A couple of memes

[tree_and_leaf]

From grondfic

Comment and I'll--

1 - Tell you why I friended you.
2 - Associate you with something. A fandom, a song, a colour, a piece of fruit. SOMETHING.
3 - Tell you something I like about you.
4 - Tell you a memory I have of you.
5 - Associate you with a character/pairing.
6 - Ask something I've always wanted to know about you. (Or else I'll just ask a random question. I reserve that right.)
7 - Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.
8 - In return, you must spread this disease in your LJ.

From mrstater

Comment and I will pick 3 things from your Interests list for you to explain a little about.

Comments

[snorkackcatcher]

Hmm ... I think you might find it difficult to pick 3 things from my interests list, as I've never got around to adding anything to it. :)

[tree_and_leaf]

Good point!

1 - NTLJ. Anyone writing long, plotty IC fic should be treasured....
2 - Pub quizzes.
3 - I like your ability to wrongfoot the reader in fics (See 'Sleeping With the Enemy', 'You tell her').
4 - Supportive comments at various points when I was angsting...
5 - I was going to say Tonks... but I think I'll say Cassius instead.
6 - Any tips for writing novel-lenght fic?
7 - Your default. I like the use of the label, and I've always been fond of owls.

[snorkackcatcher]

6 -- I wish I had, I'd have followed them myself. :) Probably the key takeaway from writing NTLJ is that it really helps to have the whole thing written (at least in draft form) before starting to post, rather than just a general outline that's partly in a document and partly in your head, and therefore having to invent lots of things as you go along and add bits that you didn't think of for retroactive continuity. Revising is much easier now that I know exactly what happens twenty chapters down the line and can adjust the setup accordingly. :)

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

Hehe, I'll bite. ;)

[tree_and_leaf]

1. We had a couple of mutual friends, and you seemed interesting.

2. A cigarette holder (purely because of the icon...)

3. I enjoy reading your posts - but I found the ones about putting on Oedipus particularly interesting. And 'Be All My Secrets Remembered' - it's the best long fic about James and Lily's generation I've come across.

4. I'm afraid it's the laptop saga, because sympathetic horror has burned it into my brain ;)

5. Sirius Black.

6. How did you get into revenge tragedy?

7. Either the Pre-Raphaelite one, or the Snape 'Everyone sit down and shut the hell up' one. Probably the latter - I've had days like that!

belle epoque, email rpgs, richard III

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

2. Which is very funny to me as I don't smoke...

3. Thank you so much!! Now if only I could finish the last chapter -- I think the characters have gone on strike due to excessive torture.

6. Oh goodness, it was so long ago I'm not even certain anymore. I've been familiar with (however indirectly) and loved Dumas' Le comte de Monte-Cristo since I was about three years old. Between that and an unhealthy obsession with the Wars of the Roses (c. age 11) and the particularly violent bits of the Italian Renaissance (about the same time) and of course Shakespeare/Marlowe/Webster, it more or less developed alongside my hopeless love for historical fiction. Then, while writing two different theses at least somewhat related to revenge tragedy, I started seeing it everywhere and apparently regard it as my duty to inflict random tropes on the Harry Potter fandom courtesy of above-mentioned fic. ;) And possibly inflict this madness on innocent students this summer.

[lucullean.livejournal.com]

amusing!

[tree_and_leaf]

1. I came across you via a friend's flist and thought you congenial (actually, I think it must have been sophysduckling's flist). I really liked the picture of Magdalen (wasn't it?) you used to have, too.

2. A copy of the Summa

3. I like your thoughtful posts on feminism and religion.

4. Probably your recent post about the unexpected book on your father's shelf, because it reminds me of how one can never quite know one's parents.

5. This is cheating, because it's a real person rather than a character, but: Virginia Woolf.

6. Why castaly?

7. The Catherine of Siena one. I'm a sucker for mystics.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Never ask people what they think of you has always seemed to me good advice. I am in a mood to disregard advice at present, so will bite..

[tree_and_leaf]

1. It was the Wimsey/ Who crossover fic.

2. A ski (cross country)

3. I like your sense of humour, also all the Wimsey and Harry Potter related speculation, discussion and fic.

4. How astonishingly difficult it can be to find room in a cafe in Oxford...

5. It has to be Barabara/ Uncle Paul, even though you've yet to write it

6. Who or what is Xenopus, and why?

7. "I hope your rabbit dies." It always amuses me.

Chalet School, nordic skiing, sewing

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Xenopus laevis is the clawed toad/frog in the photograph (it’s actually a third genus and not strictly a frog or toad), bred in captivity since the 1920s for lab experiments. The icon is essentially a private joke – the expression “I hope your rabbit dies” originated as a straightforward insult, but later became associated in the USA with pregnancy testing, due to the early use of rabbits for this purpose and the mistaken belief that when injected with the urine of a pregnant woman, they proved the test positive by dying. They don’t die, but they were generally killed after the test because it was uneconomic to keep them long enough to use again. (Testing with rabbits never caught on in the UK because (a) it is less reliable than a similar and cheaper test using mice and (b) the research assistants at the Edinburgh lab where it was done didn’t like killing them). Subsequently a pregnancy test was developed that uses Xenopus. Its advantages were that it was quicker, cheaper, reliable and that the animals could easily be kept and used again. Hence Xenopus, unlike the rabbits, lived.

So now you know.

[tree_and_leaf]

Good Lord. I'm speechless.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

Go on - I'm feeling vain today.

[tree_and_leaf]

1. I think I knew your fics on FA first (where I lurked for a long time before getting a user name), and it was Grawp and the Runes that did it. It warmed the cockles of my philological heart....

2. Big Space Rockets.

3. You seem to be fair-minded and honest, without coming over all worthy-but-dull - also, to be trite but true, I always enjoy reading your posts, whether fandom or RL related, and you write excellent fics.

4. Either the sequence of posts about the wedding, which were fascinating, or the discussion about Zombies In the Basement.

5. Grawp. I had always thought he had potential to be really interesting, and you proved it.

6. What drew you to study China and the language(s?)

7. "Illogical" - the expression is brilliant. I also like your default, though I still haven't read ASOIAF.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

1. I'm glad someone else likes the Grawpfic - it's my favourite, and also my least read major fic.

2. Yay! Someone associates me with Big SPace Rockets! (admit it, you were just trying to be nice, weren't you?)

3. *blushes* - you're just trying to make me feel better, aren't you?

4. Thank you for enjoying the wedding drama-llama - and I have a great fondness for your orcs in the Bodleian too!

6. I was always good at languages, and always wanted to try something different. Chinese was about as different as I could get!
I first suggested studying Chinese to rile my German teacher - it succeeded, but also seeded the idea of China in my mind. Once I started reading around the subject I was hooked - and at that time China was even less understood than it is now.

[tree_and_leaf]

Much of my work in German at school was to annoy the German teacher. Which sounds stupid, but she'd made it very clear she didn't like teaching German and only wanted to do French....

(actually, I think it probably is stupid nontheless, but never mind...)

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

*comments*

[tree_and_leaf]

1. It would have been on someone's flist - it was the posts on Tolkien that caught my eye.

2. Aeroplanes.

3. You find intersting links to Tolkien and cricket related stuff.

4. The buttons discussion at the last TS banquet (occasions where I've met people in RL tend to stick in the mind more than internet ones)

5. Bilbo. Although you're a good deal taller. I think the connection has something to do with waistcoats...

6. Have you ever had flying lessons, or would you if the chance arose?

7. The James Stewart one, although I don't think I've seen you use it 'in anger'. I just like Jimmy Stewart.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that!

6 - I had a gliding lesson once. It was great fun. The friend of Creatrix's we arranged it through kept saying she'd sort out another one ...

[sammee42.livejournal.com]

Do me! :)

[tree_and_leaf]

1. Easy. Because I identified you as a RL friend.

2. Earl Grey tea.

3. You're a good friend.

4. The rather disasterous trek round Headington looking for Jack Lewis in all the wrong places....

5. It has to be Jean-Luc, doesn't it?

6. Would you consider living abroad (again)?

7. I can't choose between sopping wet! Darcy and the one of Picard drinking tea. Make of that what you will, although I'm thinking I need an icon with tea in it...

[oursin.livejournal.com]

If you still have any enthusiasm left for this...

[tree_and_leaf]

1. Came across you on a friend's flist and found you interesting, particularly the posts on what I suppose one would call women's issues.

2. Hedgehogs.

3. IAMC is a fine motto and generally a very good thing to keep in mind.

4 Discovering you were interested in Charlotte M Yonge. I've met so few people who've heard of her.

5. Flora Poste.

6. What's the best thing about your job?

7 Sid the Syphillis Spirochete, though I'm slightly worried about what that says about me...

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Answered here (http://oursin.livejournal.com/641443.html).

Sid says hi!

[themolesmother.livejournal.com]

Me too!

MM

[harriet-wimsey.livejournal.com]

I'll bite.