NotPotable

Guys, look! The beautiful ~ThreshTheSky threshthesky.deviantart.com/ very very kindly made for me a beautiful avatar! It is the best and I love it!

^____________^

ThreshTheSky threshthesky.deviantart.com/ tagged me a couple of weeks ago, and I'm sorry I haven't gotten around to doing this until today! Let the good times roll:

RULES:
1: Post these rules.
2: Tell 10 things about yourself.
3: Tag at least 10 people from your friends list (or watchers).
4: NO TAG-BACKS.
5. Go to their page and tell them you have tagged them
6. Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post, and create three new questions for the people you tag to answer.

Questions from ThreshTheSky:
1. What's your favorite kind of sandwich?
--I am in love with the vegan Reuben at this little local organic ice cream shop. It is so good.
2. If you were a character on a tv show, movie, or musical, what would your leitmotif sound like?
--I would have two: Yakety Sax most of the time www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK6TXM… , and "Bydlo" by Mussorgsky when the misanthropy or despondency rise www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx6Eo6… .
3. If you were a tree, what species would you be? Show your work.
--I would be a really short variety of something like an acacia. Small, kind of scrubby at the top and a little lopsided. Here's my work: notpotable.deviantart.com/art/… notpotable.deviantart.com/art/… notpotable.deviantart.com/art/…

My ten things:

1. I love puns, and infantile plays on words provide me with absolutely enormous amounts of glee. "Q: What is the internal temperature of a Taun-taun? A: Lukewarm!" had me clutching my sides with laughter for days.

2. I'm not easily grossed out, creeped out, or disgusted by bugs, blood, excrement, what-have-you, but spiders terrify me and I'm a huge baby about scary movies.

3. I'm decently coordinated (in D&D terms, I put all my ranks in Balance!), but I cannot dance to save my life.

4. I always feel like I don't really excel at anything in particular. However, I do get super-excited about things that I like. If only that were a marketable skill...

5. I studied Japanese and Russian in college, but I'm not very good at either language. I did translate a few volumes of the manga "3x3 Eyes" for a scanlation group, though, and I'm trying to improve my Russian. I also took German in high school, but I don't have much command over it. With a dictionary I can muddle through reading any of them, but I'm not at a point where I could hold a conversation. Which stinks, because I love languages so much.

6. For a span of about six weeks last year, I was in an awesome groove where I was exercising diligently every day. And then one of my cats, Samson, died of an HCM-related heart attack, and I stopped. I haven't been able to make myself start back up again since then.

7. In high school I had super-long hair, always in a braid down to the small of my back. I love braids, but long hair is such a pain, so several years ago I finally got mine cut nice and short. Like, Rachel Maddow-short. It is so much easier to deal with and I'll never go back, but sometimes I do miss having a braid.

8. I went vegetarian in 2008, eventually made it to vegan. (Though if a coworker brings in cookies or something and I didn't bring lunch, I'll let myself be "freegan". I'm trying to stop allowing myself to do so.)

9. When I was starting kindergarten, I found out I needed to have a favorite color, so I took the usual colors of dinosaurs (I still love dinos to this day) - brown, grey, and green - and chose between them randomly as my first, second, and third favorites.

10. I will probably never move out of my city, because I live in a county that has a Trap-Neuter-Return program for stray cats. I spend a lot of my free time catching cats to have them vaccinated and spayed/neutered, and then managing their colonies to make sure they stay healthy and sterilize any newcomers. If this program wasn't here I don't know what I'd do with myself not being able to do anything to prevent more kittens from being born when they usually suffer and die.


My new questions:
1. If you could have just one superpower, what would it be?
2. What bit of childhood nostalgia is your absolute favorite?
3. What is your favorite food to prepare for yourself?


Don't feel like you have to respond to being tagged - I have fun with these, but it doesn't mean you have to. And I only have a handful of watchers, so I can't actually tag ten people, oh well. Watchers, I tag you!

Elfhawk elfhawk.deviantart.com/
AxmxZ axmxz.deviantart.com/
Arulein arulein.deviantart.com/
Birikein birikein.deviantart.com/
Zippy1 zippy1.deviantart.com/

and since I only have four watchers anyway for whom this might be relevant it's sadly probably mostly an exercise in futility... BUT I GOTTA BELIEVE.

Since I've been on this Les Misérables kick, I've discovered a lot of absolutely amazing fan art and fan fiction. And all of it just makes my face stretch out in misshapen glee.

How do you pick a favorite out of so many things you love? It's damn hard (and to be perfectly honest, I'm not even sure that this really is my favorite since there is so much other great stuff I also love that makes me just kind of lose control over my vocal centers and drool on the keyboard). But what this IS, is a project I love and can support in a "Shut up and take my money!" kind of way.

There's a Les Mis AU fiction series called Pont-au-Change. I discovered it last month and I haven't even been able to geek out about anything else since then. Three books out in e-format, with three to go, they basically follow the premise of "What if Valjean managed to save Javert from jumping into the Seine", and they do it very well. The first book, "Resurrections", in particular fits so seamlessly into the end of Les Misérables that there will be moments where a specific odd event in the Brick makes even better sense in the new context. The characterizations of every one of Hugo's originals leave nothing to be desired, and are instantly recognizable. There is no J/JVJ slash in this series, but their scattered moments of tender friendship are so good to read - seeing Javert develop as a character is my favorite thing ever, and this version of Valjean is the most true-to-Hugo's I think I've read anywhere. And then they go off and have adventures and are the best odd couple and now I'm keysmashing again you guys.

-edited after Jul 6 -
So anyway, it had a kickstarter campaign that didn't get of the ground, but that the author will try launching again in a few months after getting the first draft of book 5 done, aimed at re-releasing the books in print and hiring a real editor to go over them to make 'em all real purty-like. I really wanted it to succeed (in particular so that I could get all the goodies at my pledge level, like that What Would Javert Do? t-shirt, and some sweet art prints), but I'm rooting for the next go-around. If it succeeds I will run around waving my arms and screeching in wild abandon as if I wasn't actually 28 years old and far too mature for this sort of nonsense.

This is the part where I ask if any of you would spread the word around to other fans of the Brick and see if they might like to take a peek at the first www.smashwords.com/books/view/… three www.smashwords.com/books/view/… books' www.smashwords.com/books/view/… sample chapters? The author also has a blog here where you can see progress on the series: pontauchange.blogspot.com/ .

I love Les Mis fan stuff so much I can't even.

Thank you for reading. ^^

Erm. I'm no artist. I made this account so that I could comment on the art of my friends. Go friends!

eta: I like to say nice things about people's art. I can't offer much useful criticism, but I will praise the skittles out of you. Mwah.