Meme!

[valiha]

A meme stolen from kayim

- Comment with "Hit me!"
- I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can get to know you.
- Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
- Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people.

My answers to her questions:

1. Where would you live if you could be anywhere in the world?
2. What's your favourite smell?
3. Which artist(s) do you admire most?
4. What is your absolute OTP?
5. When are we going to meet in person?! :)


1. Where would you live if you could be anywhere in the world?

Hmm, where would I live? Many places draw my attention, mostly those that are not heavily populated, where nature is mostly unspoiled and that are situated in a mountainous area. My home town is surrounded by many hills, and several large mountains are quite visible; and my mother comes from a town located high in the mountains of Montenegro, 1000 meters above sea level. I'd never be able to live in a flat area - I'd go crazy from all that uniformity! I think I'd like it in Scotland or Wales, actually.

2. What's your favourite smell?

Rose Petal Jam! It's absolutely wonderful, and has a very distinctive smell. The type of rose used is what we call a May rose, and it has smaller flowers and soft petals - nothing like the roses you'd get at a florist, with their stiff petals and lack of smell. These roses are actually quite shabby, and have an intoxicating smell. (In fact, here are two recipes, one in English by a Turkish blogger, the other in Serbian but with more photos. It is very simple to make, and looks and smells fabulous. Citric acid is a key ingredient.)

3. Which artist(s) do you admire most?

I'm actually not at all familiar with many artists, past and present. I never had any formal art/art history classes, and what little art education I had I received while I was still in elementary school [which was a long, long time ago :)]. I admire Leonardo da Vinci's incredibly detailed and precise drawings, and other people, a lot more skilled than I am, have already commented on his paintings.

Since I started working more on my own drawing and painting skills, I found that I like the near photo realism of colored pencil artists Ann Kullberg, Lee Hammond ( I love the way she manages to achieve realistic skin tones in colored pencil), and Gary Greene. In watercolor, I love the style of Richard Taylor.

4. What is your absolute OTP?

My absolute OTP? Man, that's a difficult one. I usually don't pay any attention to pairings, and prefer to concentrate on non-romantic character interaction, but there are a few I'd call my OTPs: Darrien Fawkes and Allianora from The Invisible Man (a screwed up pairing of two screwed up people), Mal and Inara from Firefly (I guess they are screwed up too), and Tom and B'Elanna from Star Trek Voyager (I sense a pattern! though these two have managed to bring their lives around). Which one of those is my absolute? I guess Tom and B'Elanna, because I love both characters, and Voyager was the first fandom I participated in.

5. When are we going to meet in person?! :)

Sarajevo Film Festival runs from 22-30 July; I'd love to have you as a guest! :) And I'd love to come to the London Book Fair one day!

Comments

[kayim]

LOL! One of these days, I'm just going to scream "screw it" and book myself on a plane :)

And wow - those pieces of art are amazing!

Plus? Tom/B'Elanna? ♥

[valiha]

\(^_^)/ Well if you do, I'll get you in touch with a colleague of mine who travels from Sarajevo to London occasionally to visit her family. She knows all the affordable fares.

They are, aren't they? :) It's amazing, because they're done in color pencil, and the amount of time and effort one has to put into it is enormous. I know how much time I spent on Chris. :)

♥ indeed! I love them both, but I adore B'Elanna. She's my favorite character of all the fandoms I follow.

[jennytork.livejournal.com]

Hit me!

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

Yes! You want to post the meme in your journal?

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

...and I clicked post comment before posting the questions, LOL!

1. How did you get involved with fandom?
2. What is your favorite character to write?
3. Are there any things you would change in your life?
4. What is your favorite childhood memory?
5. What kind of jewelry do you like?

There!

[nikojen.livejournal.com]

Gah! I've just spent fifteen minutes poking around on the Serbian site ogling the food pictures. This looks sooooo good.

I've been trying to think of things to say post in LJ-land, so... hit me. :)

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

Okay, I can be hitted :)

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

Ooh, sweet and sour sauce for fish and chicken! Very nice, and it looks absolutely delicious. I just ran it through Google translate and had an absolute giggle fit, but it manages to give a good enough translation to show the proper recipe. :D

Now, on to the questions:

1. What is the attraction of podfic for you?
2. Who is your absolute favorite characters in all the fandoms you follow?
3. What is your favorite dish?
4. Where in the world would you most like to live?
5. What fictional character are you most like?

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know a perfect first question for you!

1. What are your three favorite words?
2. Where in the world would you most like to live?
3. What is the crackiest thing you have ever written?
4. If you didn't have your current job, where would you like to work?
5. What is your favorite dish?

[nikojen.livejournal.com]

Ah... thank you for vetting the google translation. :) I don't usually even bother to go over there, it's such a hit and miss thing. (Especially since most of what I usually need to translate is Japanese, and the translations of that are pretty laughable. :) )

I may just need to give that recipe a try.

[nikojen.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, character bashing sucks... and just in general writing stories to somehow "punish" a character that you have issues with. I can totally understand an author's need to write something to "fix" a situation from canon, but don't think I'll ever understand that urge that so many seem to have to get REVENGE for some "unforgiveable" mistake (or in your case, the character's very existence).

Re: Harry Potter - I know what you mean about the abusiveness, in particular. The whole Harry-living-in-a-cupboard thing was ok in early books when you could read it as over-the-top silliness, but once it got serious... ugh. I think my biggest gripe with the books was the treatment of Draco. She was so back-and-forth about whether he could ever be a redeemable character, and the way she never really tied that up in a satisfying way for me kinda soured the whole finale a bit.

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

I am perfectly fine with people saying, I dislike character so and so. I can even live with an irrational dislike because people get taken by an impression that is difficult to get rid of later. Just like in real life, there are some characters we really don't click with. But we don't fantasize about a bloody death of a real person or if we do, there is something really wrong with us and we need help. It just gives me the creeps.

Yes, I agree so much. I was appalled at the living condition of the Gaunt's, and the treatment of Merope. At one time there were wizarding officials there, and yet no one ever thought that this young woman should be removed from such a situation and given proper treatment and training. All anyone seems to remember is her giving Riddle Sr. a love potion which is judges as a crime (I've seen people write, OMG she raped him!), yet when Romilda Vane tries to give one to Harry, it is played for laughs. That just screams double standards to me. Apparently if you have a certain name, or come from a certain background, or are sorted into a house with bad reputation, that's it, you're doomed and judged unworthy of help. Why not judge the same thing the same way? It just gets my goat every time.

I can understand the whole cupboard thing: it was a fast and easy way to elicit instant sympathy from readers - small, orphaned boy, living in difficult circumstances discovers a whole different world and starts learning about it, meeting various good and bad people along the way, eventually triumphing over his circumstances. It has been done before: if I remember correctly, Oliver Twist had a similar plot. But once you think about it, it makes no sense to have Harry live in such dreadful conditions since Dumbledore is a wise, powerful wizard who can make sure the Dursleys treat the boy well or else - or it makes perfect sense, depending on whether you subscribe to the theory of Dumbledore as a master manipulator who deliberately left Harry to live a life of abuse so that he could win the boy's trust and worship and shape him into a weapon in the upcoming war. Nobody understands better than us that individuals mean very little, if anything at all in times of war. I'm not sure whether I believe in that theory, but I can certainly see how it's possible.

Oh man, I know! his whole arc just kind of fizzled out, never really going either way. Did he do enough not to finger the trio at Malfoy manor? Was he an embodiment of evil or a schoolyard bully who never really managed to inflict much damage? Did he do enough to save them from being burned in the Room of Requirement? Should he have stood up to that Death Eater during the final battle instead of trying to ingratiate himself? Did he pay for his crimes enough after the war? Can what he did be classified as crimes seeing as he was underage, raised a certain way and under the influence of powerful and/or insane and abusive adults? Did he snub Harry with that brief nod at the platform or was it a respectful nod? Should he have shown more gratitude? And the arguments go on and on, and nobody ever seems to be able to come to any conclusion about Draco.

He's a frustrating character, and like with Snape she clearly means for us to dislike him, but I just feel sorry for him, watching him struggle with an impossible task of being the anti-Harry, if you will.

:looks up: Man, I almost wrote an entire essay. I'm just not yet clear on how I feel about most of these characters. I will probably need to re-read the books at one time in order to make sense of things in my head. Right now it's all a jumbled mess of emotions and impressions.