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yakalskovich) wrote2009-02-28 05:00 pm
yakalskovich) wrote2009-02-28 05:00 pm
Entry tags:
Association meme
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.
I asked three times so far, and failed to answer, due to being sick and working too much, in turns.
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innerbrat gave me: Tales of the Cheysuli, Goths, Germany, Aunthood, Milliways.
ceitfianna gave me: Goths, Axe, Gods, Purple, Nazgul
essayel gave me: Spirituality, Robb as in J D, Teja, Plant as in Robert, Fan
Now, let me get this in some sort of order:
Goths: Goths, and goths. First, there were the Goths, or rather, 'A Struggle For Rome'. I was about twelve, had already read all of Karl May I could grab at home or in the school library, and not yet discovered 'The Lord of the Rings'. That book filled a gaping, yearning market niche in my budding imagination. Of course, once I was hooked, I read many other historical novels, and I read all the non-fiction books I could get as well. I even asked for Procopius' 'Gothic War' (in a bilingual German and Greek edition) for Christmas that year, and got it; and that was years before I started Greek in school.-
As for the non-capital letter goths, I encountered them in strength first in 2003 at the Wraeththu con in Stafford. I was sitting on the panel, being a sort-of BNF and among the internet crowd that turned up every Saturday at the Wraeththu chat. None of us on the panel of fan fic authors and BNFs wore black, was visibly or bizarrely pierced, or was especially grim. Of the roughly 150 people in the audience, most were. We did that opening panel, good friends meeting for the first time in RL, and at the same time fan fic authors kicking off the discussion for an intense and memetically riveting weekend of con, and the audience was very much impressed with us. That formed my attitude to the gothy crowd: I either dress up in black and move smoothly among them, or, if I encounter any that think they are dark and dangerous while I am wearing mundane civvies, I am somewhat underwhelmed because I know I have more weirdness in a little finger than one of those black-wearing kiddies from the Miserable Village have in their entire bodies.-
Teja: At my very first reading of 'A Struggle For Rome', I immediately fell for the dark sad grimg gothy Goth who was so different from everybody else! Ahhh Teja! Neither staunch, tragic Witichis nor beautiful, sunny Totila gripped my young imagination that much. It was the great, aimless love felt by the unreflected, naive teenage fan! He established a sort of mold for what I would like; later, there was Aragorn, and there was Feanor, and then I finally matured in what I liked. I almost forgot about Teja -- almost. And then, suddenly, bizarre serendipity, and next I know, I end up playing Teja in Milliways. It was almost as if the charrie chose me, not the other way around.
Germany: I have the usual ambiguous attitude to my home country that people of my generation still have. I found the sudden resurgence of 'harmless' patriotism, the cheering and flag-waving, of the 2006 Footie World Championship deeply distateful, starting with the fact I find football orcs deeply distateful at the best of times. That of course ties in neatly into an ambiguous attitude aas to whether or not one ought to reclaim history and old religion, the way all sorts of neopagans and re-enactors have done in the English speaking countries. Playing a Goth from a work that was meant to rediscover or re-invent a national heritage in the time when nations and nation-states were all the rage, I can't of course utterly ignore the issue. If there are objections, I have text that I can point at. It is not a thing one should play with unreflected.-
Tales of the Cheysuli: I read parts of it during my great fantasy reading binge in the early to mid-nineties, from the library. It was, to be honest, not the most impressive of the lot that I read then; that was 'Grass' by Sheri S. Tepper. Then I was talked into apping Asar-Suti to Milliways, for plot purposes, re-read the canon, realised that I did know it after all, and was more impressed now.-
Purple: Product of character bleed. I have a definite yen for purple -- anything purple -- and it is definitely down to Asar-Suti; and it is definitely here to stay.
Gods: I don't really believe in any. I think all deities are tulpas, archetypes that were created by human minds but live in so many of them now that they have taken on a life on their own. There may be forces in the world, but they are certainly not person-shaped, or have names. We give them shapes and names, and the more of us know about them (true belief isn't even necessary), the stronger and the more independent they get. A tarot card is very strong that way, lots of people know it and work with it, so that is why I say I can't control Tower as a charrie. I am making my mind the space for a tulpa to occur in when I play him; it is scary for me and scary for people I play with, so I don't do it very often. I'd rather be the priest than the miko.-
Spirituality: See above. I am descended from generations of Lutheran vicars, I have Orthodox leanings, I encourage atheism, I respect shintô, and my own beliefs are varied and strange. I think the supernatural, and the spiritual, is mostly shortcuts through the fascinatingly complex jungle of the human mind, and human psychology. It is legitimate to use shortcuts, of course.-
JD Robb: Futuristic detective novels with romance elements. Not so different from, say, romantic mysteries with added vampires and kinky sex. Definitely has more of a sense of humour than Laurel K. Hamilton. I'm reading the fourth book at the moment (not fourth in the series, but fourth that I am reading; once you know the first, you know the setup), and might even read more. But not very deep or special. My Milli!Teja liking the Milliways version of Charlie Monroe doesn't mean I must madly fall in love with Charlie's canon.
Robert Plant:essayel pointed me to a YouTube vid where she thought he looked like Billy Boyd. i said 'Um-huh' and thought that guy, iff any, would make a decent PB for Totila. And then I found that snippet where he seemed to want to intentionally prove it, and suddenly I had made all these icons. Also, I finally caught up with classic seventies rock that had just got out of fashion when I got interested in music in the late 1970s. Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple: all due to Sal! A large gap in my education, closed at last thanks to one YouTube link.
Fan: I'm not that much of a fan, and I only very rarely write typical fan fiction. I don't want to be an also-ran in a popular fandom, either.carolinw and I are the only Teja fans on the English speaking internet, so what we say is by that very fact fanon.
Milliways: I apped an RP charrie I already had about the first morning of its existence, then saw all the best and brightest from the old Discworld RPG drain off to there. I held out for quite a while, only ever dabbled -- but then, I was talked into apping 'Suti, and the rest you know. It is still great fun.
Nazgul: I met her at the fountain in Worlds Away, where the German-speaking avatars hung out, in about 1998 or so. She became the Nazgul when she tried to join me in the old Wraeththu chat one memorable Saturday evening in 2002 or so, because I was there anyway, and gave herself that user name, was booted by the revolving door in that place, came back with Nazgul2 as user name, got booted again, and so on, untiil five. That is when she bacame Nazgul #5; the similarity to the fanfic spoof is coincidental. We found that only later.
Axe: Yes, I own a battle axe. I bought it out of 1/3 character bleed from my Milli!Teja, 1/3 runing gag about decapitating superfluous Siemens employees, and 1/3 getting into the living history/creative anachronism/LARP stuff so much that I wanted to own some weapon.
Aunthood: My Little Lady is the best thing that ever happened in my RL. Ever! She is enormous fun to know, it's endlessly fascinating to watch her grow up and like things I like as well, and she changed my perspective on life rather radically: I want there to be a future that I can leave to her and her descendants without worrying too much as I give up my ghost. Also, as she is my niece, it means I am still comfortably child-free most of the time. I had spent three weeks taking care of her when she was only 11 months old, walking the stroller into town in Wiesbaden every day, and getting a view at the world from the other side, so I am not a pure armchair traveller in that area. Being an aunt means having the best of both worlds, there. I very much enjoy it!
I asked three times so far, and failed to answer, due to being sick and working too much, in turns.
innerbrat gave me: Tales of the Cheysuli, Goths, Germany, Aunthood, Milliways.ceitfianna gave me: Goths, Axe, Gods, Purple, Nazgulessayel gave me: Spirituality, Robb as in J D, Teja, Plant as in Robert, FanNow, let me get this in some sort of order:
Goths: Goths, and goths. First, there were the Goths, or rather, 'A Struggle For Rome'. I was about twelve, had already read all of Karl May I could grab at home or in the school library, and not yet discovered 'The Lord of the Rings'. That book filled a gaping, yearning market niche in my budding imagination. Of course, once I was hooked, I read many other historical novels, and I read all the non-fiction books I could get as well. I even asked for Procopius' 'Gothic War' (in a bilingual German and Greek edition) for Christmas that year, and got it; and that was years before I started Greek in school.-
As for the non-capital letter goths, I encountered them in strength first in 2003 at the Wraeththu con in Stafford. I was sitting on the panel, being a sort-of BNF and among the internet crowd that turned up every Saturday at the Wraeththu chat. None of us on the panel of fan fic authors and BNFs wore black, was visibly or bizarrely pierced, or was especially grim. Of the roughly 150 people in the audience, most were. We did that opening panel, good friends meeting for the first time in RL, and at the same time fan fic authors kicking off the discussion for an intense and memetically riveting weekend of con, and the audience was very much impressed with us. That formed my attitude to the gothy crowd: I either dress up in black and move smoothly among them, or, if I encounter any that think they are dark and dangerous while I am wearing mundane civvies, I am somewhat underwhelmed because I know I have more weirdness in a little finger than one of those black-wearing kiddies from the Miserable Village have in their entire bodies.-
Teja: At my very first reading of 'A Struggle For Rome', I immediately fell for the dark sad grimg gothy Goth who was so different from everybody else! Ahhh Teja! Neither staunch, tragic Witichis nor beautiful, sunny Totila gripped my young imagination that much. It was the great, aimless love felt by the unreflected, naive teenage fan! He established a sort of mold for what I would like; later, there was Aragorn, and there was Feanor, and then I finally matured in what I liked. I almost forgot about Teja -- almost. And then, suddenly, bizarre serendipity, and next I know, I end up playing Teja in Milliways. It was almost as if the charrie chose me, not the other way around.
Germany: I have the usual ambiguous attitude to my home country that people of my generation still have. I found the sudden resurgence of 'harmless' patriotism, the cheering and flag-waving, of the 2006 Footie World Championship deeply distateful, starting with the fact I find football orcs deeply distateful at the best of times. That of course ties in neatly into an ambiguous attitude aas to whether or not one ought to reclaim history and old religion, the way all sorts of neopagans and re-enactors have done in the English speaking countries. Playing a Goth from a work that was meant to rediscover or re-invent a national heritage in the time when nations and nation-states were all the rage, I can't of course utterly ignore the issue. If there are objections, I have text that I can point at. It is not a thing one should play with unreflected.-
Tales of the Cheysuli: I read parts of it during my great fantasy reading binge in the early to mid-nineties, from the library. It was, to be honest, not the most impressive of the lot that I read then; that was 'Grass' by Sheri S. Tepper. Then I was talked into apping Asar-Suti to Milliways, for plot purposes, re-read the canon, realised that I did know it after all, and was more impressed now.-
Purple: Product of character bleed. I have a definite yen for purple -- anything purple -- and it is definitely down to Asar-Suti; and it is definitely here to stay.
Gods: I don't really believe in any. I think all deities are tulpas, archetypes that were created by human minds but live in so many of them now that they have taken on a life on their own. There may be forces in the world, but they are certainly not person-shaped, or have names. We give them shapes and names, and the more of us know about them (true belief isn't even necessary), the stronger and the more independent they get. A tarot card is very strong that way, lots of people know it and work with it, so that is why I say I can't control Tower as a charrie. I am making my mind the space for a tulpa to occur in when I play him; it is scary for me and scary for people I play with, so I don't do it very often. I'd rather be the priest than the miko.-
Spirituality: See above. I am descended from generations of Lutheran vicars, I have Orthodox leanings, I encourage atheism, I respect shintô, and my own beliefs are varied and strange. I think the supernatural, and the spiritual, is mostly shortcuts through the fascinatingly complex jungle of the human mind, and human psychology. It is legitimate to use shortcuts, of course.-
JD Robb: Futuristic detective novels with romance elements. Not so different from, say, romantic mysteries with added vampires and kinky sex. Definitely has more of a sense of humour than Laurel K. Hamilton. I'm reading the fourth book at the moment (not fourth in the series, but fourth that I am reading; once you know the first, you know the setup), and might even read more. But not very deep or special. My Milli!Teja liking the Milliways version of Charlie Monroe doesn't mean I must madly fall in love with Charlie's canon.
Robert Plant:
essayel pointed me to a YouTube vid where she thought he looked like Billy Boyd. i said 'Um-huh' and thought that guy, iff any, would make a decent PB for Totila. And then I found that snippet where he seemed to want to intentionally prove it, and suddenly I had made all these icons. Also, I finally caught up with classic seventies rock that had just got out of fashion when I got interested in music in the late 1970s. Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple: all due to Sal! A large gap in my education, closed at last thanks to one YouTube link.Fan: I'm not that much of a fan, and I only very rarely write typical fan fiction. I don't want to be an also-ran in a popular fandom, either.
carolinw and I are the only Teja fans on the English speaking internet, so what we say is by that very fact fanon.Milliways: I apped an RP charrie I already had about the first morning of its existence, then saw all the best and brightest from the old Discworld RPG drain off to there. I held out for quite a while, only ever dabbled -- but then, I was talked into apping 'Suti, and the rest you know. It is still great fun.
Nazgul: I met her at the fountain in Worlds Away, where the German-speaking avatars hung out, in about 1998 or so. She became the Nazgul when she tried to join me in the old Wraeththu chat one memorable Saturday evening in 2002 or so, because I was there anyway, and gave herself that user name, was booted by the revolving door in that place, came back with Nazgul2 as user name, got booted again, and so on, untiil five. That is when she bacame Nazgul #5; the similarity to the fanfic spoof is coincidental. We found that only later.
Axe: Yes, I own a battle axe. I bought it out of 1/3 character bleed from my Milli!Teja, 1/3 runing gag about decapitating superfluous Siemens employees, and 1/3 getting into the living history/creative anachronism/LARP stuff so much that I wanted to own some weapon.
Aunthood: My Little Lady is the best thing that ever happened in my RL. Ever! She is enormous fun to know, it's endlessly fascinating to watch her grow up and like things I like as well, and she changed my perspective on life rather radically: I want there to be a future that I can leave to her and her descendants without worrying too much as I give up my ghost. Also, as she is my niece, it means I am still comfortably child-free most of the time. I had spent three weeks taking care of her when she was only 11 months old, walking the stroller into town in Wiesbaden every day, and getting a view at the world from the other side, so I am not a pure armchair traveller in that area. Being an aunt means having the best of both worlds, there. I very much enjoy it!