Five Things
Feb. 21st, 2009 10:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerComment to this post (and let me know you want to play) and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.
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silksieve gave me the following topics:
YA lit
I do read a lot of YA, don't I? It's partly habit: there are a lot of YA writers I know I like, so I want to read their new books and, given the constraints on my time, I don't have room for too much else.
I must confess that another reason I read so much YA is because the books are so thin. I can read them quickly, and I get a lovely fizz of accomplishment when I'm done.
The third reason, and probably the most important, is that YA consistently has the qualities I like in books: humor, strangeness, and a refusal to wallow in violence or hopelessness needlessly. Of course there are plenty of adult books that fit these criteria (Terry Pratchett, say), but generally speaking adult books are much more likely to stick needles into my soul.
Also - and I realize this sounds contradictory - I think a lot of adult books do "darkness" very poorly, because they tend not to follow through the logical consequences of the ugliness they've set up if doing so would really shock their readers (rather than merely titillate them). The Kushiel books come to mind here: they have every kinky practice under the sun, but they set the age of consent laws at sixteen, which makes no sense in the story world. It's a sop to readers, who would be shocked if the laws were set at the more historically plausible twelve.
Really, you could go down to ten and still be historically plausible. Tennessee set the age of consent at seven back in the early 1800s, so maybe even lower. But that would alienate readers, so no go.
Quirky but Awesome TV (you know, like Pushing Daisies and Psych)
Heehee. Actually, it's sad about Psych. I love the show, but I've seen very few episodes because I never get around to these things unless I have the DVDs, so I can't write any fanfic for it even though hair-brained plots with quirky dialogue are my specialty.
It occurs to me that Netflix probably has the DVDs. I think I'll add them to my queue and rectify this problem.
Languages
I've already mentioned my imaginary major, where you take a new language each year (while continuing to study the languages you took in the previous years), so that by the time you graduate college you speak, like, five languages, haven't I? Because that would be a totally awesome major.
As it is I can only study Russian, and will at best emerge from college trilingual (the third language being Spanish), which leaves the coveted title of polyglot one language away. Curses!
Cookies
What can I say? I have a sweet tooth the size of the Ozarks (it used to be the size of the Andes. This is progress), and I love baking things; so much goodness from so little effort.
I have this great idea for new cookie recipe: cranberry chocolate. If only I can get my hands on some cranberries I think it will be highly successful.
College
Oh, college. It's kind of like living in a petri dish.
I do have excellent classes this term, though. Ask about my nineteenth century art history class sometime - I can go on at great length about the Impressionists, Caspar David Friedrich, the female nude, paintings of the working class, and/or why I hate Courbet.
silksieve gave me the following topics: YA lit
I do read a lot of YA, don't I? It's partly habit: there are a lot of YA writers I know I like, so I want to read their new books and, given the constraints on my time, I don't have room for too much else.
I must confess that another reason I read so much YA is because the books are so thin. I can read them quickly, and I get a lovely fizz of accomplishment when I'm done.
The third reason, and probably the most important, is that YA consistently has the qualities I like in books: humor, strangeness, and a refusal to wallow in violence or hopelessness needlessly. Of course there are plenty of adult books that fit these criteria (Terry Pratchett, say), but generally speaking adult books are much more likely to stick needles into my soul.
Also - and I realize this sounds contradictory - I think a lot of adult books do "darkness" very poorly, because they tend not to follow through the logical consequences of the ugliness they've set up if doing so would really shock their readers (rather than merely titillate them). The Kushiel books come to mind here: they have every kinky practice under the sun, but they set the age of consent laws at sixteen, which makes no sense in the story world. It's a sop to readers, who would be shocked if the laws were set at the more historically plausible twelve.
Really, you could go down to ten and still be historically plausible. Tennessee set the age of consent at seven back in the early 1800s, so maybe even lower. But that would alienate readers, so no go.
Quirky but Awesome TV (you know, like Pushing Daisies and Psych)
Heehee. Actually, it's sad about Psych. I love the show, but I've seen very few episodes because I never get around to these things unless I have the DVDs, so I can't write any fanfic for it even though hair-brained plots with quirky dialogue are my specialty.
It occurs to me that Netflix probably has the DVDs. I think I'll add them to my queue and rectify this problem.
Languages
I've already mentioned my imaginary major, where you take a new language each year (while continuing to study the languages you took in the previous years), so that by the time you graduate college you speak, like, five languages, haven't I? Because that would be a totally awesome major.
As it is I can only study Russian, and will at best emerge from college trilingual (the third language being Spanish), which leaves the coveted title of polyglot one language away. Curses!
Cookies
What can I say? I have a sweet tooth the size of the Ozarks (it used to be the size of the Andes. This is progress), and I love baking things; so much goodness from so little effort.
I have this great idea for new cookie recipe: cranberry chocolate. If only I can get my hands on some cranberries I think it will be highly successful.
College
Oh, college. It's kind of like living in a petri dish.
I do have excellent classes this term, though. Ask about my nineteenth century art history class sometime - I can go on at great length about the Impressionists, Caspar David Friedrich, the female nude, paintings of the working class, and/or why I hate Courbet.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 08:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 05:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 08:52 am (UTC)YES, DO IT!
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Date: 2009-02-22 05:25 pm (UTC)Do you want five things, or did you just want to make sure that I followed my better angels and committed a Psych marathon?
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Date: 2009-02-22 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 02:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 08:23 pm (UTC)why do you hate courbet? just because i learned a little bit about him last semester... actually i'd be pretty interested in your opinions on nineteenth century art.
; )
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Date: 2009-02-22 08:35 pm (UTC)(I'll take 5 things, if you're offering.)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 02:15 am (UTC)(I can't hear that without thinking of Hot Fuzz, though. The Greater Good!)
Five things: Lerant, oceans, books, tragically unfinished fics, and sunshine.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 02:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 11:34 pm (UTC)This was one of my favourite classes also, probably because by the time we got to impressionism, my prof kept gleefully pointing out: "This one's a dancer/prostitute! This one's a singer/prostitute! This one's at a masque (meat market!). This one's nude (prostitute!). This one's just a prostitute! This one's of the artist's wife/friend posing as a prostitute! That's a haystack."
(Oh, Manet.)
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Date: 2009-02-22 11:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 02:18 am (UTC)I'm going to make a longer post about Courbet, but in a nutshell he's an arrogant jackass with an ego the size of France.
I love - well, I love a lot of painters; I really love Caspar David Friedrich, and I love most of the Impressionists, especially Renoir and Cassatt and Degas.
Do you want five things?
no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 03:15 am (UTC)Sure, I think I can take five things!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 06:24 am (UTC)Five things: sketching, sisters, ochre, Hogwarts houses, and Tortall.
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Date: 2009-02-26 07:30 pm (UTC)Yep. I agree with you.
my imaginary major, where you take a new language each year (while continuing to study the languages you took in the previous years), so that by the time you graduate college you speak, like, five languages
This should be an actual major. Anyway, you are far closer to being a polyglot than I will ever be, with my one and a half languages.
new cookie recipe: cranberry chocolate
I would eat these! I recommend the frozen cranberries. They work really well in lemon-cranberry muffins.
Oh, college. It's kind of like living in a petri dish.
...In that you're getting cultured? :P
I've never taken an art history class but I get a bit of it through Sally, and I love looking at paintings in museums. They always look a million times better than the reproductions in books.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-26 09:12 pm (UTC)What's your half language?
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Date: 2009-02-28 07:34 pm (UTC)What painters do you like best?
Some of mine are: Velasquez, Manet, Bronzino, Titian, Van Dyck, some of the Goya portraits, Caravaggio.
Yeah, I like the portraits. Humanity, colour, honesty.
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Date: 2009-02-28 10:39 pm (UTC)There's a sort of nineteenth century bias here. Obviously I need to take more art history classes to correct that. :)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-28 11:56 pm (UTC)(Velasquez, Velasquez, Velasquez!)
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Date: 2009-03-02 05:39 am (UTC)I'm not terribly familiar with Velasquez - we looked at a couple of his pictures to compare/contrast with Goya, but no more - but with your enthusiastic acclaim clearly I need to look up his pictures.
On a completely different note: do you ever beta fic? I have a draft of that Copper Islands piece I told you about, but it needs...something...i'm not sure what. So I was hoping you'd read it?