response to a meme
So, there's a 'I give you a list of five things I associate with you, and then you babble about them' meme going around, and I asked zero_pixel_coun for a list.
She gave me
russia
fangy grins
firearms
tattooing (in fiction & otherwise)
cattle-raids (and sagas thereof)
-------
russia
I am not Russian. This is important to note, as if you go by my food preferences (yay starches, sour cream, dill and butter!) and my default fairy-tale references . . . :)
What actually happened was that my father did citizen exchanges in the eighties--hosting Soviet teenagers/chaperoning groups of them, or acting as chaperone for American teens in the USSR, back when we lived on the east coast. He went to the USSR three times before I was four (I didn't approve much--apparently I bit at least one other kid as a method of expressing my displeasure), and definitely kept the connections after we moved cross-country. So we had small Russian objects d'art around the house, Russian guests, or exchange students around every so often. The first Ilya I can remember actually helped finish paneling the upstairs section of my parents' house, and carved his name in to prove it.
We had an old tape of the Kirov Ballet's version of Swan Lake that I'd watch for hours without understanding the plot--my version of brainless cartoons.
I can vaguely remember our hosting younger members of several performing groups--I think I attended at least one performance of The Firebird, a set of traditional dances, and a couple of plays about American students in the USSR. Mostly I remember my moment of absolute horror when the balaikala player broke his instrument on Kaschei and got banged up for it, hosting a terribly homesick girl about a year older than I was (I think she was twelve or thirteen to my ten or eleven), and a black actress having a verbal "..." moment about winding up in the wrong bathroom in theater!Russia.
All of which fostered an interest in Russia; when I was twelve I accidentally picked up an international phone call and couldn't for the life of me get across to the poor caller that the guest they were trying to reach was actually now staying with his sister in San Francisco. I ended up doing Russian for my college language, studied with a tutor for some time, and actually was in Russia for three weeks when I was sixteen. Much to my horror, I'd developed a native accent, and wound up keeping my mouth SHUT most of the time because if I said anything I tended to get a paragraph in response, and I simply didn't have the vocabulary to keep up.
Currently I'm playing with retold Russian fairy-tales, as they're lots of fun, and gently foreign to most readers' eyes. Russian history is also highly useful for most of the stories I'm working on (retold fairy-tales and epic fantasies alike, weirdly enough), so I'm gradually amassing a collection of reference books.
fangy grins
Entertainingly, I actually have very flat canine teeth--I used to use them as tools and wore them down a bit. I suspect it's slightly difficult to notice that, though, at least at first. :) My predatory glee, it often shows?
firearms
I was afraid of guns, growing up.
No, seriously! I didn't know how they worked, so I wanted no part of them--they could hurt me, or someone else, without me intending to, and that would suck. My brother was the one with the toy guns; I made toy swords. :D
Then Dad dragged us both to a hunter safety course in 2003; before we were born, he'd had guns, and liked the idea of having them again, so once my brother was reasonably into the age of reason, off we all went. We all passed the end of course exam (hardly surprising; both my brother and my father later became range safety officers), and I discovered that guns were actually kinda fun.
My preferred Thing Wot Goes Bang is a .22 lever-action Winchester rifle that my father said was mine if I put a whole box (500 rounds) through it. This took less time that he was perhaps expecting, but hey. :) I can shoot comfortably (or used to be able to) up to a 9 mil; .45 guns have slightly too much recoil for me to be able to put more than two magazines into paper targets. I used to give other guests at a range '....' moments, as one, rifle on the pistol range (.22s are so light they don't punch through the backstop), and two, when I'm shooting pistol I do it one-handed, body in profile to the target.
My Big Epic Fantasy has lots of firearms present; they have swords and various other shiny sharp things and magic as well, but there is so much Interesting Wildlife around that humans are manifestly not the top of the food chain, with iron (read 'artillery') as the major leveler of the playing field. It's fun. :)
tattooing (in fiction & otherwise)
This is really interesting. I can't remember if any of my own writing has people with tattoos (I know of several, but I can't remember if I've written any of it out).
When it comes to tattoos, I have two (so far). They're moderately obvious-- elbow to wrist dark brown vines and flowers--when I'm wearing shorter sleeves. Got 'em close to two years ago, essentially as a reminder that my hand problems are real, that I'm not making it up, and that it hasn't stopped me yet.
That aside, I was always interested in body decoration; I started with the Japanese (still have several books on that, come to think of it) for tattoo reference, and henna for personal decoration sometime in the 14 age range. This of course excepts the incidents with watercolour and acrylic paints and my brother and I. >.> Ahem.
So it's an interest, and kind of always has been--what stories are set down in ink on skin, why, etc--but I'm mildly surprised that it was an association.
cattle-raids (and sagas thereof)
Hee! I love the real Celtic myths, but haven't done any real reading in them in aaaaages. I got into mythology in a pretty haphazard fashion, and lounged around in the old Celtic stuff because it was fun, and it kinda sorta went with the music I had access to at the time (ten to twelveish I largely bought celtic music on tapes, because I could afford the tapes, and celtic is a pretty safe bet as a subgenre).
I haven't done any cultural research into them--I really should, considering one of the stories I've got going features a variation on the Morrigan--but still remember the basic ideas well enough to have mad glee when other people write in the system. Messy and capricious, cattle-raid wars and the salmon of knowledge, shapeshifting and geas and jealousy at faithfulness ('why does SHE get the shiny? Dammit, the shiny won't nibble on me! DOOM ON YOU. AND YOUR COW.'). They're very human stories, in a way the Greek and Egyptian ones aren't, anymore.
Questions are welcome. :)
She gave me
russia
fangy grins
firearms
tattooing (in fiction & otherwise)
cattle-raids (and sagas thereof)
-------
russia
I am not Russian. This is important to note, as if you go by my food preferences (yay starches, sour cream, dill and butter!) and my default fairy-tale references . . . :)
What actually happened was that my father did citizen exchanges in the eighties--hosting Soviet teenagers/chaperoning groups of them, or acting as chaperone for American teens in the USSR, back when we lived on the east coast. He went to the USSR three times before I was four (I didn't approve much--apparently I bit at least one other kid as a method of expressing my displeasure), and definitely kept the connections after we moved cross-country. So we had small Russian objects d'art around the house, Russian guests, or exchange students around every so often. The first Ilya I can remember actually helped finish paneling the upstairs section of my parents' house, and carved his name in to prove it.
We had an old tape of the Kirov Ballet's version of Swan Lake that I'd watch for hours without understanding the plot--my version of brainless cartoons.
I can vaguely remember our hosting younger members of several performing groups--I think I attended at least one performance of The Firebird, a set of traditional dances, and a couple of plays about American students in the USSR. Mostly I remember my moment of absolute horror when the balaikala player broke his instrument on Kaschei and got banged up for it, hosting a terribly homesick girl about a year older than I was (I think she was twelve or thirteen to my ten or eleven), and a black actress having a verbal "..." moment about winding up in the wrong bathroom in theater!Russia.
All of which fostered an interest in Russia; when I was twelve I accidentally picked up an international phone call and couldn't for the life of me get across to the poor caller that the guest they were trying to reach was actually now staying with his sister in San Francisco. I ended up doing Russian for my college language, studied with a tutor for some time, and actually was in Russia for three weeks when I was sixteen. Much to my horror, I'd developed a native accent, and wound up keeping my mouth SHUT most of the time because if I said anything I tended to get a paragraph in response, and I simply didn't have the vocabulary to keep up.
Currently I'm playing with retold Russian fairy-tales, as they're lots of fun, and gently foreign to most readers' eyes. Russian history is also highly useful for most of the stories I'm working on (retold fairy-tales and epic fantasies alike, weirdly enough), so I'm gradually amassing a collection of reference books.
fangy grins
Entertainingly, I actually have very flat canine teeth--I used to use them as tools and wore them down a bit. I suspect it's slightly difficult to notice that, though, at least at first. :) My predatory glee, it often shows?
firearms
I was afraid of guns, growing up.
No, seriously! I didn't know how they worked, so I wanted no part of them--they could hurt me, or someone else, without me intending to, and that would suck. My brother was the one with the toy guns; I made toy swords. :D
Then Dad dragged us both to a hunter safety course in 2003; before we were born, he'd had guns, and liked the idea of having them again, so once my brother was reasonably into the age of reason, off we all went. We all passed the end of course exam (hardly surprising; both my brother and my father later became range safety officers), and I discovered that guns were actually kinda fun.
My preferred Thing Wot Goes Bang is a .22 lever-action Winchester rifle that my father said was mine if I put a whole box (500 rounds) through it. This took less time that he was perhaps expecting, but hey. :) I can shoot comfortably (or used to be able to) up to a 9 mil; .45 guns have slightly too much recoil for me to be able to put more than two magazines into paper targets. I used to give other guests at a range '....' moments, as one, rifle on the pistol range (.22s are so light they don't punch through the backstop), and two, when I'm shooting pistol I do it one-handed, body in profile to the target.
My Big Epic Fantasy has lots of firearms present; they have swords and various other shiny sharp things and magic as well, but there is so much Interesting Wildlife around that humans are manifestly not the top of the food chain, with iron (read 'artillery') as the major leveler of the playing field. It's fun. :)
tattooing (in fiction & otherwise)
This is really interesting. I can't remember if any of my own writing has people with tattoos (I know of several, but I can't remember if I've written any of it out).
When it comes to tattoos, I have two (so far). They're moderately obvious-- elbow to wrist dark brown vines and flowers--when I'm wearing shorter sleeves. Got 'em close to two years ago, essentially as a reminder that my hand problems are real, that I'm not making it up, and that it hasn't stopped me yet.
That aside, I was always interested in body decoration; I started with the Japanese (still have several books on that, come to think of it) for tattoo reference, and henna for personal decoration sometime in the 14 age range. This of course excepts the incidents with watercolour and acrylic paints and my brother and I. >.> Ahem.
So it's an interest, and kind of always has been--what stories are set down in ink on skin, why, etc--but I'm mildly surprised that it was an association.
cattle-raids (and sagas thereof)
Hee! I love the real Celtic myths, but haven't done any real reading in them in aaaaages. I got into mythology in a pretty haphazard fashion, and lounged around in the old Celtic stuff because it was fun, and it kinda sorta went with the music I had access to at the time (ten to twelveish I largely bought celtic music on tapes, because I could afford the tapes, and celtic is a pretty safe bet as a subgenre).
I haven't done any cultural research into them--I really should, considering one of the stories I've got going features a variation on the Morrigan--but still remember the basic ideas well enough to have mad glee when other people write in the system. Messy and capricious, cattle-raid wars and the salmon of knowledge, shapeshifting and geas and jealousy at faithfulness ('why does SHE get the shiny? Dammit, the shiny won't nibble on me! DOOM ON YOU. AND YOUR COW.'). They're very human stories, in a way the Greek and Egyptian ones aren't, anymore.
Questions are welcome. :)