lin·gua·phile

luxheroica asked: I know it is early but KORRA

Why I like them: Because she is totally confident in herself and in her abilities, UNTIL she has to airbend and it’s like running up against this brick wall, and the degree to which that utterly kills her is…really compelling? To other people, she’s defined by those things that come easy to her (and they may be jealous), but I get the feeling that as much as she tries to shrug it off, she defines herself to herself based on those things she can’t do…like airbending.

Why I don’t: She has a lot of privilege issues to deal with, and just general adjusting-to-public-life stuff (ex. beating up the Equalist megaphone guy is probably not the best way to show them you do not want to oppress them!), but frankly, I trust in the show to give her a chance to get past this, and it’s part of what makes me want to keep watching.

Favorite episode/scene: Since I can’t say ALL OF THEM, my favorite is from the pilot, when she leaves the compound on Naga and just runs, not because she’s going to get anywhere (and she knows this), but because she wants so much more than this small circle of ice and snow. That moment when you can see the White Lotus guards as a flicker to the side of one shot just kills me, because she can’t be alone by herself, ever, and no one (except probably Katara) will ever be themselves around her. This scene, with absolutely zero dialogue, shows you everything that really matters about how her upbringing has shaped her and what her challenges will be when she leaves the South Pole behind.

Favorite line: “The morning is evil.”

Favorite outfit: When she steals Mako’s scarf! (So, the outfit at the Equalist rally in 1x03.)

OTP: Korra/Mako is approximately equal to Elizabeth/Darcy in my head, so I think you know what I’m shipping. 

Non-romantic OTP: Korra & Bolin, bros for life! It’s obvious the two of them get along really well, and while they’ll probably get each other into more mischief than is entirely healthy, they’ll always have great stories to tell afterwards. 

Headcanon: At some point, she and Bolin go out drinking and dancing after they win a big match (and at some point they argue about who is a better wingman, and they have a contest which Bolin actually wins because the girl Korra tries to pick up for Bolin is actually waaaaaay more interested in Korra!). Mako declines joining them, saying he’s tired, but he actually goes and puts in an extra shift lightningbending for a factory and doesn’t tell them, because that is WHO HE IS. Just as Mako, exhausted, is home and about to fall asleep, an incredibly drunk Korra and Bolin appear, and Mako ends up taking care of both of them and putting them to bed. (He gives Korra his bed. He sleeps on the floor.)

Unpopular opinion: My portion of the fandom is totally not average and would, in fact, cheer if this happened, but I suspect lots of people would dislike it if Korra ended up being queer, and I personally would not mind in the least?

A wish for them: To be able to see her own privilege for what it is before it loses her a friendship she can’t rebuild.

An oh-god-please-don’t-ever-happen for them: I am just sort of dreading anything terrible enough to send her into the Avatar state at present, because she is SO NOT SPIRITUAL and that is what that’s all about, and considering how even Aang only went into the Avatar state in times of incredible crisis/personal pain, I cannot imagine what would prompt that in Korra, and I don’t want to see her hurting that badly.

5 words to best describe them: Act first, ask questions later.

My nickname for them: N/A

luxheroica asked: Yellow, Lilac, Blue

Yellow: When you get older, where would you want to live?

Right now I’d have to say Berkeley, CA. New York is amazing, and London is magical, but Berkeley is both of those things and it also feels like home. Plus, I don’t think I’d want to raise kids in either London or NYC, whereas growing up in Berkeley sounds like a pretty awesome childhood.

Lilac: What is your dream vacation?

Uhm, I am bad at “vacationing” because I far prefer exploring, and actually living places or at least being there long enough to get a real feel for them! So the short answer is, I WANT TO GO EVERYWHERE (like seriously no joke, provided I am going with at least one person I know and love). The slightly more serious answer at present is probably that I would like to go on a walking/hiking-oriented trip to north Wales or Yorkshire.

Blue: Are you still friends with the people you met in elementary school?

Not with a lot of them, but two guys were in at least one class with me EVERY YEAR from kindergarten until we all went off to college, and I still sort of keep in touch! My oldest friends are all people I met during my first weeks of middle school (and the reason why I survived it relatively unscathed!). 

luxheroica asked: 1, 15, 22, 34

1. Favorite childhood book?

Before I read Harry Potter and found Young Wizards as a result, my long-time favorite book was The Giver by Lois Lowry.

15. What is your policy on book lending?

If you return it to me in more or less the condition you borrowed it in, you can have it for as long as you need it, provided I don’t also suddenly need it. But the books I lend people most frequently are also typically books for which I possess multiple copies, ex. Young Wizards, so me suddenly needing it will not be an issue, I will have more! I actually have ~4 copies of SYWTBAW and I have a tendency of gifting it to people who I think ought to read it? I brought my omnibus of the first three books with me to New York when I moved, and shortly after lending the whole thing to a friend, I was browsing a bookstore that had a used omnibus of the first five books. Which, of course, I bought.

22. Favorite genre?

I would say, very generally, that my favorite genre is fantasy.  I am less interested in epic fantasy/high fantasy and more interested in modern urban fantasy, but I am also in love with alternate history/alternate universe fantasy-esque novels — particularly those grounded in a specific historical place and period, in which fantastic elements are integrated in a way that’s in keeping with the place/period. And of course, within this, I love YA.

(If I were answering the 18th-century version of this question I would just say my favorite genre is “the novel,” but this is a foregone conclusion today when we talk about books in a way that it simply wasn’t back then.)

34. Most intimidating book you’re too nervous to begin?

Up until recently, the answer to this would have been Middlemarch, but I finally finished it last semester; for a short while after finishing Middlemarch the answer would have been Clarissa, but I’m more than 75% done with that one by now! 

It is quite possible that, at present, the answer is Joyce’s Ulysses, which I have not yet committed to read, but which is on the syllabus for the only course I’d be able to take with a professor who seems really awesome and with whom I’d want the opportunity of working…

The non-academic answer to this might be The Door Into Fire by Diane Duane, which — don’t ask me how, because I have no idea — I have started several times and never actually finished! (Blasphemy!) Though I suspect part of this is that I like the idea of having one of her books “in waiting,” a part of the mental landscape I don’t yet know, which, upon reading, will nonetheless feel like coming home. 

luxheroica asked: Nita/Kit, Dairine/Roshaun, Deryn/Alek, uhh... something Austen maybe? I have no idea either.

Heh yeah I was figuring this out myself and I think this list is pretty much exactly right. Young Wizards is my primary fandom, hence overwhelming percentage of OTPs from said fandom (I might also include Tom/Carl on that list, actually).

And my Austen pairing of choice would be Elizabeth/Darcy, so you know. The laptop before this one was named Fitzwilliam, and there was a point where my computer password hint was “his favorite feature” and the password was “fineeyes,” because of that moment when Darcy tells Catherine Bingley that he’s been thinking about “the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow.”

luxheroica replied to your post: Oh man I really need to finally finish writing…

Stamp of approval. : D

nabokovian replied to your post: Oh man I really need to finally finish writing…

please do. i want read.

You guys don’t even understand. It is conceptually one of the coolest things I think I have ever thought up. But it is also ridiculously flawed in so many ways and needs SO MUCH retooling before it will ever be worth anything. I mean. I’m not even entirely sure what time period it is happening in. It sort of meanders back and forth between medieval and Regency pretty much at whim. And I still don’t have any clue HOW my MCs manage to destroy the patriarchy. I just know that it happens and it is beautiful.

…that being said, I, uh, sort of posted the first several chapters of it a couple of years ago? I’ve been looking over them post-Cold Magic and cringing at my own lackluster worldbuilding deployment and just generally questionable prose (seriously how did I think this was revised enough to let other people read?), but also remembering the things about this plot that I love and that make me really really want to go back to it and do it justice.

SHANNON

SHANNON

I LIVE IN A WORLD OF MAGIC AND WONDER (granted we already knew that this was the definition of New York because, hello, Young Wizards)

BECAUSE I WALKED ACROSS THE STREET FROM MY APARTMENT TO THE BOOKSTORE THAT USUALLY DOES NOT HAVE MUCH SFF OR YA

AND THEY HAD THIS ON MARKDOWN!

Good thing I was a diligent student earlier today, won’t feel bad about reading & liveblogging this til ungodly hours of the morning, surviving on tea & chocolate biscuits & girlpower & MAGIC!

(In case you can’t tell I am expecting a lot out of this book but luxheroica’s judgment = flawless, so I really doubt I will be disappointed. Also do you see that tagline? WHEN SCIENCE AND MAGIC COLLIDE! That is basically a definition of every book I have ever loved, ever.)

luxheroica asked: 1, 6, 10, 13, 20, 28, 31,

1. What was the last book you read? Depends if we count this as “finished” or just “read some part of”; if the former, then Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins (contemporary YA romance, sweet & adorable), but if the latter, then Clarissa by Samuel Richardson.

6. A strong memory associated with reading: The first time I read Pride and Prejudice I had NO IDEA what happened in it. The plot hadn’t been spoiled for me at all. So when the first proposal happened midway through the book, I was taken aback entirely — and this happened while sitting in my history teacher’s class, having finished a test early. My friend was sitting across the room, also having finished early, also reading P&P, and hit the exact same scene about a minute after my contained flailing.

10. A book recommendation: In addition to all of the things I blog incessantly about, White Cat by Holly Black was REALLY GOOD. (And the sequel is possibly even better.) YA urban fantasy at its best — I mean, assuming we leave Young Wizards out of the equation because obviously YW > everything else ever.

13. Top 5 female characters: Ugh why do you do this to me?! This is hard! Still, here’s something like a list, but not in any order.

—Deryn Sharp: more confident and talented and brave than I could ever hope to be, and also quite dashing!

—Nita and Dairine Callahan: I’m cheating and counting them as a single entry because I have always felt that I fall somewhere in between the two of them; I grew up with more of Dairine’s precocity, but with more of Nita’s concern for others and her impulse to help make things right. I’m not even sure I could tell you which of these girls I have more complicated feelings for, because I feel incredibly complex things about both of them.

—Elizabeth Bennet: She’s witty and quick and clever and not always right, but she’s one of the few people in the world of her novel who understands what is deserving of solemnity and what needs to be laughed at. Not to mention she walks across fields and gets her skirts six inches deep in the mud to visit her ailing sister the day after a storm. Elizabeth continues to teach me how to inhabit others’ expectations in my own unique way, with the intention of changing them (or getting things out of them that weren’t thought possible). 

—Hermione Granger: even before the Callahan sisters, Hermione was a geek girl I could relate with, someone whose story I cared about, someone who lived in the books instead of in the world but was like me in some emphatic way that made me see my own intelligence as something that mattered.

—Nora Darwin Barlow: I am realizing that my feelings about this fabulous lady boffin are extensive and vast, but as a woman going into a male-dominated career field (not as badly male-dominated as the sciences but still arranged around male privilege), I take courage even (especially?) in fictional representations of women who are not only good at what they do, but care about it. Dr. Barlow is not always the best person, but right now I respect her for the way she doesn’t let anyone treat her as a woman first and a boffin second: she is the head of the London Zoo, and she fabricated the perspicacious lorises. Seriously. Does it get more badass?

(Oh look they are basically all geeks/nerds/bookworms and/or career women, this is not surprising in the least.)

20. First book you remember reading/being read to you: The first book I ever read all on my own was The Berenstein Bears and the Spooky Old Tree.

28. A book you’re looking forward to: Games Wizards Play! I need it I want it I must have it! Also the Manual of Aeronautics and Black Heart, the third book in Holly Black’s Curseworkers trilogy.

31. Favorite fictional character of all time (or just today): Again, what is it with the difficult questions?! It really depends on the day. Right now because I’m listening to the audiobook of Goliath it may be Deryn, but normally this is a question I am just not capable of answering.

luxheroica replied to your post: Tom/Carl

Yessss legally married off-planet, this is my favorite Tom/Carl thing ever. Also everything here is beautiful and gorgeous and I love it.

OBVIOUSLY I got the “legally married off-planet” thing from your awesome fic! Which, you know, I would have added to the list of fic on that previous post that has inspired myTom/Carl headcanon, except that the post was in response to you and obviously YOU WROTE IT so you know all about it. :D

luxheroica asked: Tom/Carl

Tom and Carl are wizard husbands FOREVER.

They meet when Tom is in New York for college. Tom goes to Columbia because he’s really interested in journalism but he ends up taking a few creative writing classes and totally falling for it and sort of cobbling together a freelance career that combines fiction and non-fiction alike. This is actually relevant because when non-wizards ask how he and Carl meet, he tells them it was at a some broadcast journalism event that the two of them attended (although they had already run into each other once or twice on errantry-related matters before that).

Carl goes to one of the CUNY public schools in Manhattan (I actually haven’t decided if I headcanon that he went to Hunter or to CCNY yet, but am leaning toward CCNY entirely because it’s closer to Columbia), and while he commutes from home at first to save money, it isn’t easy, especially since he’s trying to find time to fit wizardry in alongside all of this, and since he’s not “out” as a wizard to his family. (And maybe not entirely “out” as gay for a while — at one point when Tom asks about what his parents know about wizardry, Carl will laugh and say that telling them he liked boys was hard enough on them and maybe they would have preferred it if they knew about his wizardry instead of his orientation but he’s never going through that again if he can help it.)

Tom and Carl become partners in wizardry before anything else, and then Tom is complaining about how expensive it is to live in the dorms (he couldn’t afford Columbia without some scholarship money), and Carl is complaining about how frustrating it is to commute to northern Manhattan from Brooklyn four days a week, and suddenly getting an apartment together doesn’t seem like a bad idea at all, and although it’s cramped and crowded and too close to the route that the ambulances take on their way to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in the middle of the night, it’s theirs, another foundation of their partnership, which is itself growing and changing and not in a bad way at all.

After college, they live together in the city for a while, being wizards and establishing their day jobs. By this time they are TOTALLY AN ITEM and Carl’s parents may be the only ones who don’t know it. Tom and Carl know they are in a serious relationship and don’t have any plans for this to change anytime soon, but still want some way of expressing this commitment in a world before legalized same-sex marriage. (Though I also headcanon that they are at some point legally married on some alien planet where same-sex marriage is legal long before it becomes so in New York!) Carl jokes about how when he thinks “commitment,” he thinks house in the suburbs and a garden and dogs. Tom smiles and says he doesn’t think that would be such a bad idea.

THEN THEY ARE AWESOME AND SUPPORTIVE AND ADORABLE TOGETHER FOREVER, TIL UNIVERSE’S END.

Also, bonus, two fics that have indelibly affected my Tom/Carl headcanon:

An Unwilling Heart by Cyphomandra

Terminus by Aria