. Amazingly well-preserved Roman arena - they still hold big events there. Like at the Palais des Papes and the Pont St. Benezet, we got English audioguides that had a ton of information. Fascinating, but way more than it was really possible to absorb, and the morning at Les Arenes was chilly and before long my fingers were freezing, as I hadn't thought to get my gloves out of my pack before we left the hotel. Took a train to Carcassonne. The Old City looked really pretty from the outside, but inside was sickeningly tourist-trap-y, plus most places were already closing down a little after we got there around 4:30. We did find a really pretty cathedral (with a sign where the English translation proclaimed it was "dedicated to the Roman-Catholic cult"). Pretty soon it started raining like whoa, so we holed up in a cafe for a few hours, braved the rain to return to the modern city and find a restaurant for dinner, braved the rain again to find an internet cafe to spend the evening at, and finally returned to the train station and caught an overnight train to Paris.
Arrived in the morning at the house of my parents' college friend Celia. She and her husband, Rich, are both American ex-pats. Celia is incredibly energetic (and has no shame; Mum's favorite story about her involved her asking an Ambassador from Luxembourg to take her home in his suitcase), and was talking a mile a minute to us from the moment we walked in the door, and was very solicitous. Rich was more laid-back but also real funny and nice. Their daughters, Sophie and Audrey, were nine and six respectively and absolutely adorable (except at bedtime). They go to a French school and are completely bilingual - I actually had Sophie help me with my AP French homework, which took a bit of pride-swallowing. I ended up getting drafted into a lot of their games - playing house, building forts, Junior Monopoly (incidentally, I despise Monopoly), and some kind of weird obstacle course, which I could never bring myself to refuse. I stayed in Sophie's room while I was there, and a few nights I stayed up reading some of her French children's chapter books - right about my reading level, I joked, and while that's a little self-deprecating, it's not that far off.
In Paris, we went to the Musee de l'Orangerie (Impressionist focus, including Monet's waterlilies - "nympheas" - which I adore and bought a panoramic poster of, and some Renoirs that I discovered I quite like), the Musee du Moyen Age (great since I've always been fascinated by all things medieval, though not being able to read the signs very well was more of a disadvantage here than the art museums; the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries were probably the coolest part), the Musee Rodin (another artist I discovered I like, and the museum had really nice gardens), the Musee d'Orsay (very cool space, all kinds of different art), Notre Dame cathedral (where I went up to see the towers and wanted to do my own version of a picture we have of my dad 20+ years ago imitating one of the gargoyles, but they've put up wire netting around the visitor walkways, which is so lame; the view was still great though), and the Jardins des Tuilleries (where there happened to be a big fashion show going on while we were there, much to our surprise. L'Orangerie was probably my favorite, but it's hard to decide. We also took a day trip to Chartres - the cathedral has the most amazing stained glass windows, and we got a private tour of the crypts, and a tour of the main cathedral by this expert on Chartres, Malcolm Miller, who apparently Dad and his class got tours of it from in college, and also there's a very pretty and nicely preserved old town with, among other things, lovely half-timbered houses and some great old trees. Sunday morning we went with Celia's family to a silent movie marathon at a neighborhood movie theater where they gave everyone a free personal-size container of Ben and Jerry's ice cream and there were probably 200 little French kids with their families. Afterward we went out to lunch with Celia's family and some of their friends (at a restaurant called "Beer Station"; the amount of gratuitous English we found quite surprised me). Our last day we did a bit of shopping: Mum dragged me to an open-air food market, and I found a dark double-breasted wool coat of the sort that look really awesome and most of the French seemed to be wearing some variation of, and we got street crepes, and I stumbled this little hole in the wall store of fantasy artwork and jewelry and figurines that had copious atmosphere and I was absolutely in heaven and bought a poster and a little dragon necklace charm, and we finally found a bookstore large enough to have a decent fantasy section, so I bought Le Vol du Dragon - Dragonflight in French, which I can read in large part because I've practically memorized the English text, so I know what it's saying even when I don't know all the words - and Mum took me on a wild goose chase for fancy chocolates to bring home as gifts, which we finally found right across the street from Celia's apartment. And the next morning we left, so that was our trip. And I've got a bunch of great pictures, so I'll post those once I finally get them uploaded to the computer.
Lessa/F'lar:
My current OTP. Lets see, what can I say that isn't just fangirlish babbling? I think they have one of McCaffrey's best-written romances subtle and believable and gradual (i.e. no Love at First Sight or Fourth Date Marriage). And they balance each each other out so well - she won't let him get too arrogant, and he won't let her get too manipulative. Which, left to their own devices, they totally would be. Which is another thing I like - at least in Dragonflight, they're both definitely flawed characters. Lessa can be kind of bitchy and misanthropic, and F'lar can be just kind of a jerk (there's one part that always amuses me where he's essentially going Compassion! What a strange feeling...).
Alaska:
I've lived in Alaska since I was a year old, except for one year when I was four, so it's always hard for me to wrap my mind around the idea that other people think it's exotic; it's just normal to me. Unfortunately for me, I really don't like winter. Naturally, I'm looking forward to going to college and getting out of here. However, I love the land and all the natural beauty, I don't think I could live without wide open spaces, and the community is wonderful (nearly everyone is a 1st or 2nd generation transplant, so we make our own 'families'), so I wouldn't be too surprised if I eventually end up back here. The common complaint among people my age is that there's nothing to do, but I've never found that a problem. Then again, I don't even know what normal teens do for fun; my idea of a good evening is some combination of reading, writing, looking at stuff on the internet, and maybe making brownies, and my idea of a good party is a sleepover with two or three fellow geeks. Also, there's a surprisingly vibrant theater community in town, which is right up my alley. I go to plays maybe twice as much as I go to the movie theater.
I live on ten wooded acres in a house my dad built almost completely by himself. It's lovely.
Finally, one of my favorite Alaska jokes: Sure, we have four seasons - Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Construction
Yeah, this took me rather a while to get to. My schedule is killing me right now. *Sigh*
thistlerose gave me these:
1. Pern (obviously!)
2. Buffy/Angel
3. France (because I want to hear more about it!)
4. Lessa/F'lar in particular
5. Alaska
Pern:
You may have noticed by now that I tend to obsession over books (or, on occasion, TV shows). Dragonriders of Pern is my current obsession. I first read the series in 7th grade, if I recall correctly. I'd just finished Patricia Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles, and I asked the librarian for recommendations of other books with 'friendly dragons', and she pointed me to the Harper Hall trilogy. So I read those, and I liked them, and then I read the whole rest of the series - in hideously incorrect order. It never became a full-blown obsession because I was still too obsessed with Harry Potter, and then a few months later I discovered Lord of the Rings, but I did spend a few months trying to draw dragons and wrote an utterly terrible (if you ever want to feel good about your writing abilities, read something you wrote in middle school) supposedly "original" story that was actually an extremely thinly-veiled ripoff (and which I might post here someday, because if you can't laugh at your Old Shames, what can you do?). And then last October or so I picked up Dragonflight - one of the two books I still had my copy of all these years later - and I ended up getting hooked all over again, and rereading the entire series, and writing fanfic, and making fanmixes, and considering making fanart, and all that stuff. Now I have copies of something like twelve of the books, and I'm familiar enough with them all to play canon fairy. Dragonflight is my particular favorite; I've lost track of how many times I've read it, and now I'm reading it again in French.
I'm definitely not without criticism for the books - McCaffrey's characterization is a little too black and white, and sometimes inconsistent, There are definitely some Mary Sues (Brekke and Jaxom in particular come to mind). There's a lot of talk about how the Weyrs are supposedly so liberated, but none of the good characters really bear that out - although part of this seems to be due to an excess of faith in the Power of True Love, which I can't complain too much about because I'm a sucker for it. The whole thing about blue and green riders and homosexuality is just plain messed up (tent pegs, anyone?), rather offensive, and I see a number of major logical flaws in it. And I'm seriously disdainful of Todd-canon. In fact, I'm only barely touching on these issues because most of them could provoke a full rant. But despite that, I think it's a damn good series in general. Some of the characters are quite compelling, McCaffrey does an amazing job of keeping straight an extremely large cast, the worldbuilding is great (which is one of my main interests), and the dragons are just plain awesome.
Buffy/Angel:
My previous OTP, probably most evident right now in my icons. As said earlier, I'm a sucker for 'true love', and I just think they're an adorable couple. Random semi-related facts, because I can't think of anything especially coherent to say: I have an extreme tendency to talk in Buffy-Speak. I like writing vulnerable!Buffy. The first - and second and third multi-chapter fic I actually finishes was for B/A. "Normal" age gaps in couples kind of squick me, but I have no problem with Really Seven Hundred Years Old situations. BtVS gave me a fascination with vampires (though most other stories I've looked at have annoyed me for their vampires not being BtVS vampires). Also, David Boreanaz is just too sexy.
France:
Mum and I went to France for nine days, for no occasion except that we got a really good deal on tickets, plus I've been taking French for four years and my parents have been promising travel practically all my life.
We arrived in Paris on a Sunday afternoon, dead-tired losing half a day and not sleeping very well on the plane, proceeded to wander around for a few hours - went to the Viaduc des Arts, which was kind of disappointing since it was closed for Monday-ness, but the park on top was really pretty even in winter, then we tried to head towards the Place de la Bastille and wandered spectacularly off-course - then got on a fast train to Avignon, which was even less cofortable to try to sleep on than the plane. Arrived at our hotel in Avignon, took a nap which ended up being way longer than intended, and had a terrible time finding a restaraunt still open afterwards.
Had a leisurely and decadent breakfast of hot chocolate and pastries at a cafe (actually, they're generally called not Cafe but Salon de The), including about an hour just sitting and reading. Went to the Palais des Papes - v. impressive. Bright, sunny day, so sat out for a while in the large Place outside the Palais. Went to see the Pont St. Benezet, very pretty old arched stone bridge. Mum talked me into dancing on it and singing "Sur le pont d'Avignon" - although apparently, the song is wrong historically people actually danced under the bridge, not on it. Wandered around side-streets for a while near the University, getting dinner at a street Sandwicherie (they're actually called that, I kid you not), and even though we didn't find the English-language bookstore that was supposedly our destination until after it had closed, that wasn't really the point.
Had a more reasonable but still quite luxurious breakfast at a different cafe. Took a bus to Pont du Gard. By that time it was raining quite miserably. The Roman aqueduct was quite impressive enough to be worth the short hike in the rain to see it, especially as you walk across on a bridge pressed right up against it, and I got an awesome photo. Tried to catch a bus to Nimes, but the bus signage was bad and we were confused and missed it, and that's when probably the biggest "adventure" of our trip occurred. As Mum tells it, "We've had two beautiful sunny days, but today it rained all day and we got soaked and missed our bus (because we were standing at the wrong bus stop - in the rain) and then someone pulled up into the bus stop in his car (to use his cell phone) and I asked him if he was going to Nimes and he said no, but then said yes he could take us, so I thought maybe he was a French serial killer (because why would he change his plans just to take us?) but by then it was too late, but he turned out to be a really nice guy (and his car was warm and dry) and he took us 20 KM out of his way to drop us off at the train station in Nime, and he wouldn't take any money for petrol. He said he had just heard of Alaska recently for the first time when Barack Obama was elected - something about our governor -- as best I could understand, he didn't speak English." Found a hotel in Nimes, unpacked to dry stuff off, and found a really neat little hole-in-the-wall creperie (where they had the kitchen in the the front of the restaurant so you can watch them make the crepes) for dinner. I had a smoked salmon crepe - I ate a lot of seafood on the trip, because it was nearly impossible to find vegetarian dishes in France. Mum accidentally got something like 1/3 of a bottle of wine with her meal, and got - as she repeatedly mentioned - a little bit drunk, and we ended up having a long conversation about sex in fiction and female vs. male arousal. Slightly bizarre experience there...
Went to see the Les Arenes des Nimes in the morning. Amazingly well-preserved Roman arena - they still hold big events there. Like at the Palais des Papes and the Pont St. Benezet, we got English audioguides that had a ton of information. Fascinating, but way more than it was really possible to absorb, and the morning at Les Arenes was chilly and before long my fingers were freezing, as I hadn't thought to get my gloves out of my pack before we left the hotel. Took a train to Carcassonne. The Old City looked really pretty from the outside, but inside was sickeningly tourist-trap-y, plus most places were already closing down a little after we got there around 4:30. We did find a really pretty cathedral (with a sign where the English translation proclaimed it was "dedicated to the Roman-Catholic cult"). Pretty soon it started raining like whoa, so we holed up in a cafe for a few hours, braved the rain to return to the modern city and find a restaurant for dinner, braved the rain again to find an internet cafe to spend the evening at, and finally returned to the train station and caught an overnight train to Paris.
Arrived in the morning at the house of my parents' college friend Celia. She and her husband, Rich, are both American ex-pats. Celia is incredibly energetic (and has no shame; Mum's favorite story about her involved her asking an Ambassador from Luxembourg to take her home in his suitcase), and was talking a mile a minute to us from the moment we walked in the door, and was very solicitous. Rich was more laid-back but also real funny and nice. Their daughters, Sophie and Audrey, were nine and six respectively and absolutely adorable (except at bedtime). They go to a French school and are completely bilingual - I actually had Sophie help me with my AP French homework, which took a bit of pride-swallowing. I ended up getting drafted into a lot of their games - playing house, building forts, Junior Monopoly (incidentally, I despise Monopoly), and some kind of weird obstacle course, which I could never bring myself to refuse. I stayed in Sophie's room while I was there, and a few nights I stayed up reading some of her French children's chapter books - right about my reading level, I joked, and while that's a little self-deprecating, it's not that far off.
In Paris, we went to the Musee de l'Orangerie (Impressionist focus, including Monet's waterlilies - "nympheas" - which I adore and bought a panoramic poster of, and some Renoirs that I discovered I quite like), the Musee du Moyen Age (great since I've always been fascinated by all things medieval, though not being able to read the signs very well was more of a disadvantage here than the art museums; the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries were probably the coolest part), the Musee Rodin (another artist I discovered I like, and the museum had really nice gardens), the Musee d'Orsay (very cool space, all kinds of different art), Notre Dame cathedral (where I went up to see the towers and wanted to do my own version of a picture we have of my dad 20+ years ago imitating one of the gargoyles, but they've put up wire netting around the visitor walkways, which is so lame; the view was still great though), and the Jardins des Tuilleries (where there happened to be a big fashion show going on while we were there, much to our surprise. L'Orangerie was probably my favorite, but it's hard to decide. We also took a day trip to Chartres - the cathedral has the most amazing stained glass windows, and we got a private tour of the crypts, and a tour of the main cathedral by this expert on Chartres, Malcolm Miller, who apparently Dad and his class got tours of it from in college, and also there's a very pretty and nicely preserved old town with, among other things, lovely half-timbered houses and some great old trees. Sunday morning we went with Celia's family to a silent movie marathon at a neighborhood movie theater where they gave everyone a free personal-size container of Ben and Jerry's ice cream and there were probably 200 little French kids with their families. Afterward we went out to lunch with Celia's family and some of their friends (at a restaurant called "Beer Station"; the amount of gratuitous English we found quite surprised me). Our last day we did a bit of shopping: Mum dragged me to an open-air food market, and I found a dark double-breasted wool coat of the sort that look really awesome and most of the French seemed to be wearing some variation of, and we got street crepes, and I stumbled this little hole in the wall store of fantasy artwork and jewelry and figurines that had copious atmosphere and I was absolutely in heaven and bought a poster and a little dragon necklace charm, and we finally found a bookstore large enough to have a decent fantasy section, so I bought Le Vol du Dragon - Dragonflight in French, which I can read in large part because I've practically memorized the English text, so I know what it's saying even when I don't know all the words - and Mum took me on a wild goose chase for fancy chocolates to bring home as gifts, which we finally found right across the street from Celia's apartment. And the next morning we left, so that was our trip. And I've got a bunch of great pictures, so I'll post those once I finally get them uploaded to the computer.
Lessa/F'lar:
My current OTP. Lets see, what can I say that isn't just fangirlish babbling? I think they have one of McCaffrey's best-written romances subtle and believable and gradual (i.e. no Love at First Sight or Fourth Date Marriage). And they balance each each other out so well - she won't let him get too arrogant, and he won't let her get too manipulative. Which, left to their own devices, they totally would be. Which is another thing I like - at least in Dragonflight, they're both definitely flawed characters. Lessa can be kind of bitchy and misanthropic, and F'lar can be just kind of a jerk (there's one part that always amuses me where he's essentially going Compassion! What a strange feeling...).
Alaska:
I've lived in Alaska since I was a year old, except for one year when I was four, so it's always hard for me to wrap my mind around the idea that other people think it's exotic; it's just normal to me. Unfortunately for me, I really don't like winter. Naturally, I'm looking forward to going to college and getting out of here. However, I love the land and all the natural beauty, I don't think I could live without wide open spaces, and the community is wonderful (nearly everyone is a 1st or 2nd generation transplant, so we make our own 'families'), so I wouldn't be too surprised if I eventually end up back here. The common complaint among people my age is that there's nothing to do, but I've never found that a problem. Then again, I don't even know what normal teens do for fun; my idea of a good evening is some combination of reading, writing, looking at stuff on the internet, and maybe making brownies, and my idea of a good party is a sleepover with two or three fellow geeks. Also, there's a surprisingly vibrant theater community in town, which is right up my alley. I go to plays maybe twice as much as I go to the movie theater.
I live on ten wooded acres in a house my dad built almost completely by himself. It's lovely.
Finally, one of my favorite Alaska jokes: Sure, we have four seasons - Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Construction
Yeah, this took me rather a while to get to. My schedule is killing me right now. *Sigh*