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5 words meme
Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your journal and explain what they mean to you.
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mab_browne gave me the following: Wales, dogs, horror, supernatural, WIP
...I don't think "WIP" is really a word, but okay.
Wales is where I live. To most people on my flist this is now land of NuWho and Torchwood (and occasionally Merlin); to me it's still the land of my youth. I was a miserable kid, always the outsiders, too clever to be popular (intelligence was a serious offence in my schools), and the sexuality issues I didn't really acknowlege until my 20's sure didn't help. But it was people who made me miserable. The land was my refuge.
I love this country. Not in a patriotic way, but in a this-is-just-beautiful way. I love long walks over the local fort - there's nothing of the Roman fort itself left but you can see the shape of it in the land - and long bus rides to visit castles. I love castles! Cardiff and Caerphilly and Chepstow and Caldicot (all the C's!). I love taking a train to Barry Island in the autumn and getting soaked in the rain on the beach...haven't done that in a while. I love the totally insane weather: the way there can be snow a foot deep a mile away and blue skies here in Newport. In winter I love being able to see the islands in the Bristol Channel on my way to work and in summer I love crossing the Ebbw bridge and wishing I had the guts to go swim in the river.
Dogs. I'm actually more of a cat person but sis is allergic so we have dogs. Rocky is getting old. He had so much personality when he was young and fit. He's a German Shepherd/Golden Retriever cross (got some greyhound in there somewhere, too) and was very enthusiastic about...well, everything. He chewed up two playstations when left alone. He ruined several of my shirts jumping up to greet me. I spent a week while unemployed dog-sitting after he injured his tail: my job was to stop him chewing on it. I fought like crazy against letting him move in, though, when Sis left her violent and abusive boyfriend. I felt it was kinder to find him a new home as this house is too small for a dog his size. I wasn't wrong, but I lost the battle.
A few years ago one of Sis's friends acquired Poppy and within weeks decided she couldn't keep her. Sis had already fallen in love with the puppy and thus we acquired dog #2. Poppy is half Jack Russell terrier and half Chihuahua and cute as anything. She has the most affectionate personality of any dog I've ever known. She loves everyone and everything. She'll sit in your lap for ages, all but purring. She's ball crazy and will nag you by dropping a tennis ball at your feet until you get the message and throw it for her, and will bring it back so you can throw it again and again. She loves squeaky toys - will chew at them until the squeak breaks and later, goes back and chews until somehow the squeak fixes itself! And she loves the other dogs!
Amber is a Border Terrier - long-haired with a button nose and black soulful eyes. If sleeping were an Olympic sport she'd win gold. But she has endless energy when she wants to play. Her favourite game is tug-o-war and she's picked up Poppy's nagging ways: she'll pick up a rag (what's left of a stuffed animal or a scrap of towel) and place it on your feet. If you move, she'll place it on your feet again. Until you notice and pick it up. She's also a junkie and I mean that literally - she craves Rocky's pain medication and Mum enables her by letting her lick the bottle when she treats Rocky. Amber's a fussy thing with food and often refuses to eat from her own bowl, stealing leftovers from the other two instead. We're working on that.
Horror is the sick part of my imagination I have begun to indulge more freely. I do love horror movies, but not most modern horror movies. I don't find much fun in horror like (sorry!) Harper's Island or Friday the 13th where it's all about the gory deaths. I like something that'll genuinely scare me. Harper's Island definitely had its moments, but I prefer horror with a supernatural theme - Spielberg's Poltergeist is far and away my favourite. I'm also fond of The Exorcist and more recently The Mist - now that ending is how to end a horror movie! I like people who aren't wholly human, devil worship and scenarios that seem like they could really happen. I like morally grey heroes and movies with women who aren't sex kittens. I like a mystery I can get my teeth into and a side-helping of humour to balance the scares.
Yeah, I'm picky. A lot of stuff marketed as horror today isn't horror to me: most recently I saw Blood: The Last Vampire which is more a martial arts movie than it is horror. And don't get me started on Twilight. True Blood on the other hand strikes exactly the right balance - some truly frightening moments alongside characters you can care about and a grisly sense of humour.
In my own writing I feel like my horror tends to be cliche - I go for lots of blood, sexual violence and dead children. Just where my headspace is.
Supernatural is going to break my heart. I know it. I actually avoided getting into the show as season one aired because everyone was slashing these two brothers. I thought the incest thing would bother me - not sure why I thought that as the many incestuous pairings in Heinlein don't trouble me a bit. But a random comment incereta's LJ after the S1 finale aired convinced me to check it out. I fell in love with Sam by episode three and by the end of the season the show had hooked me in a way nothing has since Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Here was a show with a really strong story, twisted family relationships, a lead character I could identify with, and OMG a mini-horror movie in every episode! And horror done right! (If only they'd drop that godawful heavy metal soundtrack.)
Then there was John Winchester. My love for him took longer but once it "clicked" I was lost. He is everything I want in a hero and I love him unreservedly and forever.
And John, together with the other minor characters I love - Jo, Ellen - will keep me in the fandom even as the heroes morph into people I can no longer like very much.
And it's such a fun fandom to write in! The pairing possibilities are endless - okay, the popular slash tends toward wincest but there are loads of other options even before season four. Gen is fun, too, and the het options are almost endless. I can even write some kinda twisted pairings like John/Jo (is it weird that I find John/Jo more twisted than John/Dean?)
WIP I assume mab picked this because I'm always going on about my WIP folder. I'm a terribly unfocussed writer. I start a story, get distracted by something else and it sits there. Months later I'll come back to it and start again. This is because most of my fic ideas are huge and epic, which takes a lot of energy to write. Occasionally I'll even finish a WIP. I don't like posting unfinished WIPs because of this habit I have of dropping a fic for months at a time. Once I've got a finished first draft it's okay. But I feel like I have a kind of contract with readers: if I start posting, I owe it to them to finish.
On the other hand, I'm the queen of dragging out a serialised story. I now many people prefer to read a long fic all in one go but for me serialisation is a particular genre. And it's fun! After all, that's how we watch our favourite TV shows, isn't it - one episode a week, trying to figure out what will happen next, loving-and-hating those cliffhangers...I like trying to recreate that in fic and it can be a lot of fun getting feeback on the story as it develops.
As a reader I love following a serialised story, but I hate the uncertainty of following a WIP...so I guess this is just me implementing the Golden Rule.
Just lately I've been posting parts of a SPN WIP under friends-lock, on the theory that this will help me get a better sense of where the story is going. I don't think many people are reading it but that's okay. It's very much a first draft and I can't guarantee it will be finished any time soon. I think I finally know where it's going, though. So, yay!
mab_browne gave me the following: Wales, dogs, horror, supernatural, WIP ...I don't think "WIP" is really a word, but okay.
Wales is where I live. To most people on my flist this is now land of NuWho and Torchwood (and occasionally Merlin); to me it's still the land of my youth. I was a miserable kid, always the outsiders, too clever to be popular (intelligence was a serious offence in my schools), and the sexuality issues I didn't really acknowlege until my 20's sure didn't help. But it was people who made me miserable. The land was my refuge.
I love this country. Not in a patriotic way, but in a this-is-just-beautiful way. I love long walks over the local fort - there's nothing of the Roman fort itself left but you can see the shape of it in the land - and long bus rides to visit castles. I love castles! Cardiff and Caerphilly and Chepstow and Caldicot (all the C's!). I love taking a train to Barry Island in the autumn and getting soaked in the rain on the beach...haven't done that in a while. I love the totally insane weather: the way there can be snow a foot deep a mile away and blue skies here in Newport. In winter I love being able to see the islands in the Bristol Channel on my way to work and in summer I love crossing the Ebbw bridge and wishing I had the guts to go swim in the river.
Dogs. I'm actually more of a cat person but sis is allergic so we have dogs. Rocky is getting old. He had so much personality when he was young and fit. He's a German Shepherd/Golden Retriever cross (got some greyhound in there somewhere, too) and was very enthusiastic about...well, everything. He chewed up two playstations when left alone. He ruined several of my shirts jumping up to greet me. I spent a week while unemployed dog-sitting after he injured his tail: my job was to stop him chewing on it. I fought like crazy against letting him move in, though, when Sis left her violent and abusive boyfriend. I felt it was kinder to find him a new home as this house is too small for a dog his size. I wasn't wrong, but I lost the battle.
A few years ago one of Sis's friends acquired Poppy and within weeks decided she couldn't keep her. Sis had already fallen in love with the puppy and thus we acquired dog #2. Poppy is half Jack Russell terrier and half Chihuahua and cute as anything. She has the most affectionate personality of any dog I've ever known. She loves everyone and everything. She'll sit in your lap for ages, all but purring. She's ball crazy and will nag you by dropping a tennis ball at your feet until you get the message and throw it for her, and will bring it back so you can throw it again and again. She loves squeaky toys - will chew at them until the squeak breaks and later, goes back and chews until somehow the squeak fixes itself! And she loves the other dogs!
Amber is a Border Terrier - long-haired with a button nose and black soulful eyes. If sleeping were an Olympic sport she'd win gold. But she has endless energy when she wants to play. Her favourite game is tug-o-war and she's picked up Poppy's nagging ways: she'll pick up a rag (what's left of a stuffed animal or a scrap of towel) and place it on your feet. If you move, she'll place it on your feet again. Until you notice and pick it up. She's also a junkie and I mean that literally - she craves Rocky's pain medication and Mum enables her by letting her lick the bottle when she treats Rocky. Amber's a fussy thing with food and often refuses to eat from her own bowl, stealing leftovers from the other two instead. We're working on that.
Horror is the sick part of my imagination I have begun to indulge more freely. I do love horror movies, but not most modern horror movies. I don't find much fun in horror like (sorry!) Harper's Island or Friday the 13th where it's all about the gory deaths. I like something that'll genuinely scare me. Harper's Island definitely had its moments, but I prefer horror with a supernatural theme - Spielberg's Poltergeist is far and away my favourite. I'm also fond of The Exorcist and more recently The Mist - now that ending is how to end a horror movie! I like people who aren't wholly human, devil worship and scenarios that seem like they could really happen. I like morally grey heroes and movies with women who aren't sex kittens. I like a mystery I can get my teeth into and a side-helping of humour to balance the scares.
Yeah, I'm picky. A lot of stuff marketed as horror today isn't horror to me: most recently I saw Blood: The Last Vampire which is more a martial arts movie than it is horror. And don't get me started on Twilight. True Blood on the other hand strikes exactly the right balance - some truly frightening moments alongside characters you can care about and a grisly sense of humour.
In my own writing I feel like my horror tends to be cliche - I go for lots of blood, sexual violence and dead children. Just where my headspace is.
Supernatural is going to break my heart. I know it. I actually avoided getting into the show as season one aired because everyone was slashing these two brothers. I thought the incest thing would bother me - not sure why I thought that as the many incestuous pairings in Heinlein don't trouble me a bit. But a random comment in
cereta's LJ after the S1 finale aired convinced me to check it out. I fell in love with Sam by episode three and by the end of the season the show had hooked me in a way nothing has since Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Here was a show with a really strong story, twisted family relationships, a lead character I could identify with, and OMG a mini-horror movie in every episode! And horror done right! (If only they'd drop that godawful heavy metal soundtrack.) Then there was John Winchester. My love for him took longer but once it "clicked" I was lost. He is everything I want in a hero and I love him unreservedly and forever.
And John, together with the other minor characters I love - Jo, Ellen - will keep me in the fandom even as the heroes morph into people I can no longer like very much.
And it's such a fun fandom to write in! The pairing possibilities are endless - okay, the popular slash tends toward wincest but there are loads of other options even before season four. Gen is fun, too, and the het options are almost endless. I can even write some kinda twisted pairings like John/Jo (is it weird that I find John/Jo more twisted than John/Dean?)
WIP I assume mab picked this because I'm always going on about my WIP folder. I'm a terribly unfocussed writer. I start a story, get distracted by something else and it sits there. Months later I'll come back to it and start again. This is because most of my fic ideas are huge and epic, which takes a lot of energy to write. Occasionally I'll even finish a WIP. I don't like posting unfinished WIPs because of this habit I have of dropping a fic for months at a time. Once I've got a finished first draft it's okay. But I feel like I have a kind of contract with readers: if I start posting, I owe it to them to finish.
On the other hand, I'm the queen of dragging out a serialised story. I now many people prefer to read a long fic all in one go but for me serialisation is a particular genre. And it's fun! After all, that's how we watch our favourite TV shows, isn't it - one episode a week, trying to figure out what will happen next, loving-and-hating those cliffhangers...I like trying to recreate that in fic and it can be a lot of fun getting feeback on the story as it develops.
As a reader I love following a serialised story, but I hate the uncertainty of following a WIP...so I guess this is just me implementing the Golden Rule.
Just lately I've been posting parts of a SPN WIP under friends-lock, on the theory that this will help me get a better sense of where the story is going. I don't think many people are reading it but that's okay. It's very much a first draft and I can't guarantee it will be finished any time soon. I think I finally know where it's going, though. So, yay!