Once a Stranger

Movie Reviews

I feel so proud of myself now XDDDDD

Meme from meganbmoore. Yes, I keep doing this meme, shud up.

DIRECTIONS:
* reply to this post with the word MEME and I will pick six of your icons.
* make a post (including this info) and talk about the icons I chose.
* other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
* this will create a never ending cycle of icon glee.


Kozue and Anthy in Akio's red car of sex doom.
This is a moment I adore in Revolutionary Girl Utena, where Kozue, being the sexual predatory being that she is looks at Anthy and wonders "hey, I wonder what is that everyone is looking in this girl, maybe I could figure out this for myself" and you know. And Miki's - Kozue's twin who has a crush on Anthy, but whose crush is in a big part a projection of his feelings for Kozue, it's all very freudian - brain break when he sees that and it loses him that duel.
And it's hilarious.
And because I adore both those characters, I though the idea of both of them having sex would be extremely hot.
Therefore it's my femslash icon!


This is a quote from Joe Abercrombrie's series The First Law, and an icon I made myself.
This said by Ferro, my favourite character of this series, a slightly blood-thirsty, revenge bidden and violent woman, who is extremely awesome. And always has a lot of knives on her. And when asked why, answered thusly. ♥
It's my sarcastic icon, or my weapons loving icon, or my fictionnal action/violence/asskicking icon.


This is Milly from Code Geass, crossdressed for the high school crossdressing festival of her own making (she presides the local students bureau)
Milly is one of the minor yet awesome characters in Code Geass, she's just extremely, amusing and awesome. Very extraverted. And she looks hot dressing as swashbuckling guy. Not that she doesn't look hot otherwise, but she looks extra hot like this! Secret time : I have a kink for crossdressing girls.
Anyway this is my genderfuck icon, I love stories that explore the liminarities of gender, from gender roles reversal to characters who are asexued, bisexued, queer gendered etc. It's one of the thing I love seeing in SFF novels.


This is Zuko. He is very DRAMATIC. He takes himself and his issues very seriously and is a very intense young man. This is what makes him cute and hilarious. Later on he learns to relax and tiny bit and becomes hilarious in a dorkish way. But I love his sense of drama, like the time he called his old man out, in the middle of an eclipse, while his nation was attacked, while threatening father with his awesome two swords, and making a whole speech out of it. It is one of my favourite moment of Avatar :D
Anyway this is a fun icon to use to be self derisive about internets and my own sense of DRAMA! And when bsns starts getting srs.


Once upon a time, there was this man called Jaime, in this book called A Game of Throne by George RR Martin. Jaime was a handsome man, a brilliant knight, member of the elite Kingsguard, and one of the highest and wealthiest noble of Westeros. But Jaime had secrets. Jaime was having sex with his twin secret, who was also the queen of the kingdom, which made this not only incest, but also high treason of the very king he was sworn to guard. Ooops. And he got caught up in the act by this cute, eight years old boy. Double ooops. So Jaime sighed and, with loathing, said "the things I do for love" and pushed the 8 years old boy from a tower.
That's when I fell in love with this fantasy series. Because "things you do for love" = "defenestring young boys" is awesome. I love stories which explore the darker sides of love. ASOIAF in general is full of people doing bad, violent, ambiguous actions, and sometimes compassionate yet disloyal out of (romantic or not) feelings of love. Or claiming it's for that when it's a bit something.
And then there's Jaime. After said defenestration, I wouldn't think he would be anything but a villain, but he turned out to be an utterly awesome character whom I totally adore. I'm not used to adoring characters who attempt murdering 8 year old boys. No, really, I know I'm fond of anti heroes and darker characters but when they're very violent or murderous I feel kinda ashamed for it, usually.
Mind you, Jaime's not the only child killer I like in this series ^_^


Fakir from Princess Tutu with a mask. I'll have to admit I've no idea why Fakir has a mask on this picture, apart from being your usual jerk with a heart of gold and a few secrets or two, but it's a pretty picture, and I adore Fakir, so it works!
This is my icons for when talking about me, me, me, or issues about identities, how they're constructed, negotiated, presented to the outer world. I'm a person with issues about trusting people and I tend to be very reserved albeit in an outgoing and loud way. I tend to deal with that by being overly blunt and brash about things about myself (tact and me aren't good friends ^_^)... so I love this icon, the idea of masks, to talk about such things. The word for "Person" comes from a word, "Personna", which means "mask" afterall.

Stolen from rosehiptea and meganbmoore

Go to my userpics and then pick:

1. Your favorite.
2. Your least favorite.
3. One that makes you automatically think of me.
4. One that you think I should TOTALLY use more often.
5. One that you don't get/needs more explanation/you have no idea why the hell I have it.

The rules:
1. Reply to this post, and I will pick five (or four or three) of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon squee. Whoo!

Icons picked by nicole_anell



Geeks are sexy, featuring the very sexy Shigure from Fruits Basket. It's an icon because it's true, there's nothing quite as attractive as intelligence, and also because I'm pretty proud of belonging to the geek subculture. Represents! Also a random Shigure icon because I like him a lot, he does kind of fit one of my ideal of characters, what with being the sleazy, manipulative bastard that he is with a bad sense of humour and a kind of ruthless sense of caring. Also, he's a dog.
That reminds me I still lack of Xelloss icon...



I've been somewhat more interested in CLAMP in general lately, so I searched a bit for images and found a series of chibi characters for xxxholic and tsubasa. I of course pounced on the Yuuko one because Yuuko is one of the most awesome character by CLAMP. Spent a long time cleaning up the background (for my meagre iconmaking ability that is), and there you go. She has a little crop, so I have an alternative version of that icon with "Mistress Yuuko" on it instead of the butterfly, but I didn't feel dom enough to use it myself ;) I use it mostly as a generic sassy, CLAMP-related icon.



The picture (of Snape of course!) was made by rexluscus and iconized for the first Snarry Olympics, back when they were the Snarry Olympics and not the Snarry Games. Initially it said "Team Angst" in support for that team during the games. It was very nice of that comm, to order the teams between the kind of snape/harry fics I liked and the kind of snape/harry fics I disliked! Sadly since then all the various games have been less handy for me D: so I was a supporter of the Team Angst of course and I especially asked rex for the modification of text. "Bring on the angst" is one of my motto, especially since BtVS's Season 6 when everyone was whining about how dark the season was so that's what I was thinking back to when I asked for that. Generally speaking, I just love dark and angsty fanfics - not because I think they're better, I acutally think that writing good fluff is harder than writing good angst - I just like them. I kinda pisses me off when there's a sense of being appologetic about having any kind of sadness or darkness in a story, which I sometimes see. So for this I have this icon :)
Also it's my last Harry Potter icon since I'm almost entirely out of the fandom right now :( I only read busaikko's and mistful's fics right now ... ^_^;;



My silly icon. I've no idea from which episode it was taken from, but it's just so adorably dorky! Baltar's one of my two favourite character in BSG. Both for his funny moments and for his most angsty. It helps that the actor is OMFG so good, but there's also something I like about a deeply despisable, narcissist, responsability-denying sleazy character. I think I always like those (like I always adored Gilderoy Lockhart in HP :D) but Baltar's the first time I see a character be so central and well built in a fiction, and I totally love BSG for that. He' a very compelling character with an interesting story of descent into darkness the more he tries to not be such a wretched human being anymore. And many, many hilarious moments :D



This is my icon for when I want to be wanky and flame people, so I don't use it often! Lyrics by and image of Tori Amos. I love their irony. That meaning of "fuck you piss me off so much but I want to be better than that so I'm going to try to contain myself. But I still think you're an asshole!" The song overall is lovely that way, about the times when you get frustrated and angry at people, it might be more because it's a bad day and you're stressed or whatever, and you want to lash out... it's good to remember then, that you do believe in peace. Even if right now you can't find in yourself much kindness for those people. Anger is a very blinding feeling.

This time picked by a_white_rain

( cut for icons picture and some Avatar spoilers up to 3x13 )

Icon meme from amewarashi and solesakuma

1. Reply to this post, and I will pick three of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon squee. Whoo!

amewarashi picked :


Rue's my second favorite character in Princess Tutu :) she's so pretty and angsty, which this icon underscores very well. I love the raven theme too, and I like the clever Poe ref of the icon, but also very fitting to the mood of Rue.


A quote from Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, from the two delicious villains Croup & Vandemar. Honestly this one just cracks me up in that outrageous, just business, sir, non apologetic villainous way.


Azula is another great villain, and, unlike many villains, she's exquisitely good at plotting evil schemes. Quite the clever mindfucker, too. You gotta love that about her.

solesakuma picked :


Touya and Sakura have my favourite sibling dynamics of all of the siblings in Clamp. Perhaps at all, actually XD So cute. That's a great icon for that feeling of tender bickering you know :)


Takumi from Nana. I have a weird love for this character (given that he's quite the bastard. Then again, I do love me bastards). Just a nice funny icon for crack-related comments :)


That's the only icon of the lot I made myself, and I'm rather proud of how it turned out. Corto Maltese from one of the greatest European comic book series there is. He's a pirate, sorta, but really gentilhomme de fortune rather fits him well as a description.

(all icons taken from my JF account)

You know, looking at all the icons over at JF... I really don't want to give LJ any money anymore, but damnit, I am sick of having only 6 icons ;_;

Comment on this post. I will choose seven userpics from your profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are using them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so others can play along.

Ganked from schemingreader who picked icons from my Journal Fen account :

(by iconsbycurtana)
Quoting from Neil Gaiman's novel Neverwhere. I love that quote because it's a great illustration of the frank ruthlessness of villains Mr Croup and Mr Vandemar (one vulpine, the other wolfish) and their delightful enthousiasm for evil, mayhem & destruction. They're darlings, really.

(by iconsbycurtana)
Quote from Ursula K Leguin's famous novel Left Hand of Darkness. The full quote is:
Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.
I love this. Someday I must look up non dualism philosophies seriously.

(by crazylittleme
Tori Amos, with a line from her song "Hey Jupiter" :
"No ones picking up the phone
Guess its me and me
And this little masochist"
I like this icon because Tori has, for some reason, an expression that's very "me" on it. I'm not sure why. She doesn't usually look like me, it's more an evocation. This little masochist, well I don't think it's a bad description for me. I can be pretty masochist both in a metaphorical sense (wasting time blaming myself for things) and in a literal sense - but it's done in an unabashed way. This little masochist. Take it. Leave it. No more, no less.


A gift from the darling cyrulean made from my interest "books" (chosen by her!)
Hahaha, isn't it a cute picture ^^
There's an evocation of stories getting out of themselves, mixing, meddling with each others, perpetuating new stories. And this, book sex, it all happens in our head, when we read. When we think back upon what we read. When we write anew. We're the books' incubators!

(by me)
I don't remember where I picked that picture, just that it's adorable and looks very much like a Ghibli Cat (maybe the one from Kiki's delivery service? I dunno). This is one of the very first icon I ever made, using one of those gif programs you can only use for a trial testing. The line is a quote from The Last Unicorn, in which a cat give as explanation for giving an enigma to the protagonists instead of a simple answer. Don't we all love cats for this ^_^

(by me)
I have an unhealthy love for books. Well, for stories, which I prefer to come in book-shape form. I adore them. They make me happy. They've made me happy at times when I don't think anything else was happy about my life. They've filled me with wisdom to learn, people to love, worlds to travel to. I guess it's silly of me, to think I may have gotten so much merely out of books. I guess it may feel very pathetic to some. But that's me. I don't think I'd be half the person I'm today if I hadn't loved books so much. I don't think I'd been alive.

(by me)
That would be my A Song of Ice and Fire fandom. "I did warn you not to trust me" is a line that a character says at the end of the first volume, and I don't want to spoil anyone who hasn't read it by revealing who. It's a good line to present that series, in which a lot of treacherous actions take place, and because when I rec it to friends I do warn them it's going to be a dark, lovely, exquisitely cleverly woven journey.

I love looking at people's icons, but I don't always *get* them - I often wonder stuff like, "Who's that guy?" or "Where's that quote from?" but I tend not to ask, for various reasons. So come on, here are my icons. Pick one (or more!) you're curious about, and I'll try to explain it. Or at least explain what I like about it.

* * *

This is my last day at the office in Rueil, we're moving in a bigger one in inner Paris starting next week. I need to remember to post a long work update post at some point ^_^

Look at your LJ "interests" list. If you have fewer than 50 interests, pick every fifth one. If you have between fifty and seventy-five interests, pick every seventh one. If you have over seventy-five interests, pick every tenth one. If you have fewer than ten, pick all of 'em. List them on your LJ, and tell everyone exactly what it is about these things that interests you so much.

I have more than 100 interests....

Amano : A japanese graphic artist. I really love what he does, it's utterly gorgeous. It's more painting than manga. He was the person illustrating Vampire Hunter D, and Final Fantasy VI.

Barbara Hambly : A writer. Mostly fantasy, and some historical stuff. I especially reccomand the Dragonbane cycle, it's got my very favourite dragon out of the fantasy books, and my very favourite dorkish father dragonslayer, and if you like fantasy that can be beautiful, dark and lyrical while at the same time being gritty and realistic, you'll love it.

David Brin : Another writer (heh), mostly Science Fiction, either Space Opera or Hard Science. I love the cycle with the "uplifted" dolphins and chimpanzees. Except for the ending which was bad.

Fantasy : The genre. As in the kind of books I read the most.

Guy Gavriel Kay : A writer (notice a trend yet ?) he writes fantasy with a historical flavour. I especially adore Tigana and Lions of Al Rassan. He's a writer I love for his style of lyrical writing and bittersweet, melancholy mood, but he's not without annoying gimmicks (as I'm sure generalblossom would be willing to explain ^^)

Lawful Drugs : A manga by Clamp. Slashy as hell and very cute in a vaguely threatening fashion. Alas only 3 volumes are out and none knows when it might be finished.

Mike Resnick : a writer *smirks* I especially love his space opera, either the Infernal Trilogy which transplants the history of the colonization and decolonization of 3 African countries as Science Fiction, and especially Santiago (which has more an ambiance of western space op)

Paradoxes : A mode of thinking I like. Life is full of paradoxes, people are full of contradictions. ^^

Shadowrun : A roleplaying game. Shadowrun is pretty unique in that it's a mix of fantasy and cyberpunk. 2050, a matrix, cyberneticized "street samurai", megacorporation, a United States divided in several federations, magic is awakened, with hermetic mages and shamans making the bulk of magician people, trolls and orks hiding in the sewer, elves founding their own nation south of Seatle, and dwarves playing the techwiz, and a dragon recently elected as newest president of what remains of the United States. Did I mention the ugly things lurking like toxic totems, blood magic and various monsters ? Shadowrun is a game I especially love because of the very consistent and rich background. There's a whole pretty dark world to explore. System is clunky as hell, though.

Tanith Lee : A writer. She writes mostly gothic-ish fantasy. I absolutly adore the Tale of the Flat Earth which is one of the most gorgeous, orginal, sensual, enigmatic and beautifully cruel fantasy cycle there is.

Writing : I love writing. I don't do a lot of it, but there's been few moments in my life where i wasn't writing something, whether poetry, original stories, fanfics, or original character backgrounds ^^

( when do i post )

Ask me for "top five" lists of pretty much anything, and I will list you my top five of that thing or things. Copy and give your own top fives.

Couch delivered to my appartment. It took them only 2 hours later than the dealine of the timeframe during which they were supposed to deliver it. (2 to 6 pm, and I got it at 8)

Happy belated birthday to angelya ! Hope it was a delightful day ^_^

( Friends' astrological sign meme )

Now, I'm going to beg. Would anyone be willing to Beta for me ? Since apparently the plot bunny that rabidly attacked me was interesting enough to wagger a full fledged fic, i'm going to continue it. But I'm afraid I need someone to talk the plot about and advice me. Someone who knows both Tokyo Babylon and Card Captor Sakura well - especially the latter because I don't know CCS all that well ^_^ Please ! *makes a cute Tsuzuki begging face*

A big, big happy birthday to azure_empress ! Hope you had a wonderful, gorgeous day full of happy things May ! And have fun with Hitoshi ^_^

Yesterday we went out with my family for my father's birthday. It was a Hungarian restaurant and very good; and there was a very skilled tzigane group playing music which was very cool.

Why does my mother keep buying me pink things even though she knows I hate that colour ? I mean, first time, it's okay, i can own one or two things of that colour and wear them from times to times, and I always appreciate recieving a gift so I wouldn't bitch... but several times in a row ? ^_^;;

Anyway, some memes

( LJ collage )
( one of those which uke are you quizz )