Revenge of the Association Meme!
For the sake of simplicity, continued from here. First off, selskia would like to know why I remind her so strongly of niceness, Ditto, university, Canadiaphiles and art.
1. Happy wonderfulness and overall awesome niceness!
Wut. xD Okay, I'll give this one a go. I do try to be pleasant to people, and civil and helpful and all that good stuff, pretty much because that seems like the right thing to do: I like making other people happier. I ascribe in many ways to the whole "do unto others" thing as well -- and also, if I'm trying to get a point across, I know that being rude and sarcastic isn't going to help. I'm not a fan of the whole Cult of Nice thing, though, the "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" idea; I'd want to be told if I was being an ass about something, and if someone else is being an ass, I think that they too should be called on it. Civilly, unless they insist on carrying on with their assiness. (I'm sometimes too much of a coward to do it myself, though.) So yeah, niceness: unless you have a really good reason not to, apply it liberally to every situation for maximum awesome! :D
2. DITTO!
DITTO! Ditto ditto? Di di ditto do ditto. xD Do do ditt; toooo. And in slightly plainer English: I have had a minor obsession with shapeshifters ever since I was a wee small bairn, especially when the shifting comes with drawbacks or limitations, so you can probably imagine how much Ditto appealed to me when I first picked up a Pokémon walkthrough.
(Related tangent: back in the day, my brother and I got a walkthrough magazine for Red and Blue and read it cover to cover to cover until it was as dog-eared as a puppy, and formed imaginary teams and imaginary stories, and that was before we ever saw a game cartridge in the flesh. Then when we finally got Blue for a joint Christmas present, we failed to realise until after many restarts and much confusion that there was only one save file. So we collaborated for a while, which given our respective ages at the time translates to "fought over it", and then I eventually got Red and the Blue cartridge defaulted to my brother's possession. And so now you know!)
And now events have eventuated, and I have arrived in the ttly Much More Grown Up world of text-based livejournal roleplay, and I write a Ditto in shatterverse. Eir main purpose there is to go up to people, freak them out a bit and/or amuse them, and then go around being stupid with their faces on until ey forgets what they look like, by which time ey've gained a couple of fresh new unwitting victims. And so the circle of life continues.
3. University!
OH MAN UNIVERSITY. University is amazing, even though it was eating my soul with fries for breakfast, lunch and dinner back in the dark days before Fluoxetine and my relative competence. But seriously, oh man. The word that I would like to express to you all is independence. I am still alive, I am feeding myself, I am not running down the street screaming because my mind has broken entirely and I think that there are crows chasing me; I am independent. I can co-sign for a house, and I can travel by bus, and I can pay rent, and I can get a job interview, and I can do all of this without needing my mum to hold my hand. And I'm so glad that I came here, because otherwise I still wouldn't have believed myself capable of those things, just like I didn't believe I was capable of booking the tickets to Canada on my own without messing it up before I said "screw waiting" and just did it, and did it right.
Which is not to say that I could survive entirely alone, because I still don't have a job and I occasionally need to cry on my friends' shoulders, but the sheer fact that I can cry on my friends' shoulders is a source of OMGWTF for me, because it was sixth form before any of my secondary school friends even saw me cry. I distinctly remember one person saying that she couldn't imagine me crying. I still don't like it -- I doubt very strongly that anyone likes crying in front of people -- but I feel more able to do it than I did before. I don't feel so much like I'm just imposing my problems on people who have far-more-important troubles of their own, and I don't feel so much like the third wheel who's just spoiling everyone else's fun. It's kind of unfair to my secondary school friends that I ever felt this, because the problem was entirely with me; they didn't exclude me or anything, I just kept subconsciously expecting them to. *shrug* I'm getting over that now, which is pretty much what matters. And I appear to have deviated from the topic just the tiniest iota. Yay for free association?
4. British Canadiaphile!
THIS IS SO ME. I MEAN SERIOUSLY, IT'S JUST MY ESSENCE RIGHT NOW. The specific area of my affections is Toronto, where I stayed for a couple of weeks over the summer, and which is just... the best city. Ever. And the stuff! And the things! The words are not coming to me, but if they were then rest assured that they'd be very admiring words. It's kind of funny how awesome Canada is to me, because I don't remember it ever really standing out before I learned just who exactly lives there. But as I plan on saying to my mum when I finally work up the nerve to instigate a "we're girlfriends; deal with it" conversation, there is a person who I love in a place that I love, and she loves me back, and I couldn't be luckier and that's all there is to it. Hi, Pyth; not only did you turn me gay, but you have the power to spawn obsessions with entire countries. Use it wisely. ♥
5. Artaging!
Artaging is my ~super passion~, and resides in the ~super passion~ area of my brain along with all of my other ~super passions~ (such as starting stories that I never finish, performing very very amateur music, talking crap with a serious face and giving my soul to the Cyth OTP). I carry sketchpads with me every-freakin'-where. I doodle people and ducks and outfits and lettering all over my notes in lectures. I make up characters who look cool, and then extrapolate their personalities from their faces and clothes. I look at someone's hand on a table or the tilt of their face and go "ooh, that would make a pretty cool picture". THIS IS MY BLESSING AND MY CURSE!
And when ultramarine talks to me, somehow his brain always leaps straight to our very own Gabriel G, plus drunken college debauchery, nonstandard definitions of love, sheep, NIN and LotR (the fiend! He gave me six!)
1. Gabriel Grey
Now you're just reminding me of the time when, ignorant British person that I am, I used to spell the guy's surname "Grey" instead of "Gray". I have decided that this ranks somewhere just above making him drink tea all the time, which is after all canon or at least accepted fanon, and slightly below having him drive on the left side of the road this one time. (In a stolen car, natch. Well, technically, although the ex-owners were dead. No, he didn't kill them. It's a long and Shattery story.)
But yes, Gabriel. Gaaaaaaabriel. The one who got me writing again, bless his tarnished little soul; I was in an epic months-long dry spell, no original or fan anything, and then I started watching Heroes and was all OMG A MUSE *GRABS IT*. The one who jump-started my poor neglected love of glasses; I'd always thought they were nifty, but he made them actively hot. The one who jump-started a lot of things, come to think of it, including that pesky serial killer obsession that I thought I'd grown out of; he just sidled up, bashed me squarely in the back of the head and slotted himself into more or less every archetype that I never really realised I was into. All he has to do now is steal Matt Parkman's power and he'll have the full freakin' set, I'm not even kidding. It helps his case that he gave me some new likes to chew over: tall guys with dark hair and stubble, woo. And he took my love of itty bitty tiny little miniature things and tied it to a table with my fondness for patterns that fit and slot together neatly, and he was all "okay, from now on, it's watch guts. BECAUSE I SAID SO." And I was all "yessir mr. Sylar sir." Aaaaandyeah. That is where the horophilia came from! It's nifty.
I've also had a heck of a lot in common with the guy over the years, like the thing where I separated myself off from other people and felt like I didn't really belong, and the whole "I want to be special" bit, and the feeling like your life is out of your hands and going down the pan (which I am getting over, thank God), and the absent father / overprotective mother combo deal, and the occasional desire to club someone very hard around the head with a large chunk of quartz crystal. I haven't started stealing braaains yet, but clearly it's only a matter of time, you guys. Be afraid!
2. Drunken college debauchery.
Muahahahahahaha. Yes, I have gotten more drunk and been to more parties at university than I had in the entire rest of my life. Frequently, the getting drunk has been combined with dressing in a variety of weird and wonderful costumes, from vampires to 20s flappers to pirates. It's shocking, I know. :D
3. Non-standard definitions of love. (Yes, I stole it from your interests. It's also true.)
Everyone knows that nonstandard definitions are the best kind around! Who wants straight monogamous vanilla missionary position when they can have Sylar and Mohinder obsessing over destroying each other and oh my God how dare you say they're similar no wait, or two personalities working out their D/s-ish romance around the possibly-inhibiting fact that they both occupy the same body, or a psychic subjugating a man who's used to being in control and who both hates and loves his loss of it? Twoo Wuv can be awesome, but so can simple affection, and so can obsession, and so can tolerance, and so can love/hate relationships, and so can denied feelings, and so can forced alliances that lead to some kind of unspoken agreement, and so can X and so can Y and so can Z.
There are waaaay too many possibilities out there to even think about limiting yourself to nothing but traditional, straight, monogamous, mutual Let's Get Married And Have 2.5 Kids love. :D
4. Sheep (baaaa!)
Baaaa indeed. I'm sure that there is a very obvious reason for you to link me to sheep in your mind, and not long ago I would have been paranoid that you meant the metaphorical kind, but my brain is not working today so I will just talk about sheep in general. They are fluffy. And they say "baaa". And they are paranoid little buggers. AND THEY SURROUND MY UNI. SHEEPSPLOSION! ...Come to think about it, that's probably why you associate me with sheep. That and the movie with the zombie sheep. Oh, and speaking of nonstandard definitions of sheep, I'm still looking for that multicoloured one.
5. Nine Inch Nails
Yay, Nine Inch Nails! True story: I first heard about these people in an Animorphs book. I recall that Marco wanted one of their albums, so Cassie persuaded her mother to let her buy it for him by claiming that their initials stand for "Nice Is Neat". Which I'm sure any parent would have readily fallen for, especially when faced with the wholesome covers. I can't remember when I actually started listening to them, although it was a while after that; I probably caught them from my cousin Adam, who I spent a great number of my formative years wishing to mimic exactly. He's the reason I like Linkin Park, as well. And, quite possibly, fantasy RPGs. And he prompted me to improve my woeful typing skills, back when I took five minutes to assemble all the keys for the word "hello". But yeah, NIN. They have a hell of a lot of remixes. In general they're awesome, especially when they're angry, or they're singing about something violent, or both at the same time. (I heart you, Ruiner and Mr. Self-Destruct!)
(6. LoTR, but you've already talked about that some, so I'm leaving it off-ish.)
Make way for Cazrolime, the Lord of the Rings! No? Too soon? Oh, okay then. LotR is just... amazing. It dragged me kicking and screaming into the tradition of high fantasy. I wouldn't be roleplaying without LotR; I was on a fansite called TORC, where roleplaying worked more like a round robin, with everyone providing a character or two and then taking a turn to write them all. Hell, I probably wouldn't be on livejournal if it weren't for LotR; Rings led me to AW's MSTs led me to the PPC led me to LJ. LotR fuelled my love of crazy languages and epic narration and gorgeous description and chivalry* and so on. And the Ring. Oh man. Oh man. That is all I have to say. Oh man.
Yeah, I gleed like a gleeing thing over the stories of Boromir and Faramir and Frodo and Bilbo and Sam and Gollum (GOLLUM), but I have since recognised the common thread, and it's that plain little band of magical gold**. I was, am and always will be a Ring fangirl. I'd hit it like the fist of Tulkas. Unf.***
*SHUTTUP I DO HAVE A LOVE FOR THIS
**Which I really need an icon of. Where's that one of Boromir with it in the snow when I need it?
***Bonus points if it would agree to a threesome with a Palantir.
*helpless* Why do I keep turning out to be inanimate-object-sexual? WHY?
1. Happy wonderfulness and overall awesome niceness!
Wut. xD Okay, I'll give this one a go. I do try to be pleasant to people, and civil and helpful and all that good stuff, pretty much because that seems like the right thing to do: I like making other people happier. I ascribe in many ways to the whole "do unto others" thing as well -- and also, if I'm trying to get a point across, I know that being rude and sarcastic isn't going to help. I'm not a fan of the whole Cult of Nice thing, though, the "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" idea; I'd want to be told if I was being an ass about something, and if someone else is being an ass, I think that they too should be called on it. Civilly, unless they insist on carrying on with their assiness. (I'm sometimes too much of a coward to do it myself, though.) So yeah, niceness: unless you have a really good reason not to, apply it liberally to every situation for maximum awesome! :D
2. DITTO!
DITTO! Ditto ditto? Di di ditto do ditto. xD Do do ditt; toooo. And in slightly plainer English: I have had a minor obsession with shapeshifters ever since I was a wee small bairn, especially when the shifting comes with drawbacks or limitations, so you can probably imagine how much Ditto appealed to me when I first picked up a Pokémon walkthrough.
(Related tangent: back in the day, my brother and I got a walkthrough magazine for Red and Blue and read it cover to cover to cover until it was as dog-eared as a puppy, and formed imaginary teams and imaginary stories, and that was before we ever saw a game cartridge in the flesh. Then when we finally got Blue for a joint Christmas present, we failed to realise until after many restarts and much confusion that there was only one save file. So we collaborated for a while, which given our respective ages at the time translates to "fought over it", and then I eventually got Red and the Blue cartridge defaulted to my brother's possession. And so now you know!)
And now events have eventuated, and I have arrived in the ttly Much More Grown Up world of text-based livejournal roleplay, and I write a Ditto in shatterverse. Eir main purpose there is to go up to people, freak them out a bit and/or amuse them, and then go around being stupid with their faces on until ey forgets what they look like, by which time ey've gained a couple of fresh new unwitting victims. And so the circle of life continues.
3. University!
OH MAN UNIVERSITY. University is amazing, even though it was eating my soul with fries for breakfast, lunch and dinner back in the dark days before Fluoxetine and my relative competence. But seriously, oh man. The word that I would like to express to you all is independence. I am still alive, I am feeding myself, I am not running down the street screaming because my mind has broken entirely and I think that there are crows chasing me; I am independent. I can co-sign for a house, and I can travel by bus, and I can pay rent, and I can get a job interview, and I can do all of this without needing my mum to hold my hand. And I'm so glad that I came here, because otherwise I still wouldn't have believed myself capable of those things, just like I didn't believe I was capable of booking the tickets to Canada on my own without messing it up before I said "screw waiting" and just did it, and did it right.
Which is not to say that I could survive entirely alone, because I still don't have a job and I occasionally need to cry on my friends' shoulders, but the sheer fact that I can cry on my friends' shoulders is a source of OMGWTF for me, because it was sixth form before any of my secondary school friends even saw me cry. I distinctly remember one person saying that she couldn't imagine me crying. I still don't like it -- I doubt very strongly that anyone likes crying in front of people -- but I feel more able to do it than I did before. I don't feel so much like I'm just imposing my problems on people who have far-more-important troubles of their own, and I don't feel so much like the third wheel who's just spoiling everyone else's fun. It's kind of unfair to my secondary school friends that I ever felt this, because the problem was entirely with me; they didn't exclude me or anything, I just kept subconsciously expecting them to. *shrug* I'm getting over that now, which is pretty much what matters. And I appear to have deviated from the topic just the tiniest iota. Yay for free association?
4. British Canadiaphile!
THIS IS SO ME. I MEAN SERIOUSLY, IT'S JUST MY ESSENCE RIGHT NOW. The specific area of my affections is Toronto, where I stayed for a couple of weeks over the summer, and which is just... the best city. Ever. And the stuff! And the things! The words are not coming to me, but if they were then rest assured that they'd be very admiring words. It's kind of funny how awesome Canada is to me, because I don't remember it ever really standing out before I learned just who exactly lives there. But as I plan on saying to my mum when I finally work up the nerve to instigate a "we're girlfriends; deal with it" conversation, there is a person who I love in a place that I love, and she loves me back, and I couldn't be luckier and that's all there is to it. Hi, Pyth; not only did you turn me gay, but you have the power to spawn obsessions with entire countries. Use it wisely. ♥
5. Artaging!
Artaging is my ~super passion~, and resides in the ~super passion~ area of my brain along with all of my other ~super passions~ (such as starting stories that I never finish, performing very very amateur music, talking crap with a serious face and giving my soul to the Cyth OTP). I carry sketchpads with me every-freakin'-where. I doodle people and ducks and outfits and lettering all over my notes in lectures. I make up characters who look cool, and then extrapolate their personalities from their faces and clothes. I look at someone's hand on a table or the tilt of their face and go "ooh, that would make a pretty cool picture". THIS IS MY BLESSING AND MY CURSE!
And when ultramarine talks to me, somehow his brain always leaps straight to our very own Gabriel G, plus drunken college debauchery, nonstandard definitions of love, sheep, NIN and LotR (the fiend! He gave me six!)
1. Gabriel Grey
Now you're just reminding me of the time when, ignorant British person that I am, I used to spell the guy's surname "Grey" instead of "Gray". I have decided that this ranks somewhere just above making him drink tea all the time, which is after all canon or at least accepted fanon, and slightly below having him drive on the left side of the road this one time. (In a stolen car, natch. Well, technically, although the ex-owners were dead. No, he didn't kill them. It's a long and Shattery story.)
But yes, Gabriel. Gaaaaaaabriel. The one who got me writing again, bless his tarnished little soul; I was in an epic months-long dry spell, no original or fan anything, and then I started watching Heroes and was all OMG A MUSE *GRABS IT*. The one who jump-started my poor neglected love of glasses; I'd always thought they were nifty, but he made them actively hot. The one who jump-started a lot of things, come to think of it, including that pesky serial killer obsession that I thought I'd grown out of; he just sidled up, bashed me squarely in the back of the head and slotted himself into more or less every archetype that I never really realised I was into. All he has to do now is steal Matt Parkman's power and he'll have the full freakin' set, I'm not even kidding. It helps his case that he gave me some new likes to chew over: tall guys with dark hair and stubble, woo. And he took my love of itty bitty tiny little miniature things and tied it to a table with my fondness for patterns that fit and slot together neatly, and he was all "okay, from now on, it's watch guts. BECAUSE I SAID SO." And I was all "yessir mr. Sylar sir." Aaaaandyeah. That is where the horophilia came from! It's nifty.
I've also had a heck of a lot in common with the guy over the years, like the thing where I separated myself off from other people and felt like I didn't really belong, and the whole "I want to be special" bit, and the feeling like your life is out of your hands and going down the pan (which I am getting over, thank God), and the absent father / overprotective mother combo deal, and the occasional desire to club someone very hard around the head with a large chunk of quartz crystal. I haven't started stealing braaains yet, but clearly it's only a matter of time, you guys. Be afraid!
2. Drunken college debauchery.
Muahahahahahaha. Yes, I have gotten more drunk and been to more parties at university than I had in the entire rest of my life. Frequently, the getting drunk has been combined with dressing in a variety of weird and wonderful costumes, from vampires to 20s flappers to pirates. It's shocking, I know. :D
3. Non-standard definitions of love. (Yes, I stole it from your interests. It's also true.)
Everyone knows that nonstandard definitions are the best kind around! Who wants straight monogamous vanilla missionary position when they can have Sylar and Mohinder obsessing over destroying each other and oh my God how dare you say they're similar no wait, or two personalities working out their D/s-ish romance around the possibly-inhibiting fact that they both occupy the same body, or a psychic subjugating a man who's used to being in control and who both hates and loves his loss of it? Twoo Wuv can be awesome, but so can simple affection, and so can obsession, and so can tolerance, and so can love/hate relationships, and so can denied feelings, and so can forced alliances that lead to some kind of unspoken agreement, and so can X and so can Y and so can Z.
There are waaaay too many possibilities out there to even think about limiting yourself to nothing but traditional, straight, monogamous, mutual Let's Get Married And Have 2.5 Kids love. :D
4. Sheep (baaaa!)
Baaaa indeed. I'm sure that there is a very obvious reason for you to link me to sheep in your mind, and not long ago I would have been paranoid that you meant the metaphorical kind, but my brain is not working today so I will just talk about sheep in general. They are fluffy. And they say "baaa". And they are paranoid little buggers. AND THEY SURROUND MY UNI. SHEEPSPLOSION! ...Come to think about it, that's probably why you associate me with sheep. That and the movie with the zombie sheep. Oh, and speaking of nonstandard definitions of sheep, I'm still looking for that multicoloured one.
5. Nine Inch Nails
Yay, Nine Inch Nails! True story: I first heard about these people in an Animorphs book. I recall that Marco wanted one of their albums, so Cassie persuaded her mother to let her buy it for him by claiming that their initials stand for "Nice Is Neat". Which I'm sure any parent would have readily fallen for, especially when faced with the wholesome covers. I can't remember when I actually started listening to them, although it was a while after that; I probably caught them from my cousin Adam, who I spent a great number of my formative years wishing to mimic exactly. He's the reason I like Linkin Park, as well. And, quite possibly, fantasy RPGs. And he prompted me to improve my woeful typing skills, back when I took five minutes to assemble all the keys for the word "hello". But yeah, NIN. They have a hell of a lot of remixes. In general they're awesome, especially when they're angry, or they're singing about something violent, or both at the same time. (I heart you, Ruiner and Mr. Self-Destruct!)
(6. LoTR, but you've already talked about that some, so I'm leaving it off-ish.)
Make way for Cazrolime, the Lord of the Rings! No? Too soon? Oh, okay then. LotR is just... amazing. It dragged me kicking and screaming into the tradition of high fantasy. I wouldn't be roleplaying without LotR; I was on a fansite called TORC, where roleplaying worked more like a round robin, with everyone providing a character or two and then taking a turn to write them all. Hell, I probably wouldn't be on livejournal if it weren't for LotR; Rings led me to AW's MSTs led me to the PPC led me to LJ. LotR fuelled my love of crazy languages and epic narration and gorgeous description and chivalry* and so on. And the Ring. Oh man. Oh man. That is all I have to say. Oh man.
Yeah, I gleed like a gleeing thing over the stories of Boromir and Faramir and Frodo and Bilbo and Sam and Gollum (GOLLUM), but I have since recognised the common thread, and it's that plain little band of magical gold**. I was, am and always will be a Ring fangirl. I'd hit it like the fist of Tulkas. Unf.***
*SHUTTUP I DO HAVE A LOVE FOR THIS
**Which I really need an icon of. Where's that one of Boromir with it in the snow when I need it?
***Bonus points if it would agree to a threesome with a Palantir.
*helpless* Why do I keep turning out to be inanimate-object-sexual? WHY?