tielan: (Default)
Monday, April 10th, 2017 11:31 pm
Gakked from [personal profile] nrgburst:

Give me a TV series and I'll tell you:

1. My all-time ultimate fave character:
2. A character I didn't used to like but now do:
3. A character I used to like but now don't:
4. A character I'm indifferent about:
5. A character who deserved better:
6. A ship I've never been able to get into:
7. A ship I've never been able to get over:
8. A cute, low-key ship:
9. An unpopular ship but I still enjoyed it:
10. A ship that was totally wrong and never should have happened:
11. My favourite storyline/moment:
12. A storyline that never should have been written:
13. My first thoughts on the show:
14. My thoughts now:

Fandoms in the tags!
tielan: (AVG - agents)
Wednesday, January 18th, 2017 08:35 pm
I figured early January was too busy with the [community profile] snowflake_challenge, and I'm hoping early February is going to be full of [livejournal.com profile] halfamoon, so maybe do this in March?

pick a date, ask a question )

Previous talkmemes are 2014, and 2016.
tielan: Leia, RotJ, concerned (SW - Leia concern)
Thursday, December 29th, 2016 09:45 am
Because to close the year out, memes are always good. And distracting from fic writing, whch I really should be doing more assiduously!

Seen over on [livejournal.com profile] crazy4orcas' LJ:

A. Author You’ve Read The Most Books From
B. Best Sequel Ever
C. Currently Reading
D. Drink of Choice While Reading
E. E-Reader or Physical Books
F. Fictional Character You Would Have Dated In High School
G. Glad You Gave This Book A Chance
H. Hidden Gem Book
I. Important Moments of Your Reading Life
J. Just Finished
K. Kinds of Books You Won’t Read
L. Longest Book You’ve Read
M. Major Book Hangover Because Of
N. Number of Bookcases You Own
O. One Book That You Have Read Multiple Times
P. Preferred Place to Read
Q. Quote From A Book That Inspires You/Gives You Feels
R. Reading Regret
S. Series You Started and Need to Finish
T. Three Of Your All-Time Favorite Books
U. Unapologetic Fangirl For
W. Worst Bookish Habit
V. Very Excited For This Release More Than Any Other
X. Marks The Spot (Start On Your Bookshelf And Count to the 27th Book)
Y. Your Latest Book Purchase
Z. ZZZ-Snatcher (last book that kept you up WAY late)

(Maybe I could do this for a January Talkmeme? Or, possibly, a February one. A February one would probably be better: I can ask for questions during January, and answer them come Feb.
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tielan: (Default)
Friday, December 16th, 2016 06:41 pm
Seen at [livejournal.com profile] mieystrapurore:
1. Comment on this post with "MEEEEEE!"
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Think of 5 fictional characters and post their names and your comments on these characters in your LJ.


She gave me the letter 'J'.

1. Janet Fraiser (Stargate SG1 TV series): small package, big personality. She was a great character - one part solicitude, one part sweet snark, one part sly sense of humour, all parts awesome. I loved that she and Sam were friends, and that her adoption of Cassie made her a mother working in a risky job, but still doing that job.

2. John Sheppard (Stargate Atlantis TV series): a man who drinks tea with strangers to get to know them better, a soldier who would probably have never made it very high on earth, but gets to live a life of meaning in Atlantis. I always felt he was pretty screwed up, which is why I don't ship him with Rodney - I like my ships to have a hope of functionality.

3. JoJo of RainFire pack (Psy-Changeling books): in spite of her really brief cameo in 'Shards of Hope', I really loved how JoJo uses her charm unthinkingly, the fact that she's described as having darker skin (Singh does a good job of writing people of many different colours), and the way she was brought in to teach the Arrow children how to play. Adorbs.

4. James Bond (James Bond movies): I enjoy the movies as a general rule, although I get tired of the repeated refrigeration of the women. Haven't seen Spectre yet, and while I enjoyed Skyfall I was kind of pissed off that they killed M. (Judi Dench 4eva.)

5. Jane Fairfax (Jane Austen's 'Emma'): I always felt that Jane was terribly colourless, poor girl. And then to fall in love with a guy like Frank Churchill who cared about her but largely on his own terms...

That was more difficult than expected.
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tielan: (Default)
Saturday, November 12th, 2016 09:55 am
Don't Worry Be Happy
LINK TO MEME || MY THREAD


The name is not exactly what I'd like it to be: there is a lot to worry about and you can't just change things by being happy. But something to distract us, to lift our spirits is definitely welcome.

--

This week, I'll finally be posting the next four stories in 'Sharp Evening Stars And Bright Morning Flame' with a few pieces of art - two by fanworkers from the Marvel Bang challenge, two which I commissioned.

Keep an eye out for that if you like my work.

The final chapter 'Sedoretu' isn't done; I was hoping to do it this month during NaNo but that's been completely derailed thanks to writer's block on the POV and the scenes, and I don't know when it's going to be done. Hopefully, once I finish To The End Of Love, I'll be able to get my brain back into Sedoretu again and Steve will be more forthcoming.

--

Finally, I've started donating to the local women's shelter. Just groceries for the time being - they're really organised, with a shopping list that has the number of items they need, and you can sign yourself up for as much as you can afford. I would have preferred to be involved with a Refugee rehoming program, but given I live in a very conservative, very middle-upperclass neighbourhood, it's much harder to find those.

And I reiterate for you who have the most to lose under the new government: if there's something I can do for you, let me know.
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tielan: (LOL)
Thursday, November 3rd, 2016 12:10 pm
Ooh, this is actually quite hard!



Anna de Wintour divorced her husband Otto West many years ago after discovering that he'd been involved in diamond heist back in the eighties. Marrying a well-known musician, she starting a career in music fashion, and left her children, Nan, James ("Bucky"), and Robert, with Otto.

Twenty years later, she has to confront her own shortcomings as a mother when James, a soldier, announces he's marrying a Russian woman he fell in love with while on TOD, only to discover that the Russian is a former spy whom his brother Robert encountered in his work as an agent of the American government. The upcoming marriage brings up a morass of difficult memories, including Anna's confrontational and complicated relationship with her daughter Nancy who's an attorney at firm Stern, Lockhart & Gardner - a relationship she comes to realise she emulated with her most recent intern...
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tielan: (Default)
Thursday, November 3rd, 2016 09:07 am
From [livejournal.com profile] daria234: A cracky meme, inspired by when you see a picture of actors together and can't help think of them in terms of the roles they're most known for in fandom.

Comment with the name or banner of a movie/TV show with actors who are better known in other roles, and I'll write you the advertising blurb. It could get slightly cracky!

(Daria's example is here if you need suggestions.)
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tielan: (Castle)
Wednesday, September 14th, 2016 12:28 pm
Meme taken from [personal profile] muccamukk:

My fics on Ao3 are here.

The questions are:
1. How did you come up with the title to [insert fic]?
2. Any of your stories inspired by personal experience?
3. What character do you identify with most?
4. Is there a song or a playlist to associate with [insert fic]?
5. If you wrote a sequel to [insert fic], what would it be about?
6. Care to share a favorite hurt/comfort fic?
7. Care to share a favorite crack fic?
8. How would you describe your style?
9. Do you have a guilty pleasure in fic (reading or writing)?
10. Write or describe an alternative ending to [insert fic].
11. What's the angstiest idea you've ever come up with?
12. What's the weirdest AU you've ever come up with?
13. Got any premises on the back burner that you'd care to share?
14. Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?
15. How do you begin a story--with the plot, or the characters?
16. Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an "architect" or a "gardener"? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?)
17. Do you have any discarded scenes/storylines/projects?
18. Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence?
19. Any fandom tropes you can't resist?
20. Any fandom tropes you can't stand?
21. A pairing you might like to write for, but haven't tried yet.
22. A secondary (or underrated) character you want to see more of in fic?
23. Do you like more general prompts, or more specific ones?
24. A character you enjoy making suffer.
25. A character you want to protect.
26. Major character death--do you ever write/read it? Is there a character whose death you can't tolerate?

Only 2 questions per commenter!
[personal profile] muccamukk: #23
[livejournal.com profile] mieystrapurore: #16 and #18
[profile] crossing_hades #24
[livejournal.com profile] alphaflyer: #19 and #20
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tielan: (Default)
Tuesday, August 9th, 2016 08:11 am
Hold onto your hats, this is one line each from every WIP in my 'currently writing' folder, except for the one which doesn't yet have anything for the next chapter to it.
The question is curious rather than challenging; nevertheless, Nick feels stung. He supposes he’ll always feel ‘young’, in much the way any grown man can be made to feel like a child by a censorious aunt.

Maria can shut this down now, or she can trust.

“Mm. Well, I’m kind of hoping there’ll be screaming,” he tells her as he draws his mouth along the line of her jaw up to her ear and nips hard enough to make her arch. “I find it kind of...gratifying.”

Being dumped is never a pleasant or comfortable experience, and of all the people who she might have expected to abandon her when the facility was built, the Avengers were not on the list.

In Maria’s opinion, he first problem with having dark-Jewelled Warlord Princes in one’s court was not their temper and arrogance, as so many assumed, but the sheer weight of their overprotectiveness.

His body feels ‘off’, without the weight of the arm as ballast, he feels unbalanced, like something is missing.

“The first test of the Freyrstaf is to lay hands upon it,” Thor says. “The second is to understand its power and to put it aside.”

His voice doesn’t tremble, but it’s a hard thing for a man to admit – even half a man, even a monster.

It’s a strange thing for Natasha to realise how little she still knows herself.

Maria doesn’t recognise the woman striding up in an elegant dress and a temper, and turns her head slightly, shifting in her seat to make sure she has access to her weapon if need be.

“You know,” Scott remarks, offhand, “I always figured as the former crim, I’d be the cynical one around here. But Jesus Christ, Hill, I’m outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered, and outplanned.”

"Well," says Clint from where he’s leaning against the marble-topped side table, "you sure clean up pretty, Cap."
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tielan: (race)
Thursday, February 4th, 2016 08:36 am
[personal profile] theladyscribe: You always have such interesting photos of meals you're eating in (I'm assuming) cool restaurants, but I'm curious about what you cook at home! Any go-to meals? Or dishes you only cook for special occasions?

Cooking at home tends pretty simple, actually. Steak with a bit of seasoning, vegies on the side. I love salads, but I'm so lazy at making them, and these days I'm spoiled by my garden; I want tomatoes that taste of something, not of nothing! In summer, though, coleslaw (cabbage, fennel, carrot, onion, red wine vinegar, mayo) is amazing and delicious and wonderful.

Breakfast is usually an egg; on a weekend, I might add smoked salmon or something else. Sometimes it's a full fry-up - eggs, bacon, mushrooms (cooked slowly), but that's pretty rare (I usually save the big breakfasts for eating out, which I do more often than I should).

I tend to cook a meat - like a haunch of beef or chicken - and then eat it several nights in a row (or sometimes over the course of a week), as much as I'm feeling like eating.

I'm going to have to be a lot more careful about what I eat in the coming months - my cholesterol is ridiculously high, and my family has a history of heart disease so I need to be careful.

5 basic meals
- bolognaise
- roast chicken (beer can chicken - always good)
- garlic and anchovy pasta
- mustard beef (roast beef)
- soy sauce chicken (usually chicken drumsticks/wings, in soy sauce)

celebration meals
It's hard to describe 'celebration' meals for me - they tend to be things that my mother/stepfather cook for family dinner kind of things.

- hainan chicken
- stewed pork belly in red bean tofu sauce
- lion's head meatballs (pork meatballs with wombok quartered and steamed in garlic sauce)
- eight treasure duck (stewed whole duck stuffed with eight other foods)
- pavlova (this is my specialty for Christmas)

For Chinese New Year (coming right up), there's usually a dish called 'tzai' (in the Cantonese), which is full of funguses and tofu and thin rice noodles, and is completely vegetarian to bring in the new year. There's also New Year cake (sticky gelatinous rock-sugar-flavoured deliciousness) and in my family deep-fried, sesame-rolled, red-bean buns which I know as 'tzin-dui'.

Not sure what's happening for CNY this year.

My family does cooking really well, which is also why I'm a big foodie; I had good food from an early age, and while my twentysomething tastebuds could take McDonalds, my fortysomething tastebuds revolt. If I'm going to have a burger, it's going to be the full-fry deal from a milk bar.
tielan: (SGA - teyla)
Monday, February 1st, 2016 02:11 pm
[livejournal.com profile] alphaflyer asked for Five items off your bucket list, please!

Oh, man. Do I even have a bucket list? I haven't thought about this in a long time, TBH. I used to have a bunch of goals written down, but I've been living from day to day, week to week, month to month for a while now.

Maybe it's time to get back on the Life Goals train.

This is the starting line-up.

1. Finish a novel manuscript
2. Take a high performance vehicle out on a race track and work my way up to going really really fast.
3. Have a quilt I designed and made accepted into the Houston Quilt Show; I just had one accepted into QuiltCon and that was pretty exciting (and kind of unexpected).
4. Go on a cruise with friends or family
5. Have a housewarming (even if several years late) with a picnic on the lawn
tielan: Yoda, deal with it (SW - Yoda deal)
Monday, February 1st, 2016 01:41 pm
Letter me!

A - Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.
B - A pairing–platonic, romantic or sexual–that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.
C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will.
D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t.
E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom? If so, what?
F - What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom?
G - Have you ever had an OTP? If so, do you remember your first one? Who was in it?
H - What is your favorite source text for fandom stuff (e.g., TV shows, movies, books, anime, Western animation, etc.)?
I - Has Tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?
J - Name a fandom you didn’t think about until you saw it all over Tumblr. (You don’t have to care about it or follow it; it just has to be something that Tumblr made you aware of.)
K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?
L - Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves. (Characters you’re neutral about are fair game, as are characters you merely dislike. Characters that you absolutely loathe with the fire of ten thousand suns are exempt, as there is no point in giving yourself an aneurysm over a character that you hate.)
M - Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.
N - Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice).
O - Choose a song at random. Which ship or character does it remind you of?

P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas).
Q - A fandom you’ve abandoned and why.
R - Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?
S - Show us an example of your personal headcanon (prompts optional but encouraged)
T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?
U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.
V - Which character do you relate to most?
W - A trope which you are virtually certain to hate in any fandom.
X - A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom.
Y - What are your secondhand fandoms (i.e., fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)?
Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go! (Prompts optional but encouraged.)
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tielan: nyara, a tabby cat is resting on a modem and staring into the camera (cat01)
Tuesday, January 12th, 2016 01:11 pm
[livejournal.com profile] adafrog: How about your thoughts on pets?

Pets are a responsibility and a pleasure. I mention the responsibility first because they're a lifetime committment - the lifetime of the pet. Yes, circumstances change and sometimes you have to give up a pet for reasons, but when you take an animal into your family it should be with the firm intent and willingness to give it a Forever Home.

I never needed this explained to me )

Talkmeme Masterpost
tielan: (Default)
Friday, January 8th, 2016 11:35 am
Talkmeme Masterpost

[profile] everbright_morning asked: One thing you didn't know about Vietnamese cooking before you visited last time.

Frankly, I don't know that I learned anything much foodwise. I already knew it's very heavily vegetable-and-soup based, even in summer, with not so much meat. Meat is the seasoning, not the main course, because vegetables are easier to grow, less intensive, and go with just about everything.

I did discover that too much street food apparently lowers my immune system, and I can develop a (temporary) allergy to shellfish? Itchy palms and sleeplessness. That was an anxious night. (Never google your symptoms.)

It was also a bit annoying, since I spent the rest of the trip not eating anything shellfish-y, and while there's nothing to compare with Australian seafood...still!

I haven't had any problems since I got back - then again, I haven't really noticed any problems that I didn't attribute to something else.

Also: if I'm going to risk myself on street food, I might as well do it with my stepmother and her bestie, because they know the really good places!
tielan: a vivid quilt in a rainbow of colours (quilting)
Wednesday, January 6th, 2016 08:53 am
I'm going to spread this out a bit - probably into February, since I'm also doing the Snowflake Challenge in Jan.

Talkmeme Masterpost

[personal profile] alexseanchai asked for a topic about quilting — favorite patterns, favorite techniques, whatever.

somewhat image intensive )
tielan: (don't make me shoot you)
Friday, December 11th, 2015 10:10 am
First load of seasonal cards have gone out. If I have inadvertently sent you a Christmas card when you requested a seasonal, I sincerely apologise. I think I managed to get everything straight, but my brainweasels have been known to get things confused when I'm not paying attention.

(That, and I'm starting to wonder if we have a poltergeist in the house; things go missing and then turn up in odd places, or switched around, or just vanish...)

I realised the value of letter-writing this past year thanks to my Cousin T and her cancer. With her death last month, I am left with stamps and letter paper and a typewriter and sealing wax and nobody to write to. I am happy to keep writing to people - it may not be every month, but it will happen.

If you would like a seasonal card (or regular letters) then go here for DW | here for LJ where the comments are screened and the deer and the antelope play and let me know whether you want regular letters or just the card.

--

My Holiday Wishlist is up and ready: actually, I was thinking I'd really like some 'song lists' for characters I like - Maria, Mako, Teyla, Sam, Gwen, etc.

My fandom stocking is over here.

There's a teeny tiny love meme at [personal profile] dingsi's LJ.

The considerably larger version over at [livejournal.com profile] gdgdbaby.

And my January Talkmeme questions post at LJ and at DW. No question too obscure!
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tielan: (Default)
Monday, December 7th, 2015 01:17 pm
I haven't got time to rack my brain in December - too many things on right now. However, I have two weeks free over Christmas/New Year during which I'm hoping my sanity will come back for a while.

So give me topics to talk about in January.

No date for posting (unless you're really really stuck on a date), just a topic. I'm planning spread them out according to how many I get, because I'm really not anticipating a mad rush to hear my opinions.
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