All about YOU

[birdsofshore]

I love talking with you all here each week / day / hour / insert own level of addiction, but I often think I don't even know basic stuff about your LJ , like what your username means, what your icons are, etc etc. Come and tell me everything.

Why did you pick your username, and what does it mean? What's your default icon, and does it have any significance? If it's a famous person, please don't assume I will know who it is - I never know who anyone is unless I have the hots for them. What about those other things we can personalise on LJ - the quotes or messages at the top of your journal, and that odd little thing I've never worked out how to change, for instance who_la_hoop's says "I can see your house from here", which always makes me laugh. Do you have special art or graphics on your header? What are they all about?

I will start you off. My username is from a poster that I have in my living room, which says "Birds of shore & sea", with, er, drawings of different birds. Of shore, and, indeed, of sea. "Birdsofshoreandsea" is more characters than LJ allows, and besides, the shorebirds are the ones I like the best.

My picture is probably self-evident, but it's a curlew, which is my absolute favourite bird. I live quite near to plenty of these glorious creatures and they make me very thrilled and happy whenever I see one. They're just so ludicrous and beaky. They look like they shouldn't exist, and they seem to have really fabulous personalities. I can watch them for hours, just mooching about and digging for worms. They also have subtly beautiful plumage and the most wonderful song. I'm not actually OBSESSED with birds in real life, but I can verge on HIGHLY ENTHUSIASTIC about birds on any given occasion, so apologies if you just glazed over there.

The quotes on my journal are from one of my favourite books, The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving. "You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed" and "Keep passing the open windows" are pieces of advice from the book on how to survive whatever life throws at you. If you haven't read it, it's a big, insane, sexy, sweet, funny, tragic romp of a book and please don't tell me if you don't like it, because I have adored it since I was about 15 and bought it to impress a boy I fancied who worked in a bookshop (my rec for Frequent Patronage will be along any day now, by the way). Fandom is definitely part of my plan to remain sane and to 'keep passing the open windows' (in other words, to avoid falling into depression and self-harm), so both quotes seemed apt when I was picking my layout.

I have only got a standard LJ header thing - it was the one that seemed least offensive when I looked through. I'd love fancy graphics or some beautiful art up there, but OMG, how hard to choose, plus, if I'm being honest, I don't have a clue how to do such things DD:

Please come and do all the sharing. I really, really want to know.

p.s. A very big thank you to whoever nominated me at HPfanficpoll thingy, if you are on my flist. I was very flattered indeed that you liked my fics, and touched that you took the time ♥

Comments

[mayfly-78.livejournal.com]

Interesting post and question! I must track this to see everyone's replies!

I like your name. And the being-obsessed-with-birds thing is sort of refreshing since everyone else on the net seems to obsessed with cats! My favourite bird is an albatross by the way. In large part because of the Baudelaire poem.

Anyway, I started off as mayfly on many fanfic archive sites. I was exclusively into HP and I thought it would be more unique if I chose a name that had no HP references. I chose that name because I was very into Belle & Sebastian at the time, and I always identified with their song Mayfly. I think I interpreted the lyrics a little how I wanted to. For me the song talks about someone on the outside looking in, wanting desperately to be included but never being judged worth-while.

When I opened my LJ account I wanted to use the same name, but someone else beat me too it - and abandoned their journal soon after, I checked up on them - I tried out may_fly, but it was also used. My friend who's laptop I was using at the time - I set up my LJ account in a hurry while on holiday because I wanted to take part in a fic writing thingy on the now defunct two_broomsticks - got fed up, typed mayfly_78 in - from my date of birth - and that was that.

On DeviantArt I go by Lazylinepainterjane. Also from a Belle & Sebastian song. Also about a rather sad and pathetic girl. I also Foxinsnow on flickr and for a blogspot blog I no longer use. Also from a Belle & Sebastian song - but also a reference to Virginia Woolf's Orlando.

For my online shop I chose Inkdoodles because I wanted something that expressed my style - until I got obsessed with block-printing, I primarily did ink drawings - and was whimsical. I refuse to take myself too seriously.

The title of my blog is "ramblings of a disjointed mind", because I harbour no illusions about being coherent or consistent.

My banner is one I made myself. It's a collage of some of my fanart.

I can no longer remember where I got my user-pic from. I came across it somewhere on my meanders on the web, before I opened my journal and before I realised it would be best to keep track of where I take things from. I used it because I liked how simple and light-hearted it was. And I think it goes with my tag-line. My ramblings are as inconsequential as soap bubbles. I like to think it makes me easily recognisable which is one of the reasons I don't change despite having a number of other user-pics too.

I think that's all.

[birdsofshore]

That is SO INTERESTING - you know, I'd always presumed your icon was a self-portrait that you had drawn yourself - I can see now that it isn't quite your style, but it's not a million miles from it. I really like it for the reasons you've mentioned; it's simple and charmingly whimsical.

I hadn't picked up on all the Belle and Sebastian refs! And I didn't know the Albatross poem, but I do now! I'm not sure if it's meant to be tragic or farcical? I'm going to read it again.

Your banner is wonderful. It almost shouldn't work, because there's so much in there to look at, but it's so rich and vivid.

[mayfly-78.livejournal.com]

No one picks up on the Belle & Sebastian theme!

The poem is tragical and I - obviously - identify with the Albatross. Who is so majestic when flying, but so ungainly on land - ie in the real "normal" world.

http://fleursdumal.org/poem/200

Haha, my banner is typical of me. Always over-doing it and putting too much in. I fail so much at minimalism!

[birdsofshore]

I love your identification with the albatross. It pulls at my heart DD:

[capitu]

Look at that, that's super interesting. I always thought the Mayfly was some sort of anamgram for Malfoy and... well, I don't know what else, but I was sure it was something about Malfoy. XD

[mayfly-78.livejournal.com]

Haha! When I first came across fandom I was not nearly as obsessed with Draco as I am now. I barely gave a second thought to him. I started off by reading some rather banal het.

I pin-point my Draco obsession starting with heidi's (I don't know her LJ name) fic Surfeit of Curses which is an abandoned WIP and then of course with CassandraClaire's Draco Trilogy.

But still I would have chosen a non HP username just to be different.