Meme time!
Aug. 16th, 2007 01:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
olorielSO I got tagged by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ladyelleth for the 10 weird things même a while back, and now rahja tagged me for the 7 habits/quirks/facts même. As the seven are kind of contained in the ten, I'll just do the former...
Sooo.
Each player of this game starts off with ten weird things or habits or little known facts aboutyourself him- or herself. People who get tagged must write in a blog an entry of their own ten weird things or habits or little known facts about themselves, as well as these directions. At the end you must choose six people to be tagged and list their names. No tagbacks!
1. When I was five or six, I decided that I was Not Afraid Of Spiders. This was because a neighbourhood friend had a lovely little kiddy cottage in her garden where I wanted to play, but it was full of spiders, so nobody dared to go in. I claimed that I was not afraid of spiders (even though I was, at that time) and volunteered to get the beasties out of the hut. They took me up on it, and I went and collected all the spiders into a jar and set them free in a distant corner of the garden. After that experience, I figured being afraid of spiders was on the whole unnecessary. So, in our relationship, it's the man who's scared of spiders, not me! :D
2. Every now and then, I need to listen to random pieces of music that I like really loud while running and bouncing around. The list of pieces used for that purpose is endless, from rock and pop hits to opera and movie soundtracks. Usually they get assigned to some scene or story of my current fandom, which will be re-enacted in my head as I hear the music. The first time I can remember doing this was at age 10 or so, to Smetana's Vltava. In those days, my "fandom" was scouting. No, it doesn't have to make sense.
This need to move to music would, I suppose, make me a perfect candidate for disco, but they never play enough of the songs I want. Also I need room to move.
3. At the same time that I got into the "mental music video" thing I began to have an "instant fanfic" inside my head that I could "re-think" or continue before falling asleep or when I was bored. I have never stopped doing that, although the stories would change or be discarded and replaced by something new (with scenes and dialogues frequently taken over from one of the old instant fanfics). I have been doing this for so long I cannot consciously remember a time before I did it. I trained myself to be able to occupy myself with the story while doing entirely different things to the point where my thinking works on two levels, one being the story as it unfolds and the other being "real life". So, yes, I can daydream and pay attention at once. This actually poses a problem in LARP, when story level and "normal" level ought to merge, because I have not yet found a way to make that work.
The "instant fanfic" to occupy me or carry me into sleep has never been written down. It is a private matter and contains things I'd blush to think about on any other level than the pure story level.
4. I wanted to become a writer from the time I learned to write. The first author I wanted to be like was Astrid Lindgren, and I actually wrote two chapters of a kind of autobiographical imitation of The Children of Noisy Village in grade two, titled Die Kinder vom Hackenberg, "The Children of Hackenberg", which was the village/suburb thing where I grew up. I would attach random pieces of it to my "language" homework. Apparently I did not yet have the qualms about sharing my work I have today.
I also wrote fanfic for Vicky the Viking, although I did not know it was called fanfic at the time. Yes, including a self-insert character, although to my defense I wish to say that she was far from perfect but rather cowardish (but of course, a strong and courageous girl character would have made Vicky as her boyfriend look bad...!). After grade three, I dropped fanfic and storywriting altogether (except when it was demanded for school, obviously) until I got into the Star Wars fandom, at which point I came up with some Obi-wan/Qui-gon stories (secretly, and very ashamedly). Oh wait, I lie! I wrote some heart-wrenching tale about a poor but good-hearted and clever kid called Anna, set in the late 19th century, at some point before that. Huh.
5. I grew up for a while believing in quite a load of deities. My mother wanted her kids to grow up all well-educated from early on, and when we were on vacation (which was always some Greek island during the years I was 5 - 10), she'd tell us Greek legends like the tale of Icarus, or Odysseus, or Europa, or Hercules (with the bits inappropriate for children left out). As a result, I knew the Greek pantheon pretty well, and if those gods showed up in stories, they had to be real, hadn't they? At the same time I was brought up to be a good (... whatever that means) protestant and believed firmly in Jesus and the Christian God. I suppose this looks a little contradictory from an adult point of view, but as a kid, it made perfect sense. You prayed to Jesus or God, but Zeus and the others existed just as well.
Later on I became a zealous little Christian for a while, and then I tried being an atheist because believing in God was uncool, but I never got the hang of it; I need to believe in some personified Power. I did worship the Force for a while, though. >_> Nowadays I suppose I'm a Christian-ish agnostic who's rather fond of the name "Ilúvatar". *coughs*
6. I've always wanted to have a second name. I only have the one because my parents didn't want me to have to sign my driving license with too many names (in those days, you apparently had to sign documents with every single name you carried around with you). Wasn't it nice of them to think so far ahead? But I always envied the other kids who would have a second name attached to their first name, and for a while I just stuck two names to my own (after all my mother had three first names as well, Ursula Hedwig Elsa (the first being a family in-joke because my grandfather's nickname for my grandmother was Bärlein, "little bear", and the other two being inherited from my great-grandmothers) and called myself Christiane Anna Katharina (NOT after my grandmothers). After all, kids don't ask for passports...!
At least we're not living in the days in which having only one name meant that you were a bastard...
7. In elementary school, I was one of the queens of the schoolyard. I actually had my own little gang (we were called the Holzschwertbande, the "Wooden Sword Gang"), and we'd hang around in the schoolyard after school, talking, singing and fencing with our wooden swords. In grade four, I even was voted class representative! Yes, I was one of the cool kids until I came to high school (or rather middle school, but we don't actually have a division between middle and high school in Germany) when all of a sudden it was important to know pop songs, be a fan of a certain football club, and wear clothing with labels instead of hand-me-downs or mommy's hand-knit. As I did neither of these things, I had to learn pretty soon that I was uncool and ignorant (and a swotter, too!). I never quite recovered from that, I think; even now that I'm able to take these things with a grain of salt or two, I'm still (more or less secretly) self-conscious and afraid of what people will think. Alas for the days in which the boys in the schoolyard knelt to me and in which I decided what was cool!
8. Still in the days of the Wooden Sword Gang, a friend and I developed our first secret script. It was rather simple, consisting of geometric shapes and numbers. There were six different shapes after which the symbols would be repeated with a small number in the middle to denote what letter was meant. So, if a triangle was an A (I no longer know whether it was; this is just for illustration!), a triangle with a small 1 in it would be a G, a triangle with a 2 an M, and so on. Rather simplistic, but at least unlike others I was over that stage when at some point in art class we all had to develop some kind of secret writing to produce a "secret document".
In grade six another friend and I developed an entire language of our own that we called Laconic. It had its own vocabulary and its own grammar, but by now I only remember "Lalamam bi fatsali chiku", which means "You are an idiot", and "alariaki", which means "asshole". Erm... right.
After that, I mostly just experimented with boring codes consisting mostly of turning words around and switching letters. The next real language I invented was Lothannon already, which takes us to the present...
9. I am phone-phobic. I am terrified of calling people on the phone: Strangers and officials especially, but even friends I haven't called before. I'll avoid or procrastinate phone calls as much as I can. As far as I am concerned, the invention of the e-mail is the best thing that ever happened to long-distance communication, and phones should just be banished from the face of the earth. I know my fears are silly and unfounded, because most of the time people expect to be called and their numbers are there to reach them under, but I can't help it. I think part of it is my boundless fear of making a fool of myelf. I am rather scared about my oral performance (... not in THAT sense, you pervs!) and feel a lot more comfortable with writing. It took me a looong time and a lot of practice to at least lose my fear of presentations in class.
10. I have always loved to read and always found it easy to remember random knowledge - but only if it's embedded in some kind of context I feel enthusiastic or at least mildly excited about. Otherwise I just can't motivate myself to learn. That was not so much of a problem in school where motivation came from outside, but in university it's a real problem when you're unenthusiastic about most of the basic knowledge you're supposed to amass and only get excited about some (usually obscure) subarea. After all, you're not allowed to specialise too much until you've made your degree...
which is why my studies drag along so much. After the first three months, it's no longer possible to get all excited about Kanji. On the other hand, I'm always enthusiastic about trying new handiwork stuff. Which tends to yield, um, "interesting" results.
- - -
I cannot think of anyone to tag because probably the people I tag won't reply anyway, and if they do I'll be afraid they only did it because I forced them. So I'll spare myself the guilt and just say that whoever wants to may feel free to share their weirdness!
ladyelleth for the 10 weird things même a while back, and now rahja tagged me for the 7 habits/quirks/facts même. As the seven are kind of contained in the ten, I'll just do the former...Sooo.
Each player of this game starts off with ten weird things or habits or little known facts about
1. When I was five or six, I decided that I was Not Afraid Of Spiders. This was because a neighbourhood friend had a lovely little kiddy cottage in her garden where I wanted to play, but it was full of spiders, so nobody dared to go in. I claimed that I was not afraid of spiders (even though I was, at that time) and volunteered to get the beasties out of the hut. They took me up on it, and I went and collected all the spiders into a jar and set them free in a distant corner of the garden. After that experience, I figured being afraid of spiders was on the whole unnecessary. So, in our relationship, it's the man who's scared of spiders, not me! :D
2. Every now and then, I need to listen to random pieces of music that I like really loud while running and bouncing around. The list of pieces used for that purpose is endless, from rock and pop hits to opera and movie soundtracks. Usually they get assigned to some scene or story of my current fandom, which will be re-enacted in my head as I hear the music. The first time I can remember doing this was at age 10 or so, to Smetana's Vltava. In those days, my "fandom" was scouting. No, it doesn't have to make sense.
This need to move to music would, I suppose, make me a perfect candidate for disco, but they never play enough of the songs I want. Also I need room to move.
3. At the same time that I got into the "mental music video" thing I began to have an "instant fanfic" inside my head that I could "re-think" or continue before falling asleep or when I was bored. I have never stopped doing that, although the stories would change or be discarded and replaced by something new (with scenes and dialogues frequently taken over from one of the old instant fanfics). I have been doing this for so long I cannot consciously remember a time before I did it. I trained myself to be able to occupy myself with the story while doing entirely different things to the point where my thinking works on two levels, one being the story as it unfolds and the other being "real life". So, yes, I can daydream and pay attention at once. This actually poses a problem in LARP, when story level and "normal" level ought to merge, because I have not yet found a way to make that work.
The "instant fanfic" to occupy me or carry me into sleep has never been written down. It is a private matter and contains things I'd blush to think about on any other level than the pure story level.
4. I wanted to become a writer from the time I learned to write. The first author I wanted to be like was Astrid Lindgren, and I actually wrote two chapters of a kind of autobiographical imitation of The Children of Noisy Village in grade two, titled Die Kinder vom Hackenberg, "The Children of Hackenberg", which was the village/suburb thing where I grew up. I would attach random pieces of it to my "language" homework. Apparently I did not yet have the qualms about sharing my work I have today.
I also wrote fanfic for Vicky the Viking, although I did not know it was called fanfic at the time. Yes, including a self-insert character, although to my defense I wish to say that she was far from perfect but rather cowardish (but of course, a strong and courageous girl character would have made Vicky as her boyfriend look bad...!). After grade three, I dropped fanfic and storywriting altogether (except when it was demanded for school, obviously) until I got into the Star Wars fandom, at which point I came up with some Obi-wan/Qui-gon stories (secretly, and very ashamedly). Oh wait, I lie! I wrote some heart-wrenching tale about a poor but good-hearted and clever kid called Anna, set in the late 19th century, at some point before that. Huh.
5. I grew up for a while believing in quite a load of deities. My mother wanted her kids to grow up all well-educated from early on, and when we were on vacation (which was always some Greek island during the years I was 5 - 10), she'd tell us Greek legends like the tale of Icarus, or Odysseus, or Europa, or Hercules (with the bits inappropriate for children left out). As a result, I knew the Greek pantheon pretty well, and if those gods showed up in stories, they had to be real, hadn't they? At the same time I was brought up to be a good (... whatever that means) protestant and believed firmly in Jesus and the Christian God. I suppose this looks a little contradictory from an adult point of view, but as a kid, it made perfect sense. You prayed to Jesus or God, but Zeus and the others existed just as well.
Later on I became a zealous little Christian for a while, and then I tried being an atheist because believing in God was uncool, but I never got the hang of it; I need to believe in some personified Power. I did worship the Force for a while, though. >_> Nowadays I suppose I'm a Christian-ish agnostic who's rather fond of the name "Ilúvatar". *coughs*
6. I've always wanted to have a second name. I only have the one because my parents didn't want me to have to sign my driving license with too many names (in those days, you apparently had to sign documents with every single name you carried around with you). Wasn't it nice of them to think so far ahead? But I always envied the other kids who would have a second name attached to their first name, and for a while I just stuck two names to my own (after all my mother had three first names as well, Ursula Hedwig Elsa (the first being a family in-joke because my grandfather's nickname for my grandmother was Bärlein, "little bear", and the other two being inherited from my great-grandmothers) and called myself Christiane Anna Katharina (NOT after my grandmothers). After all, kids don't ask for passports...!
At least we're not living in the days in which having only one name meant that you were a bastard...
7. In elementary school, I was one of the queens of the schoolyard. I actually had my own little gang (we were called the Holzschwertbande, the "Wooden Sword Gang"), and we'd hang around in the schoolyard after school, talking, singing and fencing with our wooden swords. In grade four, I even was voted class representative! Yes, I was one of the cool kids until I came to high school (or rather middle school, but we don't actually have a division between middle and high school in Germany) when all of a sudden it was important to know pop songs, be a fan of a certain football club, and wear clothing with labels instead of hand-me-downs or mommy's hand-knit. As I did neither of these things, I had to learn pretty soon that I was uncool and ignorant (and a swotter, too!). I never quite recovered from that, I think; even now that I'm able to take these things with a grain of salt or two, I'm still (more or less secretly) self-conscious and afraid of what people will think. Alas for the days in which the boys in the schoolyard knelt to me and in which I decided what was cool!
8. Still in the days of the Wooden Sword Gang, a friend and I developed our first secret script. It was rather simple, consisting of geometric shapes and numbers. There were six different shapes after which the symbols would be repeated with a small number in the middle to denote what letter was meant. So, if a triangle was an A (I no longer know whether it was; this is just for illustration!), a triangle with a small 1 in it would be a G, a triangle with a 2 an M, and so on. Rather simplistic, but at least unlike others I was over that stage when at some point in art class we all had to develop some kind of secret writing to produce a "secret document".
In grade six another friend and I developed an entire language of our own that we called Laconic. It had its own vocabulary and its own grammar, but by now I only remember "Lalamam bi fatsali chiku", which means "You are an idiot", and "alariaki", which means "asshole". Erm... right.
After that, I mostly just experimented with boring codes consisting mostly of turning words around and switching letters. The next real language I invented was Lothannon already, which takes us to the present...
9. I am phone-phobic. I am terrified of calling people on the phone: Strangers and officials especially, but even friends I haven't called before. I'll avoid or procrastinate phone calls as much as I can. As far as I am concerned, the invention of the e-mail is the best thing that ever happened to long-distance communication, and phones should just be banished from the face of the earth. I know my fears are silly and unfounded, because most of the time people expect to be called and their numbers are there to reach them under, but I can't help it. I think part of it is my boundless fear of making a fool of myelf. I am rather scared about my oral performance (... not in THAT sense, you pervs!) and feel a lot more comfortable with writing. It took me a looong time and a lot of practice to at least lose my fear of presentations in class.
10. I have always loved to read and always found it easy to remember random knowledge - but only if it's embedded in some kind of context I feel enthusiastic or at least mildly excited about. Otherwise I just can't motivate myself to learn. That was not so much of a problem in school where motivation came from outside, but in university it's a real problem when you're unenthusiastic about most of the basic knowledge you're supposed to amass and only get excited about some (usually obscure) subarea. After all, you're not allowed to specialise too much until you've made your degree...
which is why my studies drag along so much. After the first three months, it's no longer possible to get all excited about Kanji. On the other hand, I'm always enthusiastic about trying new handiwork stuff. Which tends to yield, um, "interesting" results.
- - -
I cannot think of anyone to tag because probably the people I tag won't reply anyway, and if they do I'll be afraid they only did it because I forced them. So I'll spare myself the guilt and just say that whoever wants to may feel free to share their weirdness!
