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

[lordhellebore]

1) My username comes from Tad Williams' novel The War of the Flowers. All the elves there have plant names, and Lord Hellebore is one of the villains.

The fun thing about the username is that back in the day, I used to participate quite avidly in a lot of Christian LJ communities. Now, there were quite a heap of Christian fundies who will get there knickers in a twist when they even see the letter combination "hell", never mind that it has nothing whatsoever to do with faith and is part of a flower's name (which is, ironically, in German called "Christrose/Pfingstrose" = "Christ rose/Pentecost rose"). So, a lot of the time they would see "Lord" and "Hell" and be all over me, since I also was arguing against stupid things like "being gay is evil" etc.
"Antichrist" is only one of the many names I earned there . . .


2) The two main icons I use for default icons are and . They're both Tilda Swinton, who is a lovely actress and quite good at portraying androgynous characters like the Archangel Gabriel in Constantine.


3) My journal titles:

a) I am not bound to please thee with my answers is a quote from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, which is my favourite play of his, and my favourite play in general. Obviously, Shylock is my favourite character, and this is one of my favourite quotes of his ;)

b) Intelligenz sieht nur von unten aus wie Arroganz is German and means "Intelligence looks like arrogance only from below". Yes, that looks arrogant *smirks*


4) Sidebar text: Tall ships and tall kings
Three times three
What brought they from the foundered land
Over the flowing Sea?
Seven stars
and seven stones
And one white tree.

Tis is a poem called A Rhyme of Lore from Lord of the Rings. Gandalf recites it to Pippin in chapter nine of The return of the King as they are riding from Edoras to Minas Tirith. The ships are the nine ships that survived the fall of Númenor, sailed by Elendil and his sons Isildur and Anárion. The foundered land is Númenor. The seven stones are the palantíri, and the white tree is the sapling of Nimloth (which is an descendant of the White Tree Galathilion, the tree made by Yavanna for the Elves in Tirion, in the likeness of Telperion, one of the two trees that used to shed light on Valinor before the sun, moon, and stars were created) preserved by Isildur before it was destroyed. What the seven stars are, I am not sure, but there are seven stars on the standard of Elendil.

[birdsofshore]

Ah, that's great to learn all of that. I do love the Shylock quote. I did know Tilda Swinton as I am a fan of hers. Your icons are really nice.

The line about arrogance is hilarious. My German was not quite good enough to get it so I have puzzled over that in the past!