reading, writing, running
May. 1st, 2010 02:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xaaraWhoo, just finished a local 20K and have time to sneak in a nap and some LJ before work. It was a fairly brutal run, given the recent unpleasantness with my knee, which means this is the longest I've run at a stretch for six weeks or so. But I took it ridiculously slowly--as in, 10:35/mile--which was boring but didn't result in pain. And then I ate curry!
A meme that keeps circulating and is always fun:
1 - Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2 - I will respond; I'll ask you five questions.
3 - You'll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4 - You'll include this explanation.
5 - You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lassiterfics asked me the following:
1. Why do you love Castiel?
Um. Because he, like, exists? And there are far too few things in this world that make me swoon. Seriously, though, I love him because he is not a human. He passes, most days, with his suit-and-tie flasher getup and ornery disposition, but he's a fundamentally alien creature, stuck with these weirdo Winchesters, who are family to each other but at best a sad substitute for what he's lost. He's alone, and cast out, and angry (whoa is that boy angry), and underneath that all, he's just desperately in need of a cause, a mission, a purpose.
I was talking recently about how Castiel is, for all practical intents and purposes, two years old, and I love that contrast: two years of emotional development masking a being with an incredible wealth of knowledge and power. It's why his relationships (read: that weird thing he's got going with Dean) are so off-balance: he holds physical and probably intellectual dominance, but Dean and Sam circumvent that by using their commonality--their humanity--to work around him (I don't understand that reference.) He might speak all the languages in the world (which is my favorite piece of fanon ever), but he doesn't speak human.
Plus, have you seen his eyes?
2. Favorite alcoholic beverage?
I'm a scotch girl, all the way. Oban at the moment, though I love Talisker and Macallan 18, before the latter had distribution/production problems and sort of disappeared from the market.
3. What are your favorite fic tropes?
I suppose this isn't really a trope so much as a style, but I love long, well-plotted stories, where the events taking place are as important as the people involved. Pairing- and friendship-based stories are fine, and I read a ton of h/c, since that seems to be, like, 80% of Supernatural fandom, but a strong concept and storyline makes it a story that I'll come back to rather than one I'll comment on quickly and move past. I love me some big bang.
Back in the day, when I was involved in Star Wars fandom (when FF.N was big and used the MPAA rating system, which meant I, as a 12-year-old who was so excited to be getting away with grown-up shit, accidentally read a story about a Princess Leia/wookie gang-bang), I realized that I liked secondary characters more than mains, and that's carried over. I love outsider POV, minor character development, and tasteful OCs. Most recently, the thing that has totally satisfied every single one of these favorites is Anything Worth Dying For bywaldorph
4. What is the strangest thing you've ever eaten?
Oh man. I should preface this by saying that although I'm mostly a vegan, I have a contradictory policy of always accepting food I've never tried before. So I've eaten some really weird shit, like squid-ink soup and candy with bugs in it. Also, once, I ate a penny.
But the weirdest thing by far was these meatballs my landlady made in Italy...from tiny, bug-eyed fish. Whole, tiny bug-eyed fish and a few bread crumbs. It was like eating a golf-ball sized sphere of tiny eyeballs. Thinking about it still makes me laugh a little hysterically.
5. What is the last beautiful thing to have broken your heart?
The other day, I was sitting on my balcony with a book and a cup of coffee, watching the sun come up, and the tree that loops over it had begun to bud. A dark green oblong, wrapped like a pair of folded hands, tipped each fractal limb; it was a beautiful promise of spring. So I tucked my nose into my book and drank my coffee, and when I looked up again, one of the buds had opened, producing a tiny, absolutely perfect maple leaf. I didn't see any others; it was like the tree had opened that one, just for me, just that morning. And it hit something, some need I didn't know I had, and became one of those moments where you feel like you are part of something huge.
A meme that keeps circulating and is always fun:
1 - Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2 - I will respond; I'll ask you five questions.
3 - You'll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4 - You'll include this explanation.
5 - You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
lassiterfics asked me the following:1. Why do you love Castiel?
Um. Because he, like, exists? And there are far too few things in this world that make me swoon. Seriously, though, I love him because he is not a human. He passes, most days, with his suit-and-tie flasher getup and ornery disposition, but he's a fundamentally alien creature, stuck with these weirdo Winchesters, who are family to each other but at best a sad substitute for what he's lost. He's alone, and cast out, and angry (whoa is that boy angry), and underneath that all, he's just desperately in need of a cause, a mission, a purpose.
I was talking recently about how Castiel is, for all practical intents and purposes, two years old, and I love that contrast: two years of emotional development masking a being with an incredible wealth of knowledge and power. It's why his relationships (read: that weird thing he's got going with Dean) are so off-balance: he holds physical and probably intellectual dominance, but Dean and Sam circumvent that by using their commonality--their humanity--to work around him (I don't understand that reference.) He might speak all the languages in the world (which is my favorite piece of fanon ever), but he doesn't speak human.
Plus, have you seen his eyes?
2. Favorite alcoholic beverage?
I'm a scotch girl, all the way. Oban at the moment, though I love Talisker and Macallan 18, before the latter had distribution/production problems and sort of disappeared from the market.
3. What are your favorite fic tropes?
I suppose this isn't really a trope so much as a style, but I love long, well-plotted stories, where the events taking place are as important as the people involved. Pairing- and friendship-based stories are fine, and I read a ton of h/c, since that seems to be, like, 80% of Supernatural fandom, but a strong concept and storyline makes it a story that I'll come back to rather than one I'll comment on quickly and move past. I love me some big bang.
Back in the day, when I was involved in Star Wars fandom (when FF.N was big and used the MPAA rating system, which meant I, as a 12-year-old who was so excited to be getting away with grown-up shit, accidentally read a story about a Princess Leia/wookie gang-bang), I realized that I liked secondary characters more than mains, and that's carried over. I love outsider POV, minor character development, and tasteful OCs. Most recently, the thing that has totally satisfied every single one of these favorites is Anything Worth Dying For by
waldorph4. What is the strangest thing you've ever eaten?
Oh man. I should preface this by saying that although I'm mostly a vegan, I have a contradictory policy of always accepting food I've never tried before. So I've eaten some really weird shit, like squid-ink soup and candy with bugs in it. Also, once, I ate a penny.
But the weirdest thing by far was these meatballs my landlady made in Italy...from tiny, bug-eyed fish. Whole, tiny bug-eyed fish and a few bread crumbs. It was like eating a golf-ball sized sphere of tiny eyeballs. Thinking about it still makes me laugh a little hysterically.
5. What is the last beautiful thing to have broken your heart?
The other day, I was sitting on my balcony with a book and a cup of coffee, watching the sun come up, and the tree that loops over it had begun to bud. A dark green oblong, wrapped like a pair of folded hands, tipped each fractal limb; it was a beautiful promise of spring. So I tucked my nose into my book and drank my coffee, and when I looked up again, one of the buds had opened, producing a tiny, absolutely perfect maple leaf. I didn't see any others; it was like the tree had opened that one, just for me, just that morning. And it hit something, some need I didn't know I had, and became one of those moments where you feel like you are part of something huge.
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-01 08:55 pm (UTC)Fascinating! I never thought of it as such. But I mean, what about his time in heaven though? He was BFFs with Uriel before Uriel went darkside, and he and Anna 'went through much together'. This just makes me wonder what socialization for angels is like. Also, Cas tends to fall in with the rogues, hmm.
A PENNY. Did you use sauce? XD
omg the perfect maple leaf *___* <3 <3
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-03 03:16 am (UTC)What else I thought was funny: in that episode where Cas and Dean end up at the brothel, Cas doesn't say that angels don't have sex; he says that he never had occasion, which to me sounds like he's just the awkward nerdy kid who was kind of a social outcast in middle school. It's not that angels don't get laid. It's that Castiel, Angel of the Lord etc., doesn't get laid. So maybe he's not just devoid of human social skills, maybe he is also devoid of angel social skills. Or maybe he's in charge of things so covert he has to spend lots of time alone. (I like that theory.) Also, you speak truth: he does tend to fall in with undesirable elements.
Long story short, I shall devote more thought to this. Because I never object to thinking, especially about this strange, crazy show.
My penny was sauceless (though a nice sweet barbeque would have gone nicely) and the maple leaf was just. Yeah.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-03 07:27 am (UTC)Whether it was comradeship or something more tenuous, there was definitely something between Cas and Anna. In 4x10, Cas said, "Anna, we have a history," and in 5x13 he was all, "Anna, we have been through much together," and sure, who knows what a socially stunted angel means when he says that, but y'know. I think he at least valued/respected her. I dunno, I've built up a whole backstory for Cas and Anna in my head. Part of my head canon is that when Cas and Dean were sitting on those park benches and Cas said that he's not a hammer and he has doubts, he was thinking of Anna and the talks they used to have, how she would get frustrated with him and he would be stern with her, and oh the irony, because if only she could see him now. She got through to him after all, a quarter of a century too late.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-02 01:53 pm (UTC)& I love your thoughts on Cas. <3 LOVE. Because in so many ways his story arch is about growing up, having your idyllic family-private-sphere shattered and having to find your own way through the world, become your own person. The interplay between the passion of two years worth of intense emotional experience and thousands (?) of years of static obedience is just fascinating.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-03 03:25 am (UTC)Castiel's story is a coming-of-age cloaked in an apocalypse, isn't it? It's interesting, because as Lass pointed out above, Cas does count Uriel as a friend, but it's not something we puny humans would consider friendship in the usual sense. So maybe it's an interplay between totally structured relationships and totally free-form ones? You really hit something with the word "static," thought--everything he fought for was status quo, and now he's fighting against that, which must be terrifying.