Another Five for your amusement...
Feb. 26th, 2018 12:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Catching up on some older Friday Fives this week to keep the posting habit going:
1. Where did you grow up and do you miss it? Suburban Los Angeles, and yes. More so as I get older. The aspects of the area that bothered me so much growing up bother me less, and the aspects I liked at the time now have a stronger pull.
2. Which are your three favorite words in the dictionary and why? Hmm! This is surprisingly difficult. Here's a bit of a dodge: "magnetic pole." When I was first creating this journal, I wanted to use it as a complement to a personal journal whose name began with "magical" (long story), and, finding myself unable to think of something on the spot, I looked in the dictionary for a word or phrase that also began with m-a-g. "Magnetic pole" caught my eye. "Magical etc." is long defunct, but "magnetic_pole" lives on.
3. What is a vegetarian dish that you really like? I love vegetarian dishes! I don't even know where to start here. Anything with tofu. (Tofu as a vehicle for spices and flavors, not as a slab of "protein" in a salad. Ugh. I don't know where we got that idea.) Anything with lots of spices and root vegetables. Bean soups. Salads with berries in them. Cake and croissants. (What? Do those not count?)
4. What do you do when you have a misunderstanding with your friend? Ugh. I'm bad at this. So you know the better half and I have been together for more than twenty years, right? And she's very outgoing, so I tend to outsource a lot of the day-to-day (well, weekly, or semi-monthly) socializing to her. I tend to make friends very slowly and hold onto them forever. The couple times I've screwed up with people, I've really screwed up, and I haven't been able or willing to go back and set things right.
5. What do you daydream about? Fictional characters in interesting situations. Sometimes that "interesting" is a euphemism for something else, but mostly not. I tend to ruminate over emotionally intense moments that reveal something about the character or the world. I've been daydreaming with characters from books and tv since I was little, and finding fic (evidence that I'm not the only one who does this!) was such a revelation. I think this is one of the reasons fandom never feels very far away, even though I haven't been writing or even reading much lately.
Anyone else want to play along? Text box below, and you can link back to the comm,
thefridayfive, and see other replies, if you'd like.
1. Where did you grow up and do you miss it? Suburban Los Angeles, and yes. More so as I get older. The aspects of the area that bothered me so much growing up bother me less, and the aspects I liked at the time now have a stronger pull.
2. Which are your three favorite words in the dictionary and why? Hmm! This is surprisingly difficult. Here's a bit of a dodge: "magnetic pole." When I was first creating this journal, I wanted to use it as a complement to a personal journal whose name began with "magical" (long story), and, finding myself unable to think of something on the spot, I looked in the dictionary for a word or phrase that also began with m-a-g. "Magnetic pole" caught my eye. "Magical etc." is long defunct, but "magnetic_pole" lives on.
3. What is a vegetarian dish that you really like? I love vegetarian dishes! I don't even know where to start here. Anything with tofu. (Tofu as a vehicle for spices and flavors, not as a slab of "protein" in a salad. Ugh. I don't know where we got that idea.) Anything with lots of spices and root vegetables. Bean soups. Salads with berries in them. Cake and croissants. (What? Do those not count?)
4. What do you do when you have a misunderstanding with your friend? Ugh. I'm bad at this. So you know the better half and I have been together for more than twenty years, right? And she's very outgoing, so I tend to outsource a lot of the day-to-day (well, weekly, or semi-monthly) socializing to her. I tend to make friends very slowly and hold onto them forever. The couple times I've screwed up with people, I've really screwed up, and I haven't been able or willing to go back and set things right.
5. What do you daydream about? Fictional characters in interesting situations. Sometimes that "interesting" is a euphemism for something else, but mostly not. I tend to ruminate over emotionally intense moments that reveal something about the character or the world. I've been daydreaming with characters from books and tv since I was little, and finding fic (evidence that I'm not the only one who does this!) was such a revelation. I think this is one of the reasons fandom never feels very far away, even though I haven't been writing or even reading much lately.
Anyone else want to play along? Text box below, and you can link back to the comm,
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
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Date: 2018-02-26 06:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-26 11:28 pm (UTC)Thanks for stopping by to read and comment! M.
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Date: 2018-02-27 12:30 pm (UTC)No worries! I'm glad you are having fun with the questions!
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Date: 2018-02-28 03:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-28 11:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-02 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-02 06:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-26 06:52 pm (UTC)Finding fic was a complete revelation for me too. I couldn't believe I had found my people; I will be eternally grateful for fandom, no matter how wanky it can get.
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Date: 2018-02-26 11:26 pm (UTC)I will be eternally grateful for fandom, no matter how wanky it can get.
Exactly. Nothing like folks who can understand your passionate need for, say, an elaborate fix-it fic to help heal the very real wounds inflicted by very fictional stories. :) M.
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Date: 2018-02-26 07:02 pm (UTC)Sames on the daydreaming. Like you say, there's clearly a lot of us in that boat.
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Date: 2018-02-26 09:40 pm (UTC)I was *so* delighted to find fanfiction, I can't tell you. I'd been daydreaming for years, never thinking to write it down, share it, or read someone else's! M.
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Date: 2018-03-01 08:53 pm (UTC)Yes, I'd never written down before, despite ours of daydreaming. (Although, given the ratio of "hours daydreaming" to "actual writing" the difference in my behaviour is negligible, sad to say.)
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Date: 2018-03-02 05:02 pm (UTC)Hee! You've been super productive lately, S, I've noticed. (And been a bit envious.) But I agree with the sentiment.
Thanks for recounting your user name story! Some user names are obviously user names, but yours sounds so natural. I'm a bit suspicious that you even have another name on your birth certificate, to be honest. :) M.
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Date: 2018-02-26 10:34 pm (UTC)Oh, man, I understand that *so well*.
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Date: 2018-02-26 11:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-26 11:36 pm (UTC)Tofu. I don't eat it often because of the soy. I don't know how true it is as I've never eaten enough to really worry, but I have read that it can aggravate endometriosis symptoms. I do love it in Pad Thai or rice dices when it's been fried and has a good crispy exterior. I'm not so much (at all) a fan when it's just cubed up and dumped in a soup. The latter stems from a turkey soup a friend once made me for dinner and it was one of the most disgusting meals I've had. I had to gag down my bowl and I've never quite gotten over it. I think we've maybe bought tofu once to cook at home. Maybe? I trust the professionals to cook it better than I can. What do you do with it?
That's a great name origin story! Those are always fun to learn.
I hear you on missing where you grew up and finding positives where you used to find negatives.
Thank god for fanfic, is all I can say. What an amazing discovery for me as well.
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Date: 2018-02-26 11:55 pm (UTC)Ah, the soy! Yes, that might be an issue. Hm. But if not, it's a great filler in a stir fry--we tend to mix a green of some sort (say, bok toy) with tofu because the tofu will take on the flavor of the sauce and complement the crunchiness of the veggies nicely. (I say "we" here because I actually do cook stir-frys sometimes, though the better half does the vast majority of the cooking and baking in the house.) You may just not have had good tofu. Some of the less-good stuff has a really styrofoam-y, hard-to-swallow texture that puts me off. Nowadays even mainstream stores seem to carry regular and even extra-soft varieties.
The other thing I should mention about the the place I grew up is that it actually *is* less conservative and less homophobic than it used to be--the world's changed quite a bit from the 70s and 80s. It's not all my nostalgia talking! :)
Yes, thank goodness for fanfic.
Thanks for reading and commenting, W! M.
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Date: 2018-02-27 11:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-28 03:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-28 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-27 03:12 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2018-02-28 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-28 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-27 03:11 am (UTC)*reins self in* It is a bad idea to get me started talking about food.
Damn, I would not want to go back to my childhood home in a million years. Sometimes I think I might like a quick drive-through, but then -- nah, don't need any reminders of that phase of life.
I daydream about fictional characters all the time, only I'm all fancy and call it "working out the plot of this fic I'm writing." *snort snort snort*
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Date: 2018-02-27 10:59 pm (UTC)I don't eat chiles: do you think substituting in sweet peppers would work?
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Date: 2018-02-27 11:23 pm (UTC)Good question about the name of the recipe. Surprisingly, it's not as hot as you might think from the quantity of pepper. Oh, and I forgot to say: I adore the tingle from Szechuan black pepper, so I always substitute it for some of the regular black pepper. Grains of paradise are also nice to throw into the mix.
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Date: 2018-02-27 11:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-28 03:33 am (UTC)I *adore* that stage in the writing process when you're getting to know the characters and working through the plot and every life is a distraction from the fictional daydreaming you want to do. :) M.
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Date: 2018-02-28 04:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-02 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-02 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-02 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-02 10:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-27 05:06 pm (UTC)AFAIK cake and croissants totally count. <3
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Date: 2018-02-28 03:32 am (UTC)We have this French bakery nearby that is just wonderful, and somehow every time I pass by there's some excuse for buying one. :) M.
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Date: 2018-02-27 07:17 pm (UTC)Love to read your answers!
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Date: 2018-02-28 03:30 am (UTC)Thanks for reading! M.
Thanks for keeping the flame
Date: 2018-02-27 11:01 pm (UTC)Of course you know how to create copy-and-paste text boxes from your years running fic comms: can you point me to a how-to?
Re: Thanks for keeping the flame
Date: 2018-02-28 02:13 am (UTC)Textareas! There's a tutorial here--scroll down to just before the comments.
Thanks for reading and commenting, J! M.
Re: Thanks for keeping the flame
Date: 2018-03-02 02:02 pm (UTC)Thanks for the great link — and introducing me to
facetofcathy's writing, which is fascinating. Do you happen to know if/where she's writing now?
Re: Thanks for keeping the flame
Date: 2018-03-02 04:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-28 01:16 am (UTC)Fictional characters in interesting situations. Sometimes that "interesting" is a euphemism for something else
I have filled so many long car/train/plane rides with "interesting" daydreams, haha.
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Date: 2018-02-28 02:11 am (UTC)Friday night, and I've slipped into something special and poured myself a glass of wine. Someone's getting laid tonight, and it's my favorite fictional character.
:)
I hope you have well-prepared tofu at some point! Done right, it's so yummy. M.