3W4DW Meme: Days Lots
May. 10th, 2011 02:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eleanorjaneOkay, nuts to this, I'm just gonna catch up. :)
8. (Alternate) What is your philosophy on journal layouts?
I'm a big fan of black text, white background, decent font size, decent column width, decent typeface, no ridiculous replacement cursors. I don't have any significant related accessibility issues apart from poor eyesight, but I have little patience for form that impedes function so I'll almost always view offending journals as style=mine.
I also don't much like layouts that don't show tags, both by post and by sidebar list/cloud, since I find tags invaluable for browsing and content discovery.
9. (Alternate) Tell me about your default icon.
For a long time my general internet pseudonym was Jestyr/LadyJestyr and Harley Quinn up there was my default icon pretty much everywhere. Jester -> Fool, and Harley Quinn was the best female Fool I could think of. Also, she's adorable.
A while ago I switched to a photo of me as my default icon in many places, but I still identify with this Harley Quinn icon as strongly as I do with my actual face. And I still use Harley as my default icon on places where I want to be me, but don't want to use an actual photo - dreamwidth, twitter and so on.
10. Pick 10 random icons from your userpics and tell me about them.
Okay, this can go behind a cut :)
Randomly selected! All of them are made by me, because I'm weird about my icons and don't like using icons that other people also use.
Stelios, from 300, looking slightly manic and entirely glorious. I loved Stelios so much; apart from the fact that Michael Fassbender is ridiculously hot, I really love characters with that edge of wild abandon. He throws his all into what he does, he does it incredibly well, and there's just ... guh. *fans self*
(Incidentally, I think this is what appeals to me about Ray Kowalski. :))
Dr. Julian Bashir, from Star Trek: Deep Space 9. I've been participating in the LJ-based![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ds9_rewatch and loving it; I'd never seen more than the first season before, though this time around I'm partway through season three. (The rewatch comm itself is nearly finished season one.) I love Julian, he's so ridiculously puppyish - even early, oblivious, slightly sketchy Julian is mostly okay to me since his sketchiness is derived from his epic cluelessness.
Lana Kane, from Archer, who is utterly awesome. Plagued with a ridiculously annoying and competitive and a boss that believes in nepotism, Lana is the shining light of professionalism in the midst of incompetent chaos.
The N7 logo from Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, video games from Bioware. I haven't actually finished them yet, but I really love the games, and I have a ridiculous planet-sized crush on my iteration of the lead character.
Gigi Edgely as Chiana from Farscape; Pip is her nickname from the show's main character. It's also the nickname my best friend occasionally calls me, so I'm particularly fond of it. Chiana is a great character, and I love the fact that she was meant to be written out by the end of the first episode she was in - they liked her enough to extend it to half-a-dozen, and by the time those finished, she was in for the rest of the show.
The plaintive error message of Hex, the Discworld's only computer (such as it is). Hex is a fine example of the Discworld's absurdity, and its error messages are quietly poetic.
+++ DIVIDE BY CUCUMBER ERROR. PLEASE REINSTALL UNIVERSE AND REBOOT. +++
BEAKER! ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
Because the idea of a LOLgrue really appealed to me. :)
Spock from Star Trek; because he did a truly magnificent "bitch, please" face at several points in the movie; because who'd have thought you could make "live long, and prosper" sound like "go fuck yourselves"? Truly, Spock is gifted with linguistics.
Jayne Cobb from Firefly; he might look like a big tough badass, but he still squeaks when the band-aids come off, just like everyone else.
11. What features do you think Dreamwidth should have that it doesn't currently?
* A kudos-style feature!
* User notes!
* A memories system analogous to Delicious (OMG WANT, never gonna happen though)
* The ability to remember viewing preferences (eg style=mine, style=light) by journal (i.e. "ok, I view these in their native styles, these in my style, and these in light style").
That's just off the top of my head. I know there's more. :)
12. What do you consider the five most "telling" interests from the list on your profile? Why?
In alphabetical order:
blogging
because this is how I talk to the world. When I get involved in a new field or subculture, or learn something new, my first urge is almost always to create a blog to help explain it to other people.
copyright
which I use as a catch-all to cover the entire depressing state of intellectual property these days. I am, ultimately, anti-DRM, anti digital scarcity, anti regional lockouts, and pro corporations treating people as potential customers, not potential criminals. If I could do anything with the state of world affairs, it would be to reverse the Disney-lobbied extensions of copyright and other anti-consumer provisions.
fandom
because I love it, despite the fact that I've never felt part of it because I don't speak the language.
roleplaying
because it's such a fun hobby, and I have learnt so much about myself and about human nature over the years. I remember, during the legally-mandated mediation hearing about my insurance settlement, I was getting grilled pretty hard by the other side's lawyers, and my parents were apparently amazed at how poised and composed and unflappable I was. They commented on it later, and I thought about how I'd done it, and finally all I could say was "...I knew how to pretend to be somebody who wasn't scared by the lawyers". That is a valuable life skill. :)
mmorpgs
because people may scoff at those who put down MMO experience on resumes, but I have learnt so much. (Context: I'm a raiding guild leader and, lately, a raid leader, in WoW and have been for four years.) I've learnt how to deal with low morale, how to keep people motivated and enthused, how to negotiate with the justifiably-pissed-off and the perenially-unhappy alike, how to manage a team, how to plan, and how to give people news they're going to hate. Guild leading has, unquestionably, made me more confident and assertive, and given me the voice to stand up for myself. And these days I think I'm not too bad at it.
Also, because I've made some tremendous friends there.
13. Do you have any unique interests on your user profile? What are they? How'd they get there?
Amazingly, no I don't.
14. Did you have a gateway fandom? Still in it? Why or why not? Is there a community for it on DW?
The first fic I ever read was bycupiscent, in XMMV, and that prompted me to read voraciously in XMMV - so in that sense, it was a gateway. I think Constantine was probably more of a gateway, though, in that I was an active participant in the fandom - I wrote reams of meta, I wallowed in the glorious fics, and I even started (though never finished) fic of my own. Had it been released five or so years later, I probably would have vidded in it (and still think I might, even now).
(alternate) What is your favourite subject to discuss on Dreamwidth?
Fandom stuff, mostly: my fannish reactions to the sources I love, vidding angst, the fandom meta du jour. I kind of wish I had the focus to be monofannish, but there's too much to love. :)
15. What's your current obsession? What about it captures your imagination?
Right now, oddly, it's nail polish. Which may seem kind of shallow, but there's nothing wrong with loving the shiny. It's not something I'd ever done much with before, apart from low-level maintenance stuff, but I bought some OPI nail polish for my mother and I a year ago, and some more at Christmas time, and it triggered something: the urge to collect ALL THE COLOURS.
It's having two good effects, I find, which are probably reinforcing the obsession: firstly, it's an incentive to take good care of my nails, which are typically weak and prone to delaminating. I've never had such nice nails so consistently before, and it's making me want to keep them nice instead of picking at them.
(Which reinforces something I'd realised about myself recently: I need an apparent motivation for reward to do things, not just an intellectual one. For instance, my house has always been rental-house ugly, and I'm very untidy and disorganised by nature. Over the last year or so as it's been slowly renovated and improved, I'm finding that I keep it much nicer without even thinking about it. As I said to a friend, back in the old days I could knock myself out tidying and cleaning and the place would still basically look like shit - whereas now the only thing stopping it looking awesome is the mess, so that's all the incentive I need to deal with the mess unbegrudgingly.)
Er, tangent much? Anyway, yes, second awesome thing about the nailpolish obsession: it's a way of really feeling good about the way I look. I have a number of body-image issues related to my recentish health woes, and they can be very disheartening; keeping my nails nice and (better yet) pretty makes me feel just plain good about myself every time I catch sight of my hands - and that's priceless.
8. (Alternate) What is your philosophy on journal layouts?
I'm a big fan of black text, white background, decent font size, decent column width, decent typeface, no ridiculous replacement cursors. I don't have any significant related accessibility issues apart from poor eyesight, but I have little patience for form that impedes function so I'll almost always view offending journals as style=mine.
I also don't much like layouts that don't show tags, both by post and by sidebar list/cloud, since I find tags invaluable for browsing and content discovery.
9. (Alternate) Tell me about your default icon.
For a long time my general internet pseudonym was Jestyr/LadyJestyr and Harley Quinn up there was my default icon pretty much everywhere. Jester -> Fool, and Harley Quinn was the best female Fool I could think of. Also, she's adorable.
A while ago I switched to a photo of me as my default icon in many places, but I still identify with this Harley Quinn icon as strongly as I do with my actual face. And I still use Harley as my default icon on places where I want to be me, but don't want to use an actual photo - dreamwidth, twitter and so on.
10. Pick 10 random icons from your userpics and tell me about them.
Okay, this can go behind a cut :)
Randomly selected! All of them are made by me, because I'm weird about my icons and don't like using icons that other people also use.
Stelios, from 300, looking slightly manic and entirely glorious. I loved Stelios so much; apart from the fact that Michael Fassbender is ridiculously hot, I really love characters with that edge of wild abandon. He throws his all into what he does, he does it incredibly well, and there's just ... guh. *fans self*
(Incidentally, I think this is what appeals to me about Ray Kowalski. :))
Dr. Julian Bashir, from Star Trek: Deep Space 9. I've been participating in the LJ-based
ds9_rewatch and loving it; I'd never seen more than the first season before, though this time around I'm partway through season three. (The rewatch comm itself is nearly finished season one.) I love Julian, he's so ridiculously puppyish - even early, oblivious, slightly sketchy Julian is mostly okay to me since his sketchiness is derived from his epic cluelessness.Lana Kane, from Archer, who is utterly awesome. Plagued with a ridiculously annoying and competitive and a boss that believes in nepotism, Lana is the shining light of professionalism in the midst of incompetent chaos.
The N7 logo from Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, video games from Bioware. I haven't actually finished them yet, but I really love the games, and I have a ridiculous planet-sized crush on my iteration of the lead character.
Gigi Edgely as Chiana from Farscape; Pip is her nickname from the show's main character. It's also the nickname my best friend occasionally calls me, so I'm particularly fond of it. Chiana is a great character, and I love the fact that she was meant to be written out by the end of the first episode she was in - they liked her enough to extend it to half-a-dozen, and by the time those finished, she was in for the rest of the show.
The plaintive error message of Hex, the Discworld's only computer (such as it is). Hex is a fine example of the Discworld's absurdity, and its error messages are quietly poetic.
+++ DIVIDE BY CUCUMBER ERROR. PLEASE REINSTALL UNIVERSE AND REBOOT. +++
BEAKER! ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
Because the idea of a LOLgrue really appealed to me. :)
Spock from Star Trek; because he did a truly magnificent "bitch, please" face at several points in the movie; because who'd have thought you could make "live long, and prosper" sound like "go fuck yourselves"? Truly, Spock is gifted with linguistics.
Jayne Cobb from Firefly; he might look like a big tough badass, but he still squeaks when the band-aids come off, just like everyone else.
11. What features do you think Dreamwidth should have that it doesn't currently?
* A kudos-style feature!
* User notes!
* A memories system analogous to Delicious (OMG WANT, never gonna happen though)
* The ability to remember viewing preferences (eg style=mine, style=light) by journal (i.e. "ok, I view these in their native styles, these in my style, and these in light style").
That's just off the top of my head. I know there's more. :)
12. What do you consider the five most "telling" interests from the list on your profile? Why?
In alphabetical order:
blogging
because this is how I talk to the world. When I get involved in a new field or subculture, or learn something new, my first urge is almost always to create a blog to help explain it to other people.
copyright
which I use as a catch-all to cover the entire depressing state of intellectual property these days. I am, ultimately, anti-DRM, anti digital scarcity, anti regional lockouts, and pro corporations treating people as potential customers, not potential criminals. If I could do anything with the state of world affairs, it would be to reverse the Disney-lobbied extensions of copyright and other anti-consumer provisions.
fandom
because I love it, despite the fact that I've never felt part of it because I don't speak the language.
roleplaying
because it's such a fun hobby, and I have learnt so much about myself and about human nature over the years. I remember, during the legally-mandated mediation hearing about my insurance settlement, I was getting grilled pretty hard by the other side's lawyers, and my parents were apparently amazed at how poised and composed and unflappable I was. They commented on it later, and I thought about how I'd done it, and finally all I could say was "...I knew how to pretend to be somebody who wasn't scared by the lawyers". That is a valuable life skill. :)
mmorpgs
because people may scoff at those who put down MMO experience on resumes, but I have learnt so much. (Context: I'm a raiding guild leader and, lately, a raid leader, in WoW and have been for four years.) I've learnt how to deal with low morale, how to keep people motivated and enthused, how to negotiate with the justifiably-pissed-off and the perenially-unhappy alike, how to manage a team, how to plan, and how to give people news they're going to hate. Guild leading has, unquestionably, made me more confident and assertive, and given me the voice to stand up for myself. And these days I think I'm not too bad at it.
Also, because I've made some tremendous friends there.
13. Do you have any unique interests on your user profile? What are they? How'd they get there?
Amazingly, no I don't.
14. Did you have a gateway fandom? Still in it? Why or why not? Is there a community for it on DW?
The first fic I ever read was by
cupiscent, in XMMV, and that prompted me to read voraciously in XMMV - so in that sense, it was a gateway. I think Constantine was probably more of a gateway, though, in that I was an active participant in the fandom - I wrote reams of meta, I wallowed in the glorious fics, and I even started (though never finished) fic of my own. Had it been released five or so years later, I probably would have vidded in it (and still think I might, even now).(alternate) What is your favourite subject to discuss on Dreamwidth?
Fandom stuff, mostly: my fannish reactions to the sources I love, vidding angst, the fandom meta du jour. I kind of wish I had the focus to be monofannish, but there's too much to love. :)
15. What's your current obsession? What about it captures your imagination?
Right now, oddly, it's nail polish. Which may seem kind of shallow, but there's nothing wrong with loving the shiny. It's not something I'd ever done much with before, apart from low-level maintenance stuff, but I bought some OPI nail polish for my mother and I a year ago, and some more at Christmas time, and it triggered something: the urge to collect ALL THE COLOURS.
It's having two good effects, I find, which are probably reinforcing the obsession: firstly, it's an incentive to take good care of my nails, which are typically weak and prone to delaminating. I've never had such nice nails so consistently before, and it's making me want to keep them nice instead of picking at them.
(Which reinforces something I'd realised about myself recently: I need an apparent motivation for reward to do things, not just an intellectual one. For instance, my house has always been rental-house ugly, and I'm very untidy and disorganised by nature. Over the last year or so as it's been slowly renovated and improved, I'm finding that I keep it much nicer without even thinking about it. As I said to a friend, back in the old days I could knock myself out tidying and cleaning and the place would still basically look like shit - whereas now the only thing stopping it looking awesome is the mess, so that's all the incentive I need to deal with the mess unbegrudgingly.)
Er, tangent much? Anyway, yes, second awesome thing about the nailpolish obsession: it's a way of really feeling good about the way I look. I have a number of body-image issues related to my recentish health woes, and they can be very disheartening; keeping my nails nice and (better yet) pretty makes me feel just plain good about myself every time I catch sight of my hands - and that's priceless.