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

[notearchiver.livejournal.com]

This looks ridiculously fun, so I shall participate.

Username: For my decade(s) of fandom participation before HP, I used a different handle. Then I stopped being active in fandom for a while. When I started back up again, I decided to pick a new name because I wanted to clearly distinguish myself from my past works in case anyone had read the zine(s) they appeared in. I initially thought of connecting it to my e-mail address, but I decided that since I use my e-mail for personal stuff as well as fandom, I didn't want to explicitly connect it. (If people in real life are suspicious enough to find me in fandom and want to go through fest sign-ups to try to find my e-mail address, then they deserve to know because that's a lot of dedication.) Anyways, I still wanted something that represented me. So I decided upon notearchiver because I take notes about anything that interests me. I have so many notebooks, scraps of paper, napkins, etc around the house and my office that it's not even funny. One of the rooms in my house has walls completely covered by note cards with songs, quotes, ideas, etc jotted down on them. Literally floor to ceiling. So it seemed appropriate that I use the moniker notearchiver.

Default Icon: My default icons is actually part of a self portrait photograph. I don't much like photography, but I was playing around with my Partner's new camera one day, and I took that photo. There's no digital manipulation. The colors are what happens when you fiddle with macro, the f-stop, zoom, and flash like crazy.

Journal Title/Subtitle: My journal title/subtitle is Sir, you are no gentleman! / And you, Miss, are no lady. It's a quote from Gone With the Wind (in the movie, it's in this scene--the specific line is at around 1:40). As a child, Gone With the Wind was one of my favourite books, and it still holds a special place in my heart. I also chose the quote because I'm trans* and waver back and forth and in between man and woman. It felt very apt.

Journal Header Image: My journal header image is just a larger part of the photograph I use for my icon.

[capitu]

I love the meaning of your Title/Subtitle. Wow, the little things you can learn! :D

[notearchiver.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

(And I didn't realise the name on your icon was your name! I just thought it was the name of the model/celebrity or something!)

[birdsofshore]

Now that's very interesting - I would not have guessed your userpic was you, because it looks such a professional and arty photo! I like the colours of it.

I also love your title/subtitle, and I like it even more now I know the meaning behind it.

I am a bit scared by the wall of notes. It sounds like the kind of thing that would make me twitchy. :DD

[notearchiver.livejournal.com]

Well, the colours of the photo definitely make me look a lot younger :) Somehow the wrinkles and such didn't appear.

And now I have the image of you with a massive beak twitching, and the beak swings so much that you fall over. :D