CRASH & tagged for memes

[lokifan]

Guess what happened on Thursday? I nearly got brained by random heavy objects! I was teaching in a classroom that has a standard whiteboard, with a big monitor above it. Behind the monitor are tucked two speakers. I was writing on the whiteboard about articles when BAM! The speakers crashed down. I jumped backwards and didn’t get hit purely by luck. The bracket holding things up suddenly went, so the monitor was hanging drunkenly off the wall and the speakers had hit with a crash heard in all the surrounding classrooms.

EEK.

Everyone was unhurt, but EEK.

Anyway. Am apparently incapable of a substantive post so here are two things I got tagged for on Tumblr approximately an ice age ago. I’m tagging kikimay, amorette, eidheann_writes, birdsofshore and isinuyasha. Pick one or both :)


Favourite character?

This goes back and forth from day to day; today it's a tie between Narcissa Malfoy and Harry himself. I love that Narcissa shows up so late and has such an enormous effect, and that she risks everything for her son by lying, because she's a loving Slytherin, and that she's clearly her family's rock. There's something very appealing to me in fiction about characters who clearly say FUCK THE WORLD I AM GOING TO KEEP X PERSON SAFE.

And Harry is brave, and polite in a way I find very endearing, and sarcastic and has enormous powers of endurance and will do anything to save those he loves.

Which house?

Ravenclaw.

Patronus?

Assuming it's an animal that represents love and protection and awesome to me, a fox. It's a symbol of London and tricksters :)

Favourite class?

To read about? DADA. My favourite would be Charms, though, it seems like lots of fun and pretty practical and Flitwick is clearly an excellent & fun teacher.

Would you make to the Quidditch team?

No way.

If you do, which position?

Beater.

Favourite teacher?

I think mine would've been Flitwick, as I said above. As a reader, my favourite is either Minerva McGonagall or Barty Crouch Jr. Minerva is such a fantastic character who comes across so strongly, and despite her occasional impatience with the slow is a fabulous teacher. She's so funny, and her fight with Snape at the end of DH hurts my heart.

Crouch – if you're trying to remember, he's the one faking it as Moody – is clearly an excellent teacher but also a total nutter. I find him a fascinating (and deeply sympathetic, despite his crucial role in bringing Voldemort back) character and also very funny, if only on re-reading when you can get all the sly jokes he's making. He's great, and also – well, speaking as a teacher myself, manipulation is a key skill for a teacher, so it's no wonder that this very clever, very sly impostor is so good at it.

First or second Dumbledore?

First, because he was perfect for those first films. I don't know if he would've stayed perfect as we saw other sides of Dumbledore; it would've been amazing if he did, though, to see that same twinkly face when he fought Tom Riddle or died a hero.

Least favourite character?

Umbridge, no question. A great character but ugggggggggggggggggggh.

Most useful spell?

I agree with alley-skywalker – Apparition. If I could travel long distances in an instant, I would live in Liverpool and work in London. Or live in like, a treehouse in Peru. EPIC.


1. Have you ever written in an unusual place?

Not really; all I can think of is writing kinky femmeslash on a plane to San Francisco (for the Azkatraz con) with this dude sitting next to me reading a Daily Fail article about how women are miserable after divorce and occasionally peeking at my screen.

2. The word/phrase you know you overuse, but can’t get rid of.

Um. Not so much a word or phrase so much as one-line descriptions of people's eyes and how the look in them changes after x happens.

3. Do you keep notes? Do you have a notebook?

I keep MANY notes in Googledocs and various documents. Not so much a physical notebook, although the back of my diary is full of ideas I’ve had on public transport.

4. What’s the hardest part of a fic to write for you?

The end if it's porn. Otherwise... still probably the end. But also possibly the bits where I connect things up, because I usually write out of sequence.

5. Have you ever based something in your fic on your personal experience? What was it?

I can't think of anything beyond occasionally using my experiences as a masochistic submissive in my consensually-kinky smutfics. Not in the sense of specific events or experiences, more in turns of phrase in how I describe things because I usually find the descriptions of painplay from a sub's POV in erotica to be... inaccurate isn't exactly the word, just... not quite getting me there because I connect to it so strongly.

Which is not to say those descriptions are necessarily flawed or inaccurate; I think it's more because how you experience this stuff is very specific. But I also think people sometimes don't write masochism very well, because experiencing pain directly as pleasurable does not compute. So like, subs seem in fic to much more often get off on being dominated or on pleasing their sadistic dom, or on humiliation, than to enjoy the pain in itself? More noticeably when it's from their POV, now I think about it. Especially especially if the pain isn't spanking but is something like flogging.

6. What’s that one fic you want to write but somehow know you never will?

SOOOOOO MANY. This one would be difficult to navigate in tone, but - I did like the idea of doing a funny fic in a canon-divergent AU, where basically Draco becomes aware of how crazy Voldemort is earlier than he does in canon, before Lucius is arrested, and wants to get out of being a Death Eater. And he wants his family to be understanding, so he decides he needs to owe Harry Potter a life debt and then be like, “well, I owe him a life debt and we need to follow the pureblood rules, he wants me to not be a Death Eater, what can you do?” So he starts following Harry around and trying to get into life-threatening situations near him, because Harry is a hero and will certainly rescue him. But everyone keeps interfering! So Draco deliberately falls off his broom during a match and then Snape rescues him and Draco’s going NO THIS IS ALL WRONG!

Faintly-cracky fun that will all end in an insane tangle of life-debts and probably some H/D smooching. Also maybe that Draco owes Harry a life-debt and Harry’s like “...stop being so horrible?” because he doesn’t really understand the parameters and Draco’s like “OMG BE MORE DEMANDING.”

But yeah, somehow know I never will.

7. What do you usually do when you procrastinate?

Click over to my gmail tab. Or something on LJ.

8. What’s the funniest typo you’ve made?

Was it some vogue Death Eaters?

9. Do you listen to music when you write?

Never. I prefer silence.

10. Your favorite comment a reader has left on your fic?

I feel weird about this question, I CAN’T CHOOSE AMONG MY BABIES. My favourites though are often the comments on older fic - it’s nice to know stuff I wrote in 2006 is still read on occasion - and for the stuff I was feeling insecure about. My hd_erised fic last year, Dashing Heroics, got the least comments of any fic in that fest… and yes I checked because I was feeling insecure so basically all of the comments there, especially the really detailed long ones that said specific stuff they liked, lit up my soul. Or even more so - because I’m actually fairly confident that Dashing Heroics is good, or at least fun to read and not wildly OOC - the few but INCREDIBLY LOVELY comments on Sparking Like The Perfect Match, because writing 30k in six weeks leaves you unsure if it’s remotely good or basically word salad.

But I LOVE ALL MY COMMENTS.

Comments

[ishtar79]

Yikes, glad you're okay.

I enjoyed your meme answers but the one about the Daily Fail reader is my favourite by far! :D