Words Meme
Jumping on this bandwagon since it's been the cool thing to do around here lately ;-) I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be that you should feel free to comment on this post, and if you want five words from me put "words" in a comment. I'll do my best ;-)
This is the part where I blog about these.
Swearing:
Ah swearing. What a lovely, lovely waste of the english language. Maybe it's living in New York City, or maybe it's growing up very very irish, but something about dropping an f-bomb here and there or replacing all adjectives with profanity brings such joy to my heart I have a hard time expressing it. There is something so satisfying in a good solid four letter word, like it expresses so much more than it really should, it can mean so much more than its definition, it can slide in and slide out practically undetected if used in the proper manner.
I have been known to be a bad influence on those around me, since swearing is something like yawning - completely contagious and catch-able. Some days I think it's something I should work on improving (I probably should try to be a bit more demure and lady like) and then other days I think "What the fuck, who the hell cares?" Which is usually what I stick with.
I'm pretty sureroland44 chose this word for me because of a particular GQMF meme in which I swore a blue streak because, you know, that's the whole point. I felt so at home ;-)
This makes me sound terrible, I realize, but before you judge me for my wicked tongue just know that swearing in NYC is like breathing and nobody really notices it that much...? Actually that's probably a blatant fucking lie, but whatever. Screw it. Fuck off.
Poetry:
Poetry. This is a flattering word, to say the least.
I am a firm believer in the music hidden in our language, of the way things ebb and flow and the way a style of writing can hand you so much information about what's happening emotionally. I'm a firm believer of breaking some of the rules of grammar in creative writing (don't tell roland) to make the flow of emotion happen, and I'm a firm believer in making all creative writing be poetry in disguise.
Influences of mine (just to share because it's fun):
W.B. Yeats -
"May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place."
(Exceprt from "A Prayer for my Daughter")
Dylan Thomas -
"And you, my father, there on the sad height
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
(Excerpt from "Do not go gentle into that good night")
Billy Collins -
"I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means."
(Excerpt from "Introduction to Poetry")
Jeanette Winterson -
"I sound like an old fashioned car, or a secret agent. I am in the wrong time, certainly, in the wrong place perhaps, and already I feel more like a story than a human being; that is, I am the kind of thing that gets written about. I am in print."
(Excerpt from "How to Die")
Jill Scott -
"I felt like cayenne pepper, red, hot, spicy,
I felt dizzy and so near heaven and miles between my thighs
Better than love, we made delicious.
He me had
Had me he
He had me tongue tied.
I could hear his rhythm in my thoughts
I was his sharp, his horn section
His boom and his bip
And he was my love."
(Excerpt from "Love Rain")
University:
I'm pretty sure I was given this word because of a special bond roland and I have over a little something called graduation. Namely, I never went to mine.
I attented the New Enlgand Conservatory of Music and was part of the class of '07. I had to take a semester off because I was hired to be in a production of Show Boat in Florida (the conservatory allegedly allows students to take time off to work professionally, since we're all trying to become musicians...in theory) I made sure that before I left for florida I had already fulfilled my requirements, including performing a senior recital completely at the last minute, so that I could still be finished with my degree on time despite the lost semester. They ended up making me come back after the run of Show Boat because I was "missing a semester of chorus."
Now I realize the value of good ensemble training. I really do. I know that the skills I learned being in chorus at NEC are beyond useful in the real world of music, and that when it comes time for me to find a church job or a job in an opera chorus those skills will have me thanking the powers that be that I suffered through those four years of Handel and Mozart and Barber...BUT. Come on guys. Really? Really. Every other requirement is completed and you make me come back here because we're required to take 8 semesters of chorus, not a certain number of credits? Just call it what it is. You want my money.
So needless to say, I did not attend the 08 graduation out of protest. Fuck you, chorus. Keep your fucking diploma.
Fanfiction Epics:
Oh, this one's a no brainer. It's nearly impossible for me to write fanfiction and NOT have it turn into some kind of twelve chapter story you have to read for english class. Some people really hate this about me. There are forums where my name has been tossed around with the sentence "Fanfiction is not supposed to be this much work to read."
I happen to have been raised on X-Files fanfiction, and we XF shippers tend to disagree.
(By raised on I mean raised on. I started reading XF fanfic when I was eleven...)
I am a sucker for the journey of a story, the angst and the drama and the build up to the ultimate happy ending, so my stories are usually planned with that in mind. Also I'm a gemini, and I'm irish (I mentioned this before) which means I have an uncanny flair for the dramatic. Why write a story where Robin confesses her love for Barney if she's not going to tell him she hates him first? Why write a story where everybody takes all their clothes off if they're not going to explain in detail why they'll never take their clothes off first? Why delve into an Alternate Universe if you don't plan on living there for like a month at least? Be with me on this. The payoff is SO much sweeter when you get dragged through the mud to get there.
Hence me constantly writing epics.
In the world of BroTP - The Trouble with Barney and Number Sixty Six
In the world of The Office - I Just Wanted to be Famous, Fathers and Daughters, For What I am When I am With You, and How it Falls
It's what I do.
Smutty smut smut:
This...is also what I do.
If my fanfic is not going to be epic, it's most likely going to be covered in the filth of smut. I try to keep it sort of classy, sort of poetic, still sort of epic in its own way, but still totally delicious and dirty. Because who doesn't love that.
As a girl in a Catholic family who never got the birds and the bees talk, but got more of a "Do not ever say the word sex in my presence again" kind of talk, I learned what I needed to know about what all teenagers need to know from the wonderful art of fanfiction. This is a ridiculous confession, but we're all friends here so... Yeah, actually it's still ridiculous.
Mulder and Scully were my version of the video they show in health class, and all the authors who so wonderfully wrote scenario after scenario for these two were my fantastic health teachers with the banana and the condom and all of that. Mind you, I stuck religiously (pardon the expression) to the age limits, so it was all legal and fine, however I read so much fanfiction my senior year of high school I called the boy I had a crush on "Mulder" by accident. Needless to say, the two of us never became an item.
So the point of this rambling is that it only makes sense that now, at the ripe old age of 24 ::rolls eyes::, I am still a slave to smut.
Who here does not love living vicariously through fictional characters? Is it just me?
This is the part where I blog about these.
Swearing:
Ah swearing. What a lovely, lovely waste of the english language. Maybe it's living in New York City, or maybe it's growing up very very irish, but something about dropping an f-bomb here and there or replacing all adjectives with profanity brings such joy to my heart I have a hard time expressing it. There is something so satisfying in a good solid four letter word, like it expresses so much more than it really should, it can mean so much more than its definition, it can slide in and slide out practically undetected if used in the proper manner.
I have been known to be a bad influence on those around me, since swearing is something like yawning - completely contagious and catch-able. Some days I think it's something I should work on improving (I probably should try to be a bit more demure and lady like) and then other days I think "What the fuck, who the hell cares?" Which is usually what I stick with.
I'm pretty sureroland44 chose this word for me because of a particular GQMF meme in which I swore a blue streak because, you know, that's the whole point. I felt so at home ;-)
This makes me sound terrible, I realize, but before you judge me for my wicked tongue just know that swearing in NYC is like breathing and nobody really notices it that much...? Actually that's probably a blatant fucking lie, but whatever. Screw it. Fuck off.
Poetry:
Poetry. This is a flattering word, to say the least.
I am a firm believer in the music hidden in our language, of the way things ebb and flow and the way a style of writing can hand you so much information about what's happening emotionally. I'm a firm believer of breaking some of the rules of grammar in creative writing (don't tell roland) to make the flow of emotion happen, and I'm a firm believer in making all creative writing be poetry in disguise.
Influences of mine (just to share because it's fun):
W.B. Yeats -
"May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place."
(Exceprt from "A Prayer for my Daughter")
Dylan Thomas -
"And you, my father, there on the sad height
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
(Excerpt from "Do not go gentle into that good night")
Billy Collins -
"I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means."
(Excerpt from "Introduction to Poetry")
Jeanette Winterson -
"I sound like an old fashioned car, or a secret agent. I am in the wrong time, certainly, in the wrong place perhaps, and already I feel more like a story than a human being; that is, I am the kind of thing that gets written about. I am in print."
(Excerpt from "How to Die")
Jill Scott -
"I felt like cayenne pepper, red, hot, spicy,
I felt dizzy and so near heaven and miles between my thighs
Better than love, we made delicious.
He me had
Had me he
He had me tongue tied.
I could hear his rhythm in my thoughts
I was his sharp, his horn section
His boom and his bip
And he was my love."
(Excerpt from "Love Rain")
University:
I'm pretty sure I was given this word because of a special bond roland and I have over a little something called graduation. Namely, I never went to mine.
I attented the New Enlgand Conservatory of Music and was part of the class of '07. I had to take a semester off because I was hired to be in a production of Show Boat in Florida (the conservatory allegedly allows students to take time off to work professionally, since we're all trying to become musicians...in theory) I made sure that before I left for florida I had already fulfilled my requirements, including performing a senior recital completely at the last minute, so that I could still be finished with my degree on time despite the lost semester. They ended up making me come back after the run of Show Boat because I was "missing a semester of chorus."
Now I realize the value of good ensemble training. I really do. I know that the skills I learned being in chorus at NEC are beyond useful in the real world of music, and that when it comes time for me to find a church job or a job in an opera chorus those skills will have me thanking the powers that be that I suffered through those four years of Handel and Mozart and Barber...BUT. Come on guys. Really? Really. Every other requirement is completed and you make me come back here because we're required to take 8 semesters of chorus, not a certain number of credits? Just call it what it is. You want my money.
So needless to say, I did not attend the 08 graduation out of protest. Fuck you, chorus. Keep your fucking diploma.
Fanfiction Epics:
Oh, this one's a no brainer. It's nearly impossible for me to write fanfiction and NOT have it turn into some kind of twelve chapter story you have to read for english class. Some people really hate this about me. There are forums where my name has been tossed around with the sentence "Fanfiction is not supposed to be this much work to read."
I happen to have been raised on X-Files fanfiction, and we XF shippers tend to disagree.
(By raised on I mean raised on. I started reading XF fanfic when I was eleven...)
I am a sucker for the journey of a story, the angst and the drama and the build up to the ultimate happy ending, so my stories are usually planned with that in mind. Also I'm a gemini, and I'm irish (I mentioned this before) which means I have an uncanny flair for the dramatic. Why write a story where Robin confesses her love for Barney if she's not going to tell him she hates him first? Why write a story where everybody takes all their clothes off if they're not going to explain in detail why they'll never take their clothes off first? Why delve into an Alternate Universe if you don't plan on living there for like a month at least? Be with me on this. The payoff is SO much sweeter when you get dragged through the mud to get there.
Hence me constantly writing epics.
In the world of BroTP - The Trouble with Barney and Number Sixty Six
In the world of The Office - I Just Wanted to be Famous, Fathers and Daughters, For What I am When I am With You, and How it Falls
It's what I do.
Smutty smut smut:
This...is also what I do.
If my fanfic is not going to be epic, it's most likely going to be covered in the filth of smut. I try to keep it sort of classy, sort of poetic, still sort of epic in its own way, but still totally delicious and dirty. Because who doesn't love that.
As a girl in a Catholic family who never got the birds and the bees talk, but got more of a "Do not ever say the word sex in my presence again" kind of talk, I learned what I needed to know about what all teenagers need to know from the wonderful art of fanfiction. This is a ridiculous confession, but we're all friends here so... Yeah, actually it's still ridiculous.
Mulder and Scully were my version of the video they show in health class, and all the authors who so wonderfully wrote scenario after scenario for these two were my fantastic health teachers with the banana and the condom and all of that. Mind you, I stuck religiously (pardon the expression) to the age limits, so it was all legal and fine, however I read so much fanfiction my senior year of high school I called the boy I had a crush on "Mulder" by accident. Needless to say, the two of us never became an item.
So the point of this rambling is that it only makes sense that now, at the ripe old age of 24 ::rolls eyes::, I am still a slave to smut.
Who here does not love living vicariously through fictional characters? Is it just me?