Interests meme
This is for pinkphoenix1985, evil meme pusher/enabler that she is *frowns sternly at PP who just giggles*
Comment here and I'll list 7 (or whatever, you guys know I can't count, right?) interests from your profile in a reply. Then you do an entry about what they mean and why you are interested in them.
Apparently I did have 7 on my list (freaky synchronicity) - but I couldn't remember what was there anyway, if she knew that she could have made anything up and I would have answered (I'm easy to lead astray that way). PP was numerically kind and only gave me 4 to answer. *hugs her for that*
This is what PP picked:
1. SPN
2. Children's Literature
3. Art house Cinema
4. Mythology
Here are the answers and nothing but the answers, so help me John Winchester (What? I think John is the perfect person to swear on! *pouts* bet dodger-winslow would agree with me)
Apologies for the off-the cuff ramble. It may be a little scrambled but I'm not bothering to censor this. This is me if you stick a mike in my face and I'm not reading a script. Me live and scary!
1. SPN - I adore this sub-genre of television. Anything with elements that take supposedly 'normal' characters and then twist and subvert what we consider reality and then see how the characters react to surreal situations. I love how science fiction or fantasy can act as a lens to show us how human motivations can stay the same no matter what stresses they are placed under. I like the heightened reality and okay, there's a lot of wish fulfillment there. I love shows about family dynamics, the more pressure they're under the better. I don't come from a close loving family. I stare at families that have that love, and sense of commitment a bit like a scientist with a bug under a microscope, and I keep watching, and taking notes, and wondering what it must be like to be part of something bigger where people really would do anything for each other. The concepts of sacrifice, salvation, and people doing hard things for the right reasons. SPN simply pushed almost all of my buttons. Great music. A family loving each other through everything. People facing their demons, real, and internal. People placed in impossible situations where there is no right answer that will make everything better, and hurt no-one. People making choices to survive, and living with the consequences of those choices and what that does to their souls, how it changes them, and how they react with the world. The way nothing is static, everything changes, events mirror other events and then twist, actions cause a tidal wave that ricochets outwards to anything in its path. The angst, the suffering, the truth. The way the writers pick various supernatural elements and and mythological ideas not because they necessarily have a particular religious issue to push, but because they are using them as a skeleton to hang a story on - using the allegory to tell a story about good, evil, the lengths people will go to for love (and everything else), and the lines people draw, and the lines they choose to cross and why. Oops I'm still rambling. I could turn this into something much bigger but people would run away screaming. *Pats readers soothingly on the back, speaks softly and calmly in manner of person talking a jumper off a building, and offers cookies*
2. Children's Literature - It is my roots. Grew up a bookaholic (I read everything, no matter what, goodness I even read Willard Price books for the sheer adventure!). Never changed. Never want to. Science fiction and fantasy early became the genre I read the most, and I never left my true childhood favourite books behind. I can re-read them now (CS Lewis, Alan Garner, Ann Holm, Theodore Taylor), and remember the person I was then, touch the magic of the first read of the book, and read them again from an adult perspective and get so many more layers from the books. It also was one of my majors at university, and I specialised in it in my work for a while. I still keep current with the subject and authors, and it's an area I'd have no hesitation moving back into one day. I just love the fact that it brings out the wide-eyed child in me every time. It's a cliche, but it's true. That sense of wonder we tend to lose in a cynical world, I get it back for a brief moment in these books.
3. Art house Cinema - Because I think we all live such tiny, inward-turning lives so much of the time. Comforted in our understanding of the world and our many prejudices. I love books that open new worlds, and ideas that make me confront myself, challenge my beliefs, and let me grow. Travel for the same reason. Small independent films from all over the world that for an hour that they put me in another place, and make me feel for some one and some topic that I thought I'd have nothing in common with. Give me a Finnish film about a homeless man, a French film about dock workers, a fluorescent Bollywood extravaganza, a horrific film about child abuse, a Mexican western - you name it I'll pretty much go see it. Some will bore me, some I'll hate, some I'll adore, but almost everyone will make me think outside of myself. Not many of the big Hollywood blockbusters will do that for me.
4. Mythology - Weird this overlaps with just about everything I've said on the previous points. Okay, I started out as a kid reading those different coloured Lang fairy tales. I had the sugar-coated versions of Grimm's thrust down me. I started reading basic myths and legends from different countries. I had everything from Greek, Roman, Indian, and Maori to read. I just kept reading more. The universality of various cultures myths, and their differences fascinated me. A lot of children's books carry on these themes, and this continues in fantasy and science fiction. I have a huge collection of mythological works, and critical analyses. I like looking at different archetypes, examining the way threads of tradition weave themselves down over the years, what remains consistent, what changes through time or across cultures. Explorations of mythology can wrap so many other subjects up within it: religion, anthropology, linguistics, literature, ethnography, law and justice, feminism, and on. It is this giant pinata of goodies. I read children's books, or adult novels and see so many of those same threads, just a little more obviously masked (yeah and that was a bad Joseph Campbell pun) than others. And I adore the way people like Angela Carter manage to subvert people's expectations.
And I better stop. Take the mike away quick before the power goes to my head! Oh, and run very fast :)
So, PP - regret asking? Heh. I could have said a lot more if I'd taken a moment to think. Just as well I didn't!
Comment here and I'll list 7 (or whatever, you guys know I can't count, right?) interests from your profile in a reply. Then you do an entry about what they mean and why you are interested in them.
Apparently I did have 7 on my list (freaky synchronicity) - but I couldn't remember what was there anyway, if she knew that she could have made anything up and I would have answered (I'm easy to lead astray that way). PP was numerically kind and only gave me 4 to answer. *hugs her for that*
This is what PP picked:
1. SPN
2. Children's Literature
3. Art house Cinema
4. Mythology
Here are the answers and nothing but the answers, so help me John Winchester (What? I think John is the perfect person to swear on! *pouts* bet dodger-winslow would agree with me)
Apologies for the off-the cuff ramble. It may be a little scrambled but I'm not bothering to censor this. This is me if you stick a mike in my face and I'm not reading a script. Me live and scary!
1. SPN - I adore this sub-genre of television. Anything with elements that take supposedly 'normal' characters and then twist and subvert what we consider reality and then see how the characters react to surreal situations. I love how science fiction or fantasy can act as a lens to show us how human motivations can stay the same no matter what stresses they are placed under. I like the heightened reality and okay, there's a lot of wish fulfillment there. I love shows about family dynamics, the more pressure they're under the better. I don't come from a close loving family. I stare at families that have that love, and sense of commitment a bit like a scientist with a bug under a microscope, and I keep watching, and taking notes, and wondering what it must be like to be part of something bigger where people really would do anything for each other. The concepts of sacrifice, salvation, and people doing hard things for the right reasons. SPN simply pushed almost all of my buttons. Great music. A family loving each other through everything. People facing their demons, real, and internal. People placed in impossible situations where there is no right answer that will make everything better, and hurt no-one. People making choices to survive, and living with the consequences of those choices and what that does to their souls, how it changes them, and how they react with the world. The way nothing is static, everything changes, events mirror other events and then twist, actions cause a tidal wave that ricochets outwards to anything in its path. The angst, the suffering, the truth. The way the writers pick various supernatural elements and and mythological ideas not because they necessarily have a particular religious issue to push, but because they are using them as a skeleton to hang a story on - using the allegory to tell a story about good, evil, the lengths people will go to for love (and everything else), and the lines people draw, and the lines they choose to cross and why. Oops I'm still rambling. I could turn this into something much bigger but people would run away screaming. *Pats readers soothingly on the back, speaks softly and calmly in manner of person talking a jumper off a building, and offers cookies*
2. Children's Literature - It is my roots. Grew up a bookaholic (I read everything, no matter what, goodness I even read Willard Price books for the sheer adventure!). Never changed. Never want to. Science fiction and fantasy early became the genre I read the most, and I never left my true childhood favourite books behind. I can re-read them now (CS Lewis, Alan Garner, Ann Holm, Theodore Taylor), and remember the person I was then, touch the magic of the first read of the book, and read them again from an adult perspective and get so many more layers from the books. It also was one of my majors at university, and I specialised in it in my work for a while. I still keep current with the subject and authors, and it's an area I'd have no hesitation moving back into one day. I just love the fact that it brings out the wide-eyed child in me every time. It's a cliche, but it's true. That sense of wonder we tend to lose in a cynical world, I get it back for a brief moment in these books.
3. Art house Cinema - Because I think we all live such tiny, inward-turning lives so much of the time. Comforted in our understanding of the world and our many prejudices. I love books that open new worlds, and ideas that make me confront myself, challenge my beliefs, and let me grow. Travel for the same reason. Small independent films from all over the world that for an hour that they put me in another place, and make me feel for some one and some topic that I thought I'd have nothing in common with. Give me a Finnish film about a homeless man, a French film about dock workers, a fluorescent Bollywood extravaganza, a horrific film about child abuse, a Mexican western - you name it I'll pretty much go see it. Some will bore me, some I'll hate, some I'll adore, but almost everyone will make me think outside of myself. Not many of the big Hollywood blockbusters will do that for me.
4. Mythology - Weird this overlaps with just about everything I've said on the previous points. Okay, I started out as a kid reading those different coloured Lang fairy tales. I had the sugar-coated versions of Grimm's thrust down me. I started reading basic myths and legends from different countries. I had everything from Greek, Roman, Indian, and Maori to read. I just kept reading more. The universality of various cultures myths, and their differences fascinated me. A lot of children's books carry on these themes, and this continues in fantasy and science fiction. I have a huge collection of mythological works, and critical analyses. I like looking at different archetypes, examining the way threads of tradition weave themselves down over the years, what remains consistent, what changes through time or across cultures. Explorations of mythology can wrap so many other subjects up within it: religion, anthropology, linguistics, literature, ethnography, law and justice, feminism, and on. It is this giant pinata of goodies. I read children's books, or adult novels and see so many of those same threads, just a little more obviously masked (yeah and that was a bad Joseph Campbell pun) than others. And I adore the way people like Angela Carter manage to subvert people's expectations.
And I better stop. Take the mike away quick before the power goes to my head! Oh, and run very fast :)
So, PP - regret asking? Heh. I could have said a lot more if I'd taken a moment to think. Just as well I didn't!