there is a point where it just all becomes hysterically funny

[harborshore]

In the continuing saga of "How My Body Hates Me: Let Me Count The Ways," I'm pretty sure I have the flu on top of my Mystery virus right now. Possibly it's a horrendous version of my sister's mild cold, but the joint aches and headache are horribly suggestive. I guess I will know in the morning.

But in the meantime, because I could use a distraction from the joint aches and the possibility of imminent swine flu, you lot should come ask me things. Like, we could do that meme that's been going around again:

Ask me for my top 5 anything: fandoms, ice cream flavours, cartoon moments, women in my fandoms, OTPs, ideal holiday destinations, goals for the future, celebrity crushes, books I wish would be made into movies, love songs, ANYTHING.

And if you like, I'll ask you a top 5 in the comments!

Comments

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

I'M PRETTY SURE I INVENTED THE PAIRING. IS IT NOT THE BEST?

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Anne of Green Gables, man. :D

Ooooooh, and recipes too! I love soup as well, thank you!

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

I HAVE A FEVER WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME.

:D I figure that way I have an excuse for a cross-country trip! Was it not well planned?

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Heee, fair enough. Though she's worth watching. Yes, yes it should! They're honestly fantastic, 'a hat full of sky' makes me cry every time I reread it.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

I mean, it's sunny outside and my cat is curled up next to me and my bed is clean and comfortable--things could be worse. Also, my head doesn't hurt as long as I don't move it? :D? ♥

Top 5 songs for a rainy day:

1. Here Comes The Sun
2. Shine, Vienna Teng
3. One More Time With Feeling, Regina Spektor
Baby Can I Hold You,Tracy Chapman
5. Make You Feel My Love, Adele singing Bob Dylan

Top 5 smells:

1. Cinnamon rolls
2. Lasagna
3. Jasmine tea
4. Clean clothes
5. The sea (which should probably be number 1)


Top 5 favourite little-details-included-in-stories that I love to see in fic:

1. Tiny touches that do exactly what they're meant to, because both of the people involved know each other really well (a hand on someone's wrist to calm them down, knowing how to tickle someone, etc.)
2. Cuddling! Wait, that's practically a trope. How about crawling into bed with your best friend or brother or significant other and knowing how to hold them to make you or them feel better?
3. Characterization in the tiny things, like how someone wears their hat or doesn't tie their shoelaces or picks at scabs or...
4. I love it when an AU is revealed in said tiny details. Like, it's not immediately obvious that the world is different, except wait, what's up with that phone, and how does that work, and why is there a random talking cat? Like the beginning of the first Harry Potter book.
5. The hottest thing in the universe is when stories include tiny touches after sex that reveal to the person being touched and to the reader that the person doing the touching figured out exactly how to turn the other person on. Except it doesn't go back to them having sex. Hnnnnngh.


Ooooh, questions. Top 5 songs for being furious, Top 5 artists (that is HARD, feel free to pick a particular medium or genre or something), Top 5 kinds of stories to write?

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I certainly hope I will.

Sports! I am more of a watcher than a doer (I swim and ski, but that's basically it.)

1. Good soccer
2. The pole vault
3. Figure skating
4. High jump
5. Gymnastics


Top 5 pieces of clothing:

1. The grey cardigan my sister got me for Christmas, which is soft and comfortable AND looks fantastic.
2. My multi-colored striped knee socks.
3. The blue pajama pants that remain the only thing I've ever bought at Victoria's Secret.
4. My black armwarmers (though I've tragically lost one of them)
5. My winter coat (it was very cold here until yesterday)

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

*clings* Ridiculousness, this health business.

You ask awesome questions! :D

1. The line "I am the fire burning,"in "Release Me."
2. The moment when Regina Spektor starts the chorus in "One More Time With Feeling," especially when she's singing it live.
3. The third verse of "Is Your Love In Vain?" because it's like he lets himself fall at last after two verses of doubt.
4. The moment in "City Hall" when you realize it's two women getting married. (Otherwise known as "When Vee started bawling on the subway.")
5. "Är ljus, allas ögon då stråla som bäst," in my favorite Swedish Christmas song.

Top 5 books/bands/movies/whatever I think there should be a fandom for:

1. I wish there was a fandom where people just wrote Shakespeare adaptations for other fandoms. Like, there are a few, but I want lots and lots and lots.
2. The Tiffany Aching books.
3. Can there be a Sappho fandom? With stories written based on the poems? Or perhaps a ficathon?
4. Ronia, the Robber's Daughter!
5. Piano-playing women like Vienna Teng and Regina Spektor.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

I am so tired, I don't know about this links business, but tell me if there's one you want to read that you haven't and I'll find it?

Top 5 bandom comfort fics:

1. Forever, Now.
2. I Have Been All Things Unholy (it's possible I'm a little odd about the whole "comfort" business).
3. Wuthering Heights and Stormy Nights, oh wait, it's Brian with a baby AGAIN, except this time he's a girl. :DDDDDDD
4. sunsetmog's Looking At You, I'm Home.
5. This ficlet of girl!Gerard/Amanda by softlyforgotten.

♥

[turps33.livejournal.com]

I hope you're feeling much better soon.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Indeed! ♥ It could stand to make things a little easier for both of us, methinks.

Top 5 guilty pleasure movies:

1. Ten Things I Hate About You
2. Mr and Mrs Smith
3. The Notebook
4. How To Deal
5. A Walk To Remember


Top 5 months of the year:

1. May
2. December
3. June
4. October
5. June

For you: Top 5 cities you've been to, Top 5 fictional heroines (including TV and films), Top 5 kinds of happy endings. ♥

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Thank you darling. ♥

[turlough]

I haven't read that. I didn't read "girl books" when I grew up, the nearest I ever came was probably the Black Stallion books. Oh yes, and Pippi of course! Otherwise I mostly read flying books like the Biggles books and detectives like Ture Sventon and Agaton Sax.

[kickingrad.livejournal.com]

Top 5 smells:

1. Cinnamon rolls
2. Lasagna
3. Jasmine tea
4. Clean clothes
5. The sea (which should probably be number 1)

YES. Most of all for numbers 3 & 4. I love the smell of clean clothes, which is unfortunate because I fucking loathe doing laundry.

3. Characterization in the tiny things, like how someone wears their hat or doesn't tie their shoelaces or picks at scabs or...

MOST FAVOURITE THING EVER. I have so many of these things for my Brendon. What I really love is when a tiny detail like that from a fic fits so well that it becomes part of your personal canon for that character.

I could ask a follow-up question and ask your top 5 pieces of personal canon? Because, yeah, awesome.

---

Okay!

Top 5 Songs for being furious:

1 Leathermouth - Bodysnatchers Forever (this is also my ultimate getting ready to go out, getting excited track. Multipurpose! It totally amps me up.)
2 Whiskeytown - Sit & Listen To The Rain (this is more for calming than for amping up)
3 Near Miss - Now Rectify
4 Against Me! - Animal
5 Thrice - The Flame Deluge

(Bonus: L7 - Shove, Temple Of The Dog - Pushin' Forward Back, Converge - Dark Horse, Kelis - Caught Out There.)

Top 5 artists OH GODDDD

1. David Downton
2. Georgia O'Keeffe
3. Tim Walker
4. James Jean
5. Shaun Tan

Top 5 kind of stories to write:

1. ROADTRIPS. ROADTRIPS ALWAYS
2. First-times and beginnings
3. Stories with, with a kind of universal feeling of truth to them. Like you read something and think, yes, that is true, I've felt that, I've been there. Bonus points if the story manages to put that feelings into words for you in a way perhaps you hadn't managed before. (THESE ARE SUPER HARD TO WRITE.) This includes stories with sex that is real and honest but also still hot. (I'm not sure if I'm there yet, but it's fun trying!)
4. Comfortable stories. Ones with no real conflict, just a gentle rise and fall.
5. Weird little fairytales.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Man, the only one I know out of those is Kelis--which is indeed awesome. *adds the rest to future dl list*

I do, however, know both 2 and 5 of the artists! In fact, I have met Shaun Tan--he came to a conference I helped organize and was generally awesome, and his art, jesus fuck, it was seriously fantastic.

I was like, I've never written a roadtrip! And then I was like, uh, self, first bandom story you posted. Ooops. But I agree with all of them, and probably especially 2, 3 and 5--I love trying to write 3 because the comments are so great, the people going, "Yes! That!" <33333.

Top 5 pieces of personal canon:

1. At some point, Lyn-Z had to sit Gerard down and tell him that, hey, it's great that you talk about feminism, but you don't actually know what it's like to be a girl in the scene.
2. Mikeyway is actually plenty good at smiling. He just hates it when people take pictures of him, so he tends to look away or look out of it or look dead to the world. (Like, the way he looks in his picture with Einstein? That's what he looks like when he's not uncomfortable about a photo being taken.)
3. Mikey is really smart. Like, really. Even if his brother talks a lot more than he does.
4. Gerard is actually not the one in his band who's had sex with boys.
5. The Bob I write about when I write him having sex likes it when people pull his hair. Yeah.

Now you!

ow my sinuses ooooooow

[wavesofwood.livejournal.com]

Z manages to drag herself back to the alley, cold and numb and just so fucking tired. She can't wait to rub some of the herbal shit Ryan found into her cracked palms, read a few pages of the Ray Bradbury collection she found in a dumpster and then sleep for a really. Fucking. Long. Time. She shivers and tugs her too-big sweater tighter around her and slips down the narrow, dark gap like she's falling off a map.
There is a girl in the alley. She has long, tangled hair, and she's wearing a thin blue t-shirt with a v-neck and a white skirt, summer clothes in the coldest December for years. Her feet are bare, and they shine pale and white amidst the diet and grime. Everything about this girl practically glows in the darkness. She looks lost.
"Hey," Z says awkwardly, feels her chapped lips split around the word, her voice husky and out of practice. She reaches out a hand like she might to a stray cat, and realizes too late that her gloves are still crammed in her pocket. The girl's eyes widen as she takes in Z's thin wrists, the blackened tips of her fingers fading to angry, puckered red burns. Z jerks her hand back and pulls her sleeves down.
"It's not what you think," she mutters fiercely, ducking her head so she doesn't have to see the expression on the other girl's face. "Look, just, just go, alright, just fucking go. You're not going to last five minutes out here dressed like that. Go back to your fucking family, okay?" Z can't look up. Something is wrong, here, and it's unsettling her, tingling around her skin like stars.
A cool hand closes on her wrist, slipping under the loose cuff of her plaid shirt. She looks down. The girl's hand is actually glowing emitting a clear, white light, luminescence radiating from her skin. Z darts a glance up from under her hair. The girl smiles, soft and sort of shy. "I'm Tennessee," she says.
"Z," Z says, and in a sudden mad rush of bravery she cups her free hand to her chest, between their bodies, and kindles a small, flickering flame. The light plays on Tennessee's face, mixes with her own light. "You looked cold," Z says, and smiles.

[wavesofwood.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! *blushes* I got your lovely Christmas card, by the way, it made me beam no end. ♥

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

"Z," Z says, and in a sudden mad rush of bravery she cups her free hand to her chest, between their bodies, and kindles a small, flickering flame. The light plays on Tennessee's face, mixes with her own light. "You looked cold," Z says, and smiles. Oh my god, my heart, that's gorgeous. I love, love, love the physical signs of their powers here, love them so much.

[wavesofwood.livejournal.com]

♥♥♥

[x_dark_siren_x]

Late to the party - mini-holidays with friends I haven't seen properly in ages \o/ - but I hope you're feeling better by now, darling. ♥