More meme-age

[niko]

It's meme-week for me, apparently. :)  From tygermama ...

- list 7 habits/quirks/facts
- tag 7 people to do the same
- don't tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag 'whoever wants to do it'

I, uh.... don't have seven people to tag, so I'm skipping that part. :)

1) I graduated college with a degree in elementary education, but a job with a small computer company fell into my lap right after graduation, and I took it.  17 years later, I'm still working for that same computer company.  If this job ever goes away, I will have absolutely no idea how to go about a real job hunt.

2)  My family goes on vacation for 2 weeks every year at a lake near Traverse City, Michigan.   It works out to less than 4% of my life spent at that lake, but it still feels more like I'm "home" when I'm there than my real home.  I've always dreamed of moving there permanently, but I think that ship has sailed.

3) I collect stuff related to the movie "My Neighbor Totoro"... plushies, music boxes, figures, blankets, lunch boxes, kitchenware, etc.  (I probably have more Totoro plushies than is technically healthy for a nearly-40-year-old woman to own, but oh well. :) )   I think the sequence in the movie where Mei meets Totoro is one of the most sublime things ever.

4) I am kinda fascinated by hurt/comfort as a genre.  I wish there was more written about it from an academic standpoint.  I've been making up hurt/comfort stories in my head since at *least* as early as 2nd grade, which is waaaaay before I came into contact with fandom, and I'm just really intrigued by how a gen-kink like that evolves, and whether it compares (or differs) from more traditional "kinks".   (I'm also very much in favor of h/c from a pure enjoyment level, too, of course. :) )

5) I'm sort of addicted to Diet Coke.

6) One of my big frustrations is not having any fannish friends in "real life".  I'm always hugely-jealous when folks talk about getting together with friends to watch season finales, bounce story ideas off each other, etc. 

7) I tried to teach myself to knit recently.  It did not go well.  I got the basics down ok, but... well, if there's a more mind-numbingly boring activity out there, I don't know what it would be.  By the time I'd done about ten rows, I couldn't remember anymore why I'd wanted to learn in the first place. :)

Comments

[tygermama.livejournal.com]

#6 - oh, I hear ya. I have been dragging my friend, K, into all the good shows for years now, but between my kids and hers, we don't get to watch tv together like we used to. And she's not into the online fandom and doesn't write, she does read all the links I send her, though, but I don't have a "real person" to talk to about story ideas or writing.

#7 - I cannot knit to save my life. My tension sucks, I always end up with one stitch so loose that I can pull it over all the other work and off the needle and one stitch so tight I can't move it at all and end up having to cut the whole thing off. So, I've tried taking up crochet, but my kids keep stealing the hook. They think it's one of those doohickeys for peeling oranges. :D

*hugs*

[nikojen.livejournal.com]

#6 - Yeah, I have a few friends who are really die-hard fans of, say, Battlestar Galactica or Lost, but as soon as I veer a conversation anywhere towards fanfic, vids, etc. things sort of shut-down. Just no interest there whatsoever. It's frustrating.

#7 - LOL. Hey, if it actually *works* to get the oranges peeled, more power to 'em. :)

I've had several people tell me now that I should try crocheting instead of knitting, so I guess that's my next step. It doesn't have quite the same cachet to it, though, for some reason. :)

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

Something more on no. 6: it seems some people are satisfied to just be passive observers though they can be passionate about it, they just don't have an interest in participating.

There are two girls I work with who love Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" and Mr. Darcy so much that they call each other Darcy. That's as far as they go. Now me, I'd be making wallpapers of Mr. Darcy since that's where my strength lies. There's a desire in me to participate, to be involved with the world and author created in some way.

[solosundance.livejournal.com]

no. 4 - YES! It fascinates me too and is my default fic-writing position (although I do try to diversify ... hem). I was whumping in my head at a startlingly early age :) Hee, I like that you call it a kink ... it is all very psycho-sexual wish-fulfillment lah-di-dah, only I'm not clever enough to analyse it. I wish someone would who actually loves fandom.

no. 6 - well I didn't either a few years ago (ie when I first got to LJ). Now I've actually met Pros fans here in London and we've been away on a little weekend retreat :) Other fandoms I'm around seem to do the same but they're all over your side of the pond. Does Mag7 have a con existence? That seems to be where most folks meet one another. Or else by coincidental geography. I was in the US last April but I hadn't yet done my swan-dive into Four Corners else I might have touted around to see who I could go and bother :)

no. 7 - Heeeee!

[nikojen.livejournal.com]

#4 - Yeah, I decided it best-qualifies as a kink a while back when I was having an internal "why do I like h/c?" conversation with myself and all my psycho-babble ramblings couldn't explain why I've always gotten that little flutter in the pit of my stomach when my whump-ee of choice gets thrown against a wall or walloped upside the head. :) It doesn't feel like a *sexual* turn-on, but it's certainly *something*.

#6 - I actually went to my first fannish con last year, MediaWest, and it had a fairly healthy lineup of Mag7 panels. I'd only been in love with the series for about 2 weeks at the time, though, and everyone in the panels were on a first-name basis and had clearly known each other since the early years of the fandom, so it was a bit daunting. :) I guess I should go back and gird my loins to be more assertive about the socializing thing. :P

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

2) Wow, what a lovely lake! I'm jealous. Although I'd be to scared to go in deep, if you can swim in it at all. I'm more of a mountain person - my mom was born in a part of the country with a lot of very high mountains, and I was born and raised in a town surrounded by hills.

4) Likewise, though I have really started to dislike when it's done over-the-top and it goes over into torture. I too wish someone more knowledgeable than me would write something about it.

6) I hate that. I have no real person to talk to about fannish things other than my sister, and we know each other so well that all conversations end up being, - Did you see when he... - ...yes! Wasn't it great? And also when... - ..that was the coolest thing ever! :simultaneous sigh:

:)

[nikojen.livejournal.com]

#2 - Mountains sound lovely, too... though I've always been rather skittish about driving in places that are too hilly, so that would be hard to get used to. :) The lake is really lovely to swim in. Where I actually live, all the lakes around here are muddy and brown. As kids, we still swam in them, but you ended up wading through goopy mud and getting sludge in your swimsuit, but the lakes in this vacation spot all have sandy beaches, so the water stays clear and lovely. It's really awesome. :)

#4 - See! The torture thing is *another* thing I'd love to see discussed with h/c. There are so many different ranges of what people find acceptable, from torture-fic to a balance to schmoopy "I got a hangnail! Cuddle me!" comfort-centric fic. Are we all liking the same thing on a sliding scale, or are there different kinks being squished into the same label? It's so weird. :)

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

The town I live in now has been built into the hills so some streets are really steep! You should see me try to walk down my street in the middle of winter when it's covered in snow and ice. :D My home town is in the South and it rarely if ever gets any snow so none of us know how to walk on it.

That would be a very interesting topic! I am sooo swamped now that I haven't touched my comm in ages, but I'd love to ask people some questions about h/c. Hopefully it would help me clarify my thoughts on that.

Torture and bashing are just something I increasingly find very upsetting. (That's also something I wanted to post about but it will have to wait.) There was a very long, very popular fic I read quite some time ago which Nathan and Maude conspiring to poison Ezra, each for their own reasons. I managed to go through it, but it left me with a really bad feeling. I had to ask myself, Who are these people? This is not the Nathan I remember, and Maude, while self serving most of the time certainly never wanted to harm Ezra in such a way. o_O