Interests Meme from Tiamatschild

[sylph_fics]

Comment and I will pick seven of your interests for you to elaborate on! :)

Answers for tiamatschild.


Alustriel Silverhand: a character from Forgotten Realms, the ruler of Silverymoon (well, at the time I was reading), now High Lady of a confederacy of cities called the Silver Marches. Chosen of the goddess of magic Mystra (actually she's her daughter) so she's a powerful mage... but an awesomely compassionate and loving ruler who has the love of her people. She's brilliant, gorgeous, and will kick your ass and look awesome doing it if you mess with her city. What's not to love? Also, she has the very good sense to be very fond of Drizzt, my favorite drow.

Amerasu: a character from the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn books by Tad Williams, which everyone out to read despite that they will take you a week. Her full name is Amerasu y-Senditu no'e-Sa'onserei, Amerasu Ship-Born, First Grandmother of the Sithi. The Sithi are basically the elves of the world of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, but elves unlike any other, because their culture is based not in western tradition, but in Japanese. ((They are kind of made of awesome, and everyone should read those books. Everyone, I say.)) I am kind of crazy in love with that ancient Lady of her people, and her strength and her courage and her stubborn will and ability to smack people upside the head with nothing more than a gentle look and word.

Fast & the Furious: there is not a movie more made for slash except possibly Point Break. The plot runs established set of truck-jackers, rookie cop sent to infiltrate the underground racing circuit, and the hijinks that ensue, but that doesn't come close to getting across the slash quotient of this movie. I mean, when one main character(Dom)'s sister (Mia) tells the other main character (Brian) that Dom "owns you now", when Brian's been flirting with Mia for months to find his way into the group, the slash kind of rolls off the screen. Dom and Bri and their speaking looks and their need for each other and the absolute betrayal that Dom feels... The movie is made for slash, and it has hot cars and hot girls and hot guys and great racing. What else could I want?

Kris Longknife: Everyone should read her books, too. Kris is awesome. Princess Longknife kind of makes me want to smack her sometimes, but Ensign Longknife is awesome. She and her snarky AI and the trouble she gets into as one of "those damn Longknifes" (her family might rule this part of the universe, but their people are sometimes not fond of them) are just too much fun. God, but she gets herself into so much trouble! *laughs* Also, they're good fun sci-fi action books, which I can't get enough of. Smart metal and AIs and political corruption (not her fault!) and all kinds of fun.

LJ Smith: an author who really needs to release the last book of her blasted series, damn it!!! *laughs* Sorry. I want the last Night World book like crazy. It was supposed to be published eight years ago. Nine, actually, because it should have been out before hitting 2000 totally Jossed it. But things went bad with her family and the last book still isn't out. Which is totally unfair. She was kind of a massive part of my early teenaged years, with her novels of various witch covens (The Secret Circle), vampires (The Vampire Diaries), the Shadow Men [think the bad Norse elves] (the Forbidden Game), human psychics (Dark Visions), and the series I need the last of, the books of vampires, witches, psychics, shapeshifters, all right around us, all just part of the Night World. Love's never been so dangerous as it is between a Night Worlder and a Day Worlder.

Mack Bolan: probably the reason I'm so in love with Slade Wilson. But I fell in love with Mack a good decade before I had a comic book in my hands again, so at least fourteen years ago, I got my hands on book #112 of his series... and I fell madly for him. So in used book stores and garage sales and anywhere else that might have them, I scrounged for copies of any of them I could find. The publication numbers are now in the high 300s, and I own all but about fifty. I also own almost all of the Stony Man books that spun off from it, and most of the SuperBolan series that's the double-sized every-other month issue ((What, yes, I'm obsessive, so?)). Admittedly, Mack had quite a bit better reason for going freelance assassin than Slade did, as the Mafia set up the death of his father, mother, and sister while he was away fighting the Vietnam War.

Point Break: Fast & the Furious is Point Break remade with cars instead of surfboards, in a lot of ways. Point Break stars Patrick Swayze (Bohdi) as a surfer (and bank robber) and Keanu Reeves (Johnny) as the fresh-from-Quantico rookie agent assigned to the case. Baaby Keanu, who actually knew how to act. He slips in through Bodhi's ex, but from the moment he met Bodhi, the two of them have a crazy chemistry. Break is more brutal than F&tF, and Bodhi is more dangerous, but it's a movie I have loved since far before I should have been watching it.

Answers for geonncannon

ancient civilization: any and all. Everything from the Stone Age through ancient Greece, ancient China, ancient Rome, the Aztec, the Mississippian culture, and anything else I can get my paws on information about. Of course, my degree specialized in Medieval Europe, which ought to say something too. However, my retention of information has sucked lately, so give me a little bit before hassling me about specifics.

communication: How do people talk, how do they not talk, why is it that no matter how much some people talk, they can't get what they're trying to say across? These are things that fascinate me. There's a reason I have metafandom friended and read most of the posts.

Dinah Lance: Black Canary II, daughter of the original and hero despite her mother's protests; metahuman though she refuses to rely on it and had lost the ability for quite some time; god-daughter of most of the JSA; long time lover of Oliver Queen [until he was an idiot]; closest thing to a mother Roy Harper ever had and favorite Aunt to his daughter Lian; founding member of the Justice League of America with Martian Manhunter, the Flash (Barry), Green Lantern (Hal), and Aquaman (Arthur); beautifully lethal, dangerous woman [fuck you Birds of Prey, Dinah's been a killer since the '80s, it's one of the reasons I actually respect her] who's willing to do what's needed; and generally ass-kicking lady in fishnets of both major DCU superhero teams. What is there to possibly not love about her?

Good Eats: one of my favorite TV shows for fun recipes, histories of foods, great snark by Alton Brown and his staff, and general amusement. I like cooking shows, and it and Iron Chef are my favorites.

Jacqueline Carey: Writer of one of my current favorite alternative "history" fiction/fantasy novel series. I love the mythology she created, I love the way she changed the world with it, I love almost all of the characters she created (except, of course, the evil ones [well, barring Melisande who I love and am terrified of]), and while gods, there are problems with the major characters' culture [oh, are there ever], I love it anyway. They're a definite pleasure of mine, for several reasons. Alterna-world, great mythos, neat characters, a fairly sexually open [maybe too open] culture... Just generally awesome.

Sex: *LAUGHS! Hi TMI! I like sex, so it's in my interests list. No matter if I mean having it (yes please), writing it (have you seen my fic?), talking about it (metafandom is my friend there), watching it (not porn, porn makes me laugh my guts sore, but sexual scenes in movies), I just like sex. I'm bisexual, though currently only in lesbian relationships. Yes, plural. I think it can be something sacred and transcendent, or something that's just good exercise and fun, or anywhere in between. I've laughed during sex (because it's too much fun not to be happy about it), I've cried (because of how good I felt, how raptured), and I think my emotions have run the gamut of other possibilities, too. It's fun, it's powerful, it's something that's as necessary as breathing for me. --though my sex life is not something my mother or the rest of the family needs to have any knowledge of. That's not shame, that's self-preservation.

Zatanna: the other fishnet-clad lady of the Justice League, one of the most powerful mages of the DCU, "she who speaks backwards", descendant of mages for many generations, stage magician and illusionist without a trace of magic when she's on stage, John Constantine's Tantric Magic partner, and generally awesome mage. She's cool. She carries off a top-hat, tailed waistcoat/bustier, and fishnets with total class, and you've just gotta respect that.

Answers for icarus_chained

Classic movies: who knows what I was thinking when I put that in? Certainly not me now. But if I had to guess at my motivations, I was pointing at the fact that I tend to like older films, and cult classics, and ignore a lot of newer stuff. Like... things I desperately need to (or do) own so that I can watch again include: Errol Flynn's Robin Hood, the old Tom Sawyer, the Wizard of Oz, Fantasia, High Sierra, Miracle on 34th Street, High Noon, Rebel Without a Cause, Ten Commandments, Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, 12 Angry Men, Ben-Hur, Magnificent Seven, Spartacus, the original Ocean's Eleven (*coughs*andtheremake*cough*), Breakfast at Tiffany's, West Side Story, To Kill a Mockingbird, Goldfinger, Cool Hand Luke, In the Heat of the Night, The Godfather, Jaws, Rocky, the Star Wars movies, the Indiana Jones movies, ET, Poltergiest, and Alien. [I refuse to call anything made after I was born a classic, sorry, that's my cutoff].

Crossovers: I love crossover fanfics. I love taking characters from one universe and dumping them in another to watch how they react, both to the situation and to the characters of that universe. I love doing fusions, where you can see what happens if you put these characters in this other world as the main protagonists, and watch how the world changes because of them. I love being able to throw the disparate characters I love together and watch them interact (or not). I love that the skills that one character has could change a universe so much, and I love seeing if the author does it in a believable way or not.

Gundam Wing: Oh, Gundam Wing. GWing was probably the first fandom I wanted to write for. I mean, Buffy and Sailormoon and Ronin Warriors I was reading fic for, but Gundam Wing started playing on Toonami and I... I wanted to write them. I wanted to understand that world better. I fell in love with all of the boys, and with Une and Noin and even Dorothy, and I shipped them so hard. It was probably far too much of an influence on my teenage self than it should have been.

Hawkgirl: I like Shiera. I like Shayara. And I like Kendra. I feel badly for Kendra, and the Hawks in general make my head hurt, but I love them. And I adore animated Hawkgirl and her so-painful, very long personal journey. Also, her wings are gorgeous, and she's another woman of the League that will kick your ass in a heartbeat if you get in her way.

Jiriki: another character from Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, the one that's most often in the books (because he owes the main character a life debt). He's another on my list of white-haired, blue-eyed, dangerous characters that I adore. Though you can't exactly call him a bastard, he is very very not human, doesn't think like a human, and you had better never forget that he is of the elder race, the Sithi.

Libraries: I was, before I decided a full time job was more important, a Library Science grad student. I work full time in a major academic library, so that's where I spend most of my life. And my childhood was kind of spaced around trips to libraries, while during my teenaged years the libraries at school and in town were where I spent a ton of my spare time. I've always been in love with libraries, with the knowledge there, with everything they have to offer

Transformers: I'm an old-school Transformers G1 fan. I grew up watching and re-watching the original animated movie, and listening to the read-along tapes, and catching episodes of the show when I could. My bikes were all named Optimus Prime. I wanted Transformer toys for Christmas and my birthday. I love my giant robot show. *grins*

Answers for lady_sarai

Classic movies: See my response to this to Icarus_chained.

d/s: Whoooo, TMI again No, I don't mean the Blue Oyster Cult song. I mean my personal favorite (and what I tend to practice most) of the trio of acronyms that make up BDSM: Dominance and submission. Bondage and discipline... well. I mean, they're fun, but they're not what trips my trigger the most. Sadism and masochism aren't my thing either, pain's something I work to avoid most of the time.

But I have such a kink for D/s. I love the shifting of power, I love the subtle (or blatant) challenges and the way those challenges are answered. I love the sheer power and vitality of a Dominant (male or female, though typically male), and the willing surrender to that power of a submissive (again, of either gender, hi, bisexuality for the win). Admittedly, I tend towards the milder side, just because of who I'm with, but I've always been a D/s girl. Probably way longer than anyone would be comfortable with knowing. But it's simply part of who I am. I'm also a switch, depending on what partner I'm with, so I love both sides of the line.

forgotten realms: One of my favorite universes to play in, build characters for, read about, and generally have fun with. Here, I'm going to cheat and get wikipedia to help me. " According to the creators, 'forgotten realms' is the name of an imaginary fantasy world that exists somewhere beyond our own world. It is a world of strange lands, dangerous creatures, and mighty deities, where magic and seemingly supernatural phenomena are quite real. Unlike our world, the lands of the Forgotten Realms are not all ruled by the human race: the planet Abeir-Toril is shared by humans, dwarves, elves, goblins, orcs, and other, more or less strange peoples and creatures. Technologically, the world of the Forgotten Realms isn't nearly as advanced as ours; in this respect, it resembles the earth in the 13th or 14th century."

Honor Harrington: Honor is the main character of David Weber's Honorverse, and to do her justice, I would have to write an essay. And honestly, I'm too tired for that. At the moment, I'll just say that in the first several books, she was made of a level of awesome that is rarely equaled. She's a woman, a starship captain, ferociously dedicated and loyal, saddled with impossible assignments, and yet... she perseveres. At the start, she's horrible at higher math (like, astrogation, not calculus) and painfully insecure about herself at points (which she gets to grow out of, yay!) but she's got a spine made of solid battle-steel and a will wired in molycircs. In the later books, the problems of any series abound and she is... a little tooooo larger-than-life and the stories suffer a little for it, but the first about eight are awesome.

Paganism: I enjoy and am fascinated by alternative spiritualities, so paganism is high on my list of interests. Also, it fits me better than the religion that says I'm going to hell for who and how I love.

role-playing: I'm a gamer-geek roleplayer girl, what can I say? I play D&D (3rd and 3.5), Whitewolf (oWoD, thank you), and... well. I run Slade Wilson and Ghanima Atreides on theatrical_muse, which is a WHOLE different RPG ballgame.

sephiroth: Another on my massive list of white-haired, arrogant, light-eyed, dangerous men who I utterly adore. A major character of FFVII, the poor being spends most of the game crazy out of his mind and evil, but the glimpses of what we see he used to be made me fall in love with him ages ago. I've never really fallen out.

Answers for second_batgirl

Da’dtou-di: *GRINS* I, um. Am a little bit of a Predator franchise fangirl--specifically, the Aliens vs. Predator part of the franchise. I think that might have been noticed by my mad, mad cross-species ship-love for Scar/Lexa. Yeah, I have a thing for doomed OTPs. Because there's only the one movie (sequel? What sequel? It doesn't exist), I've been buying the novels as I can find them. And as soon as I got my hands on AvP: Prey, I fell madly in love. I love the way the universe of the AvP novel franchise is designed, I love being able to be inside the Yautja (Predator) headspace and see what they think, and I love the Elder, Dachande.

But more than any of that, I love the human woman, Machiko, who got caught in the middle of the Aliens and the Yautja. Her colony planet got used as a 'drop baby aliens and then go hunt them as a rite of passage' site. Things got a little out of control, and she wound up befriending Dachande--and kicking lots of Alien ass. After they managed to attack and destroy the Queen that got dropped along with the drone eggs, Dachande named her 'Dadtou-di', "Little Knife", and marked her as a Hunter of his clan. She'd been too changed by the experience of running with Dachande to remain among the humans, and when the Yautja came back, she made them take them with her. Iiiiiiiiiiiiiitty-bitty human woman, and she manages to be tough enough to make an entire ship-full of Predators take her with them as a full Hunter.

I love her so hard.

Sorka Hanrahan-Connell: Y'all are like in a conspiracy to make me look like a better feminist than I am, aren't you? Well, I'll take what I can get.

Sorka's from Pern, the Dragonsdawn book actually, and is another one of the characters I really love. To plug my own fic, she's a major character in Another Chance, our Pern/DC crossover. But back to her actual canon. We meet Sorka when she's about ten, still on the colony ship the Yokohama. She's kind of an adorable ten-year-old from Ireland, strong, hard-worker, and generally awesome. Then as the book progresses, she falls for Sean Connell (another Irish boy, though he was Roma), but amazingly enough, doesn't lose her mind because of it. She's one of the best with the firelizards, which stands her in good stead later. As she grows up, she's a vet student, then a full vet, then one of the original dragonriders with her golden queen, Faranth. She and Sean bound to the last gold and bronze to hatch, but last-born didn't mean last in strength or ability.

She and Faranth, along with Sean and Carenath, eventually become the first Weyrleaders of Fort Weyr, and since the dragons are female-ruled, Faranth's position as senior gold brings Sorka to equal prominence. She winds up with several kids, mostly raised by her mother as her own duties as Weyrwoman leave her very little time to raise them, though she loves her kids kind of fiercely.

Vincent Valentine: Oh, Viiiincent. Tragic, dangerous, cynical, cursed... he's one of my favorite characters from Final Fantasy VII, right along with Sephiroth. He's got black hair, pure red eyes, and is very, very pale. Vincent was madly in love with Seph's mother, but she married another man--if you can call that piece of filth a man. Vincent was shot by his beloved's husband, experimented on by him, turned into a were-creature and given immortality during the experiments, and then left for dead. His beloved came and pushed something into his body that would bring him back to life--unlife, really. He found the place devastated when he woke up, so he spent the next 30 years in a coffin in the basement, ignoring the world.

It took Cloud showing up and offering him a chance at the man that made him a monster for him to come out of his coffin and fight. I'm glad he did, because he got to see the woman he loved again, and I get to stare at him going g'uh.

young wizard series: What's not to love about a YA series that has real conflict, real serious choices, a girl and a Hispanic boy as main characters, doesn't do the stupid "kids forget their great adventures" trope, and is just made of awesome? I mean, seriously. There is no bad here. Even the force of all evil has a chance of redemption, thanks to Nita. I'll take that any day. I started out with Deep Wizardry, so I had to go back and read SYWtbaW, by I just fell in love with the books and what they say, what they can be.

alien vs predator: This franchise, I think I mentioned a couple of answers up, has slipped in and owned a bit of my soul. I'm not even sure how, I'm not really a horror film fan, I close my eyes through huge chunks of Aliens, I don't like the rest of the franchise... Then again, I do love the Predator movies, both the first and the sequel, and the comic books that I've been acquiring in omnibus. So I guess the aliens just snuck in.

As much as I love the Predator solo stuff, they're normally the antagonists of the stories, as the comics tend to be told from a human point of view. And, well, normally yautja think humans make pretty good prey, because of their cunningness and their skill. So yeah, they're the bad guys of the solo stuff.

But get into the AvP stuff, and all of a sudden, the 7 and a half foot tall alien in the armor looks like a pretty damn good ally against the things that want to stuff a tube down your throat and use you for an incubator. In this stuff, be it the comics or the novels or the really awesome AvP film: they're still alien, they're still very dangerous... but if you're good at surviving, and smart, you just might wind up with a big damn alien ally. And you might get out of the Aliens' turf alive.

Aditu: I have what, three characters from Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn listed, and four people manage to pick all three? Wow, folks.

Okay. Aditu is Jiriki's slightly younger sister. Mysterious, fey, dangerous, beautifully nonhuman, wickedly humorous... I kind of love her a lot. She rescues our darling main character, plays with him, teases him sometimes--but she's willing to help him, too.

Jack Ryan novels: I grew up on Tom Clancy's books. I was reading 'Without Remorse' and 'Hunt for Red October' when I was nine or ten. I love Jack Ryan (Gary Stu that he can occasionally be), and they've never cast him well for a film yet. I am very fond of his wife, too, but mostly, it's the spook stuff. It's the careful intelligence gathering combined with the damn reckless stunts; it's his stubborn irishness and his willingess to learn, to believe the best of people despite everything he's seen that make me love him so much. Yes, the books struggle after the fall of communism, because that's what Tom Clancy was most familiar with. And yes, eventually, Jack has the same problems Honor does with becoming just too larger than life... but at the same time you see how much he struggles with what he's become, too.

But I'm probably not ever not going to want to have them in my house so that when the urge hits, I can read all of them from Without Remose through Rainbow Six, as long as I don't sleep for like two days.

Comments

[jenna-thorn.livejournal.com]

Boiled in Lead (http://www.omnium.com/bil/)is a Trad-rock band, based out of Minneapolis. It's Irish folk + rock, like Flogging Molly, only less punk.

Blues can be Delta-style, acoustic guitar, shadowed porches in the Mississsippi sun and folk lyrics or Chicago-style, electric guitar and smoky voiced women with whiskey on the table.

I like mine gritty with city smoke and women who walk away from good men and an amplifier on the stage.

Liad is a reference to the Space Opera by Sharon Miller and Steve Lee. (http://www.korval.com/liad.htm)

The ten of cups is emotional (cups) fulfillment (tens). I'm not Slytherin; I've no interest in leading the world, nor am I Gryffindor, looking to save it. Joy is not measured in dollars, nor comfort in the envy of others. I'm content with my own hearth, warm bread from the oven, pets underfoot, a happy healthy child, and the wolf far from my door. That's what I'm working toward, not my salary or fame.

Red Dwarf (http://www.reddwarf.co.uk/) is a BBC science fiction show. Goofy and silly and fun.

The Flash Girls (http://www.last.fm/music/The+Flash+Girls) are also Minneapolis and Irish, but less rock and more folksy and and they've actually split to do other things. coffeem aka Emma Bull, the writer of War for the Oaks, is one half of the duo.

twh_attendee is, um, actually left over from The Witching Hour (http://jenna-thorn.livejournal.com/2005/10/13/) Harry Potter convention/symposium in Salem in 2005.