Meme!
Leave a comment saying, "COMMENT" and I will give you five words I associate with you. Then post about what they mean to you, along with this, at your journal.
celesma gave me: Lovecraft, Snake, Florida, Trigun, and cats.
Lovecraft: The work of H. P. Lovecraft has inspired me since I got my brother to pick up a anthology of his stories for my birthday five years ago. And I'm not alone; Lovecraft's work has sparked the imaginations of such diverse authors as Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, Alan Moore, and probably a billion other people who I don't know as much about. And also the team who developed Chrono Trigger, which is basically "The Call of Cthulhu" with a happy ending tacked on. This is not because Lovecraft was a good writer; stylistically he ranges from pretty and poetic (if slightly purple) to actually bad (in the stories where his love of adverbs doesn't work, or whenever he tries to write dialogue). This is because Lovecraft's vision of a bleak, pitiless universe where any gods that do exist either don't care about you or consider you a pest to be exterminated is genuinely disturbing, his cosmology is compelling, and in the stories where his descriptions are working for him (Dream Quest comes to mind), the results border on epic.
All that said, the entire staff of Chaosium needs to be lined up and BRUTALLY FLOGGED for all the stupidities they've loosed upon fans of the man's actual work. If I hear the Derlethian heresy that Yog-Sothoth looks like a mass of soap bubbles one more time, I will strangle the person I hear it from, even if I have to reach through my computer screen to do it.
Snake: I assume this is referring to Solid Snake, the guy in my primary avatar. In short, Snake is the epitome of heroic manliness: manly because he is not afraid to walk into hostile territory alone and unarmed to face some of the most elite (and most mentally unstable) warriors alive, who typically have at least one giant robot and are supported by hordes of mooks, and heroic because he does all this in the name of ending his crazy father's legacy of violence and making the world a better place. He's also a good Stoic, he does what he has to do in the pursuit of his ideals even when he's dying. And what he has to do is sneak around, fight more superpowered psychotics, and destroy more giant robots. How many insane superhumans did you defeat in mortal combat the last time you were dying of a degenerative disease? If the answer is less than six, you are not as awesome as Solid Snake and have some catching up to do, you slacker.
Florida: I hate this state. And that's sad, because I used to love it. The weather's nice except for the hurricanes, and you generally get three days advance warning for those. The wildlife is fascinating, the scenery's often very pretty, and, you know, there are beaches. But the condos are now so thick that I literally cannot see the water when I drive down the road that runs alongside the gulf, and they cast a shadow that makes that road seem overcast at all times other than high noon. There is no culture, everyone here is either a tourist or a hick, and there are no positions that don't involve serving one of those two demographics. Maybe one of the more metropolitan areas would be better, I don't know. I just want to leave.
Trigun: The very first anime I watched, and the fandom that introduced me to almost all of my online friends. I'd love it for that alone, but as it turns out, it is good on its own merits. Nightow's philosophical debates, while sometimes heavy handed, complement the action nicely, the main characters are intriguing, and the setting (future western, with emphasis on the western) captures my imagination. If it has a weakness, it's that the author obviously ran out of steam and couldn't quite figure out how to end the manga; it goes on for about a third again the length it needed to, and that last quarter introduces several boring and/or redundant characters, plays up the science fiction and plays down the western (getting rid of what was a major draw for me), and possesses a few continuity glitches. We will not speak of Legato's backstory in detail. The anime however, has none of these problems, and the only reason I stuck with the manga despite them is that it's damn good regardless. I mean that. Go check it out if you haven't already.
Cats: I love cats. They're beautiful, self-sufficient, graceful, and quiet, except apparently right now. This is because Alessa (my black moggy) has found a large box, and it is apparently the most fascinating thing she has ever encountered in the history of our time together. She runs inside it, lies down for a bit, paws at the lid, scratches at the bottom of the box, then runs at full speed out of my room into the hallway, leaping over the bed on her way out. She has repeated this process three times this evening. Despite peculiarities like these, I love her dearly, and when she follows me around the house and leaps up on counters to catch my attention, I'm touched because I know she has no particular instinctual drive to do so. When I move, I want to get a Siamese kitten to keep her company; I've heard they're very friendly and do well with other cats.
~Chaotic Neutral
celesma gave me: Lovecraft, Snake, Florida, Trigun, and cats.
Lovecraft: The work of H. P. Lovecraft has inspired me since I got my brother to pick up a anthology of his stories for my birthday five years ago. And I'm not alone; Lovecraft's work has sparked the imaginations of such diverse authors as Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, Alan Moore, and probably a billion other people who I don't know as much about. And also the team who developed Chrono Trigger, which is basically "The Call of Cthulhu" with a happy ending tacked on. This is not because Lovecraft was a good writer; stylistically he ranges from pretty and poetic (if slightly purple) to actually bad (in the stories where his love of adverbs doesn't work, or whenever he tries to write dialogue). This is because Lovecraft's vision of a bleak, pitiless universe where any gods that do exist either don't care about you or consider you a pest to be exterminated is genuinely disturbing, his cosmology is compelling, and in the stories where his descriptions are working for him (Dream Quest comes to mind), the results border on epic.
All that said, the entire staff of Chaosium needs to be lined up and BRUTALLY FLOGGED for all the stupidities they've loosed upon fans of the man's actual work. If I hear the Derlethian heresy that Yog-Sothoth looks like a mass of soap bubbles one more time, I will strangle the person I hear it from, even if I have to reach through my computer screen to do it.
Snake: I assume this is referring to Solid Snake, the guy in my primary avatar. In short, Snake is the epitome of heroic manliness: manly because he is not afraid to walk into hostile territory alone and unarmed to face some of the most elite (and most mentally unstable) warriors alive, who typically have at least one giant robot and are supported by hordes of mooks, and heroic because he does all this in the name of ending his crazy father's legacy of violence and making the world a better place. He's also a good Stoic, he does what he has to do in the pursuit of his ideals even when he's dying. And what he has to do is sneak around, fight more superpowered psychotics, and destroy more giant robots. How many insane superhumans did you defeat in mortal combat the last time you were dying of a degenerative disease? If the answer is less than six, you are not as awesome as Solid Snake and have some catching up to do, you slacker.
Florida: I hate this state. And that's sad, because I used to love it. The weather's nice except for the hurricanes, and you generally get three days advance warning for those. The wildlife is fascinating, the scenery's often very pretty, and, you know, there are beaches. But the condos are now so thick that I literally cannot see the water when I drive down the road that runs alongside the gulf, and they cast a shadow that makes that road seem overcast at all times other than high noon. There is no culture, everyone here is either a tourist or a hick, and there are no positions that don't involve serving one of those two demographics. Maybe one of the more metropolitan areas would be better, I don't know. I just want to leave.
Trigun: The very first anime I watched, and the fandom that introduced me to almost all of my online friends. I'd love it for that alone, but as it turns out, it is good on its own merits. Nightow's philosophical debates, while sometimes heavy handed, complement the action nicely, the main characters are intriguing, and the setting (future western, with emphasis on the western) captures my imagination. If it has a weakness, it's that the author obviously ran out of steam and couldn't quite figure out how to end the manga; it goes on for about a third again the length it needed to, and that last quarter introduces several boring and/or redundant characters, plays up the science fiction and plays down the western (getting rid of what was a major draw for me), and possesses a few continuity glitches. We will not speak of Legato's backstory in detail. The anime however, has none of these problems, and the only reason I stuck with the manga despite them is that it's damn good regardless. I mean that. Go check it out if you haven't already.
Cats: I love cats. They're beautiful, self-sufficient, graceful, and quiet, except apparently right now. This is because Alessa (my black moggy) has found a large box, and it is apparently the most fascinating thing she has ever encountered in the history of our time together. She runs inside it, lies down for a bit, paws at the lid, scratches at the bottom of the box, then runs at full speed out of my room into the hallway, leaping over the bed on her way out. She has repeated this process three times this evening. Despite peculiarities like these, I love her dearly, and when she follows me around the house and leaps up on counters to catch my attention, I'm touched because I know she has no particular instinctual drive to do so. When I move, I want to get a Siamese kitten to keep her company; I've heard they're very friendly and do well with other cats.
~Chaotic Neutral