Baaaa!

[erastes]

And now to calm me down, a 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.

Tagged by lee_rowan for Standish, reviewing, wild birds, Perseus, cats

1. Standish. Hmm. The idea came from my mother's Concise Oxford Dictionary (1966)  It's a book I grew up with, it was always there and I would literally pore through it for words that I didn't know. The pages are amazingly thin, like tissue paper, but sturdy, even after forty years it hasn't deteriorated at all.  At Christmas we would always play "Call My Bluff" and I'd be given the task of finding obscure words to play with--the Concise never let me down.  So when I decided I wanted to write I reached for the Concise and started flicking through it. I found lots of delicious words--I was planning a fanfic to be honest--words like louche and post-prandial--then I came across one I'd not heard before. Standish. A very simple entry: "Inkstand" it said. Like this one here. I had the image of a young man writing in a small, dimly lit room. Then I thought: "what if his NAME is Standish? What if it's the name of his home? Why isn't he living there?".... And that was it!

2. Reviewing. I wish I could do more on Speak Its Name, but time just gets the better of me. The trouble with reviewing gay historical romance is, because of the size of the genre, it's naturally incestuous. I'm going to have to review books by Lee, or Alex Beecroft and any number of people that I've got to know--most of them very well, because I've made a point of seeking every new author out and pointing them at the other authors.  But it's important to me to still be as honest as I can, and I know that probably people don't send me their books for that reason. I don't agree with being nice just because I haven't the balls to be honest. Many review sites won't give a bad review at all--I've had one of two review sites, who when offering me a review position have said exactly that and I feel what's the point of it?  If every review you do is a good one, how can anyone trust your word?  Ok shutting up now.

3. Wild Birds.  I love them. It's a real privilege when you can entice wild animals into the garden, and it gives me such pleasure to see the same birds coming back on a regular basis. The robin is cheeky enough to look me straight in the eye when he lands on the table and the collared doves (once a rarity in Britain, now everywhere) are downright rude. When the food is running low they STARE into the sitting room as if to say "oi! come on, more please!"  I have a basin of water out there too, but it's too deep for them to bathe in, they do drink from it from time to time, but I must treat myself to a bird bath I think.  The cats are losing interest in them, which is good--Sevvie sits at the window for hours watching them--his favourite TV show, and the birds take no notice of him. Lucius still stalks them from time to time but luckily they are aware of him.

4. Perseus Harry Hamlin!  Bare thighs! Nothing much else to say there!

5. Cats  I'm actually a dog person more than a cat person, or I always was. But as I was working and felt that I had to have pets, I decided to have cats because they could be left alone, didn't need walks etc etc. My first cat was Ekco who - like Lucius - was a wanderer, sadly and one day she just never came back. I got Spooky at the same time and she was always the timid one, and was more my ex-husband's cat than mine, but when he buggered off (and Ekco had been gone a while) she seemed to know how upset I was and when my ex turned up to pick up some of his gear she sat on my lap (she'd never done that before, ever!) and GLARED at him. She was a one-woman cat after that, and would go everywhere with me, she moved to Ireland and had a wonderful life there with me, with all the fields, I'll always laugh the first time she saw a sheep, her eyes nearly bugged out of her head.  Even if i do one day, get a dog - I'm LONGING for a Basset puppy - I'll still have cats because I never realised how much fun they could be. Severus is more like a dog than a cat, he sleeps by my feet, won't let me go up the stairs on my own, comes on call, retrieves...And Lucius is just beautiful.  as for Lili - well. Annoying and loud as she is, I wouldn't be without her either.

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love these! Words, please.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

1. Jack/Ianto
2. Canada
3. The 11th Doctor
4. Scrabble
5. PotC

The five words: part 1-2

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

1. Jack/Ianto

I could go on about them for hours. In fact, I've been intending to write an essay about them on my LJ, but haven't yet figured out where to start, where to focus, or how to make it interesting. And how not to offend the legion of Ianto fans out there with the lack of lustre of my reaction to him.

See, here I am, which a shiny, pretty fandom that gives me a gorgeous canonical pairing, and I'm unthrilled by it. Jack delightes me. Ianto is problematic. It isn't that I don't like the character: Ianto is fascinating in many ways. But he's too much or an enigma, or too mercurial, or too private - I don't feel I understand him well, as a fan writer. I could do anywhere, storywise, with Ianto. (And fans do.) In a way, this is good. Gives me scope. Different ways to play the relationship.

But the slash pairing I most love are the ones I feel I understand, particularly if it's an intuitive/subjective understanding. So I love Jack/Nine, I love Jack/Ten in spite of the fact that it's all problematic UST, I love Jack/Jack and Jack/John and even Jack/Gwen and Jack/Tosh.... So Jack/Ianto is fun to play with, but it doesn't scream HOT at me, and it fills me with questions. I can and do play with those questions: do they truly love each other? (The actors say they do. Okay, I can take it as a working premise.) Why aren't they more demonstrative onscreen? What makes them - no stopwatch pun intended here - tick?

Delightful to play with. Fun to find ways of interpretation that make it work for me for the space of a story. But I still have to work at it.

Canonical slash is its own kind of thrill, and I'm happy with that. But I confess: I love any detail I can grab that indicates that Jack and Ianto are not domestic together, are not monogamous, are not equals.

2. Canada

Home sweet home. Home cold home? In February or March, Canada is bleak and ugly and frozen and inconvenient. Not the best time to think about it. By May or June, it's beautiful. There is so much that's good about Canadian society: multiculturalism, gay rights, women's rights, a highly-educated and hightly-civilized population, lots of libraries, universities, mood health care system, freedom of choice and speech. And a few of the most beautiful places anywhere - Cape Breton Island, Georgian Bay.

I could quibble it's being ruined by a neo-Conservative government, but there are only so many ways (I hope) that Harper can mess it up.

Canada is the best of all worlds. I might want to live in the UK or Italy, but I'm very Canadian at heart.

the five words: part 3 - 5

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

3. The 11th Doctor

I'm looking forward to him. Not that Ten isn't endearing; but there's baggage surrounding Ten now and I'll be happy to have a clean - or at least, cleaner - slate. My problems with Ten centre on two facts: that he doesn't love Martha, and doesn't love Jack, or, if he does, is afraid of that love and therefore treats them badly. That can be extended to "he loved Rose, and admits it, and treated her badly anyway."

So Eleven is cute in all the right ways, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with him.

We can't guarantee I'll like him. I liked Matt Smith very much in Secret Diary of a Call Girl and Ruby in the Smoke, so it all comes down to the writing. As always. I don't quite have the faith in Steven Moffat to be sure he'll do it right, but the suspense is half of the fun.

4. Scrabble

Basically the only game I like, and the only game I'll play. There was a time, decades ago, that I liked canasta. Briefly, I allowed myself to be coaxed into playing cribbage with my friends Di and Norm. But mostly? Scrabble. (Okay, Boggle, to)

Not that I'm very serious about it. Donna and Tasia go to Scrabble club and try to persuade me to go as well. I'm hesitant. It sounds so much like work. Ratings and timers and keeping track of the numbers of letters used and not used.

Really, I'm not that competitive: it ruins the fun for me.

5. PotC

I never expected to like it; I'm not a big Disney fan.

But I loved it, mostly thanks to Johnny Depp, who put heart and soul into the show. Despite a swashbuckling role that I ought to love, I find Orlando Bloom as Will Turner a bit of a washout, except for the end of the third movie.

Keira Knightly is gorgeous and fun. In the third movie she's incredibly sexy; and I didn't think I had a thing for pirate women.

But... it's Johnny Depp as Captain Jack (good name) Sparrow who makes the movies worth watching.

I also like Pintel and Ragetti, classic stereotypes pulled off with panache.

I also like Jack Davenport as Commodore Norrington. Really. Like him starchy, like him scruffy, like him tragic.

Things I don't like? The special effects, which go on for too long, and the monsters, which are sort of hokey.

And the first appearance of Captain Jack Sparrow in the first movie must be one of the best and funniest introductions of a hero ever.

Re: the five words: part 3 - 5

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Yay! thank you - it was good to hear all that from you! I like this meme.

Re: the five words: part 3 - 5

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I like it too. Thanks for setting it up here!

[megleigh.livejournal.com]

Me too. This looks like fun...

[erastes.livejournal.com]

1. Dead dragons
2. Australia
3. The Heart Divided
4. Australian Romance
5. Writer's Block

[pepperlandgirl4.livejournal.com]

I'd like to play (that is, if you know me well enough to associate five whole words with me lol).

[erastes.livejournal.com]

1. The Novel
2. Writing in Tandem
3. m/m
4. Twitter
5. Beatles

[anderyn.livejournal.com]

I already asked the_sea_to but now I wonder what five words you would give me!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Opera
Food
Snow
The Tigers
Draco

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

That's so fascinating about being a dog person versus being a cat person. I first had a cat, and now we have our basset hound because my fiancé is allergic to cats (we'd have probably kept my old cat Pellinore if he weren't allergic, and acquired a dog to keep him company -- he thought he was a dog anyway!). Spooky sounds like an absolute darling, and nobody can quite glare like a cat, can they? Lucy is hopeless at glaring, but she is a pro when it comes to begging for food. ;)

If you'd like to give me associations, I'm happy to respond to the, but I know I'm only periodically around on this LJ, so no pressure if you don't feel like it.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

1. John Foxe
2. Classical music
3. Snow
4. Oxford
5. Captain Jack

[crawling-angel.livejournal.com]

Sporky's just been down, sitting on the birdtable roof at the window. I ran for my camera but he'd gone *pahh* I think my long pink and black socks scared him off. (I call him a he, I don't think he's been still for long enough for us to tell other than that shot Dave got, but that might not be the same bird).

Words, if you feel you can pick five for me! \o/

[erastes.livejournal.com]

1. Aleksander
2. Photography
3. Drink!
4. Grizedale
5. TV

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

Oooh, could I please have five words?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

1. Dresden
2. Marcone
3. Fairytales
4. Spoons
5. Bureaucracy

[lusiology.livejournal.com]

Could be tricky because you don't really know me, but have at it.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

1. Administration
2. Potterdom
3. Vampires
4. Malfoy
5. Anime

[sleveen.livejournal.com]

Lovely...I know what you mean about coming across words/terms/various obscurities and having a story spontaneously bloom in your head...it's wonderful when that happens...I see Standish is going to be on the list for my next book-buying spree, and by the bye, I LOVE it when authors talk about how their characters come to them, what inspires their fiction, how they "get" their stories and such. I used to post about that sort of thing a lot in my LJ but I stopped doing it (and deleted what I had) because I was worried that I was being egocentric and/or boring people - however, I love reading it when you write about how the creative process happens, so please, keep on. :-)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I owe it all to fanfic of course, I wouldn't be writing at all if the floodgates hadn't been opened by ff.

Well, you see? If you like reading about my creative process you can bet your bottom dollar that other people were liking what you were writing. In fact I was so worried about Nino and Stanley I went looking for the story online and noticed you'd deleted everything!

You didn't ask for five words, but I'll give them to you anyway.

1. Dandy
2. Gunsel
3. Prohibition
4. Newfoundland
5. Snow (most people are getting this) :)

[sleveen.livejournal.com]

Fanfic is what got me started writing, too! Long before the Internet, I was writing "what if" stories (I called them) in school exercise books...LOL

Okay...I see my five words and will get busy... ^____^

[suryaofvulcan.livejournal.com]

I always thought of myself as a dog person - until I had a cat. I left Missy behind with the ex, and I still miss her.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

There was no way I would given him Spooky, even if he'd wanted her, not after her sweet behaviour!

If you want five words, here you go:

1. enterprise
2. slash
3. NHS
4. Swimming
5. Mike Oldfield

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

I meant Perseus Press, but ... nice chest!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Hee hee - I know you did. I was being naughty.

:)

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

8-P

[gavinatlas.livejournal.com]

I had thought she meant Perseus Press, too, and wondered what you were going to say about it. However, Mr. Hamlin is very handsome, so that worked, too. I once read he made the mistake of being in a gay-oriented film called Making Love which stalled his career for years until he got a part on a show called LA Law. Isn't it nice that playing gay doesn't destroy an actor anymore? Although I guess actually being gay still hurts one's Hollywood-Hearthrob status.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Well, so far I have nothing but praise for Perseus. They are communicative, helpful beyond measure, friendly and encompassing. Editing has been a positive experience - even when she wanted things changed - and they've listened to everything we had to say. Very happy with them indeed.

[the-sea-to.livejournal.com]

Do me! Now! Fithily!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

1. blacksand
2. elgin
3. cat
4. fanfic
5. Sues

[essayel.livejournal.com]

I remember yelping 'standish - it's a stand for ink and pens and stuff' while watching the old Call My Bluff on tv when Frank Muir and Patrick Campbell were the team captains. I could thank Georgette Heyer for that bit of trivia, though I was very shocked to hear a couple of years ago that she made up a lot of her Regency 'flash talk'. "Bit o' muslin" for instance was a complete fabrication.

I like one dog [in the present case a deliciously daft black flat coated retriever called Sirius] and two cats, because the cats can gang up if necessary.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I used to LOVE the old Call my Bluff.

And yes, bloody shocking about Heyer and her Heyer-isms. I've been banging on about that for a while - and what's worse is that many regency writers think they are gospel and you see them springing up again and again in books. Bleckh.

I love black labs, too. I won't risk getting that Basset puppy until I'm sure I'm not going to work again...

do you want words?

[essayel.livejournal.com]

I'd be delighted to have words, thank you very much.

Yes, dogs are a tie. Luckily I can get home from the museum at lunchtime and we go for a walk round the lanes. Bassets are gorgeous. I just love their knees.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Yes! baggy knees! They are supposed to be like dachshunds but worse. We've had dachsies all our life, so it could be fun.

longbow
Tolkien
footprints
jenny
goldfish